“It’s okay now,” she says. “You and me, we’re safe. We—”
“I’m never going to remember what your Ava knew, you know.” I say. “Clementine lied to you about that. She didn’t . . . she didn’t bring me here for you.”
“I know, but you are here,” Jane says. “And you shouldn’t say—there isn’t a ‘my Ava’ and you. There’s just Ava. Just you.” She twines my fingers in hers, not tightly, but gently, loosely. With love. “I know you didn’t ask to be here but is it—is it so bad?”
“No,” I say, and let my fingers twine with hers because it isn’t, not in the way Jane means. I have everything I could ever want: family, food, shelter, and a chance to decide who I want to be, what I want to do.
“Thank you,” Jane says, her voice full of joy, cracking with it. “And now, I think . . . I think that if you don’t want to go see your doctors anymore, if you want to just start over, it’s all right with me. I believe—I know this is my—our—second chance, and I think we should take it.”
“No more doctors?” No more watching Jane try not to hope when I take tests and peer into lights and have magnets or radiation beamed around and in my head.
No more trying for what we both know can’t ever be.
“No more doctors,” Jane echoes. “Just you and me. How does that sound?” There is so much hope in her voice, in her eyes, in her shaking smile, that I can’t stop looking at it.
She loves her Ava too, and always will, but she sees me too, and wants me here. I see that now.
I see that she loves me—the Ava I am. I look at her and finally see myself in her. I see where the love I had in my heart to give, the longing that led me to Morgan, to leaving all I thought I wanted behind, came from.
I see who loved me first, before anyone else. I remember a Jane who was different, drained and lost. But I see this one can be with me. That she wants to be. And I can be with her.
“You and me,” I say, but even now, seeing how much she loves me, and feeling it, understanding it, I still can’t bring myself to say “Mom.”
I still don’t—I still think about what I had. Who I’ve lost.
I still think about the mother I never got to have. I still think about Morgan, and dream of moments that aren’t dreams at all. I dream of my life, and I can’t go back it. It will only ever live in my head now. I had so little, and my choices were so small. But I had them, and I made them. They were mine.
“Oh, Ava,” Jane says, and kisses the top of my head. She smiles at me with so much love that I can almost believe it will be enough, that I will learn to belong here, that I will become yet another Ava, that I will turn into someone new.
I could be happy here. Maybe all I have to do is try.
Maybe that’s all it takes.
It isn’t.
Or at least, it isn’t at school with Greer and Olivia and Sophy. They take one look at me when I show up, still smiling from talking to Jane, and gather together, motioning me over.
“Enough is enough,” Greer says. “It’s the weekend, finally, and you haven’t done anything with us for ages, so tonight’s the night, Ava. You know what I mean, right?”
She shoots me a sharp-eyed look, all meaning that slides through me because while I know it’s about things that the other Ava understood and wanted, they aren’t what I want. I am the same age as this Greer, but I feel so much older.
I have seen more, lived more, than she ever will, I think.
“Greer, don’t be mean, you know Ava doesn’t—she doesn’t remember anything still,” Olivia says, giving me a gentle smile. “Is it really awful?”
“No,” I say, and Olivia blinks and then yawns, stretching her arm up over her head and showing a pale strip of skin that Greer looks at and then turns away, snarl-smiling—her version of interest—at a boy passing by.
Olivia’s face drops, but she keeps talking. “Anyway, tonight,” she says, “we’re going to Brent’s party.”
“And we’re going for you, Ava,” Greer says, having gotten the boy’s interest and already gotten bored with it. “We heard Ethan’s going to be there and it’s time you started . . .” She gestures at my head. “You need to be more than that girl with no memory. You can at least start on making someone, anyway.”
“And Ethan did ask if you were coming,” Sophy says, and Greer says, “I think we’ve all already figured the reason why for that one out already.”
Sophy smiles, teeth clenched, and nods.
“I’m glad you’re coming with us,” Olivia says to me, her heart-shaped face lighting up as she glances quickly at Greer. “It’ll be fun.”
Sophy’s smile goes sharp, and I know it. I know it. “It will be fun,” she says. “I mean, usually, we just all sit around and watch Greer go for some guy that she ends up doing nothing with, don’t we? It’s like—I don’t know. Do you maybe like someone you don’t want to tell us about, Greer?”
Greer ignores her—ignores us all—moving back toward the boy she just cast away, talking to him in a low voice and then laughing, head thrown back so her dark hair ripples down her back.
“I gotta go,” Sophy says, and walks off, her steps so careful I know she’s about to explode from all the fury inside her. I wonder if she’s more dangerous now than she was as I know her. No, knew her. Has to be knew her, now.
“Is Sophy okay?” Olivia says and when I look at her, Olivia’s normal, sweet smile is gone, replaced by a weary, scared-looking frown. She looks away and I follow her gaze, see Sophy looking at us. Staring at Greer, hate in her eye.
The Sophy I knew wouldn’t have been so obvious. But this one is, and her intent—her longing to be someone, to have power—is so clear. I don’t know exactly what happened to the other Ava, but I do know this—I’m safe here now. I know Sophy, her true heart, and she can’t hurt me.
From now on, I can—and will—write my own future. I have to.
I think of Morgan in class, dream of him awake and with my eyes wide open, but tell myself to let it go. To let him go.
It’s hard, though, because they aren’t dreams. They are memories, they are what I know: his skin, his voice, the way his hand felt in mine, how his fingers would skate over the calluses life in the crèche had left on me as if he wanted to know them, as if nothing about me could push him away. I remember him kneeling in front of me, eyes bright, hands behind his head, and the steady spark thump that burned through me.
I remember standing in the dark with him, staring at the stars and knowing that I was outside the city, away. Free.
I remember that and it’s gone—it was taken from me—and at lunch, sitting across from Sophy, I see who told Clementine about me and Morgan. It’s so obvious now.
Sophy wanted power, she always did. She still does. She had it there, where I lived, but she wanted more, and Morgan and I—knowing about that would have given her access to Clementine, so worried about Morgan. It would have given her even more power. She broke Greer. She made her and me and Ethan—everyone—watch Olivia die, just because she could.
Whispering about me into Clementine’s ear would have been nothing to her.
She broke me once.
She won’t break me now. I survived the crèche. I can survive this, easy.
I tell the three of them I can’t wait for the party. I ask Sophy to pick me up.
“If you can, I mean,” I say, and she nods, hiding her smile until she looks down at her food. But I see it.
I’m ready for it. For her.
45.
JANE IS SURPRISINGLY HAPPY that I’m going out, although she wants to know where I’m going and what time I’ll be home and it reminds me, for a moment, of standing stiffly in a room, and reciting details of my life to someone who sat, already knowing my story and never once looking at me. Just testing me, to make sure I was still worthy. That the crèche girl wasn’t falling apart.
I shake my head and Jane says, “I’m sorry, but you have to tell me where you’ll be, and you have to be back by
midnight. It’s a rule in this house, and it’s not changing.” She says it with ease, as if she’s said it dozens of times before and for a moment, I get a glimpse of what her Ava was like.
Her Ava wouldn’t have quietly answered the person who wrote down what I was required to say like I did to survive. She would have pointed out that everything about her was known, that her life would barely be her own once she was done with training. She might have even said what I always felt, gave voice to the humiliation of it all. The anger.
That girl, that Ava, didn’t live here. She wouldn’t have survived the life I had. She could talk, sure.
But she died.
I smile at Jane. “I’m going to a party with Sophy and Greer and Olivia,” I say, feeling a sudden rush of tenderness for her, who just wants to be in my life. Who already holds me in her heart.
“Really?” Jane says. “That’s . . . oh, Ava, I’m so glad you’re doing things with your friends again. Not that I want you to do things, but you know what I mean.” She throws her arms around me, squeezing tight, and I hear her sniffle once. “You seem happier now. Are you happier?”
“I have choices here,” I say, and she sighs, quickly and sadly at my non-answer, but when she pulls back to look at me she is smiling.
“You do have choices,” she says. “You have—you have your whole life ahead of you and Ava, you’re going to be—I know you’re going to do amazing things. And you—” She looks down at the floor. “You’ll always have me. Always.”
I wonder what that will be like, a lifetime of having Jane in my life. Will we ever fit together like she wants us to? Can we?
I kiss her cheek, touched by her belief, and she looks up at me, her eyes bright and happy.
“We’re getting there,” she says. “We’re—we’re a family again. I feel it. You feel it, don’t you?”
I feel a possibility. I feel her longing for what she had, and how she now sees possibilities beyond that. Sees me.
I nod, and then ask a question I have to ask. “Does—what happened to Sophy?”
“Sophy?” Jane says. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, how come she’s—” I break off, because Jane doesn’t know what I’m talking about.
But I know what to do. I was trained to find things out.
“I just—I heard she’s been in trouble,” I said. “That she’s—I don’t know. Someone said she tried to hurt someone or something like that.”
“Sophy?” Jane says, and shakes her head. “No, that’s not possible. She’s so quiet. She’s—she’s just waiting. She’ll bloom when she goes to college, but now she just wants to be Greer.”
I nod, but I know Sophy wants more than that. Her heart is still the same. It’s just—it can’t run free in this world, which is a very good thing.
But it doesn’t mean I won’t be careful.
Sophy comes to pick me up, smiling fake bright, and I kiss Jane’s cheek again before I leave. “See you later.”
“So, you’re getting along with your mom now?” Sophy says as we walk to her car. She greeted Jane with a wide, soft smile that Jane saw nothing but kindness in. I wonder if that’s how my mother, my Jane, was. If that’s why she wasn’t able to see what her choices cost her until it was too late.
“It doesn’t take much to make her happy,” I say, and watch Sophy’s smile. See it for what it is, gleaming and dreaming of prey. Of power.
I wonder how she failed to get it now.
“I should loose my memory, then,” Sophy says. “Maybe then someone would notice me.”
“I see who you are,” I say, and Sophy stares at me.
I stare back and wait, calm and knowing. I understand what this is. I know what people who want power are like and I know her.
I know what to do, know how to stay safe around her.
Sophy looks away first. “Should we go?”
We do, and as we drive to the party I wonder what makes Sophy want to be someone everyone knows and fears so badly. I wonder what made her want it before. I wonder what makes her want it now.
At the party, I see Sophy measure Olivia’s desperate, unseen love. I watch her watch Greer posture, posing for one boy and another, always turning to Olivia and stopping her whenever Olivia gets upset enough to finally start to walk away.
I watch, and I finally realize what Sophy—the one I knew, and the one I see now—really wanted. It was more than power. I see that as she stares at Greer and Olivia, and the sparks the two of them don’t see but I do. That Sophy does.
Sophy wanted power, but she also wanted love. Not from Olivia or Greer, but from everyone. She wanted—wants—to be noticed. To be the person everyone fears and yet still, deep in their hearts, wants to see.
She wants everything. Power. Love—no, worship.
“Let’s go get a drink,” she says, turning to me, and then tugs me into another room, pushing a cup into my hand.
“I saw you looking at Greer,” she says. “I know you see how she is, how she tells us what to do, what to wear, how to act, how to think. Even if you don’t remember before, you see it now. And if we can just get her to do something stupid, I—we—can be—”
“No,” I say, and my voice comes out harsher than I mean it to, but I can’t help it. This Sophy did not destroy my world, but the one I know, the one who saw what people wanted to keep hidden and knew what to do in a way this one never will—she did.
She told Clementine about me.
She’s why I’m here.
“No?” she says, and in that instant she looks like the Sophy I remember. Sounds like the Sophy I know.
“No,” I say again, and she swallows, looks into the other room, looks at Greer standing smiling at people, Olivia flitting around her.
“I knew you’d do this,” she hisses. “And you know what? That’s fine. I’m sick of pretending I like any of you. Get Greer to take you home tonight, if she’s willing. And don’t even think of coming to me when she isn’t.”
I say nothing, and she turns away, then whirls back to face me.
“This is really it?” she says. “We’ve known each other for ages, we’ve put up with being little puppets for ages, and this is fine with you now? This is how you want things to be?”
“I won’t hurt anyone for you,” I say, not hiding what I know. Who I was. Who I am. I let it shine from my eyes. “Not ever.”
She blinks, looking startled, like she’s seen something she almost understands but doesn’t want to, and then says, “Whatever. Giving you that drink is the last thing I’m ever doing for you.”
She turns away again, and this time she doesn’t look back, disappears into the shadowy crowd around us. I look and see nothing but tall, dark shapes standing in a row, waiting.
I can guess what happened to the other Ava now. Sophy scared her, she ran, and then the Ava from here died, somehow. Badly, maybe. Easily—I hope so.
But I doubt it.
I see woods, sparse but there, and I see them. I am waiting for Morgan, waiting to leave with him, but he isn’t there, just these dark shapes, and someone behind them, someone coming into sight. Someone older, a woman I’ve never seen before. Clementine.
I see her and—
Blink, and the shadows are just boys, ones I’ve seen around school, all pimples and eagerness.
But when I was, who I was—then they might have been something else. Might have been people that Sophy arranged to be there. Sent with Clementine as a gift to find me. To make sure I ended up here.
I look at my drink. It’s cloudy, smells of liquor and juice and maybe something else. I watch Sophy weave through the boys, nodding at them like the Sophy I knew nodded, all business, all desire to achieve no matter what happened.
I don’t know what the Ava I never have been did. But I do know I am not her. I survive, no matter what. It’s who I am.
I put my drink down, then bat it away when someone else reaches for it, watch it spill on the floor. Watch Sophy’s face twist in fury and then fall
.
She is so breakable here and I am glad of it.
I grab Greer’s and Olivia’s cups, ignoring their pouted protests, and get them new ones.
“I hadn’t even had a sip of that,” Greer says. “Olivia hadn’t touched hers either. I made Sophy get them, and you—look, I thought you didn’t remember things. You didn’t say you were going to act like a retard in public too.”
“Hey, I thought getting drinks was a nice thing to do,” Ethan says, coming up behind Greer and smiling at me.
“Ethan,” Greer says, throwing her arms around him and snuggling up against him, turning so I can see her triumphant-looking eyes. Next to her, Olivia blows out a breath and then downs her drink in one swift swallow, throat working, eyes closed.
“Good to see you too, Greer,” Ethan says, pushing away from her, his body tense. “Hi, Ava.”
“Sorry I’m a retard,” I say to Greer, who frowns, not sure from my voice if I mean the words or not.
“I was kidding, Ava, duh,” Greer says, and looks at Olivia, who is holding her now-empty cup upside down. “Oh shit. Olivia, did you just drink all that? You had one already when we came in, remember?”
“Ava isn’t a retard,” Olivia says, her voice slurred. “But sometimes you are.” She covers her mouth with one hand, as if she’s shocked, and then starts to giggle.
“How much liquor did you put in there?” Greer asks me. “You know Olivia is a fucking lightweight.”
“I guess she is,” I say, and Greer scowls and walks off with Olivia, one arm around her to hold her up, palm resting against Olivia’s skin where her shirt has ridden up.
Ethan watches them go and then turns to me, taking a sip of Greer’s untouched drink.
“That lemon-lime soda,” he says after a moment, grinning. “It’s a killer. Poor Olivia.”
“I think she’ll be all right,” I say, and he puts the soda down, touches my arm and turns me gently toward him.
“Me too,” he says. “I saw Sophy stomping off just now, and since I saw you come in with her I wanted to make sure you were okay. Not that I was watching you—all right, I was watching you.” He grins again, running a hand through his hair, and I watch it fall back into place, hanging so it almost covers his eyes, making him look like a secret waiting to be told.