The Insatiable Volt Sisters by Rachel Eve Moulton

Author:Rachel Eve Moulton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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In the dark of the quarry cliff cave, we sit crisscross applesauce, and I pick at the dirt under my too-long toenails. If my mom were truly herself, she’d say, “Those are too ugly for real life.” She’d clear her throat in mock disgust and say, “Clip those gnarled masses or they’re gonna grow right into the ground.” Instead, she said nothing at all. B.B. is right. She’s in the house, packing to take me out of here. She thinks she can take me from my home like it’s nothing. Like taking my heart out of my body wouldn’t kill me. B.B. thinks it too. Like I can just walk away and live off island. Like a home is a home is a home. What bullshit that is. What utter nonsense. My heart burns in my chest, fires up my throat to my hot tongue and makes me think more bad words. Worse than bullshit. And Daddy. That asshole. He says nothing. He doesn’t fight for me. He isn’t even fighting for me or the island. He isn’t listening to the house. He just lets it all happen. I press my spine to the cave wall. It hurts.

I press harder and harder still until I feel myself connect, as if I am the blasted-away rock. Each knuckle of my spine fits into the curve of the cave, clicking into place. I am a piece of the great big gears of this place, a working piece. I cannot just be taken away. A cocooned Henrietta splitting silk to wake up a new and more terrible thing.

“Henrie!” B.B. is shouting. It’s possible she’s said my name more than once.

“What?” I snarl.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

The cave is small, shallow, so the two of us fit like yolks in a shell, but I’m at the back, and I’ve elevated myself by pushing my ankle bones into the floor. I relax and B.B. pulls my leg over hers so she can see my ankle.

“You’ve made yourself bleed. What the hell.”

“I wasn’t doing anything.” I make sure the base of my spine is still connected to wall. Skin to rock through my wet T-shirt. Connected.

“Looked like you were seizing up or something.”

“Don’t be dramatic.” I resist the urge to ask what she means by seizing up.

“You’re being creepy.”

“Am not.”

“Whatever.”

We sit for a moment. A bit of my anger has separated from my body and floats between us, its own hot thing.

“You know you can tell me anything, right, Henrie?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Mean.”

“You are,” I say, thinking it’s gonna be funny, but it isn’t. It’s just more nasty, and I find that I don’t care. I don’t even care when B.B.’s eyes start to look all watery like she might cry.

B.B. clears her throat, the noise loud in our little cavern, and looks away from me. “Look at Toast.”

I look. He’s sitting out at the far edge of the water next to our cameras and much of our discarded clothes. From that spot he can keep an eye on us even when we are up here in our high cave.

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