“I heard once,” says Letty, “that a woman gave birth to a defective that was a fish. It had gills and scales and everything.”
“Ha! Who did she spend the night with?” cries Fiona, and everyone doubles over laughing at the thought of a woman lying down under a big fish. They become breathless with giggling, their laughter echoing around the glum field.
As their mirth wanes, there’s a pause, and then Diana Saul says thoughtfully, “Alicia is pregnant.” Diana used to be Alicia’s best friend, before Alicia bled and had her summer of fruition. Now Alicia is married to Harold Balthazar and her belly is swelling. She looks strange to Vanessa when they pass each other at church, with her skinny legs sticking out of a woman’s dress.
“It’ll be your turn next summer,” says Letty to Diana, and it’s hard to tell if she’s trying to be comforting or threatening. Diana presses her palms against her flat chest, as if to test for new growth, and then runs her hands contentedly down her ribs. Nobody looks at Fiona, who missed her summer of fruition by about two days. Her body is pushing against her dress in all directions, fighting to emerge from the straight shift.
“Amanda Balthazar bled out, I heard,” says Lily Jacob. “All of a sudden, her blood just all fell out and she dropped dead on the floor.”
Everyone glances at Janey, who loved Amanda. Her face is turned away toward a cluster of boys playing with a frog. “She—” she says. Her voice is heavy and trembling, and she continues looking studiously away from them. Mary puts a tentative hand on her arm, and Janey lashes it off with a violent motion and then becomes still again.
“Anyone can bleed out,” Diana says. “Sometimes it’s a defective, but sometimes it’s just bad luck.”
“My mother almost bled out once,” says Letty, “when I was younger. Her skin looked like chalk and she had to lie in bed for weeks.”
“I heard that it’s your monthly bleeding that will tell you,” says Diana. “If you bleed a lot every month then you won’t bleed out, but if you don’t bleed much then the blood builds up in your womb, and then suddenly you bleed out the baby.”
“I don’t think she bled out,” says a voice so soft Vanessa has to search for the speaker. She sees tiny, bedraggled Caitlin Jacob standing awkwardly at one side of the group. Vanessa finds Caitlin annoying, with her hunched-over frame and shyness; she acts like a frightened mouse.
“What do you mean?” demands Letty. “Of course she did.”
Caitlin shakes her head, but she’s already backing away slowly, admitting defeat in front of Letty’s indignation.
“Wait,” says Janey, turning and holding out her hand. Caitlin stops and looks at her. Janey’s face is pale beneath her freckles, and her eyes are hooded and glassy. “What do you mean?”
Caitlin glances around as if waiting for someone and then shakes her head so her braid falls over her shoulder, hiding a bruise on her neck. “Nothing.”
“Come here,” says Janey in a sweet tone Vanessa has never heard before. Caitlin hovers indecisively, but then slips in next to her.
“Now,” says Janey, putting a hand on her shoulder, “why do you say she didn’t bleed out?” Vanessa has a sudden picture of Janey and Amanda running together two summers ago, muddy and bloody with their teeth bared.
“Because I saw her,” says Caitlin so quietly that they have to lean in to hear her. “I saw her in the water. She drowned.”
“In the water?” exclaims Fiona, but Janey silences her with a wave of her hand.
“When did you see her?” asks Janey.
“It was yesterday,” says Caitlin, and suddenly Vanessa notices how tired she looks, with purple half-moons under bloodshot eyes. There’s a pattern of small bruises up her forearm. “I saw them take her body out of the water. It was all blue. Her body.”
“Who took her body?”
“The wanderers. They were standing there in their black coats. They pulled her out of the water.”
“Are you sure?” says Janey.
“Even if that was true, you don’t know she drowned,” says Fiona. “She could have bled out and then…” She trails off, trying to think of a reason Amanda’s body would have been in the sea.
“There was water coming out of her mouth,” says Caitlin.
Everyone is silent for a moment, and then Fiona glares at Caitlin. “Liar.”
Caitlin shakes her head, and everyone looks at her frail, marked body. There’s an awkward silence.
Letty sighs dismissively. “Why would they tell us she bled out?”
But Janey’s face is stony, her hands trembling. She takes Caitlin’s shoulder and peers at her intently. Caitlin, surprisingly, stares back, looking weary but determined. Inhaling, Janey releases her and walks off, leaving the school grounds. Mary is shifting her gaze from Janey to the other girls, trying to decide what to do, when Mr. Joseph, who teaches one of the younger classrooms, comes to call everyone back into the school. He looks at Janey’s retreating body, but then shrugs one shoulder and turns away.
Back in the classroom, Mr. Abraham starts talking about types of metal in the wastelands, and Mary puts her head on her folded arms. Caitlin is staring vacantly out the window. Vanessa looks around, trying to catch someone’s eye, but all the girls are resolutely faced forward.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Vanessa
For dinner, the wanderer Adams are expecting the new Adams. Vanessa knows she should be wild with anticipation, but she can’t stop thinking about Janey’s freckled, blazing face gazing at Caitlin’s small, exhausted one. She would normally resent Caitlin and her whispery voice for taking everyone’s attention away from her story of stuck-together twins, but she’s too puzzled by what that whispery voice said.
Why would somebody put Amanda Balthazar’s body into the water after she bled out? Dead bodies are buried deep below the farmlands. She’s heard people say that they fertilize the crops, and others say that they stay whole until summer, when everything turns to muck and they sink like stones through endless layers of earth. Amanda couldn’t have gone into the water and then suddenly bled out, because adults don’t go out during the summer. Or if they do, they don’t go in the water. The only explanation that would make sense is that her husband, crazed with grief, tried to wash off the blood in the sea. But why drag her all the way to the sea if he wanted to wash her? The mosquitoes would have sucked him dry. It doesn’t make any sense to Vanessa, no matter how long she turns it over in her mind. Finally, she decides Caitlin must be a very good liar. But it doesn’t seem right for Caitlin to be a very good anything.