Caitlin, staring at Fiona’s damaged face, feels a sense of sinking, filthy inevitability. She had gotten carried away by the utter joy of these past sweet days and nights, but of course they won’t be allowed to stay on the beach. There are houses to be scrubbed, dishes to be washed, animals to be fed, men to be married, children to be borne, and the fathers have had enough.
“We’re not stopping,” Janey says in a voice so low and grating that Mary jerks in surprise. “They can’t have us. I won’t let them. Not yet.”
“What do we do, then?” asks Diana.
“I don’t know,” says Janey. “They’re going to find us one day and take us. Hurt all of us.”
“Not if we kill them,” growls Rosie.
There’s a shocked silence, and Violet says in a horrified tone, “I don’t want to kill anybody!” just as Mary says, “We’re not killing anyone.”
“There’s more of them than of us,” says Janey, sidestepping the question of violence to focus on practicalities. “And the men are stronger.”
“Even if they weren’t, we’re not murderers,” says Mary slowly and intently, staring at Janey, who holds her gaze for a long moment, then looks away and nods slightly.
“They are,” Rosie mutters, but nobody answers, and the idea trails off into the darkness. Shoulders loosen, lungs sigh with deep breaths once more.
“We can’t sleep together during the day. It isn’t safe. We need to hide. We can still be together at night, but we’ll change where we meet each time and set girls to watch for intruders. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best we can do.”
“But what if they find us during the day?” asks Helen Abraham.
“Then we’ll be taken, and beaten, and maybe never come back,” says Janey. “I don’t think they’ll kill us, there’s too many of us out here, and we’re children.”
The weight of this statement, with all its possibilities, settles heavily over the girls. Joanne Adam starts to cry. “I don’t want to be beaten,” she says.
“Then go home,” advises Janey. “Say you’re sorry and start going back to school and living with your parents.”
“I don’t want to do that either!” wails Joanne.
“It’s not like we haven’t been beaten before,” Fiona points out to Joanne, talking slowly and painfully. “It’s worse, but it’s the same. Hasn’t your father ever beaten you for something?”
Joanne sniffs, nodding.
“Well, me too. Not this badly, but almost, that time I—well, it doesn’t matter. They’re not going to stop me by beating me. I’m going to hide, and if they catch me and beat me again I’ll come back anyway.” Fiona tosses her head, then looks at Janey for approval.
Janey sighs. “It’s best if we sleep alone, or in pairs. Try to choose places people won’t find you, even if they’re looking. That means no sleeping on the beach—it will have to be inland. The woods where there’s no houses will be good, but then again they’ll be looking for us there. Choose as best as you can. We’ll be together at night. Please don’t lose hope.”
“What’s…what do you want to happen, out of all of this?” asks Violet.
“I want something to change,” says Janey, “and I’m not even sure what could or would change. But I want things to change for us. Maybe a big change, like going to the wastelands. Maybe a small change, like we have a little more freedom, not just in summer.”
“How would this bring us to the wastelands?” asks Fiona, confused.
Janey sighs. “I don’t really know,” she says, “but Amanda died for it.” And there is silence.
The next day, Caitlin sleeps in the brush next to the Saul orchards, curled up under the thicket in the hopes nobody will find her, and nobody does. That night they meet at the beach off the Gideon cornfields where the two willows meet, and excitedly exchange sleeping locations: a thornbush (from a Helen covered in scratches), a haystack, a roof. Violet brazenly snuck into her house and slept in her own bed after her father left, exiting in late afternoon. “I think Mother might have known,” she confessed, “but I never saw her.”
That night, Diana is missing, and she returns the night after, beaten bloody. “I pretended I couldn’t move,” she says spitefully, “and then I just walked out.”
“Who beat you?” whispers Caitlin.
“The wanderer Solomon found me and took me to my father with instructions for a beating,” she says. “Father seemed happy to do it.”
“But now what if they catch you again?” asks Isabelle Moses fearfully.
“Then they’ll beat me again. And I’ll come back again,” says Diana, and spits. One of the girls, farther into the darkness, gives a little cheer.
One by one, not every day, but often, the girls are discovered, and each time the beatings seem to get worse. Nina comes back missing a patch of hair, Natalie with a broken finger, and Letty doesn’t come back at all. Rosie sneaks to her house during the day and peers into a window, and reports seeing Letty in a bed with the covers pulled up over her dark hair. “So at least she’s alive,” says Rosie. “They wouldn’t put her in bed if she was dead.”
Marks from the beatings become badges of honor. The girls compare injuries, competing for the deepest-black bruise, the grisliest swellings, the most blood dried to crackling brown on their faces. Elsie Jacob waits to return to the beach and a circle of girls before she triumphantly removes a tooth knocked almost out of the gum, displaying the long-rooted, blood-slick piece of enamel in her fingers like a battle trophy. Helen, with two immobile fingers swollen like sausages, walks with her hand held before her like it was draped in ostentatious jewelry, making sure the girls see the damage thrust in front of them. Fiona, with her iridescent face, is envied and admired, and she walks around, tilting her head up toward the sun, so her skin glows in navy and violet and gold. Diana doesn’t wash the blood from her body, spending the next few days looking like a thinly coated summer child. And yet Caitlin hears them at night, when darkness renders them unknowable: sobbing quietly, creeping to the sea to immerse fingers and feet, wrists and faces, and numb the agony of their suffering bodies. When Helen slinks away to the woods, Caitlin knows she will drop to her knees out of sight, hold her fingers to her chest, and rock in silent affliction.
Since Caitlin arrived on the beach, she and Janey have become closer. Janey seems to like her, although Caitlin isn’t sure why. They talk softly sometimes, about little practicalities or nothing in particular, and often move close to each other in the moonlight and watch the other girls, or the sea, or the star-soaked sky. Sometimes they simply sit in silence and look at the dark. Caitlin enjoys the lines of energy that seem to radiate from Janey’s form, even when she is quiet and still. At one point, Janey puts a bony arm around Caitlin’s back, and Caitlin freezes as if a bird had landed on her shoulder, wanting the moment to last.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do about winter,” remarks Janey.