Echoes of Us (11 page)

“What’s going on?” I said.

Bridget didn’t look at me. Just stared down at her blanket and finished braiding her hair. Her voice was tight. “We’re being rotated.”

Our chest squeezed.

Rotation. This was what we’d been waiting for since the day we arrived. We’d promised ourselves to stay this long before signaling for rescue, and now our sentence was up.

But the rest of these girls—the ones Addie and I had just started getting to know—they had no such promise of freedom.

The caretaker called everyone out of bed. We gathered in a clump in the middle of the ward—all except Viola, who continued in her circling. No one went to grab her.

“Bridget,” I whispered, drawing up next to her. “If we get separated, I just wanted to say—”

She was suddenly impatient, shoving us away and warning us to keep our distance with a sharp look. I ended up next to Jeanie and Caitlin instead—until they hurried away from us, too.

Addie’s confusion mirrored mine.

I said.

“Stand still,” the caretaker barked, and started counting us off, pulling each girl aside as she assigned her a number—two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve . . .—and snapped a plastic bracelet around her wrist. Hospital bracelets, impossible to get out of without scissors or a knife.

The caretaker didn’t go in any particular order, but two girls standing next to each other never got the same number.

I said slowly.

It was a foreign concept. Addie and I had never been the one other people sought out. If anything, we’d been the one nobody wanted.

“Twelve,” the caretaker said when she got to Addie and me, and snapped the corresponding bracelet around our wrist. We went to stand with Ruth, the only other twelve so far.

I could practically see Bridget’s mind whirring. Trying to figure out where she should stand to get the same number, and if she could move without the caretaker noticing. The remaining group wasn’t large.

“Fourteen,” the caretaker said to the girl who’d stood next to me. Mayree. Then, “Sixteen” to the girl next to her. Claire. Then back to “Two . . . four . . . six . . . eight . . . ten . . .”

“Twelve,” she said to Bridget.

Bridget betrayed no emotion at all as she came to join us.

Viola was last to be sorted, labeled a number four. But there were still two girls remaining: Coreena and Iris. They did not get numbers. Or bracelets.

I remembered, suddenly, what Bridget had said about girls disappearing during rotation. Marion hadn’t told us about the possibility of being siphoned off—to where? For what purpose?

Coreena and Iris stared wide-eyed after us as the caretaker ushered them away from the group.

For the first time in weeks, we emerged beyond the confines of the ward into the hallways. We noticed everything. The pattern of cracks along the molding. The scuff marks and little indentations on the ground.

The caretakers weren’t releasing all the classes at once. There weren’t enough girls in the hall for that. But there were at least two other classes out here, being separated into new wards. The girls in our class stared at them. Some of them stared back, but most seemed too deadened to care. Their hands hung limply at their sides, the weak overhead light glinting off plastic bracelets.

The ring was hidden in our hand, though I let the gem peek through. I filmed as much as I could of this quiet, solemn migration of children. There were only ten doors on this floor. Were the boys’ wards mixed in with ours? It seemed more likely they were on the third floor, or the fourth.

“Oh—”

It was the only warning we got—Bridget’s startled cry—before Viola fell.

I reached out and grabbed her just before she hit the ground.

It was the first time we’d ever touched her, and her shoulders were frail in our hands. She didn’t make eye contact.

I’d dropped our ring.

Panic shot ice under our skin, blasted frost in our lungs. I let go of Viola, who’d wavered back onto her feet, and spun around.

I cried.

Addie’s silent delirium was answer enough. A burst of heat replaced the first flush of cold, ravaging our thoughts. Our eyes raked the floor. It couldn’t have gone far. But there were so many pairs of feet—

The caretaker behind us had noticed the holdup. She approached—

Bridget darted from our side. Snatched something bright off the floor.

“Keep moving, girls,” the caretaker said. “You’re clogging up the hallway.”

We kept moving. Even Viola, with her clouded eyes.

“Here,” Bridget whispered when she’d caught up with us. Her hand bumped against ours, transferring the ring from her fingers to ours with a touch.

I gave our
thank
-
you
with a glance. I didn’t dare open our hand until we were shepherded into our new ward. There were fewer girls this time. Only about fifteen. Just a trick of the numbering system? Or had Hahns really lost that many girls in the weeks since the last rotation? How many other girls had been stolen in the night like Hannah? Or taken away today?

This ward looked almost identical to the last. The only differences lay in the unique wear and tear of the walls—the murals of bleak destruction, boredom, and the erosion of time. A caretaker stood with a pair of heavy scissors, snapping the hospital bracelets from wrists. Some of the girls were already headed toward beds, studying the chains of braided string wrapped around the metal bars. Laying claim.

Ruth hesitated, then left our side to do the same. Only Bridget remained. But she didn’t follow us when we hurried to the bathroom. There, hidden inside a stall, I finally opened our hand.

The ring looked normal. At first.

Then I noticed the crack along the side of the gemstone. When I gingerly pressed down on it, it didn’t click into place the way it had before. Instead, it ground against the band in a way that frightened me so much I didn’t try it again—what if the stone popped off entirely?

There was a hollowness to Addie’s voice.

I didn’t reply.

There was nothing to say.

W
e couldn’t be positive the camera embedded in the ring was broken. No more than we could know if everything we’d filmed over the past few weeks had been erased.

If it was all gone . . .

This rotation was supposed to grant us our freedom. Instead, it might become the reason for an extended sentence.

I said.

Addie took the better part of the morning to braid together a rope that would reach the ground, then jimmied the window lock open. The blast of frigid air made us shiver. She knotted the end of our string around the ring, our fingers growing numb in the chill.

We peered out onto the grounds below us. The snow was so thick that even the bushes growing snug against the institution walls were half-buried under a white coat.

We’ll send someone
, Marion had said.
Get the ring out the window, and someone will come pick it up.

Hahns had increased background checks on all their caretakers after Peter’s last breakout attempt. They were less strict, though, with the people who trimmed the lawns. Picked up the trash. Shoveled the snow.

Addie set the ring on the sill and pushed it over the edge. It hung against the side of the building, a glimmering thing in the morning light.

I said.

Addie unraveled the string from around our wrist. Lowered the ring, bit by bit, until it disappeared into the bushes. She tied our end of the string to one of the nails screwing the window frame in place. Thin and gray, it was all but invisible.

She shut the window and shivered again, squeezing our fingers to warm them up.

I said.

That night, after lights out, Addie and I were just about to close our eyes when a shadowy figure appeared by our bed. It was Ruth. Her hands wrung at each other. Bridget, in the bed next to ours, sat up.

“Aren’t you going to do it?” The softness of Ruth’s voice reminded me of Kitty and Nina—how much we missed them.

“Do what?” Addie said wearily. We wanted to do nothing but sleep away the hours until someone collected the broken ring. Until we knew our fate.

Ruth bit her lip. “I thought you might gather everyone up again. For the stories.”

Bridget waited, too, for our response. But the last thing Addie and I wanted tonight was to talk.

“I don’t know if I can think of anything,” Addie said. “I—”

“It doesn’t have to be anything new,” Ruth said earnestly. “None of them have heard any of your stories. They wouldn’t know if you told an old one.”

“I don’t feel well,” Addie said. “Maybe tomorrow, okay?”

Ruth was quiet. So was Bridget. We couldn’t stand their silent disappointment; we slipped out of bed and fled to the bathroom. There, Addie shoved open the window and put our forehead to the cold glass, closing our eyes. The night wind whipped in from outside. We looked down at the string around the nail. The string connected to the ring that no one had come to collect.

Addie whispered.

It was a harsh truth I hadn’t let myself dwell on before. Our life was in Marion Prytt’s hands. I’d put it there, against all warning, against Ryan’s anger, and Hally’s frustration, and my own misgivings.

Addie said.

<
We
wanted to help Jackson.>
I hesitated.

We’d also come into Hahns because I wanted to make up for past wrongs.

Addie ran our finger along the window glass. The light shining outside the bathroom doorway just barely illuminated the cramped space. The darkness beyond the window was complete. A new moon, maybe.

I repeated Henri’s satphone number in my mind, a mantra of comfort.

“Addie,” Bridget said, and Addie turned. Then we both realized what had happened, and Bridget quickly corrected herself. “Darcie.” She stood in the bathroom doorway, without even a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. “I think you should come see this.”

The first thing we noticed was that the beds nearer the bathroom were vacant. They’d been filled before. Addie turned to Bridget, alarmed. But Bridget motioned for her to stay quiet. She pointed to the other end of the ward. We squinted, but it was too dark and too far to see anything clearly.

Then we heard a girl’s voice. It wasn’t until we’d almost reached her, moving carefully among the beds in the darkness, that I realized who the speaker was. And where the missing girls had gone.

Ruth Tarvie, eleven years old, sat on her bed in the darkest corner of the ward, telling the story of the time she won division championship in horseback riding. We’d heard the story before, back when we were both part of Class 6. Ruth was a good storyteller—knew how to spin a story so it looped around her listeners and entangled them, drew them closer to her with every word.

Girls crowded by her bed, some sharing the mattresses closest by, others sitting on the floor.

Ruth glanced up when she noticed us approaching. She faltered, and the other girls faltered with her. Even in the almost pitch-darkness, we felt the strength of their eyes. Bridget had already sat down, taking the edge of another girl’s bed. The girl didn’t say anything. In fact, she shifted so Bridget would have more room.

Addie folded ourself up on the ground, our legs crossed.

“Go on,” she said quietly. “What happened then?”

Ruth cleared her throat and told us.

And so it started up again. Each night, more girls joined in. Each day, it got colder. We woke some mornings and saw our breath under the fluorescent lights. It usually warmed up a bit by lunchtime, but not much. I found myself relieved for only fifteen girls and more than thirty beds—it meant we could double up on blankets. Everyone spent both waking and sleeping hours huddled under them.

But more and more girls fell ill, too. So far, none seemed as bad off as Hannah had been in the beginning. But Addie and I shared the ward with girls flushed with fever, and girls pale with cold, and we could do so little to help.

I asked Addie one night as we sat next to a girl whose breaths wheezed from her lungs.

They’d had a way, however imperfect, of keeping themselves as safe as possible. We’d broken that. We’d thought we were doing something good, and back in Class 6, when fewer of the girls were sick, it hadn’t seemed to come at any cost. But our actions had grown beyond us. The other girls not only gathered after lights-out, they started flocking together in smaller groups during the day.

One morning, someone laughed, and it was like lightning jolted every soul in the ward. The room silenced. Heads turned.

It was Lilac Helms, and she pressed her fingers to her lips like she’d just said something wrong. For a moment, I thought she might apologize. Instead, she just looked away. After a moment, everyone else did, too.

But the echoes of her laughter remained.

Addie and I checked the string as often as we could. Each time, we felt a jolt of excitement as the glimmer of gold lifted from the ground. And each time, the anticipation flattened into disappointment. A week passed. No one came to collect the ring or leave us any kind of message—any sign that we had friends on the outside, ready to help if something went wrong.

Perhaps Marion had been caught. Perhaps she had made a wrong move, gotten someone suspicious, and now had to lie low. Perhaps she’d decided this whole thing was too dangerous, and given up.