“Just let me wrap your eyes, Val,” he says gently. “We have to contain the bleeding and get you to the infirmary.”
He tries to wrap her eyes again and this time, she lets him.
“Chrys,” Valeria says. “It worked so much better than I thought it would. It’s so much quieter now. All the noise. It’s still here kind of—I can still remember it—but it’s so much quieter now.” She winces in pain for a moment. “Maybe if you cut your hands off, you’d get the same effect.” She chuckles dryly, gasping in between chuckles.
Before I can reply, Elise pushes past me and Hunter and kneels in front of Valeria as Remington ties a knot behind her head. The cloth in front of her eyes is already soaked through, a deep crimson.
Elise helps Valeria up and guides her out of the cabin.
*Do not follow us. Go back to your cabins.
Looking out the door, I see a group of people has gathered at the entrance, getting soaked in the rain. They move aside to let Elise and Valeria through. The two of them go across the field. No one follows.
We all stand there and watch until their shapes become completely obscured by the darkness and the rain. The others who are standing outside start to disperse.
“Oh god,” a girl says from up above. “Will she be okay?”
I look up. The pink-haired girl has her eyes open now and is looking down at Remington.
Remington looks at the pool of blood and then at Jayden and Tam. “You two, go clean your feet and then stay in Cabin 11 for the time being.” Jayden and Tam nod blankly and head to the bathroom to do as he said.
He looks up at the girl. “Come on, I’ll help you down and then you can go to Cabin 11 too.”
“What about…?” She points at the ground.
“Don’t worry about it,” Remington says. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t get on you and then I’ll clean it up.”
“I’ll get some rags from the supply closet,” Hunter says.
Remington nods at him, so Hunter heads out into the rain.
Remington’s lower legs and chest have blood on them but his hands and arms are still clean. The girl goes down the ladder and into Remington’s arms. He holds her away from his chest and carries her past the blood. As soon as he sets her down she runs out.
“Do you need help with anything else?” I say.
He shakes his head. “Just take Ana Maria back to our cabin.”
Ana Maria is still standing there, looking down at the pool of blood. I tap her on the shoulder through her T-shirt sleeve with my ungloved hands.
“Come on, let’s go,” I say to her.
She turns away from the scene and takes my arm, leaning close against me again. I walk her back to our cabin.
I bring a towel from the bathroom and dry off Ana Maria’s long hair as she sits on the rug staring at the board game. Valeria’s words to me keep ringing through my head. It worked. Blinding herself worked. So much better than she thought it would, too. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
By the time Ana Maria’s hair is mostly dry, my tiny afro and clothes have mostly dried off too. I bring the towel into the bathroom and hang it up to dry.
When I come back into the room, Ana Maria, fiddling with her monopoly game piece on the board, says, “Do you know how to cut hair?”
“Not expertly,” I say.
“That’s fine. I don’t need anything fancy. Just something short.”
“How short?”
She puts her hands on her chin. “Like Elise’s, or like yours maybe.”
I touch my hair. It’s about three or four inches if I stretch it out, but it usually shrinks up so much that it only appears to be about half an inch tall.
“You don’t want hair this short,” I say. “You’ll look like a boy. Besides, I like your long hair. I can just trim it a little.”
“My parents never let me cut my hair. They said if I did, I’d be rejecting God’s gift to me. But God didn’t give me any gift.” She lets go of the game piece and runs her fingers through her hair. “And this stupid hair is heavy and gets in my face and gets dirty when I sit because it pools on the floor. I want it short. Really short and light. I don’t care what I look like.”
I sigh. “Fine. I can cut it like Elise’s. Is that okay?”
She nods. She gets up and takes her large pair of fabric scissors from her desk and hands them to me.
“Okay, let’s go in the bathroom so it’s easier to clean up,” I say.
We both go into the bathroom and stand in front of the mirror above the sink. Ana Maria stares at herself in the mirror solemnly as I stand behind her with the scissors.
“Are you sure about this?” I say.
She nods twice firmly.
I cut her hair, taking off just a couple inches at the bottom at first, trying to get used to the texture in my hands. Each strand is thick and bone straight, nothing at all like the fine and twisty strands I’m used to.
I keep cutting higher, slowly making my way up to her chin, expecting her to tell me to stop and that she’s changed her mind and she likes it at this longer length instead.
But she doesn’t say anything. She just looks at her reflection as the hair falls around her.
Chapter 21
By the time it’s evening, Ron is only a quarter through Normal-C’s posts on the Normal News forum. Ron isn’t much of a reader—that’s more Chrys’s area—so it takes her a long time to go through each one. Most are boring and irrelevant discussions of what seem to be Normal News articles about the gifted. The only
