Burning Page 11

  She ushers us into a long skinny room. Narrow cots line the walls and a single barred window overlooks the snow-covered ground and distant trees. I don’t know where they expect us to sit. The room is crowded with people, and nearly every cot is already taken. The SciGirls stop to chat with the inmates as they dart in and out of the infirmary and the rest of the girls seem just as dazzled by them as Issie was. There are bound to be a few new names on Dr. Gruen’s sign-up sheets by the end of the day.

  We make our way to the back, weaving past nurses and medical equipment. Dr. Gruen and Director Wu chat with Nurse Ramsick in the corner next to her desk, but Dr. Gruen glances up when I walk past.

  “Nice to see you again, Angela,” she calls.

  I nod, giving her an awkward wave.

  “Doctor’s pet,” Cara says.

  “Another demerit,” Officer Crane snaps. I flinch—I hadn’t realized she was still behind us. Cara turns to argue, but I pinch her on the arm.

  “Is that necessary, officer?” Dr. Gruen crosses the room and drops a hand on Cara’s shoulder. I think it’s meant to be comforting, but Cara stiffens. She’s not exactly touchy-feely.

  “I don’t see why the girls need to have their hands in diamonds anymore,” Gruen says, flashing Crane a smile made entirely of perfect white teeth. “I think we can handle them.”

  Officer Crane gives her a curt nod. “Very well.”

  Dr. Gruen squeezes Cara’s shoulder, then ambles back over to where Nurse Ramsick and Director Wu are still standing.

  “Now who’s the doctor’s pet?” I ask.

  “Still you,” Cara says. She absently touches her shoulder, staring at Dr. Gruen’s back. “That woman is creepy.”

  I frown. “Dr. Gruen? She was being totally nice to you.”

  “If you say so,” Cara says, shaking out her arm. “You know that would have been my fifth demerit this week?”

  “You’re kidding,” Issie says. Aaliyah waves from across the room, then motions to an empty cot next to her. Issie holds up one finger.

  “Not kidding,” Cara says. “Two more and I’d have to spend the night in the Seg Block.”

  “Girl, you’ve got to handle your shit,” Issie says. She claps Cara on the back, then heads over to Aaliyah.

  “She’s not wrong,” I say. We’ve reached the end of the room, and our seating options are limited. “There’s an empty one,” I say, pointing to a cot.

  “You can take it,” Cara says. She waves at Mary Anne, who’s standing at the other end of the room. Mary Anne turns to wave back at us, and I see Jessica perched on the cot behind her.

  “Hey, runt!” I call, crossing over to her. Jessica looks up. A smile flickers over her lips, then disappears so quickly I’m certain I imagined it.

  “Can I sit next to you?” I ask. Jessica jerks her shoulders up and down.

  “Hi, Angela,” Mary Anne says. She’s wearing the same polo as all the other girls—crisp white with a green logo on the shoulder. She wraps a blood-pressure cuff around Jessica’s arm and pumps the little black ball attached to it.

  “Hey,” I say, sitting on the empty cot next to Jessica. “Do you know what this is all about?”

  “Dr. Gruen set it up,” Mary Anne explains. “You have to submit to a physical before you can join SciGirls, but there’s been so much interest that she just arranged for all the girls to get them at the same time. She figured it’d be easier.”

  Mary Anne finishes the blood-pressure test and picks up a tongue depressor. “Say ‘Ah.’ ”

  Jessica tilts her head back and opens her mouth. “Ah.”

  “Is everyone here in SciGirls?” I ask, looking around at the dozens of girls in white shirts in the infirmary. Mary Anne shakes her head.

  “About half of them are real nurses,” she explains. “The rest of us aren’t certified to draw blood or give shots.”

  “Shots?” Jessica squeaks.

  “Don’t tell me you’re nervous,” I say. Jessica crooks her finger, and I lean closer.

  “I don’t like needles,” she whispers.

  “It’s a little needle,” I explain. “You won’t even feel it.”

  “I don’t like big needles or little needles.”

  I reach for her hand. Her fingers feel warm. Like she just ran them under hot water. I tell myself there’s nothing to worry about, but my heart beats a little faster.

  Mary Anne weighs Jessica and takes her temperature, then motions for a tiny nurse with blond hair to come over to us. The nurse starts to set up, and behind her, Mary Anne frowns. I follow her gaze to Cara, who’s arguing with the nurse standing beside her cot. The nurse holds up a long needle. Cara shakes her head. She says something that makes the nurse take a step back and lift a hand to her mouth in shock.

  Mary Anne sees me watching her. “I’ll be back in a moment,” she says, hurrying across the room.

  I wish Cara would draw less attention to herself. She could end up in the Seg Block again—or worse. I think of her pocketknife and wonder, for the millionth time, where she’s hidden it. The Seg Block isn’t the only place they could send her.

  The nurse beside me pulls a syringe out of a plastic wrapper and flicks the needle. Jessica stiffens. I look away from Cara and reach for the little girl’s hand.

  “Watch her do me first, okay?” I say. “Then you’ll see that it doesn’t hurt.”

  Jessica presses her lips together. She nods. “Okay.”

  The nurse leans forward. “Ready?” she asks. I nod, and she swabs my arm with alcohol. “Three . . . two . . .”

  I feel a pinch, and stick out my tongue, making a face. Jessica giggles.

  “All done,” the nurse says. She pulls the needle out of my arm and slaps a Band-Aid over the tiny prick in my skin.

  “What do you think?” I ask Jessica. “Not that scary, right?”

  The nurse picks up another wrapped needle. Jessica reaches for my hand again.

  “It was a little scary,” she says.

  “Where’s your teddy bear, hon?” the nurse asks, unwrapping the second needle. Jessica shrugs.

  “Don’t have it.”

  Annoyance flashes across the nurse’s face, then disappears a second later. “Oh well,” she says with a cheery smile, “I guess you’ll just have to hold on to your friend, then.” She winks at me and douses a cotton swab with alcohol. Jessica watches. The lightbulb above her flickers.

  “Jessica . . .” My chest clenches. Jessica grabs my hand. Her fingers feel like lit matches. The air around us grows warmer.

  “Ready?” the nurse asks. Jessica starts humming below her breath. Just one note.

  “Give me a second?” I ask. The nurse shrugs. I kneel in front of Jessica, making her look me in the eye. Charlie used to hate getting shots. I’d have to pull out every big-sister trick I had just to get him into the doctor’s office. But now, crouching in front of this terrifying little girl, my mind goes completely blank.

  I clear my throat. “Um . . . why did the cow cross the road?”

  Jessica blinks at me. “I don’t know.”

  “To get to the udder side.”

  There’s a beat of silence. Jessica frowns.

  “Get it?” I say. “Udder side? It’s a joke.”

  Her lip twitches. “It was dumb.”

  “Are you kidding? Those are the best ones!”

  The nurse pricks Jessica’s arm with the needle. Black floods Jessica’s eyes, and the light switches on and off. I turn on instinct, my mouth already open to shout at the nurse for surprising us. But she isn’t looking at me. She’s watching Jessica’s face. Curious.

  She pulls the needle from her arm, and the black fades from Jessica’s eyes.

  Something slams to the ground behind me. I jump and spin around. Officer Crane is standing between Cara and the nurse she’d been arguing with. A metal table lies on its side on the floor, needles and tongue depressors scattered around it. Mary Anne stands with Dr. Gruen on the other side of the room, her forehead wrinkled in
concern.

  “That’s another demerit, Miss Walker,” Crane says.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I slip Cara a note in the middle of math class.

  What the hell happened in the infirmary?

  I tried to talk to her during lunch, but she decided today was the perfect day to scrape all the gum off the tables in the cafeteria, leaving Issie and me to prepare the meal alone. She reads my note under the table, then glances at me and shakes her head, pretending to be distracted by the video playing on the ancient television at the front of class.

  I glance at Brody, who’s collapsed behind a giant steel desk, his head resting against the chalkboard. Aaliyah snuck out of her seat the second he started snoring and drew a pair of twisting devil horns behind his head. We don’t normally have chalk, but this morning a brand-new box appeared in every classroom, courtesy of Dr. Gruen. Girls have been drawing things on the blackboards ever since.

  Jessica sits in the seat next to me, sucking on the end of her braid and doodling on her own knuckles. Issie let her borrow her Sharpie, and she’s started sketching tiny pictures on her fingers. A sun. A moon. A heart. The rest of the class huddles around a desk at the back of the room, trying to figure out what will be on the SciGirls test.

  “Cara,” I whisper, shooting an anxious look at the front of the room. Brody releases a guttural snore and shifts in his seat. If he wakes up now he’ll be pissed and probably spend the rest of the period quizzing us on how to multiply fractions (always doubly hard because he doesn’t know how to do it himself and tends to make up the answers). A crumpled-up paper ball sails over my head and lands on the floor just inches away from his heavy black boot. It’s another one of Dr. Gruen’s brochures; I can tell from the thick, glossy paper. They’ve been everywhere lately.

  I spin around in my chair, shooting Issie a look.

  “Sorry! That was meant for Cara,” she whispers. Cara glances over her shoulder.

  “What?”

  “Do you think we’ll need to know the equation for calculating velocity?”

  “Why would you need to know that?”

  “For the SciGirls test, Issie says, like this should be obvious.

  “It’s a stupid volunteer program,” Cara says. “Why do you even want to join?”

  She turns around again, and Issie shakes a fist at her back. Today her fingers read “hell.”

  I glance back to Cara. She’s still intently watching the video, which is ridiculous because (a) the video is about subtraction, which even the most undereducated girls in lock-up actually know how to do, and (b) we’ve already seen it three times this month.

  “Are you really going to ignore me?” I whisper. Her jaw tightens and she shrugs.

  “They wanted to give me a flu shot, okay?” she says.

  “That’s why you pushed over a table?”

  “I didn’t want a flu shot. Who knows what they put in those things?”

  I close my eyes, so frustrated I can hardly speak. I shouldn’t be surprised. Cara has always had trouble with authority. But I keep thinking of Mary Anne studying her from across the infirmary, that disapproving wrinkle between her eyes.

  “Did you ever think of just telling them no?” I ask. Before Cara can answer, the classroom door opens and Officer Mateo steps in. Carmen releases a loud catcall and Brody, giving one final snort-snore, wakes up. Jessica wrinkles her nose at him. It makes her look like an angry kitten.

  “Can I help you, officer?” Brody asks, trying to nonchalantly wipe the drool from his chin. Mateo clears his throat, pretending not to notice.

  “I need to borrow Miss Davis for a moment,” he says. I sit up a little straighter.

  “Angela, on your feet!” Brody barks, and even Mateo shakes his head in disbelief. I slip out of my desk, casting one last glance at Cara.

  “We can talk more later.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Goody.”

  A few girls whistle as Mateo leads me out of the room. A smile curls the corners of his lips.

  “Dr. Gruen’s asked to see you again,” he says once the door swings shut behind me. “Seems like she likes you.”

  “Yeah?” I say. There’s a tiny blob of shaving cream on Mateo’s neck, just below his jaw. I want to wipe it away but, instead, I cross my hands over my chest. God, this feels weird. What do I usually do with my hands?

  “Did you ever listen to that book?” he asks. When I don’t answer, he frowns and wipes his lower lip with the back of his hand. “What is it?”

  I blush. Stop staring like a freak, Angela. “Um, shaving cream? Right there.”

  He turns his head at the exact moment that I point and my finger grazes his jaw. It’s rough, like sandpaper. My ex-boyfriend Jake had little-boy skin, even though he was two years older than me. He could barely grow a wispy mustache. Mateo has actual stubble.

  I drop my hand, but Mateo just laughs. He stops walking and pulls his shirt up to wipe the shaving cream from his face. The bottom comes untucked, and I catch the slightest glimpse of skin just above his belt.

  I swear to God I almost stop breathing. I haven’t seen this much of the opposite sex in nearly two years. It feels borderline pornographic.

  “What would I do without you?” Mateo says, clumsily tucking his shirt back in.

  “I’m sure you’d get by,” I say.

  For a few minutes the only sounds in the hallway are our shoes thumping against the floor. Mateo clears his throat.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” he says. “That book? Tuck something? Did you listen to it?”

  “Oh yeah,” I say, grateful for the change of topic. I usually listen to the tapes while I’m doing the dishes after meals, but I’ve been so focused on Jessica for the past few days that I keep forgetting to stick them in the cassette player. “Just once, though. Been busy.”

  “Just once?” Mateo asks. “Do you usually listen to them more than that?”

  He holds the door for me and I shuffle into the next hallway. “There are only six audiobooks in our entire library,” I explain. “I’ve heard them all at least five times.”

  “Wait, really? That sucks.”

  “I can’t even tell you. Do you know we have copies of the first two His Dark Materials books, but not the last one? I’ve spent a year and a half wondering what happened to Lyra.”

  “You’re kidding.” Mateo laughs. It’s a big, booming noise that echoes of the walls around us. I so rarely hear laughter in these halls. It makes them feel different, somehow. Warmer. “That’s torture.”

  “Tell me about it. The first thing I’m going to do when I get out of here is buy that freaking book and see how the series ends.”

  We turn down the hallway that leads to Dr. Gruen’s office. Mary Anne sits at a small desk just outside Dr. Gruen’s door, like a secretary. She looks up as we approach.

  “Angela Davis,” she murmurs, studying a chart attached to the front of her binder. “There you are—three thirty. You can go right in.”

  “Thanks,” I say, reaching for the door.

  “See you around,” Mateo says. He winks at me and, once again, all the air whooshes out of the room. He’s a guard, I tell myself. He’s a guard he’s a guard he’s a guard.

  I slip into Dr. Gruen’s office without a word. Wet, sticky snow falls outside the window next to her desk. It clings to the tree branches and creates gray slush on the fields surrounding us. I think of the thin sweatshirt I left crumpled in a ball on my bunk, and I shiver.

  Dr. Gruen doesn’t look up from the folder she’s examining. It isn’t mine, I can tell by the unfamiliar photographs clipped to the inside cover.

  “Miss Davis.” She closes the folder and places her hands on top of it. “Thank you so much for seeing me again.”

  “Sure.” I settle myself in the leather chair across from her desk.

  “How are things with Jessica?”

  “Good,” I say. “I think she’s starting to feel a little more comfortable here.”

  Int
erest flickers across Dr. Gruen’s face. She clasps her hands together.

  “That’s fantastic,” she says, leaning forward. “So, she’s spoken to you?”

  I shrug. “A little.”

  “Has she told you anything interesting?”

  I think of the monster trucks and how nervous Jessica sounded when she told me how her father used to teach her about cars. But that story isn’t mine to share.

  Dr. Gruen closes her eyes, shaking her head. “I apologize. How inappropriate of me. Of course you shouldn’t reveal anything Jessica told you in confidence.”

  She flashes me a smile. I release a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.

  “That’s okay,” I say.

  “Good.” Her hand hovers above her desk for a split second before she lowers her palm to the folder. “Do you know what this is?” she asks. I shake my head. “This is Jessica’s file. I thought you should know a little more about why she was sent here since you’ll be spending so much time with her.”

  Aaliyah’s voice echoes in my ear. She killed her whole family. Nerves crawl over my skin, and I find myself sitting up a little taller in my chair. I’m not sure I want to know what Jessica did, but Dr. Gruen doesn’t wait for me to protest. She flips the folder open and slides it around so I can see the photographs.

  Jessica stands in front of a white man and woman with dull blond hair and slumping shoulders. A little boy crouches next to her. His shaggy brown hair hangs over thick glasses that take up most of his face. A run-down house towers over them, surrounded by a field filled with dead grass and skeletal trees. The scene belongs in a slasher film. All that’s missing is a man wearing a creepy mask and holding a bloody ax.

  “This is Jessica’s foster family.” Dr. Gruen tugs the paper clip off with a manicured fingernail and fans the photographs over her desk. “Family” isn’t the word I’d use to describe these four people. They look more like strangers asked to stand next to one another in line. The man and woman don’t touch or even look at Jessica and the little boy. Instead they glower at the camera, arms stiff.

  One photograph hides behind the others, only the corner visible beneath the stack. I lean forward.