Page 27 of Gorgeous Misery

Sometimes we’d be in Brunswick, Georgia, and Wendy would say, “We’re going to this library in Mobile, Alabama, today, Nick.” In the beginning she would narrow her eyes at me when she made destination decisions like that, waiting for me to object. But I didn’t. I just drove our asses over to Mobile, Alabama.

But if she did that, the next ten or fifteen destinations would be logical. Maybe logistical is a better word. They would make sense, is what I mean. We’d drive the coast of the Gulf, hanging close to the beach.

So anyway. It was in this particular library in Mobile that Wendy stole a book. It wasn’t a chapter book, either. It was a picture book. She tore the security tag off, slipped it into her backpack, and I didn’t know about this until that night when we were putting Lauren to bed and Wendy produced her contraband for story time.

I didn’t ask about it. Not that day at least. This book kinda plays a major part in our story so it comes back up later. But on this night Wendy just took it out of her backpack, climbed into bed with Lauren, and started reading it to her.

I don’t remember who it was by, but it was called Wild Child. And it had a nice rhyme to it. Lauren was paying attention to the cadence of Wendy’s words. She wasn’t really talking yet—six months old is early for that, even for Zero girls. But she understood shit. You could see it in her eyes. And she babbled in her own baby language as Wendy read the rhyme that night.

It was a poem about feral children, obviously. Children who lived in the wildwoods and didn’t have any rules, and were happy. And then the grownups came, and they pulled them out of the wild, and they made them go to school, and stop playing, and put on shoes.

The grown-ups stole the wild right out of the child.

Lauren didn’t get it, of course.

I don’t even think Wendy got it. Not back then. She was the wild child and she was in no danger of ever being pulled out of the woods. She was gonna spend her entire life in the woods.

Wendy showed no guilt or remorse about stealing the book, so I figured there was some logical reason in her head for this act of rebellion. The poem was nice, and lyrical, and beautiful, actually. But it made me uncomfortable. I’m not sure why, it just did. So I never asked her about it. I didn’t reprimand her for stealing, either.

She was the Wild Child.

And she didn’t belong to me, she was on loan.

It was not my place to pull her out of the woods.

It would be years before I understood why she stole that book.

It would be years before I fully understood what was going on inside her head that night as she read the rhyme to Lauren.

And I’m not the kind of man who cries—hell, I wasn’t even the kind of kid who cries. But when I discovered that book hidden under the backseat of my truck almost six years later and I read the words she had scribbled inside it—her own poem handwritten alongside the printed one—I did cry.

Because I knew.

Chek didn’t save Wendy when he pulled her out of that Mexican orphanage.

No one could save Wendy.

She was never going to grow up to be Sasha. She was never going to be Lauren.

She was Indie. She was Angelica. She was Daphne, and Avery, and yes, even Lily was too old.

It was a mistake.

That’s what hit me that day I read the poem Wendy wrote in that book.

Saving these girls was a huge mistake because we got them too late.

The rest of them were already out of my hands, but just because I understood this didn’t mean I was gonna give up on Wendy.

When I found that book it was too late to go backward.

There was nothing left but the future in front of us.

Six years later Wendy was almost sixteen and we had stopped being “friends” the year before when I sent Lauren to live with Sasha. We still worked together, but everything was very professional.

Sixteen was also still in the good times because even though I was technically dead, Chek still had a year and a half of life ahead of him. The Company was not gone, but no one was really working for them anymore. It was very scattered because after Kansas happened, Adam was just getting back to normal after Indie tried to kill him.

Seven years later was seventeen and Chek was dead.