Breaking Page 21

  I stop beside another cot and stare down at another girl. Blankets cover her frail body. Her cheeks are hollow, her arms all skin and bone. She doesn’t look dangerous. She looks like she’s dying.

  Mother said the antidote hasn’t been tested yet. What she means is that it hasn’t been tested on her. They haven’t studied its effects on this girl’s broken body. They haven’t sacrificed her to make sure I’ll be safe. Yet.

  I focus on the last struggling flicker of humanity left inside me. I picture it like a flame growing higher and higher. I may be doomed, but this girl—these people—don’t have to be.

  A medicine bag hangs from the metal stand beside her cot, and a thin tube trails away from it, attaching to her arm through a needle taped to her skin. Clear liquid drips through the tube. It must be what’s keeping her asleep.

  I yank the needle out of the girl’s arm, and a new machine starts beeping. The sound is frantic—an alarm.

  “Charlotte?” Mother snaps. “What are you doing?”

  “You’re wrong.” I turn to the machines behind the girl’s bed and flip switches until the beeping stops. “This is wrong.”

  Mother’s heels pound against the tile. I flip one more switch before her hand circles my wrist and yanks me away.

  “Let me go.” I pull out of Mother’s grip and lunge for the machine.

  Mother wraps her arms around my chest, restraining me. “Decades of research have gone into this project.”

  I shake my head. No. These people aren’t a project. They aren’t assets or experiments. Mother is strong, but I’m strong now, too. So much stronger than her.

  I wrestle an arm free of her grip and shove her. She stumbles and trips over her feet, slamming into the floor in a heap of black silk. I don’t stop for long enough to check on her. I fumble with the straps binding the girl’s wrists to her side. Leather snaps between my fingers. I undo the buckle, letting the straps fall to the floor. Then I move to the next cot.

  Mother pushes herself up to one elbow. “Charlotte, stop,” she begs. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  But I know exactly what I’m doing. Mother is wrong, and I’m right, and I’ve only ever known that for sure once before in my life, when I was nine years old and tossed some wooden blocks out the window of a hotel room. When I saved the tiny princess, at last.

  I move from cot to cot, unlatching leather and unhooking needles. My fingers work quickly, frantically. Moans echo through the room behind me. Blankets rustle.

  They’re waking up.

  I pause, and glance over my shoulder to watch Mother’s prisoners climb down from their cots. I expect them to move like zombies. Dazed and slow, and confused about where they are. I expect them to need my help.

  They don’t. The frail girl stands, immediately alert, and hurries to another cot. She pulls the leather restraints apart with her bare hands. A boy with a shaved head and a bandage covering the back of his skull yanks the needles out of his neighbor’s arm. He hits two buttons in tandem, stopping the blaring alarm before it even begins.

  It’s like they’d been expecting this. Planning for it.

  I make my way to the cot holding the girl with the burned face. Despite the burns, she doesn’t look as frail as the others. Her arms are muscular and her cheeks don’t have that caved-in, hollow look yet. Tape peels, easily, away from her arm. I slide the needle out of her skin, ignoring the blaring siren as I fumble with her restraints. The buckle is stiff and awkward in my hands, so I grab the leather and pull. It snaps apart between my fingers, like tissue.

  She wakes quickly, like the others, and turns to me with bleary, bloodshot eyes.

  “You,” she murmurs, and I wonder if she recognizes me from the Med Center. Her eyes shift to my hands, still holding the strips of leather that bound her to her cot. She sits, rubbing her wrists. “What are you doing?”

  “You have to get out of here,” I choke out. I nod at the rest of the patients. “Take them and go far, far away.”

  Gratitude flashes across the girl’s face. She climbs out of her cot, heading straight for the cage in the back of the room. She tries to yank the padlock open, and, when that doesn’t work, she curls her hand around the metal and closes her eyes. The padlock glows red beneath her fingers. Molten metal drips to the floor.

  The cage door swings open, and a large boy with thickly muscled arms climbs out.

  Mother pushes herself to her feet, wobbling on her heels. A rip tears across the side of her gown, and torn silk flaps around her legs. “Angela,” she shouts. “Don’t!”

  The girl with the burned face—Angela—flashes a predatory smile, her gnarled lips pulling tight across her teeth. “What’s the matter, Dr. Gruen?” she asks. “Afraid to face your monsters?”

  The boy from the cage slams his fist into a cot—it crumples like paper, the sound of grinding metal echoing off the walls.

  Mother backs toward the door, eyes moving over the faces of her patients. Her prisoners. They circle her, anger etched on their pale, tired faces. The fluorescent light above her flares—red and orange sparks rain down on us.

  Mother lifts her head, finding me at the back of the room. Animal terror fills her eyes. Maybe I’ve already lost my humanity. Maybe this is the last choice I’ll make before taking my own life. But as I stand at the back of the lab, watching the monsters she made descend upon her, I don’t feel a shred of guilt or sorrow.

  She should face what she’s created. It’s only fair.

  “Charlotte,” she calls to me. “Please. I’m your mother. Your family.”

  I think of Ariel laughing as we sat beside the river, braiding hair and tossing stones into the water. Devon signing my mother’s name in perfect, loopy handwriting. The three of us making cookies on a Friday night because none of us had—or wanted—dates.

  “No,” I say. “You killed my family.”

  Angela stops beside me. Her breathing comes faster. She blinks, and when she opens her eyes again, they’re an oily, perfect black. The air becomes a staticky crackle. Like all of the moisture has been leached from the room.

  She’s dangerous, Mother said. Pyretic, it read in her notes.

  I catch a whiff of smoke, and before I can process what’s about to happen, fire blazes to life around me, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. It erupts from the tile. It manifests out of thin air, cracking and flaring, exploding from nothing. It rolls between the cots like waves. It curls around my mother’s feet, a circle of flame holding her in place.

  Smoke stings my eyes. I drop to my knees.

  The boy from the cage lifts a beeping machine above his head and hurls it at my mother. It crashes into the far wall, exploding into shards of plastic and white-hot sparks of electricity. My mother cowers, and it misses her face by inches. Her prisoners crowd closer around her, blocking any chance of escape.

  I should run. The heat is too much. My head pounds and the ground seems to lurch. For a moment, all I see is black. I blink again and again, until the room comes back into focus. Until Angela and my mother and the flames feel real.

  Is this what it feels like? I wonder absently. I did something inhumane, just like Mother said I would. I stood aside and let her monsters destroy her. This must be the fail-safe kicking in, preventing me from saving myself. Letting me die.

  I open my mouth, but ashes coat my throat and tongue. There’s too much smoke, too much fire. I don’t try to stand up again.

  “Want to see a trick?” Angela says. Before my mother can answer, Angela curls her hands into two tight fists, drawing the fire close to her. The flames waver and then disappear. It’s like they’ve soaked down into the floors and walls. Like Angela’s absorbed them.

  Mother’s body begins to glow. It’s subtle at first, almost like light bouncing off her pale skin. But it gets brighter. There are flames beneath her skin. She is heat and fire. I can’t look directly at her. I shield my eyes and turn away.

  I understand what’s happening a moment before it do
es. Fire erupts from Mother’s mouth. It flares in her eyes and curls from her nostrils. Her skin begins to boil and peel. Her gown turns to ash as her body succumbs to flames.

  I close my eyes, trying to feel the horror of what I just saw. I replay the image again and again, but everything seems so far away. Like I’m seeing it through a veil.

  The fire closes in. I imagine it destroying my face. Skin peeling away from my nose. Lips bubbling and turning black. Is it suicide if you let yourself die? If you do nothing to try to stop it?

  I blink, and then I’m no longer in the lab surrounded by flames. I’m in the woods, in our secret cove. Tree branches form a canopy of leaves over my head, sunlight painting their bark gold. A soft breeze rustles the new grass. Somewhere in the distance, a bird chirps.

  Ariel and Devon wait on the path ahead of me, their familiar laughter echoing through the woods. Shivers race over my arms. I found them. Finally, I found them.

  They turn, beckoning to me. There are other paths through the woods to explore. Paths that lead to places we’ve never seen.

  I take their hands, and darkness falls, like a light switching off.

  Epilogue

  I wake to a world of ash and blood. Ariel and Devon are gone, but they were never really here, were they? I close my eyes, remembering the feel of their hands in mine, the sound of their laughter in the trees. I should have died. Why didn’t I die?

  I count to three, and then I open my eyes again.

  Angela is gone. Everyone in the small tile room is gone. The cots lie empty, blankets tangled on the floor beside them. Machines beep angrily. Lights flash.

  I sit up and look around. I’m not where I’m supposed to be. I collapsed at the back of the room, near the cage, but now I’m sitting at the foot of the stairs. Footsteps trail through the ash-coated tile and, beside them, a swath of clear floor. Like someone dragged me.

  All at once, I realize: the kids my mother tortured and experimented on and imprisoned moved me to where the flames couldn’t touch me. They saved my life.

  I blink, and letters float before my eyes. Someone wrote me a message in the ash.

  Come find us, it reads.

  Acknowledgments

  A big, wet, sloppy thank you to Mandy Hubbard, as always, for everything you do to help my books become more than funny little images in my head. We’re talking email therapy sessions, near-constant cheerleading, and an uncanny ability to answer the exact same question numerous times without calling me out on it. You’re a rock star. I’m so glad we fell in love.

  Thank you to Mary Kate Castellani for loving these characters as much as I do, and for helping to lead them out of the woods. To Claire Stetzer, thanks for everything (including endless patience as I actually write this). To Cristin Stickles, thanks for holding my hand during events and fielding crazy email requests. HUGE thanks to the rest of the Bloomsbury team for working so hard to get this book out into the world. I particularly want to call out Vicky Leech in the UK for everything you’ve done for my books overseas.

  I also have to spend a second thanking all the usual suspects. Mom and Dad, thanks bunches for reading this one, and all the others, and for screaming like children every time I hand you a new book. Thank you, Ron, for loving this one (and, let’s be honest, every new one I write) the MOST. Thanks Leah and Anna, for workshopping this bad girl to within an inch of her life. She’s a better book for it.

  I dedicated this book to nice girls and monsters. Throughout both Breaking and Burning, I played with concepts of image and femininity; namely, how to walk that increasingly narrow line between what’s considered good and bad when you also happen to be a girl. I hope I did an okay job, but these things are always works in progress. If you have any questions, or want to discuss it more, you can find me almost anywhere @vegarollins.

  Copyright © 2017 by Danielle Rollins

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  First published in the United States of America in June 2017

  by Bloomsbury Children’s Books

  www.bloomsbury.com

  Bloomsbury is a registered trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 1385 Broadway, New York, New York 10018

  Bloomsbury books may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at specialmarkets@macmillan.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Rollins, Danielle, author.

  Title: Breaking / by Danielle Rollins.

  Description: New York: Bloomsbury, 2017.

  Summary: Charlotte, an outsider at prestigious Underhill Preparatory Institute, must decide if she is willing to risk her own safety and sanity to discover the truth about her two best friends’ suicides.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016037740 (print) • LCCN 2016058839 (e-book)

  ISBN 978-1-61963-740-5 (hardcover) • ISBN 978-1-61963-741-2 (e-book)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Suicide—Fiction. | Secrets—Fiction. | Best friends—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Boarding schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Self-esteem—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Friendship. | JUVENILE FICTION / Law & Crime.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.R666 Bre 2017 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.R666 (e-book) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016037740

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