Wilder Girls

“You’re gonna be okay,” Reese whispers, and I let it push me further into sleep. “You saved me. Now I’m gonna save you.”

I don’t know where we’re going. I don’t know what’s next. But Reese’s heartbeat is steady in my ear, and I remember—I remember how it was. The three of us together, and I’ll make it that way again.

We keep so many secrets, and we make decisions we shouldn’t have to, and I can’t do that right now.

“Is there a way out?” I say. “You didn’t tell Headmistress, but tell me, Reese. Can we leave here?”

She looks at me for a long moment, and then she sighs. “I think so, yeah.”

Is she serious? I pull her even farther away from the others. “Why the hell wouldn’t you use it before now?”

“At first I didn’t think I could get past the fence,” she says, avoiding my gaze. “And then I could, but this place is my whole life.”

I swallow hard, blink back a flicker of Mr. Harker’s face in the dark, empty eyes and blackened teeth. “And now?”

She shrugs. “You asked me to.”

“Do you understand?” Welch is looking back and forth between us and Julia, and as the wind pushes her hair back, I see blood trailing down her chin from where she’s bitten her lip.

Julia smiles easily and says, “Sure we do.” I know that tone, know a lie when I hear one. She’s trying to keep things calm, but she’s got her hand in the pocket of her coat where she’s stashed her pistol.

“No, you don’t. That’s—” And Welch’s voice snaps in half, comes back low and rough. “That’s the end of it. The food, us, everything. They’re never coming back.”

“Don’t be silly. Of course they are.” Julia’s getting closer to Welch, one hand outstretched, and she sounds like somebody’s mother. Patient, and controlled, because someone here has to be, and we’re children, but we stopped being kids a year and a half ago.

It was inside me and I didn’t even know.

A violation, but a gift too. It let me find a reason for everything I felt, at Raxter, in Boston, and every day in between. It let me match my body to my mind. I can thank it for that, at least.

I look back at the window to see my reflection, to see if I look different. But I don’t. Same me, same old    same old    but I think    I think maybe something is missing

“Reese,” I start, but she shakes her head.

“I understand what you did. I think you did the right thing. And I’m still angry about it.” She shrugs her good shoulder. “What else is there to say?”

“So, what,” she says, acid dripping from her voice, “I don’t get to be mad that my father is dead? That the Tox ripped him apart so badly you had to put him down?”

I shoot to my feet, and I don’t know what it is—anger or pure desperation—that has me so wound up I’m shaking. “No, actually,” I say, “you don’t get to be mad that I saved your life.”

Reese narrows her eyes. I brace myself for whatever’s coming next. I’ve never met anyone who likes fighting the way she does, never met anyone so good at it. But the silence beats on. At last she lets out a long, slow breath, tension draining from her shoulders.

“Do you think I want this?” she says. She sounds hoarse, and I can barely pick out one word from the next, every ounce of exhaustion crashing down on both of us at once. “We don’t get to choose what hurts us.”

Because people are messy and that’s how it goes. But let’s not pretend.”

“I’m not pissed.” She shrugs. “It’s just true. That’s all.”

I should never have brought her. I should have known she wouldn’t understand. “Why are you even here?” I snap. Around us, the patchwork walls of the house pressing in, the birch looming, Byatt’s initials traced in blood. “Why did you come at all?”

Reese doesn’t answer. But I can hear it all the same. Everything about her—the sorrow buried in her eyes, the tightness of her mouth—all of it screaming the same thing:

For you, Hetty.

It’s too much. I can’t even say I never asked her to, because I did—I did, over and over again. I’m doing this for Byatt, and Reese is doing this for me.

Fuck.

There’s no room to feel bad. If I feel that, I have to feel everything else.