“But she what?”
“But you keep buying it,” she says, smiling at me, but too late, too late, we both know what she said.
Ava. Her. She.
Not you.
Not one You.
I look at Jane. “I—I’m not her, am I? I’m not Ava.”
Jane stares at me.
“Don’t,” she finally says, looking at the floor, and then says it again, louder, before looking at me.
There are tears in her eyes.
My heart pounds.
“Don’t ever—please don’t ever think that,” she says.
“I can’t—just hearing you say it . . . You don’t really think that, do you? I know it’s hard for you and that things aren’t the same. The doctors said . . . they said you might not ever remember everything. That things might be a little different. That you might be a little different. But you’re still Ava. You’ll always—you’re forever my little girl.”
“But just now you said—”
“I know,” she says. “I’m—I’m tired, honey. I’m scared. I lie awake at night worrying about you. Wondering what it must be like to be here, with me, and to not know—” She breaks off. “Sometimes I think you must be so angry with me.”
“Angry?”
“You’re so—Ava, you’re so quiet now, and I—” She takes a deep breath. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I miss you yelling at me. You used to, you know, all the time, over your clothes, your hair, everything. But now you—you’re so nice to me. And I love it but I look at you and I know you don’t—you don’t remember me.”
“I did—”
“I know,” she says. “But one time, honey, and I—it’s something I don’t actually remember. I’ve been thinking about it all night and I just . . . it’s not there. I can’t see it.” She touches my hair with one hand, gently. “Is that what it’s like for you? Is that how—is that how everything is, you try to remember but nothing’s there?”
“Yes,” I say, my voice cracking, shocking me, making me cringe, and she says, “Oh, Ava,” and folds her hands together like she doesn’t know what to do with them. Like she doesn’t know what to do about anything.
“I’m sorry,” she says after a while. “I know that doesn’t make things better, but I wish it did. I wish I could. I wanted—I want you here and happy and safe.”
“I want—” I say, and then have to stop because I don’t know what words should come after those. I don’t know what I want.
And then Jane looks at me, so much sadness and worry—so much love—in her eyes—and I wish I could help her. I wish I could make things better for her. Be the Ava I’m supposed to be.
But I can’t.
I’m not her.
It’s a relief to get to school, or at least it is until third period, when I leave study hall like Greer and Olivia and Sophy told me to and make my way to the garden.
“There you are,” Greer says when she sees me.
“What happened to you this morning, you wench? We totally waited for you.”
“Late,” I say, thinking of the silent, strained breakfast Jane and I had shared, and the equally silent ride to school.
How Jane had leaned toward me when we stopped, like she wanted to hug me and then stilled, able to tell I didn’t know what to do. That my arms weren’t opening for her.
The look on her face when I got out of the car . . .
It made me think of the Jane I know, that I remember.
It made me want to open my arms but it was too late, I was out of the car and at school, swimming around in Ava’s life.
“Well, stop it,” Greer says. “Here’s a memory I’ll fill in for you: I don’t wait. Ever. Okay?”
“Greer,” Olivia says, elbowing her, and Greer rolls her eyes and says, “I’m kidding, Ava,” and looks at Olivia. “Thanks, Mom.”
Olivia giggles, and then turns away when she sees me looking at her.
She knows I see what’s in her heart. Who’s in it, and it makes her face turn deep, dark red.
How can Greer not see this?
“Guys, shut up,” Greer says. “Ava, don’t look, but you-know-who is coming this way.”
“I know who,” Sophy says, her voice a singsong mockery of Greer’s, and Greer and Olivia both look at her, Greer with both eyebrows raised, Olivia merely looking startled.
“We all know who, duh,” Greer says, rolling her eyes at Sophy, and then grins at me. “Well, don’t just stand there. Sit down and smile. But not at him! Smile at Sophy and then laugh like she’s said something funny. You’ll have to pretend hard for that one.”
Sophy, who is sitting down on a bench next to me, looks up at me, smiles, and pats the space next to her. The tips of her ears are a mottled, angry red.
I sit down, forcing my mouth into a smile, and look at the cover of the textbook Sophy’s fiddling with. The top right corner looks like it’s been gouged with something sharp, but the rest of the cover is spotless, the map that covers it glowing brown and green and blue, the whole world sketched out and divided up along curving lines.
It seems to grow larger, and paler, faded with age, and I shake my head to clear it, closing my eyes.
“Hey,” I hear, and open my eyes, see Ethan sitting next to me. His hair is short, cropped close to his scalp, raw red and freshly cut. He is taking furious, frantic notes.
“Hey,” I say, and he looks at me, sort of, a sideways, almost anxious glance.
“What are you doing here?” I say.
“You’re making fun of me too?” he says, his voice low and miserable. “I passed the first maps class, Ava. I did, I swear. And besides, you—you shouldn’t even be talking to me. You’re crèche, and just because Greer talks to you it doesn’t mean the rest of us can. You know how—you know how things are.” He turns away and opens a small tin on his desk, takes out a peppermint.
“Sorry,” he mutters after a moment. “I didn’t mean it. I’m just . . . you know how bad I am with maps. I didn’t really—I—” His voice cracks, and then he crunches the mint between his teeth and starts taking notes again.
“Is this a memory?” I say, but he’s silent, his mouth not moving even though he says “Ava.”
I hear it though, hear him, and I lean toward him, everything going blurry, fading as a headache bursts open behind my eyes, blinding me.
“Ava, sit up!” I hear, and blink, see Sophy next to me, watching me. See Olivia smiling at me, hear Greer saying, “Ava, sit up!” again.
“Oh,” I say, sliding back onto the bench, my head throbbing, and Ethan is standing a few feet away, looking at me.
He doesn’t look the same. His hair isn’t short, it’s longish like it was before, when Greer took me to see him, and has fallen so it shadows the side of his face, dark curls ringing the slight fullness of his cheeks, stopping by the curve of his lips. He has a full, smiling mouth.
He doesn’t look miserable. He looks happy.
I don’t understand.
But then I know I remember Ethan, but not this Ethan.
But why is this Ethan so happy when the Ethan I know wasn’t?
What am I not seeing?
As he sees me watching him, he winks and gives me a slow, small wave, a suggestive crooking of his fingers. When I don’t wave back, he gives a little sigh and then another, slightly smaller smile, like a secret, before he turns and walks away.
He looks so happy. So calm.
But his smile never touched his eyes, not even a little.
His eyes are . . .
They’re sad. They’re full of knowing that no one should have.
I know this Ethan’s eyes.
“Gah!” Greer says, grabbing my arm as the bell rings. “That was a total I-want-you thing, there. I wanted to have sex just watching you two.”
“I know,” Olivia says. “Ava, you should go for it already, okay? I mean, we all know what you’re thinking when you look at him, and now he’s totally thinking it too.”
H
e was? I didn’t see it. I didn’t—I didn’t feel anything. Not then. The maps—then I felt something.
I felt sorry for him.
“Are you all right?” Sophy says, touching my arm as Greer and Olivia head off to their classes. “I know you don’t actually remember Ethan—or anyone—and, well—we used to talk a lot about stuff, you know?”
I look at her, and I can’t tell if she’s lying or not. I can’t read her.
It makes me nervous.
“I’m okay,” I say, and when she smiles I see another smile under the one she wears, a deeper one, a stronger one. One that has power and uses it. Loves it.
Destroys with it, or wants to.
I know her too. Not this her, but another her, and that Sophy—
That Sophy was everything this one wants to be.
I shudder.
I’m Ava, I remember people from this place.
I remember them, but not from here.
How can I remember a world that isn’t mine? One that isn’t the one I wake up in every day now?
“Girls, get to class,” a teacher passing by calls out, and I’m glad to turn away.
Glad to walk away.
23.
IN CHEMISTRY CLASS, I don’t understand why the teacher is going over the periodic table so slowly, or why he isn’t talking about the way each element can be used.
I don’t know how I know the elements, or what they can do. Ava’s notes for this class are as empty as all her others. I doodle a little, copying Ava’s squares and spirals and then a few squiggles of my own, attaching letters and numbers to them that don’t mean anything but flow out of my pen anyway and then sigh, pull out my English textbook and hide it inside my Chemistry book.
English, like Government, it’s another class I am lost in, startled by references to things everyone seems to know about but that I can’t remember. Today we talked about pastoral imagery, which seems to mean that sheep and grass are more than just sheep and grass.
I look at the poem again, and manage to get about twenty lines in before my eyes start to feel heavy. I like the idea of green grass, of open spaces. It sounds so free.
I wish I could see grass like that, green grass, I think, and wake up with a start, jerking up so hard my chair squeaks. I look around, but the attic is empty and I let out a sigh.
Relief, I tell myself, relief, and rub my eyes, tell myself to stop dreaming and listen.
Nothing.
I adjust my headset, flex my fingers over the keyboard, and then type “56-412 watches television and eats chips.”
After that lie—another one, already—I look at my own small foil packet. The bread is so heavy it’s poked through one corner, dense brown that can only be tamed through thick mustard.
I wonder where Morgan is. I wish—
No. I have got to stop doing this, I can’t drift away, I have to stay here. I’ve worked so hard. It has been all I ever wanted.
Thought I wanted.
“Ava,” he says quietly—he’s here, again—and I turn around, the chair wheezing protest. It was not meant to move so fast.
“You have to stop coming up here,” I say, but I don’t mean it, watching as he pulls the attic door closed, and my heart is pounding from him, just from him, and I know, I know, I know him, it is the beating of my heart.
But what if someone saw him come up here? I am in the attic and he is on the top floor, in his own apartment, an unheard of luxury, but there are SAT everywhere.
I talk to the one low-level watcher who lives on the first floor every week and she tells me what Morgan bought at the grocery store because he always stops by to say “Hello” since they have to wait in the same line together. She is sure he always gets sausages when she never gets any. She thinks he must know someone, or that he is a thief. She wants to get proof so she can get him sent away and get an extra card for rations every month.
Sometimes I think life outside the crèche is no better than life in it.
“Why can’t I come up here?” he says and comes closer, moving so he is standing in front of me, then kneeling so I can see into his eyes, he can see into mine, I try to turn away but he puts his hands on my knees, not hard, not hard at all, his touch is so gentle, his thumbs moving in a slow circle. I feel myself sinking into the touch, into him.
Into us, and that’s just it—I see him and I see me and him and we—I close my eyes.
“I have to listen to you,” I say, trying to make my voice strong, and when I open my eyes he smiles, a small, crooked smile, and says, “But I’m right here.”
“I can’t—” I say and my voice is cracking because I’m scared someone has seen us—him—that’s all, I’m not scared of him, I’m not scared of what I think when I see him. What I feel.
Alive.
“I think about you listening to me,” he says. “You hear everything, don’t you?”
I bite my lip because I do, of course I do, and I know what his breathing in bed this morning meant, I wrote “56-412 masturbates,” and then sat, fingers shaking before I gave in and touched myself, thinking of him and wondering—hoping—he was thinking of me.
“I can have you taken in,” I say and he draws back a little. The sun, filtered in through the small, dirty windows, catches his eyes. They are brown, ordinary, but the way he looks at me—no one has ever looked at me like he does. He looks at me like he sees something. Someone.
Me.
“All right,” he says, and puts his hands behind his head. “Go ahead.”
24.
WAKE UP.
I don’t want to, I want what’s next, I want to be there, with him, and I—
“Wake up,” I hear, and sit up, disoriented, my English book falling out of my Chemistry book and hitting the desk.
I was here. I was in class, I am in class. I wasn’t in an attic, I didn’t see Morgan. We didn’t talk, we didn’t do anything. But it—
It felt so real. Embarrassingly real.
Frighteningly real.
Alive real.
“What’s this?” the chemistry teacher says, and he’s the one who told me to wake up just now.
I heard it twice, though. He said it and then before . . . before it didn’t sound like a voice at all. It was something else, it was action, I was being pulled back, away.
“I said, what’s this?” the chemistry teacher says again, pointing not at my fallen English book, but at my notebook, at the little branching sticks with number and letters appended to them that I drew, a squiggle tagged C3H6N6O6.
“I don’t know.”
“You think you’re funny?” he says, voice rising on every word. “We’re studying chemistry here, and you—you think drawing the formula for a lethal explosive is a good idea?”
“I—”
“Go to the office right now!” he says, and strangely, his anger and the way everyone around me falls silent because it feels far more familiar than all the other classes I’ve sat through, like somehow I’m used to being silent in class.
To being scared.
In the office, I’m told to sit and wait, that Jane will be called.
“You know about Mr. Green’s son and what he did, of course,” the woman who calls Jane tells me when she gets off the phone.
When I stare at her blankly, she clears his throat and says, “I—Sorry, Ava. Why don’t you spend the rest of the period in the nurse’s office while we wait for your mother.”
It’s not a question.
I get up, but instead of going to the nurse’s office I head outside, wanting to get away from the school and whatever is going on with me. This morning, with Ethan, and then just now, what happened, what I dreamed—
No. What I know.
What I remember.
Not that this Ethan is one I know, not that he’s someone I remember. No one here—except for Morgan and Clementine—reaches into that strange, hazy place inside me. In my head.
But still, somehow, someway, I remember a different Ethan. A differ
ent Jane. It’s like some people—Jane, Sophy, Olivia, Greer, Ethan—that are in this Ava’s life were . . .
Were somehow, and in very different ways, in memories that I’m not supposed to have.
Were in a life I know better—deeper, truer—than this one.
When I get outside, I look for Jane’s car even though I know it won’t be here yet. It isn’t. There is nothing to see but a guy sitting on the white stone bench by the street, watching me.
Morgan.
When he sees me looking, he stands up. Walks toward me, stepping carefully across the road. He doesn’t look like he belongs here. There is something not quite right about him; the way he walks, as if every step pains him, and how he looks around, as if everything he sees is unknown, not terrifying but new.
“I know you,” I say, and he smiles like I have given him the world.
“I would have come sooner,” he says. “You know that, don’t you? I just—it was hard to find you.”
“Why?” I say, and his mouth opens, but no sound comes out. The world flutters, then drifts.
Shifts.
25.
WAKE UP.
I sit up, startled and blinking, and realize I’ve slid off the orange chair again. I know it’s nothing but bad color and creaks and cracks, but to slide right off it?
I’ve got to stop falling asleep. I’ve got to stop sitting up at night staring at my hands and thinking about what I’ve typed. About Morgan.
I’ve got to stop wondering—wishing. I know what happens to people who do, poor Olivia with her heart in her eyes even as her brains were clubbed across the floor for not saying who she was sleeping with, Olivia dying as Greer stood next to me, shaking but watching without blinking.
You don’t question what happens, not ever, and I don’t want to die.
But he’s here. I know it, can hear him before I see him, and when I turn around Morgan is in the attic again. Sitting right next to me. Looking at me.
I have to report this. Report him. I haven’t done it yet, but I will, I will.
My fingers don’t move. Don’t type.
“You must have fallen off the chair,” he says, and I see there is a shirt tucked under me, soft fabric wedged near the edge of my head, as if someone has tried to slip it under me. “Don’t you ever sleep?”