Burning Read online

  I go back to scrubbing dried tomato sauce from the stovetop in the kitchen. I’ve wanted to tell Issie about Dr. Gruen’s cameras at least a hundred times, but something always stops me. Right now it’s Officer Sterling. I can see the back of her head through the window in the kitchen door. She can probably hear every word we say.

  My muscles burn as I work. The sauce seems to be glued down with some sort of special superhuman adhesive. I see something out of the corner of my eye and recoil—but it’s just Issie.

  “Here.” She squirts a stream of soap onto the impossible tomato stain.

  “Where’s Her Highness?” I ask to cover my nerves. Cara never bothered showing up for evening chores today. She used to disappear all the time, leaving us to cover for her, but I thought she was over that crap by now.

  “Who knows?” Issie says, elbow-deep in greasy water. “Gross. Do you smell that? Nasty.”

  “Is it the smell of my desperation?” I dig the sponge into the tomato stain. The kitchen always smells foul. Today the smell is a little . . . riper than usual, but that’s probably because the trash needs to be taken out. “Just work fast so we can get out of here,” I say, scrubbing away the last red flecks of tomato sauce. I triumphantly toss the sponge back into the sink, splashing Issie with water.

  “Watch it!” she mutters, wiping the water from her face with the back of her arm. She wrinkles her nose again. “Seriously though, you don’t notice that? Something smells rank.”

  I frown, and pull open a cupboard door. “You think something’s gone bad?”

  “I think something died.”

  One of the girls here might be next, I think. I picture Jessica’s eyes turning black, the air growing hot and dry. “Seriously,” I say. “When was the last time you saw Cara?”

  “We both saw her in the yard for rec. Remember?” Issie turns and gives me a look. “Girl, what’s wrong with you? I was joking. Nobody’s dead. Jesus.”

  I close the cupboard. Issie’s right. Nobody’s dead. The kitchen always smells gross. This isn’t unusual. I wipe my greasy hands on a towel and follow Issie around the room. We move the trash cans, but there’s nothing there—in fact, Cara must’ve taken the trash out yesterday. A few crumpled paper towels lay at the bottom of the bins.

  “Weird,” I say, pushing the cans back into place. I’m trying to act calm, but I feel like every hair on my body is standing straight up. I rub my hands up and down my arms, trying to ignore my nerves. Lots of things smell bad. Sour milk, for instance. And bad meat. Mold.

  Bloody clothes. Burning skin. Dead girls.

  I cover my mouth with my hand, feeling like I’m going to be sick. Issie opens up another cupboard door while I search the fridge to see whether something’s gone rotten. But nothing’s expired, nothing’s moldy. I smell an open carton of milk, then put it back and close the door. It’s completely fine. Shit.

  Desperate now, I yank open the door to the walk-in freezer. I half expect a frozen body to tumble out but no—it’s empty. My eyes travel over shelves of frozen, saran-wrapped meat. I sigh and close it again. “Freezer’s clean too.”

  Issie sniffs the air, then grimaces. “There,” she says, pinching her nose. “It’s coming from in there.”

  She points to the pantry.

  A sour taste hits the back of my throat. Other than the freezer, the pantry’s the only place in the kitchen large enough to hide something creepy. Like a body. I stare at the door, and everything in my body tells me not to open it.

  “Maybe we should leave,” I say. Issie frowns.

  “Don’t be dumb. Come on.”

  She reaches for the door. I cringe, waiting. I don’t want to know what’s inside.

  She turns the knob, and pulls the door open.

  Something tumbles out, smacking me in the shoulder. I scream, and jump backward.

  A mop falls to the floor—the same mop I used to clean the Seg Block. Someone must’ve brought it back up here now that I’m done with my punishment. I’m so relieved I could sink to the floor and cry, but the feeling doesn’t last long. The scent of old, rotting meat wafts over me, turning my stomach.

  “Oh God,” I say, gagging. I pull my T-shirt over my nose, but it doesn’t manage to mask the smell. My eyes water. “Definitely coming from here.”

  The pantry is packed with food. Mostly dried goods, but there are also bags of potatoes and lemons, and stacks of canned fruit floating in sugary syrup. I keep my shirt pulled up over my face as I sort through them, wondering what could possibly have gone so bad so quickly. Issie squeezes in next to me.

  “I’m going to kill Cara for skipping out on this,” she mutters. I move a box of dried noodles and stand up on my tiptoes, sweeping my hands along the shelf.

  “She’s probably just—” The end of my sentence dies as my fingers brush something rubbery and thin—almost like a shoelace, but the texture’s wrong. The hair on my arm stands up. I reach deeper. Now I feel something dense and prickly. Fur.

  I jerk my hand back. Issie whirls around, nearly hitting me in the face with her elbow.

  “What the hell?” she says.

  “There’s something up there,” I say, pointing to the shelf. Issie grabs the mop.

  “I’ll do it,” she says, shouldering past me. She swipes at the shelf with the mop handle, frowning. “I don’t feel any—”

  A small, dark object tumbles from the shelf, cutting her off. I dance backward, biting off a scream. Issie drops her mop and jerks away.

  A mouse lies on the floor, burned and blackened. I cover my mouth with my hand. The last time I saw that mouse, Jessica was trying to feed it a Tootsie Roll. Now, raw, bloody meat peaks out from its fur in patches. Angry blisters cover its tail, and yellow pus leaks from its eyes.

  Something cold hits the back of my throat. This mouse has been burned to death. I think of Jessica trying to coax it out of the hole in the wall and I swallow, again worried I might throw up.

  Jessica is a very dangerous little girl.

  Issie covers her face with her hands and stares down at it through the gaps in her fingers. “That’s Ellen’s mouse,” she says. “Remember? The one Jessica called Sir.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Maybe.”

  “You think it crawled into the stove?”

  “It must have,” I lie. I grab a trash bag from under the sink and hurriedly sweep the mouse inside. “I’ll take it out,” I say. Issie waves me away.

  “Go right ahead,” she says, pinching her nose again. “Get that out of here.”

  Jessica sits at a circular table in the library, staring at a book on emperor penguins that’s larger than she is. Her legs swing off the sides of her chair, her feet skimming the floor.

  Officer Sterling stands guard at one end of the dank, crowded room. Two other girls pace between the stacks, quizzing each other with flash cards. Every single table is filled with girls and textbooks and dog-eared reams of notebook paper.

  I stare at the study materials as I cross the room. The paper looks fresh, and the books are several decades newer than anything else in the library. Clearly they’re gifts from Dr. Gruen, but no one looks suspicious or paranoid. I want to grab the books and throw them. I want to scream at all the other girls. Can’t they tell that she’s manipulating them? Am I the only one who sees who Dr. Gruen really is?

  But I’m here because of Jessica, not Dr. Gruen. I still feel the stink of dead mouse on my skin, even though I dropped it in the Dumpster before coming here. No one looks up or makes a face as I walk past, so the smell must be in my head. Still, I find myself wiping my hands on my scrubs, trying to make it go away.

  I slide into the chair across from Jessica. She puts her book down, and a goofy little-kid smile splits her face.

  “Hey!” she says, too loudly for the library. Sterling shoots her a look. “Oops,” Jessica whispers. “Sorry.”

  I wait until Sterling turns back around and then I lean across the table, trying to keep my expression normal. I can’t let Jessica know h
ow freaked out I am. She won’t tell me anything if she’s scared.

  I press my hands flat against the table, like I’m trying to push it away. “We found . . . something in the kitchen,” I say, finally.

  “Yeah?” Jessica puts the book down and folds her hands on its cover.

  “You remember Ellen’s mouse? Sir?”

  Jessica’s face falls.

  “Jessica?” I say, harsher this time. She fidgets in her seat.

  “Did that guard catch him?” she asks in a small voice.

  I frown. “No. The guard didn’t catch him.”

  Relief passes over her face. “Good,” she says, exhaling. She opens her book again. “Did you know emperor penguins mate for life?”

  Officer Sterling starts walking toward me. I tap my knuckles against the tabletop, suddenly nervous. I bet Dr. Gruen told her to watch me. I wait for her to stop next to our table and demand to know what we’re talking about.

  But Officer Sterling passes behind me without a word. She heads to the stacks on the other side of the room to help Aaliyah get a book from the top shelf.

  I lean forward again, barely speaking above a whisper. “Jessica, the mouse is dead,” I say. Jessica looks up from her book, eyes widening.

  “But you said—”

  “Someone burned it to death.”

  Jessica’s lower lip starts to tremble. “You think it was me.”

  “It was burned to death,” I say again. “Who else—”

  “I didn’t do it,” she whispers. It reminds me of how Charlie used to sound whenever he thought he was going to get in trouble for tracking mud into the house or getting a bad grade on a quiz at school. I keep my eyes glued to Jessica’s face.

  “Don’t lie to me about this. Was it an accident? Did you get angry?”

  “I didn’t do it!” she says again. I cringe, and turn around. Officer Sterling is still helping Aaliyah. She doesn’t seem to have heard us. I hold a finger to my lips, and shoot Jessica a look.

  “I would never hurt a little animal,” Jessica whispers.

  “Jessica . . .”

  “You have to believe me. I’ve been practicing! I can control it now.”

  Doubt flickers through me. She sounds so earnest. I want to trust her. But then I think of the mouse’s raw skin, the blisters on its tail.

  “I promise,” Jessica says. “I didn’t.”

  “Evening, ladies.” Ben’s voice comes out of nowhere. I turn too quickly and my neck cramps.

  “Crap,” I moan, grimacing. Ben crouches next to our table.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  “Peachy.” I try to catch Jessica’s eye, to tell her this conversation isn’t over. But she takes one look at Ben and slides her penguin book off the table, cowering behind its cover.

  “Can I talk to you for a second?” Ben asks.

  “Yeah, sure.” I doubt I’ll manage to coax Jessica out from behind her book, so I push my seat back and follow Ben to the other side of the room. I study Jessica over his shoulder. She’s still hiding, her knuckles turning white from gripping the book cover so tightly.

  “Angela?”

  “Sorry.” I turn to Ben. He’s studying a book on the table next to him, absentmindedly running a finger along the cover. “Everything okay?” I ask.

  “What? Yeah.” He tries to flip the book open and knocks it off the stack instead. It hits the floor with a slap.

  Two girls across the room glance up, then lean their heads together and giggle.

  “Jesus,” Ben mutters, kneeling to pick up the book.

  “Why are you being such a spaz?” I ask.

  “I don’t know.” He drops the book back on the table and shoves his hands into his pockets. I wait.

  “You wanted to talk to me, right?” I say, after a moment.

  “Right. Yes.” He clears his throat, looks down at his shoes and then back up at me again. “I wanted to give you something, actually.”

  He hesitates, then pulls a cassette tape out of his pocket. “Here.”

  “This is for me?” I turn the cassette over in my hands. “What is it?”

  Something about my expression relaxes Ben. He exhales, and his shoulders loosen.

  “Just listen to it,” he says. Then he nods good-bye and hurries out of the library.

  I stare down at the cassette. It’s blank, no label or anything to tell me what it is. I press it between my palms and it still feels warm from being inside Ben’s pocket.

  Curiosity gnaws at me. I want to hurry back to my dorm and pop it into my tape player. But I can still smell that dead mouse on my scrubs. I shiver, and turn back to Jessica’s table.

  It’s empty. The oversize book on emperor penguins lies on the chair where she’d been sitting.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Issie’s lying on Jessica’s bunk when I get back to our dorm. I set Ben’s tape on my locker and bite my lip to keep from frowning. I was hoping Jessica had come back here. No such luck.

  “Where did you run off to?” Issie asks, putting the flash cards down on the bed.

  “Library.” I sit on the bunk next to her and pick up the cards. They’re still stiff and new, like she’d just slid them from the pack. “Invertebrates,” the top card reads.

  “Where did you get these?” I ask, flipping through the deck.

  “Dr. Gruen,” Issie says. “She’s scheduled the SciGirls test for tomorrow afternoon, so everyone’s cramming.”

  “Tomorrow?” My voice catches. I thought I had more time. Issie takes the cards out of my hands and pushes herself off the bunk.

  “Yup,” she says. “I was just about to head to the library to study.”

  I glance into the hall. I can’t see the blinking video-camera light from this angle, but I know it’s there, recording everything I say. It’s now or never. I stand and hurry across the room to close the door.

  Issie’s eyes go wide. “What are you doing? If a guard sees—”

  “Listen,” I cut in. “Issie, you can’t take the SciGirls test.”

  Issie frowns. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “I don’t trust Dr. Gruen.” I clear my throat and glance over my shoulder, through the window in the door. I almost expect to see the doctor standing behind me, listening to everything I say. But the hall is empty. “She’s not what she seems.”

  “You’re joking, right?” Issie slaps the deck of flash cards against her palm with a little more force than necessary. “Or haven’t you noticed the new sports equipment, and the better showers, and—”

  “What about all the extra demerits? And girls spending the night in the Seg Block—”

  “God, is that what you’re worried about? Dr. Gruen explained all that the last time I met with her. They have to be harsher with us because SciGirls only accepts the best. It’s for our own good.”

  “But don’t you think that’s—”

  “Look. I have to meet Aaliyah,” Issie says, coldly. “Can you move?”

  “Issie, wait.”

  Issie squares her shoulders, propping her hands on her hips. “Don’t make me go through you.”

  I shift to the side, and Issie pushes the door open. She pauses before starting into the hall. “Have you heard yet?”

  “Heard what?” I ask.

  “Cara’s in the infirmary,” Issie says. “Been there since before dinner.”

  My stomach drops. “What? Why?”

  Issie shrugs. “No one knows. But that’s why she never came to evening chores.”

  My heart starts beating faster. Jessica would never hurt Cara. But Jessica’s not the only dangerous girl in this place. Cara’s knife flashes through my head, the blade glinting. I picture someone thrusting it into her gut, and suddenly I feel cold all over.

  I hurry past Issie and start down the hall.

  “Ang,” she calls after me, “they’re not letting anyone in to see—”

  I turn the corner and can’t hear her anymore. I take the steps two at a time and slip past Officer Crane
while she has her head turned.

  The lights in the infirmary are off. Darkness pools in the corners and seeps across the floor. The only brightness comes from the two large barred windows on the far wall. The last few beams of sunlight bounce off the snow and catch on the bleached-white sheets, making the empty sickbeds glow like ghosts.

  “Cara?” I whisper, making my way to the only occupied bed. Cara rolls over.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks. It’s too dark in the room to see her clearly, so I kneel next to her bed and wait for my eyes to adjust to the light.

  “What happened? Did Peach—”

  “Quiet,” Cara says, sitting up. I can just make out her face. She looks fine. Not a bruise in sight.

  I frown, and open my mouth to ask another question, but Cara raises her hand, stopping me.

  “Wait,” she whispers. I glance over my shoulder to see what she’s looking at. A shadow looms in the hall just outside the infirmary door. Cara’s eyes flick back over to mine. “Officer Crane’s gonna take a smoke break soon,” she explains.

  We wait in silence for one minute. Two. Then Officer Crane’s shadow moves away from the door, and I hear a window at the end of the hallway creak open. Cara relaxes behind me.

  “We have a couple minutes before she comes back,” she says. “What are you doing here?”

  “Issie told me you were hurt.”

  Cara groans. “I’m fine. God, I should have known you guys wouldn’t be cool.”

  I seriously consider punching her in the face. “Then why are you here? You missed kitchen duty.”

  “That’s what you’re pissed about? Kitchen duty?”

  “Cara!” I snap.

  “Fine. Jesus. Calm down.” Cara peeks into the hallway again, but Crane still isn’t back.

  “Okay,” she starts. “Remember that meeting I had with Dr. Gruen the other day?”

  “About your demerits?”

  “Right,” Cara says. “Get this. Dr. Gruen told me she’d wipe my slate clean if I took the stupid SciGirls test.” Cara snaps her fingers. “All my demerits gone, just like that. Don’t you think that’s weird?”

  I think about what Issie just told me, that Dr. Gruen made our punishments harsher because SciGirls only accepts the best. “It sounds like she’s trying to trick people into joining.”