Kaden | ✓

part fourteen ♚ noachian

The other girls were surprisingly okay. As it turned out, they all had been expecting it. I heard the story in pieces from the others.

Summer Casuyae, the girl from Belcourt, told me that she had been friends with them until she found out that they were intimidating other girls. When she stopped talking to them, they told her that if she told anyone, they'd make sure she left with a vital piece of her missing. The threat was enough to silence her.

Danielle Osborn, the girl from Calgary, said that she hadn't known anything about them except that they were cruel and that the others seemed to cower away from them. She said that she'd flown into Angeles with one or two of them and had immediately known that something wasn't right. She didn't tell me because she was worried that I'd think that she didn't like them and just wanted them gone.

Essence Werner from Denbeigh didn't know anything, but her friends Chanel, Delilah, and Isabelle did. They told me that they'd seen them threaten other girls and even put their hands on them, but it was nothing to the extent of what had been done to Emmaline. When Laurel came in to talk to them, I found out from her that after one of the girls had choked her, she asked a guard to look into her and found that she had a family history of psychotic breaks and must have had one recently.

Valentina, Kirsten, Marilyn, and Miracle had all experienced the wrath of the girls after they had determined they were going to tell me. It was back before I brought in the other group of girls, in the second week of the Selection. They said that as soon as Emmaline was picked, they all recognized her. Miracle said that she'd seen the look on Sierre and Carly's faces when her picture appeared on the screen, and that she knew immediately that she would be a target.

I went to find Eadlyn and handed her the notes I'd taken. She promised to review them with my father and Officer Leger as soon as they got the chance, and I asked her where Emmaline was.

"I'm assuming the infirmary," she said, not looking up from the list of names and quotes and short notes. "If not, check her room."

I hurried to find her. It turned out that she was in the infirmary, sitting on a bed with bandages wrapped around her arms and a doctor, Miss Lucy, Miss Marlee, and my mother sitting beside and behind her. She seemed almost completely unaffected by the white of the blankets and beds and infirmary and bandages. None of them turned to look to see who was striding up the aisle splitting the beds, and the doctor barely even glanced up from his clipboard.

It turned out that she'd gotten lucky--the shattering from the plate had only scratched her arms, and the blood on her dress was Sierre's, not hers. She didn't seem affected. When I asked her about it, she had a wicked gleam in her eyes. "She had it coming," she said fiercely. "She's lucky I didn't do worse."

I had a feeling that the streets of Angeles had hardened Emmaline in the way they had hardened James--it broke them down, tore them to pieces, and then glued them back together in a way that made them at a glance seem whole, but upon closer examination revealed something that could hurt you if touched the wrong way. Pretty face meant danger beneath the surface, and when it came to both James and Emmaline, I knew that they were a thin sheet of ice and snow covering a deep pit of freezing water. Looking at her then, I knew that her wrath was not something that could be escaped. I wasn't sure whether or not I should have been terrified.

I decided to walk her back to her room, but halfway there, she stopped. "I don't want to go back there yet." She said.

I didn't question it. "Where do you want to go?" I asked instead.

She ran her thumb over her lower lip. "Out," she said. "I want to get out of here."

"Now?"

"Right now."