Free The Girls of No Return by Erin Saldin Page B

the rest of the group slowly got up and chatted with one another. I’d made it to the porch of the lodge before I heard someone near me say, “Here it goes,” and I turned and looked behind me.
    Boone was standing next to Gia by the doorway, her hand out with its palm turned up, as though she was waiting for Gia to put something in it.
    â€œI wonder if you’d let me try it on,” she was saying. “Walk around with it. Just for a few hours.”
    This was a change. As I understood it, Boone’s “welcomes” were accomplished while the new girl was asleep or otherwise occupied. This was more direct. I wondered why Boone was playing it this way.
    Gia glanced down at the jacket she was wearing. Then she looked up at Boone, her bleach-blue eyes calm and noncommittal. “I’d prefer to wear it myself,” she said in a strange accent that was somewhere between Britain and Baton Rouge. Her gaze traveled up and down the length of Boone’s body before she added, “I’m not sure it’s your style.”
    It happened before I had time to imagine it happening. Boone slammed Gia up against the door frame, her ear just inches from a rusted old nail that was protruding from the wood. Boone held her there, the pipe bone of her arm pressing into Gia’s neck. Boone’s voice was low, but I could still hear her even as she leaned in and locked eyes with the other girl. “Prep school reject.” She leaned in closer. “East Coast whore.”
    Like I said, it happened so quickly that no one had time to act. And it was over as soon as it had started. Boone stepped back politely and shook her arm out while Gia felt at her throat with delicate moth-wing fingertips. Then Boone asked for the jacket again. She said she felt sure that Gia wouldn’t mind giving up her accoutrement for the sake of friendship. Accoutrement . A French word, naturally.
    One finger still on her neck, Gia stroked the hollow of her throat as if restructuring it, and then she smiled. She shrugged the jacket off like a kimono, like she was practiced at letting things slide off her. It fell to the ground behind her. Without a word or another glance at Boone, she adjusted the sleeves of her shirt so that they came evenly to her wrists, and then she turned. She stepped heavily on the sleeve of the jacket, leaving a dark, almost black smear of dirt in the form of a footprint. She didn’t look at any of us, but she threw back her shoulders a little as she walked away.
    No one picked up the jacket. Boone just stared down at the ugly smudge curving down the sleeve before wiping her nose with the back of her arm and walking away too. Nobody said anything as the group slowly dispersed.
    I knew one thing, though. From then on, I would always glance at that rusted, protruding nail in the door frame whenever I passed by it. I would glance at it like I wasn’t really looking, but I would memorize every shadow on its sharp, jagged end.

 

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    WHAT BOONE WANTED, SHE GOT. YOU WERE LUCKY IF SHE bothered to ask. No one had ever defied her before. So after the incident with Boone, Gia became legend.
    What we knew about her was nothing and everything. She had gone to school in Switzerland/India/Las Vegas/Maryland. She received daily, coded love letters from her German/Spanish/Icelandic/Colombian boyfriend — who was, everyone suspected, a freedom fighter, nationality notwithstanding. She could swear in three or nine languages, had escaped from a boarding school or detox center, and — despite Bev’s thorough search — she managed to smuggle in both cigarettes and weed in the lining of her pillow.
    I watched Gia. In the Mess Hall, around the campfire, walking toward the Waterfront. There was something about her that seemed bright and hard, like a star. It made me want to keep looking. So I did. And I began to notice things.
    She cut her oranges in half and spooned the flesh out like she