Wilder Girls

write a list. Mona’s gills. Hetty’s eye. Even try to draw Reese’s hand, and there are a hundred more flare-ups I can’t remember from a hundred other girls. It startles me, seeing it all laid out. How the Tox models us after the animals around us, tries to change our bodies, push them further than they’re willing to go. Like it’s trying to make us better, if only we could adapt.

Did they teach you about Raxter Blues at school?” she asks. “About what makes them special?” I nod.

You mean the lungs

“And the gills,” Paretta says. “It’s pretty amazing, right? So it can survive anywhere. And I think it’s pretty amazing, too, that you girls are part of it now.”

Part of it. The way our bodies alter and bend. The way our fingers darken just before we die, pure black spreading up to our knuckles. I used to stare at my hands in the dark, Hetty asleep next to me, and try to will them to change color.

“Imagine how we could use this.” Her voice is urgent, confiding. “Imagine the people we could help.”

But sometimes I didn’t. Anger, depthless and black, and I couldn’t cut it out of me. Growing and growing until it was all I had room for.

Part of me really thought it would be that simple. A locked door, somewhere deep in the house, and Byatt on the other side of it.

Part of me really was an idiot.

Part of me really thought it would be that simple. A locked door, somewhere deep in the house, and Byatt on the other side of it.

Part of me really was an idiot.

I think I have been a problem all my life. Here I am where problems go.

For once I think I know what to say. It’s what people used to tell me when I was small, when my father was deployed. “You’re his daughter,” I say. “You’re not supposed to be the one protecting him

,” she says, but it’s pouring out of me, louder than I should be, angrier than I expected.

“Because I know you don’t care.” I keep on, a bitter twist to my words. “I know that makes you better than me, but I can’t just write the whole world off like you do.”

“I don’t care? Are you—” And then she breaks off like it hurts. For a second I can see it all laid out across her. The longing and the resignation and the betrayal, the sting of watching the island she loves steal the people she pretends she doesn’t.

I wave it away. They’ve always told us the quarantine is the most important thing, but if I’m choosing between it and Byatt, it’s no choice at all

I wave it away. They’ve always told us the quarantine is the most important thing, but if I’m choosing between it and Byatt, it’s no choice at all