The girls sometimes experience flare-ups that leave them with new abnormalities and sometimes kill them, so no one is surprised when Byatt falls victim. The other girls have various changes, ranging from an extra heart that is beating away in the chest of one girl to vicious bruises that simply appear and never fade. Reese has a webbed hand that is scaled over with hard, spiky scales. Byatt has developed a second spine that stands out against her skin. One of Hetty's eyes has closed over and she can feel something moving around behind the fused eyelid. At this point, Hetty only feels shame that she and the others bring back a small portion of the food. The Navy has tampered with much of the food, leaving the girls with only very basic rations and never enough to fill up the almost 60 hungry girls still alive at the school. What Hetty does not realize until much later is that Miss Welch is doing her best to protect the girls from experiments. She is amazed at the amount of food waiting for them on the dock and is horrified when Miss Welch throws most of it away. When one of them announces she is no longer willing to be part of the group, Miss Welch chooses Hetty to become one of the Boat Girls.ĭuring the first trek across the island, Hetty gets her first look outside the fence in almost two years. The Navy brings supplies to a dock at the opposite end of the island and a teacher, Miss Welch, leads a group of three girls to pick up the supplies. There is an enormous bear, the deer have become carnivores, and the trees have grown bigger than usual. Not only have the girls changed, but the island's fauna and animals have changed as well, meaning the land is especially dangerous outside the fenced campus. They have settled into a semblance of routine, given their terrible situation.

The students have been living amid the disease for over a year. A strange disease is spreading through the student body, infecting everyone in different and grotesque ways and killing many. Hetty, Byatt, and Reese were students at a boarding school, located on Raxter Island off the coast of Maine. Random House, LLC, New York, New York, 2019.

The following version of the book was used to create this study guide: Power, Rory.

Wilder Girls by Rory Power