“Her,” I say. “You love her, you love your memories of her. Not me. You want to save someone who is never, ever going to be here again.”
And then I get out of the car. Jane gets out too, and comes after me.
I turn and face her.
“You’re Ava, and I love you,” she says. “Not wanting me to say it doesn’t make it not true. And you—you know me. I know you do.”
“But you don’t know me,” I say, and walk away.
33.
I WALK THROUGH OTHER STREETS Jane hasn’t driven me down every day. They are still carved with houses, packed so tightly together there are times when the windows of one seem to almost blur into the sides of another, but as I walk the houses grow farther apart, and the sidewalk turns into a narrow, cracked road that twists by an empty shopping center before turning into a park, shading dark as the sun sets.
The minute I walk into the park I stop, staring.
I know it. Eyes wide open, looking into the growing dark, I see the same place through and around it, only it’s worn down, the trees naked and stunted, the grass thin and so bleached of color it almost seems to shine in the twilight.
I walk down a path, leaves brushing against me, and behind them, through and all around them, are empty branches I know. That I remember. They crackle as I pass, trying to catch me, but I twist away from their twining grasp.
I sit down on a bench. Here it is solid, wooden and sturdy, but the ghost of it, the memory I see, shows me one that is crumbling, dried out and withering away.
I hear the sound of someone walking to my right and look toward it. See shadows moving my way, watch as they shape themselves into a person. Into someone I know.
Into Morgan.
“You found the park,” he says. “I knew you would.” He sits down next to me on the bench, close enough for our legs to touch.
I don’t move over. Don’t move away.
I want to be by his side. It overwhelms everything else, every other moment that’s happened since I woke up in Jane’s house.
I can’t believe Clementine thought she could wipe this—him, and how I feel—away. He is written in me deeper than memory. He’s in my soul.
“I see—I knew a park like this. Know it.”
“We used to meet here,” Morgan says. “I’ve waited here every day since I came.”
“Why?” I say, and he looks at me.
He doesn’t say “for you,” but he doesn’t have to. It can be left unsaid because I am why he’s here.
He’s walked through worlds to find me and I move closer to him, so close our foreheads are touching. He smells strange, like cold, crisp and bitter.
“Clementine said you shouldn’t be here,” I say. “Was she lying?”
He’s silent for a moment, then says, “No.”
“So here, you and I, we don’t—”
“No,” he says again. “And that’s why I want you to leave here with me, to go back to where we’re both from. I know you can tell something’s wrong with me and I’m not—I’m not totally here. This place has no room for me. It might have, once, but if it did it was a long time ago and I—the me I was here didn’t live long. And when I breathe, I feel—I feel this place reminding me of that. I feel it wanting me to leave.”
“Why did she send me here?”
Morgan looks down at his feet. “I—because of me.”
“You?”
He nods. “My parents were—they were well known, once. They had power. She knew them, and after they died—”
“She kept an eye on you. Found out I was listening to you. I remember . . . I remember doing that,” I say. “So she found out and—but won’t people wonder what happened to me? Won’t someone ask . . . ?” I trail off, staring at my hands. Turning them over to look at my palms, my wrists. The clear, unmarked skin there.
“No one will ask because I came from the crèche,” I say. “But why didn’t she just kill me? Why did she send me here?”
“I don’t know,” Morgan says, still looking at his feet, and then he looks at me. When he does I gasp because even in the murky dark, the rising moonlight my only guide, I can see how hurt he is. How he hurts for me, for what has happened.
“Ava, I’m so sorry,” he says, and I kiss him, I drink his sorrow, I fold him into my arms and it feels right. It feels like coming home. We slip into the dark, onto the grass the night hides, and he pants my name again, his hands hesitant on my skin.
“I won’t break,” I tell him and I won’t, I haven’t, I was put here, supposed to be someone else, another me, and I’m not. I know who I am, and I know who he is.
Touching his skin is like reading a book I know, like the dreams I had that weren’t dreams at all. His skin is strange, though, cold and stretched tight, and he arches under my touch like he feels it down to the bone, like my fingers can slide inside his skin. Reach his heart.
“We have to go back,” he says, pulling away, gasping, and I look down at him, see how the grass, night dark, shines through him, and understand what he’s asking. He does not belong here. He cannot stay here. He’ll die if he does. He’s already fading away.
I lean down, kiss him. The curve of his mouth against mine is so familiar, this place—this here—is nothing, a dream like I first thought it was.
He and I are what’s real.
“We have to go back,” he says again, cupping my face in his hands. “Please. Just say you want to come back with me. That you want to let go of this place.”
“But if I go back, will I end up sent here again? Or worse?”
“No,” he says, and kisses my neck. “No, I swear, Ava, we’ll be safe. I know who I can trust now and we were out of the city before, we were headed toward the forest, where trees still live and we can hide.”
He holds his hands out toward me, waiting, and I want to reach for them, for him.
But I don’t.
“I—I think I’ve forgotten something,” I say, staring at him, watching his smile—so familiar, so clear to me, so known and yet there is something in it I don’t know, that I’m not seeing. “What is it?”
He looks at me, his eyes huge, and shakes his head, but it’s not to say “no.” It’s something else. It’s—
Morgan doesn’t want me to see something. Doesn’t want me to remember something.
“Hello, Morgan. Ava,” I hear, and I know that voice.
I turn and see Clementine looking at us. She’s smiling, and I have seen the shape of her smile before. I have seen it echoed in another’s face, seen it made into something I thought was gentle. Real.
“I guess I should have known my grandson wouldn’t give up,” she says, and then I see what I haven’t before. I see why she let me live. I see why the curve of her mouth looks so familiar.
It looks like Morgan’s.
My grandson, she said.
I want to be asleep and wake up but I already know that won’t happen, not here, not now, not to me.
“Ava,” Morgan says, but I am moving away from him, scrambling back in shock and fear.
“You didn’t tell her,” Clementine says, and glances at me before looking back at him. “I suppose I can see why. Habits of a lifetime, and all that. Will you please go home now? She isn’t going to come with you, you know. Not after this. Lying, sending her here . . .”
“I didn’t—you did this,” Morgan says, but his voice is shaking.
“You left me no choice!” Clementine says. “Was I supposed to let you get arrested and taken away to suffer in a rehabilitation institute or worse, end up like your mother and father? I had to watch them die and I won’t—I will not watch that happen to you. I couldn’t save your mother from herself and her choice of your idiot, free-speech-spewing husband, but I will save you. If you’d just let me help you now—”
“Help me?” Morgan shouts, and his whole body shimmers, rippling pale. “You sent Ava here! We were going to—”
“Run away, I know,” Clementine says, and shakes her he
ad when Morgan’s mouth opens in soundless surprise. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out? Did you really think I’d let you throw away your life to go into hiding with a nothing listener from the crèche?”
“My life isn’t yours to—”
“What? Save?” Clementine says. “And for all your plans, you were never totally sure of her, were you? After all, you didn’t even tell her about me.”
She looks at me. “I bet he told you he was a student and that was it.”
She’s his grandmother. I think of him looking at his feet. Of him saying I was here because of him. “He said—he said he knew you,” I say slowly.
“No, Ava,” Clementine says, her voice gentle. “Not here. Where it really mattered. Where you were. He never told you who he really is. Never told you about his family, about me. Did he?”
“I—” I say, and all around and through Clementine I see her as she was, as she is where I used to be.
She touches my arm as I stand in the shadow of a few small, scant trees, waiting. The city shines brightly in the cloudy night behind me.
“Morgan isn’t here,” she says. “He got a note from you saying you needed to meet him a little later. Your handwriting was easy to copy—you didn’t learn a thing until you went into training, did you? Your writing looks just like the print in the textbooks.”
I shake my head no, because this can’t be happening, it can’t be—but it is. Clementine is here, and she is talking about Morgan, and the stories I’ve heard about her, about what she can do—I have to try and save him.
“It was my idea,” I say. “I told him he had to come with me or I’d turn him in.”
She smiles at me. It’s a gentle smile, and something about it is strangely familiar. “Morgan’s fine,” she says. “I wouldn’t hurt my own grandson. As for you, I was going to—well, it doesn’t matter now. You’re not like I thought you’d be, for someone from the crèche, you know.”
When I suck in a breath her smile goes gentler still and I can see Morgan’s smile in it, I have seen him smile at me like that, with kindness, but he isn’t—“Your grandson?”
She nods and then puts one hand on my arm. It’s so hot I feel it through my shirt, burning pain against my skin. “You’ll want to close your eyes now,” she says, and I try to pull away but I can’t and my eyes are heavy and everything is spinning, stretching out long and swirling into colors, into nothingness and I don’t want to see, I can’t see, and close my eyes.
“Good,” she says.
I blink, eyes opening again, always opening again, and I’m in the park, in Jane’s world, in the world I was sent to and Morgan—I look at him.
“You lied,” I say, and he flinches.
“I—yes,” he says after a moment. “But Ava, I would never hurt you, not ever. I thought you were safe, I thought she didn’t know about you. She was in Science, she was out of SAT, but she—she must have known someone and you—”
I wasn’t safe.
And now I’m here.
“You didn’t tell me about her,” I whisper. “I wasn’t safe being with you. I knew that, you knew that, but you didn’t—you didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth and now—”
“Ava,” he says, reaching for me, but I pull back, pull away, and look at Clementine.
She is looking at Morgan, not at me. This was never about me. Not ever.
And yet here I am. Broken and bleeding on the inside, heartsick, I am here.
Never trusted. No choices.
I turn away and start to run.
I run, and no one comes after me.
I run, and I am alone.
I am in a place where I never asked to be. I am an Ava I’m not.
I run, and there is nowhere for me to go. There are no exits.
There is no out.
I am here, and Morgan—
I run, and don’t let myself finish the thought.
I can’t.
I run, and everything I know is nothing again.
34.
JANE IS AWAKE when I get to her house—I have nowhere else to go, I can’t go back to where I am supposed to be, to the place where I came from, and even if I could, it’s clear there’s nothing for me there. I am here because of there.
Because I believed in Morgan.
Morgan, who lied to me. I’ve questioned everyone and everything else, but Morgan . . . I believed him. Believed in him.
Jane lied to me, but at least I saw it.
At least she told me the truth when I asked.
“Ava,” she says when I walk in, happy, and I don’t understand why. I walked away from her. I made it clear I don’t remember this her, or the things she wants. I’ve made it clear that I’m not her Ava.
She reaches for me and I step away. I want to run again, I want to run forever, but this is the safest place for me, I think.
Safe, with a woman who wants a me that is gone. With a woman who made a deal with Clementine to get me here.
I laugh and it comes out like a sob.
“Something happened to you,” Jane says, her smile fading. “Did—” She takes a deep breath. “Clementine came by after you left. Wanted to know where you were. I didn’t know—I went looking for you, I went to all the places Ava goes, but you weren’t—”
“I wasn’t there,” I say.
“No,” Jane says. “You weren’t. She found you though, didn’t she? Did she—did she hurt you? I know she’s—I know she can do things, but if she hurt you I swear I’ll—”
“She didn’t touch me,” I say, because she didn’t. I am whole, I am here. Clementine broke no bones. She just shattered my heart. Broke most of the memories I have. “She . . . she let me in on a few things I’d forgotten. No, that’s not it.” I laugh that broken sob again. “She told me things I never knew.”
“Ava,” Jane says, “oh, Ava, honey,” and starts to cry.
“You shouldn’t be crying,” I say, staring at her wet face. “You’ve got what you wanted. I’m here and I—I’ve got no choice but to be your Ava.”
“There is no ‘my Ava,’” she says. “Don’t you see that? You are Ava.”
“I have one memory of you,” I say. “One moment that you—you, standing right here—weren’t even there for. That you won’t ever remember.”
“But it’s a memory,” she says. “It’s your memory of you and me and if I—if I wasn’t there like I am now, I was still—I’m always with you, Ava. You will always—and I am talking to you, Ava, the you that is here now—you are and will always be my daughter. My heart would know you anywhere.”
“No, it can’t,” I say. “It’s—it’s the kind of thing you want to say, that you want to believe, but it isn’t—I know it isn’t true. I thought my heart knew things, but what I thought was real turned out to be a lie, and now I don’t—”
Jane touches my hand. “I know you’re upset,” she says. “I know you’re hurting.”
“You think?” I say, my voice bitter, and then she surprises me. She wraps her arms around me. She hugs me.
I fight her at first. I don’t want to be touched by her, by anyone, not again, not ever. I believed in Morgan and the memories I had but they led me here, they’ve trapped me here, but Jane won’t let go. She just holds on, one hand rubbing small circles on my back, a gentle touch, a mother’s touch, and I don’t remember ever being held like this. Feeling safe like this. I remember feeling loved but Morgan’s love led me here, led to Clementine telling me what he hadn’t wanted me to see, and before I know it I am crying, strange, harsh sobbing sounds.
Jane says, “It’s okay, it’s okay” over and over again and even though I don’t believe her, I want to. And after a while, I hold her back.
She is smaller than I thought, and when my arms wrap around her, I still don’t know her—don’t remember her—but yet, somehow, in a way beyond memory, I do. Something in me, in my bruised heart, wakes up, and even though I’m terrified, I don’t push the feeling away.
I am so tired
of feeling bad. Of feeling lost. Of being alone.
When I’m done crying, my head hurts. Jane walks me to Ava’s room, tucks me into Ava’s bed. Sits beside me, smoothing my hair.
“You’re going to be all right, you’re going to be safe,” she says as my eyes get heavy, and before they close I realize I want to believe her.
35.
WAKE U P.
I’m in a large gray room with gray walls. Gray light floats in through a grimy window and I scramble out of bed, my breath casting small white clouds that float around me, float away. My feet are so small and my hands, struggling to make up my bed, are small too.
When the bed is done I stand in front of it, stand as straight and tall as I can. While we wait, I stare at the forehead of the girl across from me. I don’t know her name. She came in and took over the bed of the last one who died. I remember her because she said she didn’t feel well right before she disappeared.
When I feel sick, I never say a word to anyone.
Blink, and I am taller, older, and I am making my narrow gray bed for the last time, ignoring the voices behind and around me as they whisper, “Are you really leaving? Really? How did you do it?”
I did it because I wanted to live. I did it because I wanted out.
I did it because I didn’t want to die.
I did it because I want to do something with my life.
I did it because I want to breathe and know that I’m going to live.
That’s how I’m leaving the crèche, how I found a way to leave these gray walls behind.
I’ve been chosen to go to training—it’s all I’ve been told. I didn’t ask anything else. I didn’t dare. Maybe it was the tests we had to take recently, pages and pages of questions given by a man who looked through us like we weren’t there even as he explained what we were supposed to do.
It doesn’t matter how I’m leaving. It matters that I am and I will never, ever come back here. I will make that happen, I will make everyone forget where I am from, that I was branded an enemy of the government from the time I was born.