Over sandwiches in a restaurant Jane says I love, decorated with pictures of people that the waitress tells me no one knows when I ask, I do think about being here. Really being here.
I don’t belong here, but I could. This world is brighter, happier, and in it I have choices. My life has not yet gotten as good as it will ever be. My future has not been mapped out by anyone, and won’t be. The choices I make will be mine to make.
I can’t quite picture it, even as part of me yearns for it.
“I think I should go back to school,” I tell Jane, and take another bite of my sandwich. It is as big as both of my fists put together. I can’t believe how easy it is to find food here. How much of it there is.
“That’s great! And maybe you’ll finally think about taking the SATs?”
“I—I have to join them here? But I—this isn’t the same, I thought I wouldn’t—” Oh no, no no, I don’t want to go through the training again, the tests. The questions. The lights in my eyes.
And then, just like that, no sleeping, no eyes flickering shut, I am in another place.
I am remembering.
I am in the bar where Morgan asked me to meet him, and he is there, sitting across from me. We are together. Hidden in a corner, in the dark of the bar—but together.
“What happened today?” I say, careful to keep my voice normal, but I’m worried. The report I read when I came in had only a terse notation covering four hours, “56-412, Search,” and nothing after.
I don’t want to think about how worried I was that Morgan wouldn’t come. That he would be gone, taken away. Disappeared by the SAT.
“Search,” he says. “I lost most of my books, a pair of boots—they fit the person who took them—and all my food coupons.”
“I have food coupons and . . .” And if I give them to him the SAT will know they are mine.
But I’d still do it.
“I’m—it’s gone beyond being listened to now,” he says.
“If anyone sees you with me, or even finds out that we’ve talked—”
“I don’t care,” I say, because I don’t, I don’t care anymore, and he stares at me.
“Ava—”
“I don’t care,” I say again, and it feels so good to say it. I am sick of hiding how he makes me feel, sick of my gray life and listening to him when I would rather be with him. Sick of pretending everything is the same when it isn’t. I know what it’s like to wake up in the morning, every morning, with a smile in my heart.
I’ve never had that before.
He reaches across the tiny table and touches my hand.
“Leave with me,” he says, so quietly I almost don’t hear him, and when I nod—I don’t have to even think about it, I know the answer as soon as he’s said the words—the smile that shines on his face makes people stare.
I don’t care because his eyes are full of promises. Full of dreams I know we both share.
“Ava, are you all right?” Jane says, and I blink at her, the world I’m in coming back around me, her face and the place we are in turning from shadow to reality.
SAT.
SAT.
I don’t want to do that again. Be that. I did it to survive, but I didn’t know what it would cost.
“I . . . why do I have to do that all again? I passed the test, the state task anti . . .” I trail off as I see Jane staring at me.
“I—I just remembered something,” I say.
“You—did you take the SAT already?”
“No.” I hear the shudder in my voice. The SAT—I don’t want to talk about it now.
“Okay, well, we can work on that. So, what was it you remembered?” she says, hope in her voice.
A moment when I was happy. A moment when I decided to change my life. To be who I wanted to be and not who I’d been told I was.
A moment that led me here.
“Nothing,” I say, and Jane looks surprised and then hurt.
“But you said . . . oh. It was from—it wasn’t about us.”
She looks so hurt. I don’t know her and she brought me here, she and her want and Clementine—but yet I have seen her face. I know it. I remember it.
It looks just like my mother’s. It is my mother’s. I know Jane and I don’t, I remember her but not her, I remember love and dead grass breaking as I pretended I could feel her all around me. When I wished to see someone I never could, or would, again.
But now I can see her. I do see her.
“It was you,” I say softly. “I remembered you.”
“You did?” Jane’s smile is so alive that the one moment I have of her, the one memory, hurts even more because I never—not until now, not until here—saw her smile like that. Saw her like this, so alive.
“I did,” I say. I lie, but it isn’t hard to do. This, right now, with her, is real. And I . . .
I like it.
39.
I’M NOT GREETED WITH MANY STARES when I go back to school, the newness of my empty head already worn off, replaced by a pair of pregnant sophomores who turn out to have been dating the same guy.
I don’t ask for memories but they still come, showing me the life I was pulled away from. Awake, asleep, they come in bits and pieces all the time now, scattered things like me holding a stub of a pencil and waiting to take a test, me sitting in bare rooms that I know are mine and wondering why they don’t mean as much, closing my eyes and listening to Morgan breathe in his apartment as my hands slip under the waistband of my pants because just hearing him makes me want him and the only want I’ve known is painful, desire to escape, and this—what I have with him, is frightening and wonderful. Overwhelming.
It overwhelms here too. In this place, this now, Morgan haunts me. Rushes through my blood with every beating twitch of my heart.
At school, during lunch, I always sit next to Sophy. Olivia sits next to Greer, watching as Greer reels boys in and tosses them back, picking one and growing bored even as they look at her with want-filled eyes.
“Ethan asked about you again today,” Greer says to me after she’s told her latest catch, who she already looks bored with, to go away and give her some space. “I have to admit, the whole pretending not to notice him thing works really well—I love it—but you can’t let it go on forever, okay? He’s a guy, and they don’t wait that well. Get bored with him before he gets bored with you, you know?”
Sophy snorts, and then pushes away her barely touched ham and cheese sandwich when Greer looks at her.
“Did you say something, Sophy?” Greer says. “Or did you want to say something? Because I know I’d love to hear what the never-gone-anywhere-with-a-guy-and-never-even-been-kissed person has to say.”
Olivia giggles, bright and nervous, and says, “Greer, you’re so mean sometimes, I swear,” before giving Sophy a small, supportive smile.
Sophy pulls the crust of her sandwich and stares at Olivia. The hate I see in her eyes makes my breath catch. Reminds me of what I’ve seen. What I remember. And even if it was another Sophy, the heart—the soul—is still the same.
Olivia doesn’t seem to notice, and maybe the Ava that was wouldn’t have seen it either.
But I do.
“Olivia’s not—you shouldn’t hate her,” I whisper, and Sophy stares at me.
When the bell rings, Greer and Olivia head off to class, saying they’ll see us later. The moment they’re gone, Sophy grabs my arm.
“I know you don’t remember how things were, Ava, but you don’t—trust me, you don’t want to tell me how to feel. You used to—you should remember how they treated us. You should see how they treat us now. How whatever Greer does or wants is okay and we all have to go along with it. I don’t know why you won’t—you used to get it. You used to say they were making us miserable too and now . . .” She shakes her head.
“Sophy—” I say, and then pause, because she’s right. I don’t remember, and what I see now doesn’t make me feel that Olivia and Greer are a threat of any kind. How can I? They are so clueless, they don’
t even see they are in love with each other. Or at least Greer doesn’t.
“What?” Sophy says, and when I don’t say anything right away, she narrows her eyes at me and walks off.
The next day, I catch her looking at me, once, twice, and each time she’s staring at me like she looked at Olivia. Like she hates me. Like she wishes I was gone.
I look back at her steadily, my heart pounding, and each time she looks away first.
The Sophy I know—that I remember—wouldn’t have done that. She was powerful. Ruthless.
And this one . . . I think this one could be too.
I look through Ava’s notebooks that night, scribbles of Ethan’s name all over the pages and scrawled messages that I think were between her and Sophy cramped into the sides. “Sick of G and O, A.” “Me too.” “Wish we could do something.” “What, for real?” “Yes.” “We can’t.”
“I could” The hand that wrote that is determined. Angry. Capable of anything.
The hand that wrote that isn’t Ava’s. I close the notebook and remember how Jane has promised to keep me safe.
I don’t think she can. I think I have to.
40.
I AM CAREFUL with Sophy the next day, try to be friendly, but I don’t know how to talk about clothes or my hair or the stars of TV shows I don’t know, of movies I’ve never seen.
It doesn’t leave us much to talk about, and there is a lot of silence. Stiff, tension-filled silence.
Still, no one but me—and Sophy—seems to notice, and Sophy smiles at me and is perfectly nice, pleasant on the surface and nothing more. I watch her face, listen as Greer says she’s “way too nice,” meaning she thinks we owe her more smiles, more listening.
I wonder how Greer never seems to get that if you look in Sophy’s eyes, anger is what you see.
I see it, though.
I see it, and as we talk in the morning before first period, the four of us is a knot of black clothes that make Olivia look washed out and Greer glow, Sophy seems like nothing, but through and around us standing here we are standing together again, the same but different.
I remember.
Sophy standing tall, standing proud and watching all of us quiver under her gaze. She says, “You might want to turn in more thorough work reports,” to me, and just smiles at Olivia and Greer, who smile back, Greer’s mouth trembling. Afraid.
I blink, surfacing, and the Greer who is here, the one in this now, smoothes her hair, frowning at me because I’m not paying attention to whatever she’s saying. If she would only turn to Olivia, she wouldn’t be so needy. She would have all the love and attention she could ever want.
“Well?” Greer says, and I say, “Sorry,” because it’s expected and because I sort of am. The Greer here does not see Olivia like that, or at least will not admit it. She is too busy making sure everyone sees her to notice the one person who would look at her no matter what. Maybe she is afraid here. Maybe she thinks love makes you weak.
It did me.
I think of Morgan then, my thoughts turning to him so easily; his face, his eyes, his voice, his hands on my skin and how sure I was that my heart knew him rushing over me.
He makes this place, this now, seem like nothing.
“Ava, smile, will you?” Greer says. “Ethan’s coming over right now. No, don’t look at him, just—”
She breaks off as I look at Ethan, who has walked over to us.
“Hey,” he says, smiling at Greer and Olivia and Sophy and then me. His hair falls over his eyes, almost shielding them, but when he looks at me I see them. See the shy, hopeful light in them.
See he does what I do. He is . . . trying to fit in. And he’s way better at it than me.
But then, he always was.
“So. Cute.” Greer breathes, and Olivia giggles, leaning into her side. Sophy glances at me, and then looks away.
“Hey,” I say, because it’s clearly expected, and we end up off in our own group of two, Greer and Olivia and Sophy nearby, close enough to watch but not close enough to listen—or so Ethan seems to think as he talks about how he hasn’t seen me out in the garden in a while, and the pictures he’s taking, which are all of open sky or empty stretches of road.
“I like . . . I like how serene it is,” he says. “Can’t you just see yourself there, alone and free? I’d love that.” He’s smiling and handsome, not pale and fading, his eyes shining openly, brightly, as straightforward as I’ll never be.
But he wants to be free, and now I can see what the other Ava saw.
I see that he is beautiful, the dream of what a guy should be, but through and around all that—I see what I know. What I remember.
I see Ethan, his beauty worn down, his voice reduced to short syllables, “I’m sorry,” “yes,” “no,” “I had to.”
I see him well-dressed and warm with pain lurking in his eyes as he turns away from Greer’s open misery when she and I see him. I see him looking at Sophy with his head bowed, see her smiling at him as if they aren’t equals, but as if she owns him.
I see him pale and sad, his eyes full of sorrow.
I see all that and so the Ethan here, the shiny, smiling guy who loves photos of lonely, empty spaces and wants to talk to Ava badly enough to have all her friends listen to him, is muted. Seems like a shadow.
“You’re really . . . you’re different now,” he says, but his voice is playful, waiting for me to say “How?” and smile, be the mystery girl, the one with the lost memories but who still fits into this world.
Be the Ava who was.
“How?” I say, but don’t smile because I can’t. I can’t because I can’t tell him that I know him, that I have seen him, and that he is miserable, that he has everything he wants but belongs to someone else, body and soul. I can’t say that I have seen him struggle to keep a tiny bit of himself alive and that he is failing, falling apart.
“You’re more serious,” he says. “I like that.” He pushes his hair back, uncovering his eyes, and although he’s still smiling, there is something in his eyes—a sadness—that catches me. Makes me still.
“Are you all right?” I say, and I am gone again, am with him in the cold park.
“Are you all right?” I say, fighting to keep my teeth from chattering and he shakes his head, says, “I’m fine, Ava, just fine,” and pulls his new coat tightly around him, flinching when he sees me notice it, says, “I have to. I’m not—you did okay on your exams. I didn’t. And Kale is . . . he looks out for me.”
“PDM?”
He nods. “He works in defense. He actually met Clementine, the woman who is the Science Division, once. He says . . .” He trails off.
“Ethan—”
“I had to go with Kale,” he said. “I didn’t—you know what they do if you don’t pass the SAT tests? I don’t . . . I want to die, but I don’t.” He shivers again. “I’m fine, for real, okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said, and says it again now, but now he seems to mean it, the dark light in his eyes fading away. This Ethan is alive and kind and I wish I could like him, but I can’t.
I can’t because my head—my heart—is still full of Morgan. He is the only bright spot in my memories, in the life I had. I felt like I was someone—not a crèche girl, not an experiment to see if the damned could be saved, but just a person, just me—with him. And that—
That was—is—everything.
Morgan talked to me like I was his equal. Like we were the same. Like I mattered, and past the first rush of him knowing I was listening and him seeing it, wanting to understand it, wanting to be inside it, subvert it, he saw me. He could have come once, twice, and left. But he kept coming back.
He came back for me.
Then—and now.
“Ava?” he says, but it’s not him, it’s Ethan, and we are still in school, still in this bright shiny world of plenty. I am here, I have this life now, in this place, and Morgan—
Morgan will die if he stays. If I don’t make him go.
The bell rings, stopping whatever Ethan was going to say, and I avoid him and Greer and Olivia and Sophy for the rest of the day, thinking of Morgan.
Thinking of what I have to do.
That night, I lie awake in Ava’s bed until the stars are high and bright in the sky. And then I get up and walk downstairs just like I did that first night. I walk outside, onto the road, just like I did that first night.
But I don’t wonder where I am. I don’t wonder who I am. I know that—I know all of it now, or at least know enough to understand what I have to do.
“Morgan,” I say, barely a whisper because I don’t want to break the silence, the night, I don’t want—
“Ava,” he says, and I close my eyes.
I don’t want to do what I’m going to, but I have to do it. I don’t—I would rather stay here, alone with only my memories than have him die. I can’t—
I can’t bear the thought of that. I can’t—he can’t die because of me.
I open my eyes.
I look at him.
41.
MORGAN LOOKS LIKE A GHOST, the dark only highlighting what was hinted at when I saw him before. He’s faded around the edges, as if his face and hair and arms and legs have been smoothed into the air around him. As if he’s being erased.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” he says, and smiles at me, a wry twist of his mouth that I remember. That I love. I want to think loved, but it isn’t past. It isn’t gone. My heart still knows him.
I would know him anywhere. Would love him anywhere. And in the world I knew, the one we lived in, the one I remember, he might have told me the truth of who his family was one day. He might have made the choice to tell me.
He might not have. I don’t know. I can’t know. I’ll never know, but now I understand why Morgan didn’t tell me. I understand his fear. I feel it.
Now I have to make my own choice and it’s—
I don’t want to make it. I don’t want him to go.
I take a deep breath, then another. It still hurts, deep down in my chest, in my heart, when I speak.
“You can’t stay here,” I say.