I take the book out of my shirt, making Marcella start with surprise. Sydney looks uncomfortable but doesn’t react like she did on the track. When I sit on the floor, she comes to sit next to me. The other girls join us, forming a circle.
“I found this in Lennon Rose’s room,” I say. “I think she was reading it before the open house. And I think it might have been why she was so upset.”
“I thought she was upset because her parents ran out of money,” Annalise says, checking with the other girls.
“That’s what Anton said,” I explain. “But he might not have been telling the truth. And when I checked Lennon Rose’s room, I found this.”
I take out the book and flip to the poem “Girls with Sharp Sticks.” I’m scared to show the other girls; I even hesitate. It seems... radical. But when I look at Sydney, she nods for me to give it to her. I pass it her way first.
“The poem is called ‘Girls with Sharp Sticks,’?” I say. Marcella smiles at the title, and the others wait impatiently as Sydney runs her eyes down the page. I watch her read, the shocked way her eyes blink. When she’s done, she looks dazed.
“Let me see,” Annalise says. Sydney hands it over without a word, lost in thought. Annalise reads it quickly, and I see her smile at the last line. Her smile is followed by a flash of guilt and then another smile.
“Who wrote this?” she asks, lifting her eyes to mine. They’re shiny with exhilaration. Defiance.
“I’m not sure,” I say. “And I don’t know how Lennon Rose got it, but I think Valentine could have given it to her.”
Brynn finishes reading, sitting very still when she’s done. Her lips are parted, her cheeks red. She passes the book to Marcella. “A girl wrote it,” Brynn says. “I’m sure of it.”
Marcella is the last to read, and when she finishes, she stares at the page. I’m suddenly worried that she isn’t going to appreciate the words or that she’ll be scared by them. But instead, she looks at me.
“This is...,” she starts. “This is kind of like us. The way we are at this school. The way...” She doesn’t finish the thought. She looks down at the page again, and her eyes drip tears.
The parallels to our lives are obvious. At least, they are now that we’re looking for them. The way we’re taught, kept, trained. It’s only now that we’re starting to see what’s happening to us. We may not completely understand, but there is a sense that we’ve been... wronged.
A heaviness pulls us down, and we all lower our heads. I think about Rebecca being humiliated and then trying to fight back in the only way she knew—destroying what they coveted: her beauty.
“There’s something else,” I say, after a moment. “You can’t take the nightly vitamins anymore.”
Brynn looks confused. “Why not?” she asks. “I’ll be off balance.”
I explain to her that I haven’t had vitamins in my system since Friday night. And when I tell them about the silver dust inside the capsule, Brynn grips Marcella’s leg, terrified.
“I’m not sure what they’ve been doing to us,” I say. “But since I stopped taking them, I see more. I understand more. Those pills are controlling us. With what? I’m not sure. But we need to figure out what the purpose of this school really is.”
I see that the girls aren’t totally getting my theories, even if the poem has moved them.
“Just... Just pretend to take the vitamins tonight,” I beg. “See how you feel tomorrow. Deal?”
“Yeah,” Annalise says, seeming lost in thought. “Fine. I hate swallowing those pills anyway.”
I tell them what Jackson said about the town knowing about the school, and how it’s super mysterious and kind of scary. They listen closely, and Sydney occasionally looks toward the bars on the window.
I still remember bits of my dreams, so I tell them about those, too. But we all agree it’s probably due to the abrupt change in medication. I relay the vision (memory?) of Annalise with blond hair, and she grabs her red strands and inspects them as if they’ve somehow changed instantly.
But it’s Brynn who suddenly starts to cry.
“So what happened to Lennon Rose?” she asks. “What—where is she?”
“I don’t know,” I say, miserably. “But Jackson is going to try to find her number. That way we can call and check on her. Only...” I shrug. “I tried to call him and it didn’t go through. He must have written his number down wrong.”
“What do we do now?” Annalise asks.
“We should call our parents,” Sydney says suddenly.
Annalise takes a breath, about to argue, but must think better of it. It’s scary to think about calling our parents. What if they don’t believe us? What if they do?
What if they do nothing at all?
