The Break-Up Retreat(85)

She looks around the room, at our grim, silent faces. Martina turns her face away, and she lands on me.

“Something happened. Didn’t it? Something worse.” It’s not a question.

Leyla stares me down.

“We found a . . .” I can’t make myself say the word body . I can’t reduce her to that. “We found Sandra .”

Leyla doesn’t shout, or slap her hand over her mouth; instead, her whole body goes very still.

“Accident?” is all she says.

I shake my head.

There’s a beat, a moment of silence.

Then Leyla turns to look at Clara.

“I’ll help carry her. I think we can get her over the gates together.” She shoots Armin a look, and adds: “I’m stronger than I look.”

“I’m not questioning that,” Armin hurries to say.

Leyla leans down and pushes the hair out of Clara’s face, and a lightbulb goes off in my head.

“Oh,” I say.

Leyla shoots me a look.

“So that’s why she was out there last night.” I’m speaking mostly to myself. “She was coming back from . . . okay.”

The question flies out before I can stop myself:

“Why was her lip bleeding last night?”

Leyla shoots a quick look at Clara, her face softening infinitesimally.

“She fell on the way back,” she says. “Bit her lip. She was trying to be sneaky. Wasn’t looking where she was going.”

“What?” Martina asks.

Then she catches me looking between Leyla and Clara, and she says: “You’ve got to be kidding me. Fraternization is not allowed between patients!”

“Fuck off, Doctor,” Leyla tells her. “I think we’ve got bigger problems right now.”

“Leyla is right,” I interject. “We’ve got to get moving. We have to get to the other cabins.”

“I’ll stay with Clara. You go round up the others.” Leyla’s face is grim and determined.

I nod.

“Okay,” I say. “Let’s go. I don’t know how much time we’ve got, but . . .”

I don’t get to finish the sentence.

Instead, the door swings open, and Anna half falls in through it, panting and crying. She slams it shut behind her, and when she scrambles away from it, I see that her pink rain jacket gone, her hair streaming with water.

“Please.” Her voice breaks. “I don’t know what’s happening. She’s gone crazy.”





Chapter 48


“Who?” I fall to the floor by her side. “Who’s gone crazy?”

When I put my hands on her shoulders, I can feel that she’s shaking.

“Belinda,” she manages to choke out. “She’s gone insane. I don’t know what got into her. Did you see her? Did you—did she get to you?”

“No.” I shake my head, my heart beating painfully fast in my chest. “What did she do? What did she say?”

“She destroyed the generator.” Anna is whispering through blue, cold lips. “She tried to—I think she drugged the tea. I feel woozy.”

The tea.

My eyes are drawn to Clara, on the bed.

Fuck.

“Anna.” I draw her up into a sitting position. “What did she say to you?”

Anna is shaking, sobbing so hard her whole chest is heaving, snot and tears and rain running down her face.

“She wasn’t making any sense. I ran away from her. I ran and I was trying to find you, to find—find the doctor. I thought maybe she could talk some sense into her, but . . .” She looks up at Doctor Martina, big blue eyes glistening.

“I think . . . I think she was trying to kill me.” Her voice is flat with shock, her cheeks burning red with cold.

“That’s . . . no.” Martina closes her eyes tightly. “Belinda isn’t—you must have misinterpreted things.”

Anna is hugging herself. She doesn’t seem like she’s listening.

“Anna, where is she now?” I ask her, throwing a fleeting glance at the door, my whole body tensing at the thought. “Was she chasing you?”

Anna shakes her head.

“I hit her.” There is both shock and wonder in her voice. “She was behind me, and I hit her. I hit her really hard.”

“Where?” I ask her.

“Down by the pond.” Anna’s voice is faint as falling snow. “By the main building. She . . .” The words die in her mouth.

I swallow. My mouth tastes like ash.

“If she drugged the tea,” I say slowly, without looking at the others, “we won’t be able to get everyone to the car. Not if they’re all passed out.”

Anna is swaying, gently, where she is sitting. Her pupils when she turns to me are pinpricks.

“I left her there. She wasn’t . . . she didn’t get back up. I just ran. I just turned around and ran away.” She sounds barely more than a child, her voice high and lilting.

“That was good, Anna.” I try to reassure her. “You did really good, okay?”

Leyla is the one who says it.

“We have to go find her.” Her voice is raspy. “If Anna managed to hit her, then maybe we can . . . together, I mean.”