Storm Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 4) by Aaron Ritchey (best books to read for teens .txt) 📗

She was fiddling with something in huge blocky fingers. Then I recognized what she held. She had a roll of EMAT on a spindle. EMAT stood for Emergency Medical Absorption Tape, and I’d been dosed with it before. Petal, our doctor turned sniper turned drug addict turned dead, had introduced us to the next generation of medical supplies.

I hoped this tape had antibiotics ’cause it definitely included some kind of narcotics.

“Give me the spool,” I said. “You big ol’ Alice with your big ol’ fingers.”

Alice handed me the spool. I checked the label on the side: Diacetylmorphinesextus—which was Skye6—and upsilonteixobactin—which was an antibiotic. Both a painkiller and an antibiotic on the same tape. Made me weepy until I got laughy.

I easily pulled out a dose and ripped it at the perforation. Then I peeled off the backing and stuck it on my left arm where she’d pulled off the previous strip.

My eyes half-closed as I felt the bliss of the drug. Prolly had too much in my system, but I was loving it like I loved Aunt Bea’s tortillas.

The ice around my heart had spread to become an ice rink. I could feel again. I wasn’t numb, and I got to feel all the goodness in the world, and yeah, the ice was there, the death, the sorrow, all that evil hate I had for God, but my stick heart skated across it until it was like I was dancing inside. Soon enough, the dancing turned into flying.

“Alice, where did you get the medicine?” I asked.

“Alice smart. Do trade. ’Cause Alice so smart, should be put in command. Maybe someday. Maybe.”

I was feeling so good flying through the world, I leaned into Alice. “Thanks, Mama,” I whispered.

Alice petted my hair. “Not mama. Sister.”

“All my sisters are dead,” I said, and yes, they were dead, but happiness, paradise on earth, was only a little bit of medical tape away.

I understood why Petal had chased this. I understood every drug addict ever. They weren’t morally wrong, or sick, or stupid. They were brilliant. Goddamn geniuses. God is dead, but we have drugs, so let’s bury the jackerdan.

In a more sober moment, I might have remembered what drugs eventually turned Petal into, or how Wren hadn’t been able to stay away from the bottle, but those thoughts felt so far away, best not to think them. They would ruin my skating and flying and all my happy.

Alice wasn’t high. She cried. “Alice’s sissy dead, too. Now we have each other. We’re sisters. Not pet and not meg, but sisters.”

“Yes, we are, Alice,” I said. And I hugged her, and she hugged me.

Out of all the sisters I’d had, well, Alice turned out to be a good one—not perfect ’cause perfect sisters don’t exist.

(ii)

We moved east on I-70 toward Denver, toward Dizzymona and the mutation that awaited me. Sometimes Alice carried me on her shoulders, sometimes across her back, and sometimes she would swaddle me in a sling like I was a baby. I rested, slept, and just bounced along, hating it, liking it, annoyed, and then diving back into the comfort of the Skye6.

I think I might have slept through a dark trip through Eisenhower Tunnel, but really, I was too doped to know or care. Alice traded more of her guns for as much EMAT as she could find. We ended up with a Ziploc bag full of it. Some were spools of the Skye6/antibiotic combo and some were just the synthesized morphine.

I stayed high, but my fever didn’t. As my body fought the infection, I found I had an appetite again. I stopped puking and started eating as my feet slowly healed themselves. I had a passion for the Gamma’s sausages. I didn’t know what was in the sausages the hogs fried every night, but I ate them to bursting. And drank icy water from Clear Creek, running next to I-70.

Jolie would come along every once in a while and look at my feet, sniff them, and then confirm I was healing.

A week later, longer maybe—or shorter—I found I could limp along. Alice pulled my old socks and boots out of a big bag she had around her. Across the side was the flecked out, faded image of a hockey player and the words: Vail Recreation District.

I had a love/hate relationship with Eryn Lopez’s cross-country ski boots, but after washing the socks, I slipped them on so I could walk next to Alice down the highway. We took up the very rear and crept slowly behind the shackled conscripts. Poor megs, they were all chained together, and the Gammas beat them if they slowed.

I could go as slow as I liked. With Alice around, no one would touch me. Problem was, Alice didn’t mind smacking me, though she tried to be gentle about it since she didn’t want to kill me.

Noon on that first day walking down the highway, I asked, “Why aren’t I with the megs now that I can walk?”

Alice was getting more and more sullen, would snap at me, and I had to be careful. She was going coco, and the worst part? She knew it. Her words burst out, clipped by her crazy. “’Cause me got stripes, you. Killed Edith, you. Traded guns, you. Did it all, you. Jackerin’ sister. Real sissy go hog. Real sissy go coco. Jackerin’ hog go coco sissy.”

In her fury, she dropped words, slavered down her face and into her beard, and struck her chest to make her meaty breasts bounce.

I stopped walking, getting ready to run if I had to, away from Alice’s violence.

She flung her hair around, slavered, and then came at me with her meat-hook fingers to rip me apart.

I stepped back. “Alice. I’m your sister. Don’t go coco on me. Not yet.”

Alice closed her eyes. “No. Alice loves ’Teeca. Alice won’t go coco. Alice won’t. For ’Teeca.”

“Easy, Alice. Easy.”

I went to her and held her hand in mine. My hand was baby-sized in comparison.

I walked some more, was