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.