Burning Read online

  This is nuts-o. Charlie used to say that. He heard it on some decades-old cartoon and thought it was hilarious, so he started repeating it all the time. Homework was nuts-o. Food was nuts-o. It was actually really annoying. It’s strange that’s the only word that comes to mind when I think about this situation.

  “Nuts-o,” I say out loud. It’s not nuts-o, not really. It’s bizarre and dangerous. But it’ll get me away from Brunesfield. Away from hallways that change size and rooms that set their own temperature and trees that tiptoe closer at night.

  I take my time walking back to my room, relishing my last Jessica-free moments. When I turn onto our hall, I see Cara leaning against the open door to our dorm, talking with Mary Anne. She’s actually smiling, which makes no sense. Cara never smiles.

  “Hey,” I say, walking up to them. Cara flinches at the sound of my voice.

  “Oh. Hey.” She straightens, and crosses her arms over her chest. “You’ve met Mary Anne, right? Get this—we used to go to the same high school. Isn’t that weird?”

  “Yeah, definitely.” I peek past Mary Anne, but our dorm room is empty. “Where’s Jessica?”

  “Bathroom,” Mary Anne says. She fumbles with the turnip charm hanging from her bracelet. “You know, I probably should have gone with her. Dr. Gruen told me to watch her. I’ll be right back.”

  Cara frowns. “Who’s Jessica?”

  “You’re about to find out.” I turn and watch Mary Anne hurry down the hallway. “The assistant girl is kind of a spaz.”

  “She’s not so bad.” Cara drops onto her bunk.

  “Really?” I ask. “Then what’s with the vegetable charm bracelet?”

  “She’s a vegetarian.”

  I groan and toss the green SciGirls bracelet onto my locker. “I love bacon, but you don’t see me wearing pig jewelry.”

  The tiny red blisters on my arms twinge. I bite my lip to keep from cringing and try to slip past Cara so I can run some cold water over my skin. Her eyes go right to my arm, narrowing at the burns.

  “What happened?” she asks. Shit. I shrug and try to pull my sleeve past my wrist.

  “Nothing.”

  Cara cocks an eyebrow. I can practically see the gears twisting and turning inside her head. “Like how the burns on your fingers were nothing?”

  “Exactly,” I say. Cara lives for conspiracies and secrets and would give anything for her life to be like one of her books. And now that something legitimately freaky is going on, I can’t tell her about it. How’s that for fair?

  I push my sleeve back up and make my way to the sink on the other side of the room. But as soon as I pass the bunks, I freeze.

  Our sink is gone. All that’s left is a dark circle on the paint, and two crumbling holes in the wall.

  “Weird, right?” Cara says, following my gaze. “Somebody came and took it a few minutes ago.”

  I frown. I didn’t think I was in Dr. Gruen’s office for that long, but I guess I dragged my heels on the way back. “Why?”

  Cara shrugs. “Mary Anne said it was malfunctioning.”

  “Malfunctioning?” I say. “When have they ever repaired something just because it didn’t work? Remember when the toilet in the girls’ room wouldn’t stop flushing?”

  We only have two toilets in the girls’ room and for a week one of them flushed every minute and a half (yes, we timed it), making it completely impossible to use. All the guards in Brunesfield knew it was a problem but no one fixed it until it shot a geyser at the ceiling, drenching Officer Crane with toilet water.

  The lights in the hallway flicker, distracting me from the missing sink. Jessica steps through the door, clutching a worn teddy bear to her chest. One of her braids has half unraveled and it looks like a frayed wire.

  Mary Anne stops behind her. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “I should get back to Dr. Gruen’s office. Are you all going to be okay?”

  Cara shoots me a look. “What’s going on?”

  “Yeah. We’ll be fine,” I say. Mary Anne gives Jessica nudge forward, then hurries back down the hall. Jessica looks at me, and all the muscles in my body tense. I clear my throat.

  “Cara, this is Jessica,” I say. “She’s been assigned to our dorm.”

  “You can’t be serious.” Cara lowers her voice but Jessica must hear her, anyway. She shifts her eyes to the floor, and a pang of sympathy shoots through me.

  “Come in,” I say. “Your bunk is up top.”

  Jessica glances at the top bunk, then back at me. She shakes her head so subtly that I almost miss it. Crap. She’s scared of heights.

  “Uh, Cara,” I say. “Maybe you should switch with her.”

  “What?” Cara snaps. At juvie, your bunk is your home. Cara decorated hers with a map of Roswell that she tore out of a library book, funny little sketches of aliens, and a confusing diagram that’s supposed to show how the moon landing was faked.

  “I think she’s afraid,” I say. “I could give her my bunk if—”

  “Whatever. It’s fine.” Cara glares at me but grabs her book and starts up the ladder. The rungs creak angrily beneath her feet. I silently vow to help her move her posters later. Jessica shuffles forward and crawls into the bed directly across from mine. She pulls the thin blue blanket up to her chin.

  I never had nightmares as a kid, never lay awake at night worrying about creatures hiding under my bed. But now, with Jessica huddled on the bed across from me, I have some idea what that feels like. She watches me with those dark eyes. The tiny burns on my arms flare.

  Chapter Nine

  Issie dances around the dorm the next morning, wiggling her butt as she pulls a clean pair of scrubs over her hips. She sings animatedly in Spanish, the melody familiar even though the words are foreign.

  I stifle a groan and burrow into my pillow. I don’t know where she gets her energy. The sun isn’t even up. The fluorescent overhead lights make the room feel sterile and cold.

  Issie plops onto the edge of my bunk and tugs on her shoes. Her voice gets louder.

  “Stop. Singing. Please.” I cover my head with my pillow, trying to block out the sound. Issie snickers. For a second, there’s quiet. The mattress shifts beneath me.

  Then, “Wake up!” She leans over me, belting the words into my ear. I chuck my pillow at her, but she catches it before it smacks her in the face.

  “Why so grumpy?” she asks, holding my pillow out of reach.

  “Not grumpy,” I say. “Tired.” I doubt I slept for more than an hour last night. The burns on my arms and fingers started to itch every time I drifted off. I’d convince myself that the air was growing warmer, that my mattress was burning my skin.

  Then I’d open my eyes and see Jessica sleeping peacefully in the bed across from me and feel like an idiot.

  “We’re supposed to be in the kitchen in five minutes,” Cara says, wrestling her curls back into a ponytail. I kick off my blanket and scoot to the edge of my bunk, fighting to keep my eyes open.

  Jessica’s balled up in the far corner of her own bed, arms wrapped around her knees. I glance at Issie. She shrugs.

  “Jessica?” I say. Jessica tilts her head, but doesn’t look up. “We’ve got to go to the kitchen for morning chores. Wanna come?”

  Cara’s facing the mirror, but she catches my eye in the reflection. “She can’t work in the kitchen. She’s too young.”

  “Right.” You have to be at least fourteen to work around the hot stoves and knives. Jessica will probably be assigned something low-key, like sorting letters in the mailroom.

  “She could hang out in the caf,” I say. “And when we’re done working, we can all eat together. How does that sound?”

  Cara frowns. “Why would she want to do that?”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to stay here alone.”

  “She’ll be alone in the caf while she waits for us.”

  “Cara,” I snap. She tightens her ponytail and turns her back on the mirror.

  “Jeez, take a pill,�
� she says.

  “Have either of you thought about letting Jessica answer for herself?” Issie asks.

  Cara and I fall silent. The three of us turn to Jessica. Jessica jerks her head back and forth. No.

  “That’s settled, then,” Cara says. “Angela? Ready?”

  I hesitate, trying to think of something else to persuade Jessica to come with us. I’m supposed to be her friend, or mentor, or whatever. I’m supposed to hang out with her and show her the ropes. Not leave her in our dorm alone.

  I open my mouth to say something, then close it again. Jessica doesn’t look like she wants to talk. She looks like she wants to disappear.

  “Anyone see my other shoe?” I ask, pulling one dirty white slip-on over my foot. Cara groans.

  “Two more minutes before we’re late,” she says.

  “I can’t get another demerit this week,” Issie adds. “They’ll dock my phone time.”

  “How’d you already get two demerits?” I drop to my hands and knees to look below my bunk. My shoe is in the far corner, half-hidden by the bed’s steel frame.

  “You kidding?” Issie says. “They’re giving demerits out for everything. I got one for laughing too loud.”

  “Shit.” I turn my shoe over in my hand. Some mysterious creature gnawed through the fabric, leaving a ragged hole in the toe. I stick my finger through the hole and wiggle it at Cara. “Gross. Look.”

  “Wear socks,” Cara says. “Let’s go.”

  I kick off my other slip-on, tug a pair of socks over my feet, and then pull on both shoes. My toe pokes out through the hole. Already, I can tell this day is going to suck. Issie pulls me to my feet and we head for the hallway.

  I stop next to the door and glance over my shoulder. “You’re sure you’re going to be okay alone?”

  Jessica doesn’t even move her head this time. I knock on the door frame.

  “Okay. See you around, I guess.”

  I do see Jessica around. I see her sitting in the cafeteria. Alone. And walking down the hallway. Alone. And hanging at the edge of the yard during rec. Alone. The other girls don’t talk to Jessica or sit with her or look at her. When she walks into a room, it empties.

  There are rumors too. Aaliyah swears Jessica killed her family, she just doesn’t know how. March heard somewhere that it wasn’t her family—it was her entire fifth-grade class. Peach says it was two younger girls who lived down the street. They try looking up the facts online during computer time, but the news sites are blocked.

  No one can figure out why Jessica’s here, but everyone agrees that weird things happen when she’s around. Lights go out. The air gets dry and hot. Once, she walked into the cafeteria and all three industrial-size fans stopped working at the exact same second.

  I try to ignore the whispers. People told stories about what I did to get in here too, and none of them got close to the truth. I sit next to Jessica in class and talk to her in the halls and during rec. I ask her questions and tell jokes, but she barely even looks at me.

  We’re hanging in the dorm one afternoon, just the two of us. Issie’s meeting with Dr. Gruen to talk about SciGirls and Cara’s off doing Cara things. I’ve given up on trying to bond with Jessica for the day, and instead I’m trying to fix the hole in my shoe. I got this idea in my head that I could stitch it shut using Issie’s cinnamon-flavored dental floss, but my fingers are thick and clumsy and the knot keeps slipping. Frustrated, I throw the shoe—it bounces off the wall and skids across the floor.

  Jessica flinches and looks up from the book she’d been reading. Our eyes meet, and she opens her mouth, like she might say something. I smile, sheepishly.

  She shifts her eyes back down to the book in her lap.

  “Damn, damn, damn. Where is my freaking shoe?” I’m on my knees again, digging beneath my bunk for my rat-eaten slip-on. Cara and Issie wait at the door. Irritated.

  Cara glances over her shoulder at the clock in the hall outside our dorm. “We have four minutes, Angela. Are you kidding me with . . .”

  She trails off as Jessica slips past her and hurries into the hallway. I start to call after her, but she’s gone before I get a word out. I heard she got assigned a job in the library. She’s been heading down earlier every day, hiding in the stacks during meals and carting dozens of books back to our dorm to read at night. A lot of the other girls won’t go into the library anymore. They say she’s cursed it.

  “Poor little runt,” Issie says once Jessica’s out of earshot. “You think she talks to anyone at all?”

  “I try to talk to her all the time.” I crouch down and look behind Cara’s locker, but my other shoe isn’t there. “I don’t think she wants to make friends.”

  “She wants to make friends,” Issie says. “She’s just scared.”

  “Angela,” Cara snaps. “Shoes.”

  “Right.” I push myself to my feet and start digging through my locker. I find old notes from Charlie, and an audiobook I forgot I had. No shoe.

  Issie frowns, then crosses the room and snatches something off Jessica’s locker. “Is this it?”

  Before I can answer, she tosses a shoe to me. I lunge, catching it in one hand.

  “Yes!” I say, pulling the shoe on. “But why—”

  The sentence dies in my mouth. Someone threaded Issie’s dental floss in teeny-tiny stitches through the fabric to sew the hole closed. My chest pinches. Cara would never have thought to do this, and Issie’s fingers are bigger than mine. I wiggle my toes inside my newly fixed shoe, staring at the tiny stitches. I only know one person with small enough fingers to pull this off.

  Jessica sits in a corner of the library, a stack of dusty books piled at her feet. The light above her buzzes on. Then off.

  I take a hesitant step into the room. It’s empty, except for Ellen and a small group of girls sitting at a bunch of desks, poring over dusty physics and biology textbooks. I frown at them as I walk past, wondering if this has anything to do with SciGirls. They look like some sort of cult, all huddled together, speaking in low whispers.

  I hear something shuffling inside Ellen’s desk and I move quicker, hoping it’s just her mouse.

  Cobwebs cling to the ceiling, and half the lightbulbs have burned out, leaving the corners dark with shadows. Something flickers at the edge of my eyesight. I flinch and spin around. Nothing there. Jesus. No wonder the other girls think this place is cursed.

  I swipe a hand across my forehead and it comes away damp with sweat. It’s boiling down here. The old radiator—which hasn’t worked in more than a decade—rattles and spits in the corner.

  “Jessica?” I say. She jerks so suddenly that the book tumbles from her lap. I dance backward, hands out front of me. “Shit! Sorry!”

  Jessica’s eyes don’t turn black. The air doesn’t buzz or warm. I inhale and lower my hands. My heartbeat steadies. “Sorry. You scared me a little.”

  Jessica pulls her book back onto her lap. The light flickers.

  I sit, cross-legged, in front of her. “You fixed my shoe.”

  Silence.

  I clear my throat. “I wanted to say thank you. So. Thank you.”

  Jessica shrugs.

  “Okay,” I say. Everything in my body wants to stand up and walk away. I think about Charlie and Prospect Park in the springtime. I look down at the tiny, even stitches at the toe of my shoe.

  “So, um, what kind of things do you like?” I ask. “I know you like books.” I nod at the stack next to her feet. Jessica flicks a piece of dust across the floor. I take a book off the pile.

  “Horses, huh?” I say, flipping through the book’s faded pictures. I take another glance at the stack. Horses, foxes, lions . . . “You like animals.”

  Jessica shrugs.

  “You don’t want to talk about animals.” I pause. “What about . . . food? What kind of food do you like? Pizza? Chicken nuggets? Ice cream? Or music? Do you like music?”

  The light above us buzzes back on. Jessica flicks the spine of her horse book.
/>   “Okay. Well, I guess I’ll let you get back to reading that.” I stand, dusting the library grime off the seat of my pants. One of the girls sitting with Ellen shouts, “Mitochondria!” and everyone at the table bursts into laughter. I shake my head. No one enjoys science that much.

  “See you around,” I say to Jessica. She tilts her head toward me, but doesn’t meet my eye.

  “Monster trucks,” she says in a very small voice.

  I freeze, sure I didn’t hear her correctly. “What did you say?”

  Jessica draws pictures in the dust with her finger. “You asked me what I like. I like monster trucks.”

  Two whole sentences. That’s the most I’ve ever heard her say.

  “Monster trucks,” I repeat. Jessica shrugs. She pulls the horse book back onto her lap, a signal that she’s done talking.

  It’s not much. But it’s a start.

  Chapter Ten

  I have an idea.

  I wait until the free period between morning and afternoon classes the next day, and then I head to the library to find Jessica. She’s sitting in the same spot as before, a different book balanced on her lap. Bears this time.

  “Come on,” I say. “I want to show you something.”

  She looks up at me. Skeptical. I’m sure she’s going to refuse. But she puts her book back on the stack next to her and stands.

  I lead Jessica out of the library and up the stairs to the main floor. During free periods you’re allowed to wander around on your floor and every floor below you. But high- and mid-security girls aren’t supposed to go to the low-security area on the second floor. Thing is, everyone hangs out in the activity center and computer room on the lower floors, so the guards mostly congregate around there. The stairwells are empty.

  I hover near the stairs, watching Officer Sterling argue with Aaliyah at the end of the hall. Aaliyah is crying, and gesturing at something in the activity center. Officer Sterling has her back to me. It sounds like they’re arguing because someone stole Aaliyah’s textbook, but that doesn’t make any sense. Who gives a shit about a textbook? I lift a finger to my mouth to motion for Jessica to stay quiet, and I wave her forward. She frowns but follows me up the stairs anyway.