Burning Read online

  “Peach is going to walk, quietly, back into the hallway and leave us both alone,” Cara says. She turns the knife so its blade catches the light. “Understood?”

  Peach rips her arm away from me, but her eyes stay locked on the blade. She glances from me to Cara.

  “Watch yourself,” she says, before ducking back into the hallway.

  As soon as Peach is gone, Cara tucks the knife back into the waistband of her uniform. Her hands tremble.

  “Cara,” I start, but I don’t know what to say to her.

  “You didn’t see anything.” Cara heads for the library door, but I grab her arm before she reaches it.

  “What are you doing with that?” I ask. “Do you know what could—”

  “The words you’re looking for are ‘thank you,’” Cara snaps. I stare at her for a beat, too shocked to speak. Cara’s smarter than this. She reads more than anyone I’ve ever met. She’s the one always telling me to keep out of trouble.

  She stares at me for a moment, and her expression softens. “Look, I need it, okay?” She pulls away from me and straightens her shirt so you can’t see the bulge at her waist. “Don’t worry about me.”

  And, without another word, she slips into the hall.

  Chapter Six

  By the next morning, stacks of SciGirls brochures sit on tables outside Director Wu’s door and in the corner of the cafeteria. I hear rumors that a few girls have been called into the new doctor’s office to discuss “enrichment opportunities.” Whatever that means. And everyone’s wearing a green rubber bracelet. Issie has five.

  I asked her where she got them, but she just shrugged and said, “Around.”

  On top of that, someone replaced the lightbulbs. Maybe it’s dumb, but I’ve been here for eighteen months and I’ve almost gotten used to the way the lights in the hallways buzzed and flickered and switched off randomly, like they were being controlled by a team of vindictive ghosts. Now they gleam from the ceilings, steadily illuminating grungy corners that probably would have been better left in shadow.

  “I’m telling you, she’s some kind of FBI spy,” Cara says, jabbing her pointy elbow into my side while we’re serving breakfast. “That assistant girl too. They’ve probably been sent here to check out the criminal element of the future.”

  I groan and pluck two waffles off the stack with my tongs. They taste like cardboard, but we get actual butter to put on top of them, and maple syrup that doesn’t taste like maple but is still thick and sweeter than anything else we get inside. It’s hard to screw up anything drenched in butter and sugar. Even here.

  “No one works for the FBI. Jesus,” I say. I drop the waffles on a tray and slide it over to Issie for butter and silverware. “I just don’t understand why they’re spending so much money on this place all of a sudden.”

  Cara stirs a giant vat of syrup. “Maybe they want everything in good working condition so they can perform experiments on us.”

  I throw a pat of butter at her, but she dodges it.

  “Hey, conspiracy girls, can I get a little help here?” Issie barks, nodding at the line of girls winding away from our counter. Usually it’s easy to move them through the breakfast line, but today they mill around our counter like cats. I grab another tray and start to pile it with waffles.

  “Come on, Angela, talk. What’s up with the new inmate?” Aaliyah asks, raising a black, pencil-drawn eyebrow that doesn’t match her bleached-blond hair. Word got out about my punishment in the Seg Block, and now every girl in Brunesfield wants to know what I think of Jessica.

  “Don’t know, don’t care,” I say, handing Aaliyah her tray so roughly that one of the waffles slides around the aluminum, nearly falling off.

  Aaliyah frowns. “Watch it,” she says, nudging the waffle back onto her tray with her thumb. A rubber SciGirls bracelet dangles from her wrist.

  “Sorry,” I say. I have no excuse for being mean to Aaliyah. Usually the most offensive thing she does is sing old Mariah Carey songs in the shower and doodle kittens on her homework assignments.

  “Come on.” She leans forward and her scrubs top droops down, displaying the oatmeal-colored, juvie-issued tank top she wears beneath. “You have to know something. Why is she in Seg anyway? She crazy?”

  I shrug and grab another girl’s tray.

  “Whoever she is, she’s freaky,” a girl named Tyra says. She’s short and skinny, with choppy black hair. “I had to bring her breakfast this morning, right? I get up next to her cell and the damn lightbulb explodes. Glass flew everywhere.”

  She thrusts her arm out, displaying fresh nicks on her wrists. Deep, twisted scars crisscross the skin below them. I glance at her arm, trying not to grimace. Everyone knows Tyra has a thing for knives. I wonder what she found to cut herself with in here.

  “They had to move the girl in the dorm next to her, you know,” a girl named March adds, winding her thick ponytail between her fingers. “She kept getting these weird-ass rashes.”

  “Rashes?” I say, before I can stop myself. “Are you sure they weren’t burns?”

  March gives me a strange look. “Ew,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “Didn’t ask for details, thanks.”

  I press my fingers together. The burns have just started to heal and, as far as anyone else is concerned, I got them from picking up a metal pan that someone left on a burner. I slap two waffles and a pat of butter onto the tray in front of me and hand it to the next girl in line. Aaliyah doesn’t move.

  “I heard she got locked up for murder.” She lowers her voice even though, by now, every girl behind her is leaning closer, listening. Aaliyah drops her voice even further, almost whispering. “She found her daddy’s gun, you know? And . . . bam!”

  Aaliyah slaps her palm against the counter and Issie jumps, dropping a waffle on the floor. Cara snickers.

  “She killed her whole family in the same night,” Aaliyah finishes with a shrug. “No one knows why. That’s why she’s in Seg.”

  “Bullshit.” Peach grabs the tray of waffles out of my hands and shoulders past Aaliyah in line. “I heard she was involved in a drug ring that sold crack to elementary-school kids.”

  “That’s so dumb,” Cara says. She shakes her head, making her frizzy curls bob around her ears.

  Peach scowls. “You say something to me, slut?” she snaps.

  Cara leans forward, syrup ladle in hand. Looking her right in the eye, she dumps the syrup on the floor next to Peach’s feet.

  “Oops,” she says.

  “Bitch.” Peach frowns at the syrup puddle and runs a hand over her peach-fuzz hair. “I’m telling Brody you did that.”

  She deliberately steps in the syrup and smears it across the tile as she walks to her table.

  “You do that,” Cara shouts after her. “I’ll be eating my waffles.”

  They’ve been like this since yesterday. Peach hasn’t ambushed us again, but every time she walks past she makes a face or says something mean. She won’t rat us out, though. Juvie girls don’t tattle. She’d rather wait and find a way to fight back.

  I cringe at that thought and plop a waffle onto someone’s tray. “Brody’s going to make us clean that up.”

  Cara shrugs and dumps another glob of syrup onto a waffle. We haven’t spoken about the knife since the fight in the library. We haven’t had a minute alone, and I’m afraid to bring it up in front of other people—even Issie. Every single person who learns about that knife puts Cara in danger.

  Cara catches my eye, staring just long enough to make me shift and look away. I swear to God, when I first met her I thought she was psychic. She has this way of looking at people. It’s like she can see through their skin to the tender, painful secrets they’re trying to hide.

  I hand another girl a tray of waffles. Erin, I think her name is. She’s wearing two green bracelets, one on each wrist. “Are people really signing up for this SciGirls thing?” I ask, nodding at the bracelets.

  “Nah. They’re just stealing the bracelets,” Issie
says, dropping a pat of butter on the tray. “It’s like a nerd club. All you do is look into microscopes and shit.”

  “Didn’t you hear? It’s kind of competitive,” Erin cuts in. She yanks at her bracelet, pulling it farther up her arm. “They only take a couple of girls. It’s, like, a really big deal to be chosen.”

  Issie raises an eyebrow. “Really?”

  “Angela?”

  I look over my shoulder to see who said my name. Officer Mateo leans against the kitchen door. His lazy smile is more of a smirk right now, and his eyes look droopy, like he just woke up.

  “Hi!” I say, brightening.

  “I thought you didn’t work until ten on Tuesdays?” Issie says. She has Mateo’s schedule memorized.

  Mateo stifles a yawn. “Traded shifts with Brody.”

  “Another hockey game?” Issie clamps her tongs around a waffle and drops it onto a tray. Last week Mateo worked an early shift so he could watch the Flyers game that night. That’s all the information Issie needed. Since then she’s gone crazy into research mode, using her measly twenty minutes of computer time a day to research players and teams.

  “Flyers are playing the Rangers tonight,” Mateo says, grin widening. “New York’s going down.”

  “No way,” Issie says. “Lundqvist is gonna score on some Flyer ass.”

  Pathetic, Cara mouths at me. I snicker, but I’m honestly wishing I’d taken a look at some of Issie’s notes. She pronounces Lundqvist’s name perfectly. She must’ve found a video that wasn’t blocked.

  “We’ll see,” Mateo says, running a hand over his hair. He must not have had time to style it, because it flops over his forehead in messy waves instead of swooping away from his face like it usually does. “Miss Davis, do you have a second? Dr. Gruen needs to see you.”

  It takes me a little too long to stop staring at Mateo’s hair. I blink.

  “Did she say why?” I ask. Mateo frowns at me, then pushes the hair off his forehead. My cheeks grow hot, and I shift my eyes back to the tray of waffles. Stop staring at his hair, you freak.

  “No,” he says. “But she’s been seeing girls for the past two days, so I don’t think you’re in any trouble.”

  I shrug off my apron. It must be time to learn about my own enrichment opportunities. Maybe I’ll even get a green SciGirls bracelet.

  Cara looks up from the pot of syrup she’s stirring and raises an eyebrow.

  “Chill,” I say under my breath. “Dr. Gruen isn’t an alien. She doesn’t work for the FBI, and I doubt she’s trying to take over the world.”

  “If you say so,” she says. Issie hums the Doctor Who theme song. A few of the girls still waiting in the food line catcall as I follow Mateo into the empty hallway, but he pretends not to notice. That easy smile slides onto his face again.

  “You all have way too much energy this early in the morning,” he says, yawning.

  Wind pushes against the windows, making the glass creak. I see movement from the corner of my eye and flinch, spinning around. A cockroach skitters across the wall and disappears into a crack in the concrete. The cassette tucked into my waistband jiggles loose and slips down my leg.

  “Oh crap,” I mutter, shaking my leg to knock the tape loose. Tuck Everlasting clatters to the floor.

  “What’s this?” Mateo stops and picks up the cracked plastic case. “Is this a cassette tape?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Old-school, right? Brunesfield has yet to discover the digital revolution.”

  “I didn’t even know they made these anymore.” He turns the cassette over in his hand, studying the picture of the girl in the pink dress on the cover. “It looks like a kids’ book.”

  “It is. My class read it in seventh grade.” I’d been planning to pop it into the ancient cassette player in the kitchen while washing the dishes after breakfast. “Or, we were supposed to.”

  Mateo averts his eyes while I lift my shirt and slip the cassette back in place.

  “Why listen to it on tape?” he asks. “Can’t you . . . I mean do you know how . . .”

  “I know how to read,” I say to put him out of his misery. “It’s just not easy for me. If I listen to the book on tape I can actually enjoy the story.”

  “So why bother with books at all?” he asks. “Why not watch a movie or something?”

  I glance up at Mateo, and for the first time I’m not looking at his thick hair or smile or the outline of his arms beneath his uniform. Instead I try to imagine him the way he was just a couple of years ago, a teenager at some crappy public school in upstate New York. I wonder if he knows what it’s like to be stupid, or to think you’re stupid because you can’t keep the letters on a page from jumping around in your head.

  The corner of Mateo’s mouth curls, and I know he wants to smile to defuse the tension. But he doesn’t. Instead he clears his throat and presses his lips together, waiting for me to answer.

  “You know we’re not allowed to have TVs in our dorms,” I say, finally. The smile unfolds across Mateo’s face. He shakes his head.

  “Ah, right. I guess I can’t help you there,” he says, stopping in front of a thick door. “Here we are.”

  “Thanks,” I say. Mateo nods and starts back down the hall. After a few steps he pauses and turns back around.

  “Just so you know, Lundqvist is the goalie,” he says.

  I blink, confused.

  “What?”

  “Your friend said ‘Lundqvist is gonna score on some Flyer ass.’ But goalies don’t score.” Mateo kicks that smile up a few watts, and a lock of hair falls across his forehead.

  “Right,” I say, making a mental note to pass that on to Issie later. I push open the door and step into Dr. Gruen’s office.

  The room looks nothing like Director Wu’s. Dr. Gruen’s black desk is small and efficient, its surface so shiny I wonder how she works without her papers sliding off. Two equally shiny leather chairs stand guard before the desk, and a floor lamp bathes the room in soft golden light. The air is several degrees warmer than in the hallway, but I don’t see a space heater.

  Mary Anne stands in the corner, studying a thick black binder like she might be tested on it later. She glances up when I walk in and flashes me a shy smile.

  “Angela, please come in,” Dr. Gruen says. She sits behind the desk, her hands folded in front of her. She’s wearing a different black suit. This one has wide lapels that taper into sharp points of fabric. The same gold rose is pinned to her jacket.

  “Okay,” I say, suddenly nervous. I didn’t notice how beautiful she was before. Director Wu’s office has a way of making everyone look shabby and tired but here, in her element, Dr. Gruen’s pointed nose and thin face look elegant. Regal, even. She looks like a queen.

  I ease into a leather chair. A steel bookcase fills the wall behind her head. It holds only a few books, all artfully arranged by color and height, and a strange twisted sculpture that looks like a burned tree branch. I wrinkle my nose. I really don’t get art.

  Framed photographs take up the rest of the shelves. I lean forward in my chair to examine them. The Dr. Gruen in the pictures looks different from the one in front of me, but just as easily elegant. Instead of a black suit, she wears khaki pants and a white lab coat, and a thick black headband holds back her blond hair. In one photograph she crouches in the middle of a group of girls wearing safety goggles and wide smiles. In another she stands next to a girl peering through a microscope.

  Dr. Gruen pivots in her seat, following my gaze to the photographs behind her. Her movements are easy, graceful. Almost like a dance. “Are you interested in science, Miss Davis?”

  I blink. Literally no one in my entire life has ever asked me a question like that before. It would be like asking a fish if it was interested in playing soccer.

  “Um, sure,” I say. Dr. Gruen nods, and Mary Anne leans forward, handing me a glossy brochure exactly like the ones I saw in the library.

  “SciGirls is always on the lookout for young women like you,”
Dr. Gruen continues. “In fact, those photographs are from my work with a local chapter that was doing research on the common cold.”

  I study the photograph on the brochure cover. Girls holding lab equipment grin at the camera. They all look like Mary Anne: shiny college hair and very straight, very white teeth.

  I shift in my chair. I feel almost exactly like I do when I’m struggling to read a book: I understand all the words Dr. Gruen’s saying, but they don’t add up to anything in my head. Why is she talking to me about science? Erin said this SciGirls program is competitive. They aren’t going to want some juvie girl.

  “It also looks really good on a college application,” Mary Anne adds. Her voice is quiet and higher than I expected it to be. She fumbles with the broccoli charm on her bracelet. “If you’re into that kind of thing.”

  “Mary Anne has been a member of SciGirls for more than a year. She was just recently promoted to my assistant, actually. We consider her something of an expert on the program,” Dr. Gruen explains. She studies me, a soft smile parting her lips. “I could see you there. You have the look of a leader.”

  My cheeks flame. I never learned how to take a compliment. “Is this why you called me in here?” I ask, nodding at the brochure.

  Dr. Gruen leans back in her chair. “Actually,” she says, “I have another job I thought you might be interested in.”

  “Job?” I frown. You don’t offer someone a job if she’s leaving in three months. I place the brochure back on Dr. Gruen’s desk. “This is about yesterday, isn’t it? My release?”

  “Your release,” Dr. Gruen repeats, pulling a folder out of the stiff black bag sitting next to her desk. “As a matter of fact, I did speak with Director Wu about that this morning. She confirmed that your latest . . . infraction could delay your release for up to six months.”

  Six months. All the air leaves the room. I watch Dr. Gruen’s lips move, so I know she’s still speaking, but I don’t hear a word she says. In six months spring will be over. Charlie will have spent another birthday by himself.