Burning Read online

  “Right? Why is she so desperate to get people into her stupid club? I thought it was supposed to be all competitive,” Cara says. “And it looked like lots of girls were signing up anyway. So I snuck into the activity room to use the computer and check this SciGirls thing out. But they block all the good websites. That’s why I had to pretend I was sick.”

  I frown. “You lost me. What does playing sick have to do with anything?”

  Cara lowers her face to her hands, groaning. “Don’t you ever pay attention? There’s only one computer in Brunesfield that doesn’t have a firewall blocking the best websites. And it’s sitting right there.”

  She nods at an ancient computer in the corner. “What do you want to bet Nurse Ramsick uses WebMD?”

  “So you pretend to be sick, and when everyone’s gone, you sneak onto the computer.” I pinch the bridge of my nose, my head spinning. Only Cara would go all Sherlock Holmes over something like this. I don’t know if I’m impressed or deeply disturbed.

  Cara lowers her voice. “Get this, there’s no mention of SciGirls anywhere on the Internet.”

  I shift my weight, suddenly aware of the stress I’m putting on my knees. “Maybe they just don’t have a website?”

  Cara cocks an eyebrow. “Everything has a website. But say they didn’t. If they were really all about helping underprivileged girls get involved in science, there’d be stories in the news about it. Or someone would have mentioned them on a forum, or in the comments section of some article. But there’s nothing. Not even an address on Whitepages.com. It’s like someone went through the entire Internet and erased them.”

  “Or like they never existed in the first place,” I say. Fear prickles along the back of my neck. I already knew Dr. Gruen was a liar. She changed her story every time she mentioned SciGirls. But it hadn’t occurred to me until just now that SciGirls might not be real at all. Those nurses could have been actors; the girls in the brochures fakes. Dr. Gruen could have made it up.

  “And then I found this.” Cara pulls a crumpled piece of paper out from under her pillow. It’s folded in half, and all I can see is a faded black-and-white photograph of a woman’s torso. She has her arms folded across her chest, and a green rubber bracelet dangles from her wrist. “SciGirls”, the bracelet reads.

  I smooth the corner of the photograph out with my thumb. “So it does exist.”

  Cara leans forward, mattress springs creaking beneath her. “This is from an obituary. The woman was a Jane Doe someone dumped at this hospital upstate—Underhill Medical Center. When the doctors performed the autopsy to see what killed her, they found out that the body had been—” Cara hesitates, grimacing— “that she’d been tampered with.”

  My stomach turns. “Tampered with?”

  “Experimented on,” Cara says. “It’s all in the article. They found traces of weird drugs in her blood, and sections of her bones and muscles had been removed. One of the doctors said it reminded him of the experiments the Nazis did back in the forties, which is weird because that’s completely illegal here.

  “I did a little more research after that. Turns out a lot of girls have disappeared in the past few years. They’ve been vanishing on their way home from correctional facilities all across the country, only no one ever thinks to look for them. They figure they’re just runaways.”

  I almost interrupt. Dr. Gruen said SciGirls never recruited from juvenile detention centers. She said this opportunity was unique. That we were lucky.

  But then I realize—it was a lie. Just like everything else was a lie.

  “And that’s not all.” Cara takes the photograph out of my hands and unfolds it, revealing the young woman’s dark skin and eyes and her thin, elfish face.

  “Looks like someone we know, doesn’t it?” Cara says. I pull the paper away from her, fingers trembling.

  The woman looks exactly like Jessica.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I stare down at the article in Cara’s hands. The woman in the photograph has Jessica’s long, thin nose, her sharp chin, and dark eyes. She could be her mother or older sister. Dr. Gruen’s voice echoes in my head: She shouldn’t have been able to develop pyretic abilities outside of the SciGirls program.

  Sweat gathers between my fingers. Jessica was never in the program, but this woman was, and they were clearly related. Dr. Gruen said pyretic abilities weren’t passed genetically, but Jessica became a pyretic anyway. No wonder she’s studying her.

  It doesn’t make sense to me, but one thing, at least, is clear. SciGirls isn’t what Dr. Gruen said it was. I hide my hands in my lap so Cara won’t see that they’re shaking. Every single word out of Dr. Gruen’s mouth was a lie. She doesn’t care about any of the girls here.

  And I trusted her. I helped her.

  “Oh my God. Issie.” I stand so quickly that I lose my balance and have to grab on to Cara’s bed to steady myself. “She’s taking that test tomorrow. We have to warn her.”

  “Quiet!” Cara shoots me a look, then jerks her chin at the door. I glance over my shoulder, suddenly certain I’m going to see Dr. Gruen standing behind me. But the doorway is empty. Cara tugs on my arm, and I sink back down to my knees.

  “Crane will be back any second,” she says in a low voice. “Issie can’t join SciGirls. You have to make sure she doesn’t take that test.”

  “What about the others?” I can’t stop picturing all those SciGirls sign-up sheets, filled in with neatly written names. Those names belong to girls who won’t ask questions about shady science programs. Girls you could threaten with demerits and punishment until they signed up for whatever you wanted them to. Girls who don’t have people waiting for them to come home.

  Cara levels her eyes at me. She speaks very slowly. “You know you can’t tell anyone else, right?”

  “But we have to warn them!”

  “We can’t. What do you think Dr. Gruen will do to us if she finds out we know about this? You and I could disappear so easily. No one would look for us.”

  Silence stretches between us. Tampered with, I think. Experimented on. If this were a fairy tale, Cara and I would come up with a plan to thwart Dr. Gruen’s evil scheme and save the day. We’d be heroes.

  Helplessness settles over me, and it feels thick and cold, like a blanket soaked through with icy water. This isn’t a fairy tale. There’s nothing I can do to help the girls who signed up for SciGirls. I can’t even help myself.

  “Can I take this?” I reach for the article, but Cara pulls it away.

  “What? Why?”

  “I want to ask Jessica if she knows who this woman is.”

  “We can talk to her together.”

  “No,” I say, too quickly. Cara narrows her eyes. The dim light turns her pupils amber. Like a fox.

  “You’re not telling me something.” Cara folds the photo in half, her fingers making a crease in the paper. I press my lips together. I want to tell her the whole story. I roll the words around in my head, trying to figure out how to start.

  Then something in the room shifts, like a stone dropping through water. I sit up straighter, the hair on the back of my neck prickling. My eyes move over the ceilings and the shadowy corners, searching for the telltale red flash of one of Dr. Gruen’s video cameras. I don’t see anything, but I still feel watched.

  Cara clucks her tongue. “Friends don’t keep secrets,” she says.

  “I have to go.” I stand, but hesitate next to her bed. “Can I have the photo?” I say in a low voice. “Please?”

  “Fine.” She holds out the photo. I grab it, then frown. This isn’t a page printed off the Internet. It’s an actual newspaper clipping. The edges have frayed, and creases crisscross the photograph as if it’s been handled many times.

  “Cara,” I breathe, turning the article over. “Where did you get this?”

  “You have your secrets,” Cara says, sinking back into the hospital bed. “And I have mine.”

  I sneak out of the infirmary, but the feeling that I’m b
eing watched follows me all the way to my room. Every creak and footstep makes me flinch. I’ve tucked Cara’s newspaper clipping into the waistband of my scrubs and it lies flat against my skin.

  No one can see it, I tell myself. But I practically run down the stairs, and I breathe a sigh of relief when I see that the hall to my room is empty. I’ll feel safer when the article is hidden.

  I find a note on my pillow when I reach my dorm:

  All-night cram session in the library 2nite, thanks 2 Dr. G!!!. See u at brkfst. –xo Issie

  I sink down onto my bed, reading the note again. Brunesfield has never let inmates stay out all night before. I wonder how many girls are crowded inside the library, how many guards Dr. Gruen has stationed around the room. Anger bubbles up inside me. I crumple Issie’s note into a ball and throw it. It skids over the concrete floor, disappearing beneath Jessica’s bunk.

  “Shit!” I flop back on my bed. I can’t talk to Issie about SciGirls with so many people around. Even if we found a private corner, I’d have no way of knowing whether Dr. Gruen hid one of her tiny video cameras inside a book or underneath a shelf. The only place in Brunesfield that I know is safe is this room. If Dr. Gruen had a camera here, she’d have found that damn bear by now.

  I roll onto my side, and stare at the wall across from me. I wonder if the teddy bear is still hidden in the hole behind Cara’s poster. Things would be a lot easier if I just took it to Dr. Gruen. I’d get the hell out of Brunesfield, and I wouldn’t have to worry about Issie getting into SciGirls, or evil experiments, or the dead woman in the photograph who looks just like Jessica. I would be with Charlie, and this could all fade away. Like an unpleasant dream.

  My heart gives a strange lurch. I ignore it, and sit up. Those are shitty reasons to betray someone, and I’m a shitty person for even thinking them. I crawl out of bed and start to pace. The room is so small that I can only take two steps across before I have to turn around, but I can’t just sit here freaking out about SciGirls and waiting for Issie to come back. I need a distraction or I’ll go crazy.

  My eyes fall on the cassette tape sitting on top of my locker. I’d forgotten about it, but now I can’t help remembering the hint of red that colored Ben’s cheeks, and the way he couldn’t quite meet my eyes when he gave it to me. I grab the tape and my ancient Walkman, and crawl back into bed. Then I slip my headphones over my ears and wait.

  The tape buzzes to life. For a long moment there’s only staticky silence. Then someone clears his throat.

  “Uh, hi, Angela,” Ben says. Hearing his voice makes my throat go dry. I sink back onto my pillow, hugging the tape player to my chest.

  “I looked for that audiobook you wanted,” he says. “The Amber Spyglass, remember? Would you believe they don’t have it at the library? Or the bookstore? And it’s back-ordered online.”

  I can’t believe he remembered I wanted to read that book. There’s another long, static-filled silence. I dig my teeth into my lower lip. I hear a sound like pages turning. Ben clears his throat again.

  “The library had the paperback, and I thought . . .” He laughs. “You know it took me forever to find blank cassette tapes? Anyway, here goes.”

  “In a valley . . .” Ben’s voice is deep and steady, and I can’t listen to him read without feeling the words rush through my entire body. I look down at my tape player, shocked. He couldn’t have read the entire book out loud.

  He keeps reading. I hear another page turn. The tension loosens from my shoulders, and a very small part of my fear drains away. I close my eyes, letting Ben’s voice lull me to sleep.

  The smell of smoke wakes me hours later. I bolt upright, and the tape player slides off my chest, the headphones ripped from my ears. Ben’s tinny voice echoes through the room for a second before I snatch the player and shut off the recording.

  Smoke drifts past my nose. Jessica, I think. I assumed she was in the library with Issie, but she must have snuck out. I blink the sleep from my eyes and pull Cara’s photo out from under my mattress, where I hid it for safekeeping. No one will interrupt us in the bathroom this late at night. I’m still rubbing my eyes as I creep to the door and ease it open. The concrete floors chill my feet, but I barely notice the cold.

  The bathroom feels icier than usual. No light dancing on the walls. No smoke billowing toward the ceiling. The girls must be studying down in the library, but I can’t hear them from up here. Still, I try to walk lightly, just in case my footsteps carry through the ceiling. The smell of fire hangs in the air, reminding me of bonfires clawing at summer skies, of fall nights lit by piles of burning leaves. I step into the room, cringing when my toes hit the damp tile floor.

  “Hello?” I whisper. I take another step forward. “Jessica?”

  No answer.

  I peer around the wall that separates the toilets from the showers. Dark tile stretches before me, and shallow pools of water gather in the dips in the floor, and in the corners near the walls. The thin windows near the ceiling reveal a moonless sky. There aren’t even stars out tonight.

  Fear tickles the back of my neck. Something’s different. Wrong. I huddle near the wall, searching for anything that looks out of place.

  A faucet drips. A door moves on its own, the creak of its hinges like a gunshot in the silence. I stiffen, and take two quick steps forward to peer into the stall.

  No one there.

  I swallow. I must be going crazy. It’s just a dark bathroom. I turn to go, when I hear movement behind me. I whirl back around.

  A shadow flickers beneath a stall door.

  I cross the bathroom on the balls of my feet, and place my hand flat against the door. Juvie girls don’t get locks on our bathroom stalls. A little push, and it swings open.

  Two girls huddle inside the stall, wound together so tightly I can hardly tell where one begins and the other ends. My face flushes. I take a quick step back.

  “Shit!” I avert my eyes. “Sorry!”

  One of the girls lifts her head. It’s a moment before I recognize her face beneath the dark tangle of hair. My voice freezes in my throat.

  “Cara?”

  Cara untangles herself. The other girl tries to slip away without looking at me, but I recognize her wispy, brown hair and pale skin.

  “Mary Anne,” I say. Mary Anne hesitates, flashing me a nervous look.

  “Don’t tell Dr. Gruen,” she whispers. “Please.” Then, before I can say another word, she slips past and hurries out of the bathroom.

  I turn back to Cara. “I don’t understand,” I say. “Are you and Mary Anne . . . together?”

  It never occurred to me that Cara liked girls, but that’s only because it never occurred to me that Cara liked anyone. She’s all sharp edges and attitude. Most days she barely seems to tolerate Issie and me.

  Cara stares at the words carved into the side of the bathroom stall: Aaliyah is a slut, Jesus luvs you. “I didn’t think you’d find out,” she says.

  “Clearly.” I bite off the end of the word and it comes out sharper, angrier than I mean for it to. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Cara digs her fingernail into the grooves of a jerky heart. She carves out a sliver of plaster and lets it flutter to the floor. I cross my arms over my chest, ignoring the goose bumps scattered across my skin.

  “Cara, what the hell?” I say. Anger ripples across Cara’s face. It tightens her features and pulls at her skin, sharpening her edges. I’m certain she’s going to tell me to fuck myself, and stomp off.

  But then her shoulders slump, the anger passing like a storm. She lowers her head to her hands.

  “I don’t know.” She rubs her eyes with her palms and looks back up at me. “Mary Anne is . . . cool. And funny. I knew her back in high school and I always thought she was cute, but we never really talked.” The ghost of a smile flickers across Cara’s lips. “I know it sounds strange but it’s just easier in here.”

  “But she’s in SciGirls,” I say. “She works with Dr. Gruen.”

 
; A hard look slides over Cara’s eyes. “I know, but Mary Anne isn’t like that. She’s the one who told me there was something weird going on.”

  “Cara . . .”

  “No, really. Remember that day she came by our dorm to drop off the brochures?”

  I nod. “You said she was trying to recruit you.”

  “She was trying to warn me. She hid a note in one of them.” Cara pulls a scrap of paper out of the waistband of her scrubs. “I know I should have thrown it away, but I just couldn’t believe it was real. Look.”

  The note is blank except for three columns of hastily scribbled numbers. I touch the edge of the paper, frowning. “What does it mean?”

  “It’s a code. Back in school I used to pass notes to people like this. The lines of numbers correspond to a word in a book. See, the first number tells you what page to go to, and the second tells you the paragraph—”

  “And the third tells you the word, right?” I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose. Already this is giving me a headache.

  “Exactly,” Cara says. “Anyway, Mary Anne remembered that I used to do this, so she wrote me one. This corresponds with the SciGirls brochures. It says, “Don’t trust her.”

  “Dr. Gruen?” I ask. Cara nods.

  “I wrote back to her later that day, asking her to tell me what’s going on. But she said we were being watched, that it wasn’t safe. So we kept passing notes back and forth like this for, like, a week. She told me about the raid, and warned me not to get a flu shot.”

  A chill shoots up my spine. “What was in the flu shot?”

  “She doesn’t know,” Cara says. “That’s the problem—she doesn’t really know anything. But she kept noticing these really weird things happening. Like, a bunch of SciGirls disappeared a few weeks ago, and Dr. Gruen won’t talk about where they went. And Gruen lies to the girls she’s recruiting. She tells them the program is prestigious, and that they’re going to get to do all these amazing things. But Mary Anne said that, after they take the test, she never sees those girls again. They’re just gone.”