She looked down at Wendy, twenty feet below her, scouting around, seeking her out. This was going to hurt both of them, what she was about to do, drop down from her perch in that tree and land squarely on Wendy’s shoulders, but it was going to hurt Wendy a hell of a lot more. And maybe a few weeks ago, she wouldn’t have cared how much it was going to hurt Wendy, would have maybe relished the fact that it was going to hurt Wendy, but today, she felt a little bad about it.
But not bad enough not to do it.
She dropped. She knocked Wendy out cold even before Wendy knew she’d been dropped on.
Next up, Colleen.
It was Henry, she knew. Henry, watching her, watching all of this play out. He was making her nervous.
God, what a spaz.
She meant herself too, of course. She’d gladly admit that she was acting a total spaz, but Jesus. Sixteen- (almost seventeen!) year-old girls were supposed to be spazzes, weren’t they? Wasn’t that, like, some kind of God-given right?
What was Henry’s excuse? That’s what she wanted to know. What was his fucking excuse?
Sure, Henry might have been a martial arts expert, a demolitions expert, a hard-ass who pushed and pushed and pushed her and the other girls in their training and was damn good at it, too, but give him a kiss, a simple little kiss, and you totally fucked up his game.
Not that there was any kind of game, not that it wasn’t absolutely fucking clear to anyone with half a brain in her head that Henry was totally, madly, absolutely in love with the Woman in Red. But still. A girl can dream, can’t she? Not to mention, Windsor was all over that shit, especially now that Emma was off on some other mission, wasn’t set to come back until it was time to attack the Regional Office. And if nothing else, it was Rose’s responsibility, wasn’t it, to make sure Windsor didn’t fuck things up for Henry and Emma, even if that meant getting in the way of Windsor by trying to get closer to Henry and, well, Christ. Whatever.
No it didn’t make sense.
No she didn’t care.
Colleen was close. Rose could sense her. Too close for her to scramble back up the tree and get the drop on her the way she had Wendy. She stripped Wendy of her boots and heaved them high up into the trees. She was going to be pissed. Those were her favorite boots and it was cold out, but Rose couldn’t have Wendy waking up and joining Colleen and the others. It was just a field exercise, yes, but it was a competition, too, and Rose wanted to win. For a lot of reasons, she wanted to win.
Still. Those were Wendy’s favorite boots.
“I’ll come back for them,” Rose said. “I’ll climb up there and get them for you, I promise,” she said.
Then she slipped away, back into the trees.
29
Four months ago, when she first arrived at the compound, she had been expecting things to be different.
She had been expecting it to be like The Karate Kid, maybe. Where she would be taken in by a lovable if befuddled and frail old man, who would, at a crucial point, reveal himself to be neither of those — befuddled, frail — but instead a subtle but powerful fighting machine and mentor, who would ultimately provide the love and wisdom of an otherwise absent parent. She would spend weeks performing a number of mundane, idiotic, useless tasks — sweeping the already swept floor, cleaning the pristine toilet bowl, making fried-egg sandwiches, which he would then refuse to eat (“I’m allergic”) — which would reveal themselves to be mysterious but powerful kung fu poses. Sweeping the Floor, Cleaning the Toilet, Frying the Egg.
Or if not that, then like An Officer and a Gentleman, but without the gentleman bit. Her pitted against the hard-ass drill sergeant. She’d be the spitfire who constantly mouthed off and who would ultimately reveal herself to be pitted against her inner demons, not the drill sergeant at all, who would prove herself foolhardy but full of bravado, and in the process develop a bond with her fellow trainees, becoming in their eyes an example of what not to do, of how not to act, but also, in the end, by the end of boot camp or whatever this place was, becoming for them, also, an example of a hard battle fought and won with difficulty, tenacity, and through her indomitable spirit and unfathomable skill.
Hell. She would have taken The Parent Trap, even. Warring factions of girls at summer camp who were so similar in nature and looks, strengths and weaknesses, all of them hemmed in by a male-dominated world that strove to limit their power and strength, that their first instinct was to undermine the force they would have become if only they worked together, but finally they would be brought together by the threat of some other Big Bad outside of themselves — maybe something more threatening than a really bad thunderstorm, and more like a drug-dealing camp counselor or something, but whatever.
That.
She would have been happy to have experienced that upon her arrival at the compound.
What she hadn’t expected, though, and what she couldn’t quite handle, was the sense of overwhelming indifference that had been waiting for her when she arrived.
She had been the last girl recruited and no one had been expecting her and they didn’t seem to care that she was there.
But then somebody must’ve cared, somebody must’ve wanted her since they’d come to her, had broken into her mother’s house, had recruited her to the team.
The Woman in Red — her name was Emma but for a while Rose could only think of her as the Woman in Red — apologized for how long it had taken for her to pick Rose up, as if Rose had been waiting for someone to come get her at the bus station or the airport, bags in hand. She had only learned about Rose very recently, she explained. The Oracles, she said. Her weak connection to them, not to mention the physical distance and all the protective charms Oyemi had put in place, she said. All of it made the system, which was already imperfect and glitchy, practically impossible to manage. It was like driving at night through heavy fog with nothing but more heavy fog as your headlights, she told Rose.
“If you know what I mean,” the Woman in Red said.
Rose had no idea what she meant or what she was talking about, but at the time, she didn’t care. She just nodded and smiled. She knew things were about to change, her life was about to change, and she didn’t want to risk fucking that up by asking questions.
“There’s not a lot of time left,” Emma said with a sad smile. Time for what, Rose didn’t ask. “But you’ll do splendid. I just know you will.” Splendid at what, Rose again didn’t ask.
Then, in Rose’s mother’s living room, Emma introduced her to Henry, formally introduced them. “This is Henry,” she said. “Henry, this is Rose,” she said. She said all of this as if Rose and Henry had never met, hadn’t just moments ago altercated the way they had altercated, then kissed the way they had kissed.
“Henry’s in charge of training and orientation,” the Woman in Red said. “He’ll take good care of you, I know.” Then she smiled and said to Henry, “Won’t you, Henry?” She said this in the way that Rose’s mother would tell her, Best behavior, Rose, whenever they went to church, which was hardly ever, which was why she never knew how to behave at church, which was why she always failed the best-behavior test, and she wondered if Henry would do the same.
She hoped he might.
“She’s in good hands,” Henry said, and then shook his head and said, “You know what I mean.”