Page 72

The egg I don’t speak to, although it does feel oddly rude. I don’t know how to explain to it that our relationship changed once I found out there’s a human growing in there. I don’t really care for the visual of a fetus crawling out of an egg, so I’m kind of hoping I’m not here for that. I’d like to show up one morning and find Widow rocking a baby in the office chair, the incubator put away, red light extinguished. I’ll say, “Good morning,” and she’ll say, “Prove it,” and then tell me what my jobs are for the day.

“Hey.”

I screech, jumping in the air and throwing clean towels everywhere. They land on the dirt floor and are going to have to go through the wash cycle again, which is a real pain in the ass because our water bill is not small. But that’s a problem for later. My now problem is that Hailey Wagner is standing in the office, and the last time I saw her she asked me if I was going to kill myself.

“Hey,” I say, hand on my chest, heart hammering underneath it. Hammering hard. My eyes go out of focus, black spots chasing each other across my vision.

“You okay?” Hailey asks, taking a step toward me.

“Yeah.” I wave her away, take a breath, steady myself. “Why are you . . .” My voice fades out, unable to finish. I move in front of the incubator, blocking her view.

“Hey, kitty,” she says, poking her long nails through. The cat sits up, swipes at them, starts to purr, the remnants of the pink spray paint on her back rippling as she arches, trying to connect further, and I feel a nasty surge of jealousy tear through me.

“What do you want?” I ask.

Widow’s out in the orchard, Panda with her. The light is starting to fail, so she should be back soon, but having Hailey Wagner around is like having a live wire snaking around my feet, shooting sparks.

“Aren’t you just the sweetest little thing?” Hailey says, and pulls out her phone. She snaps a picture and then taps out a text, slipping her phone back in her pocket.

Behind me, I feel something thump against the warm glass at my back. Shit, the egg rolled. It rolled, and I’ve got to get it away from the glass or it could overheat and—

“What do I want?” Hailey repeats when she finishes texting, slipping her phone into her back pocket. “I’m just checking up on you.”

“I’m . . .” I fall short, looking at her oddly. “I’m okay. I promise I’m not going to kill myself, since you asked.”

“Yeah,” Hailey sighs, tosses her head. “That’s not what I mean, though.”

The office door opens, and Widow stands there, shotgun crooked in her elbow.

“It’s just Hailey,” I say quickly. “She came over to—”

“Yeah,” Hailey says again, sounding bored. “That’s not what the gun’s for, Ava.”

“What? I—” My gaze swings back to Widow, who is looking at me oddly, but I don’t have time to interpret it because I feel another thump at my back, then another. The egg is rocking, hitting the glass like . . . like it wants out.

“Widow?” I ask, stomach dropping.

Her mouth quirks at one corner, the slightest of movements.

“There are some things I didn’t tell you, kiddo,” she says.

“What do you mean?” I ask, breathless, panic rising.

“Ava,” Hailey says calmly, spinning the office chair around to face me. “You need to sit down.”

“I’m not—”

I don’t finish, a scream tearing through my throat as there’s a deep, stabbing pain at my shoulder. Hailey grabs my elbow, throws me into the chair, her grip surprisingly strong. She pulls her hair out of her face, slaps my hand away when I try to touch my shoulder.

“Let me see,” she whispers. And she’s so confident, so in command that I do, my hand falling away as she leans in, jerking the neck of my hoodie aside so that she can see. First her eyes probe, then her fingers, as she stabs them into my shoulder. Like before, I feel something soft give way there, something soft that slips out from under her touch, something that moves down my arm. But this time . . . this time I can see it.

“What the fuck?” I scream, trying to get up, but Hailey pushes me back as I watch something undulate beneath my skin, a thick, ropy thing working its way across my inner elbow, rolling around my forearm, sliding down to my wrist.

“Nope,” Hailey says calmly, cinching her fingers around my wrist and blocking the way. It reverses course, crawling back up my arm, brushing past my bones and muscles, tendons and ligaments.

“Widow?” I ask again, voice weak and quavering. But she’s not listening; she’s not even looking at me. She’s put the shotgun aside, is opening the incubator, taking the egg out with both hands, cradling it in her arms.

The thing in my arm reaches my shoulder, disappears, diving deeper into my body, into parts of me that no one has ever seen, and never should. There’s another flare of pain, and my heart goes wild, beating fast, then slow, stuttering out a cadence, then dropping the beat, finding a new one, discarding it for another.