The Lost Girl Read online

  Either way, it has made being at the house quite stressful, and I am as eager as Sasha to get out for the day.

  After lunch, Sasha and I go for a walk, past shops and vendors, ending up at Garuda Mall. It reminds me of my first day with Ray, but I don’t protest when Sasha asks to go in. She loves riding the escalators up and down. I buy her a lollipop, and in exchange she solemnly agrees to go with me to the bookshop and not protest that she’s bored. I lose myself in the aisles and the smell of paper. I am so immersed I don’t realize my small charge has disappeared until I turn around to look for her.

  Confronted with empty space, my stomach drops. I look frantically around. There is no sign of her.

  “Sasha!” I shout. “Sasha, where are you?”

  When I find her at last, standing near the best-seller shelf, I almost collapse with relief. Then I realize that she has company. There’s a dark-eyed boy with her. His T-shirt has French words over his breast pocket. My body tenses.

  “Eva, look who I found,” says Sasha happily, clinging to his hand.

  I force a smile. “Oh, golly, what a treat,” I say, hoping he can hear the venom in my voice.

  Judging by his response, I think he did. “Better be more careful,” says Ray. “You don’t want to go back to the house and explain they’ve lost another child, do you?”

  “That’s a horrible thing to say, even for you,” I snap. “Come on, Sash, we’re going.”

  “She doesn’t want to leave,” says Ray angrily, holding up their entwined hands as if to prove this.

  “Don’t test me, Ray.”

  “Or you’ll what?” His glower softens slightly. “I’m sorry I said that about losing her. It wasn’t fair. But you could at least try to be friendly, for her.”

  “Of course,” I reply bitterly, “I’m the unfriendly one.”

  I glare at him, but I also turn pink because he’s right. It’s not fair to frighten Sasha. I suppose it’s a point in his favor that she’s happy to see him. But he’s not the smiling boy from the photograph. This boy is hard and heartbroken and bitter.

  Sasha turns an anxious face up to me. She reaches out with her free hand to hold one of mine, as if to show that she’s not choosing Ray over me. Ashamed and touched by her gesture, I smile at her.

  “Why don’t you ask Ray if he wants to come with us?” I ask, hating each word. I don’t want to spend time with him. I don’t want to feel his bitterness, his grief, his hate.

  Sasha’s face lights up. “Will you, Ray?” she asks. “We’re going to have coffee and ice cream, will you come?”

  There’s no way he can say no now. It’s almost satisfying to see it’s something he wants even less than I do. It also stings.

  “Yeah, Sash,” he says at last, “’course I’ll come with you.”

  With Sasha happily chattering on, we go up to the food court. I find a table and avoid looking at Ray. He offers to buy the ice cream. I thank him as gracefully as I can.

  “How’s your holiday been so far?” he asks, politely enough.

  “Fine, thank you. How’s yours?”

  “Fine too.”

  “Good.”

  I wince. I would rather have a black eye than make such inane conversation.

  “What are you doing here anyway?”

  “In the mall?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wandering,” he says.

  But what I really hear is remembering.

  “This place reminds me of you,” I say, hoping to startle him. It works. “Last time I was here, it was with you.”

  “When you were lying to me,” he says, keeping his tone flat so as not to alarm Sasha.

  “Yes, then,” I say calmly.

  Ray gestures at Sasha. “She called you Eva.”

  “Yes,” I say, “that’s my name.” I cock my head. “That seems to surprise you. Did you think I like being a—what was it you called me? A cold, lying monster?”

  He winces. “I’m not proud of that. It just came out. I’m angry because you lied. Because of who you are, not what you are. That’s kind of irrelevant to me. I hope you know that.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “I appreciate that.”

  He narrows his eyes. “Have you always been this, you know, confrontational?”

  “Yes, I have a temper,” I say wearily. “Why don’t you join the line of people who have been bewailing it all my life?”

  He considers me. “I get angry too.”

  “No! Really?”

  “So you noticed?” he says, almost smiling.

  “Do I have eyes?”

  “She didn’t lose her temper. She did get angry, but it was a calm kind of pissed off. She’d just tell you straight out, quite coolly, that you were being an idiot or that she was annoyed. But it took a lot to get her there. She was like those cows you see in the middle of the road. They seem so patient, they don’t get worked up even with a gazillion cars honking at them.”

  I can’t help smiling at the comparison. “I’m sure she enjoyed being called a cow.”

  A grin flickers over his face. “Yeah, I got a whack on the head for that once.”

  As the smile fades away, I can’t help noticing how tired his eyes are, and I feel a quick rush of sympathy.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” he demands, shifting back to anger in a flash. “Because she died or because you stole her life?”

  Clearly he is not about to forgive me for that. Sasha looks up at the sharp tone of his voice. I tug lightly on a lock of her hair to distract her. She smiles anxiously.

  “Because she died,” I answer Ray, in a cheerful trill designed solely to reassure Sasha.

  He doesn’t reply.

  “I’m not as wicked as you think I am.”

  “Yeah, I get that you were doing what you had to and all that. But I still think we deserved to know the truth. She died.” He flinches in pain. “We had a right to know who we were loving.”

  I flush. “Yes, you did,” I admit. “I didn’t like lying to you. But it happened. So why are you still here? You could have had your ice cream, made Sasha happy, and left ages ago.”

  “Because I need to look at you.” The intensity of his eyes is painful. “You look just like her. It’s all I have.”

  “The last time we spoke, you said it hurt like hell to look at me,” I say. “Can’t you make up your mind?”

  “No,” he says, “I can’t. Because it does hurt like hell and sometimes I can’t stand it. At school I had to avoid being in the same room as you. But these last couple weeks, not seeing you at all, were almost as bad.” He stares bitterly into his melted ice cream. “I can’t stop hating myself. I can’t stop missing her. I’d do anything to get her back if it was possible. And sometimes when I am happy, it’s because I see you and you’re laughing. It’s like seeing a ghost. For just one second, you’re her and I forget she’s gone.”

  I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. I feel a throb in my chest, humming against my ribs. I search for something easy to say, something light to take that look off his face.

  “It seems to me,” I say rather severely, “that you could give Heathcliff a run for his money. Quite a moody git, aren’t you?”

  He grins, almost as if it was drawn out of him against his will. The smile shocks me, flashing phantomlike to the old photograph and the boy who knew how to be happy, who hadn’t yet dissolved in rage and grief. It drags me through a tiny portal in my own mind, to the Eva who first looked at that photograph and wondered if she could love him.

  “We’ve got to go,” I say. “Thank you for the ice cream.”

  I’m on my feet before he can say or do anything. As we leave, I feel his eyes on me the whole way.

  I pack Sasha off to her room when we get home. She has a weekend’s worth of journal pages to write for her echo. I run past her room and up the stairs, hoping for some time on my own.

  But I only have a few minutes before there’s a knock on the door. “Come in,” I ca
ll out, half buried under the bed as I search for a pair of shoes I haven’t worn in weeks.

  Nikhil comes in and, to my surprise, shuts the door behind him. “Eva, can—can we talk for a sec? Please?”

  He sounds so uncharacteristically hesitant, I crawl out from under the bed at once.

  “Nik, don’t be so bloody silly,” I say briskly. “You can talk to me whenever you want to, you don’t have to ask.”

  My manner cheers him slightly. He has an envelope in his hands that he keeps twisting, this way and that, round and round. It’s a nervous tic I have never seen on him before.

  “What is it?” I ask in a softer tone.

  “It was, like, six months or something before Amarra . . . before the accident,” he says, wincing slightly. “She asked me to keep a secret for her. I was the only one she trusted to help her. She—she gave me this.” He taps the envelope in his hands. “She asked me to always keep it with me. I guess I . . . she—she must have thought she’d live a lot longer than—than she did.”

  “She couldn’t have known,” I tell him. “No one could have.” I make him sit. I frown. “Do you want to go on?”

  He nods miserably. “I have to. You have to know.” He stares at me. “Amarra said . . . she told me that if anything happened to her, if she d-died before Mum and Dad did, that I should open this and read it. She asked me not to before then. She asked me to give the stuff inside to Mum and Dad.”

  “And you read it?” I say. I still don’t see where this is going. “After the accident?”

  “Yeah.”

  He doesn’t say anything more. He opens the envelope and holds out its contents. A letter and a single sheet of paper.

  “Here,” he says.

  “I don’t think this was meant for me—”

  “You need to.”

  So I unfold the single sheet of paper first and read it. It’s typed all the way through, except for a dotted line at the bottom, where I see Amarra’s signature carefully etched. I keep staring at the signature because it’s the only thing on the paper that makes sense. The rest is a mass of words that blur and bend at angles.

  There’s a buzzing in my ears, I’m surrounded by angry wasps. Slowly, very slowly, words on the page come into focus.

  Words like Request for Removal. And effective immediately.

  “This is a Sleep Order!” I burst out in horror. “Amarra signed it? But this—this is impossible! She couldn’t have done this, only familiars and Weavers can . . .”

  I stop, the words trailing off like the last pitiful notes from a broken musical toy. Because it isn’t true. It’s not just familiars or Weavers who can pass the Sleep Order; I just thought so because I had never heard about it happening otherwise. But there must be some way it’s possible. Mina Ma told me so, long ago, when she brought me scones to cheer me up about the tattoo. Matthew told me so. He said I was lucky Amarra had died before figuring out a way to destroy me.

  Only she didn’t. She worked it out.

  I whip the Sleep Order out of the way and scramble through Amarra’s letter to her parents, no longer hesitant. I have to know.

  Dear Mom and Dad,

  I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done this behind your back. I should have told you. I’m sorry about that.

  I hate sharing everything with a stranger. She takes everything. She gets my stories and my memories and my photographs. You would want her to love you like I do, but she wouldn’t. She could hurt you. She puts you in danger just by existing. I’ve been so scared thinking one day Nik and Sash and I will wake up and the police will be there taking you away. I can’t do this anymore.

  Now that I’m gone she’ll be coming to live with you, and I don’t want her to. She’s not me. I don’t want whatever second chance you think she could give me. I don’t believe these second chances are possible. She’s not me.

  I found this blog online, where people like me were talking. “Others.” Someone said they had found a way to get rid of their echo. I didn’t know people like me could do it. I thought only you could. But it’s true. I can do it. But only as long as you let me.

  Please don’t let her come. I’ve signed the Request for Removal. All you have to do is add your signatures to the bottom, under the bit where it says you’re allowing me to do this, and then send it to the Weavers. They’ll get rid of her.

  Please.

  I love you. So much.

  Amarra

  My mouth is dry. She didn’t just hate me. She was afraid of me. She was afraid that I wouldn’t just steal everything from her—I’d destroy it, too. I was the monster that haunted her nightmares.

  And so she decided to destroy me first. In a funny, distant way, I actually admire that. It’s the kind of thing I would do to protect what’s mine, to protect everything I love.

  I thought she was cool-headed, that she always gave in gracefully even when she didn’t like something. Maybe that was true. But I was wrong to think there was no spirit in her or that she wasn’t capable of doing everything in her power when pushed. She’s proven twice now that she was capable of standing up and fighting back if she had to. She refused to tell me anything about Ray. And now she’s killed me.

  “Eva?”

  That’s Nikhil’s voice. I should speak to him. I try to open my mouth, but my throat is so dry I can’t make any sound come out. The wasps are louder now. They’re buzzing furiously.

  I could laugh. I’ve spent all this time, all these months, trying to make my familiars happy. Trying to keep my promise to Mina Ma. Be good. Be happy. Keep the Weavers and my familiars happy. Make them want to keep me.

  But in the end, it wasn’t Neil or Alisha or the Weavers I should have been keeping my eye on. No, it was the one threat I thought had gone, the one I thought couldn’t touch me again.

  Yet her ghost has reached out and done it.

  “Eva?” Nik says my name again. Louder. He looks so anxious, so unlike his normal self, it’s heartbreaking.

  “I’m okay,” I lie, trying to moisten my dry mouth. “Nik, why do you still have this? Why didn’t you give it to your parents after the accident?”

  “Because,” he says helplessly, “because when I read it I—I couldn’t do it. I knew you’d die. And I didn’t know you at all then, you hadn’t yet come, but I knew you had feelings. That you might be a nice person. Amarra never knew those things, but I did, because I talk to my echo. If Amarra had known what I did, she wouldn’t have wanted to hurt you either. So I—I hid it. I thought I could hide it forever and no one would have to know. And then you came and I liked you and I felt bad about not keeping my promise to Amarra, but I knew I couldn’t—”

  I put my arm around his shoulders and hug him. “You did a very kind thing,” I say softly, my voice shaking slightly. “But why give this to me now?”

  He glances at the ceiling and I realize he’s looking toward Alisha. He’s been waiting for the ax to fall, too.

  “After Mom realized—” He falters, and shrugs. “I don’t think they’d ever just send you away to be hurt or anything, they’re not like that. But I was scared someone would find the letter, I mean, if Mom doesn’t think you could be Amarra, then she might not—”

  I nod. “She might not feel like there was a good reason to keep me anymore.”

  “Yeah.”

  I look down at the letter, and at the Sleep Order, my fingers numb and my heart cold. “And now what?” I ask, half to myself, half to him.

  “I want you to have it now.” His voice is calm again, but underneath I hear a small, miserable note.

  I look sharply at him. “Nik, you can’t expect me to be objective about this—”

  “I know that,” he says. “But it’s your life. You should get to decide.”

  I stare at him and wonder if I could have done the same thing in his place. If I’d made such a promise to someone I loved, would I be able to turn my back on it and do the right thing? Probably not. I’m not quite so selfless. But Nikhil is doing what he believes i
s fair. He’s handing me my life back.

  “Then I’m going to destroy this,” I say quietly. My stomach twists guiltily. It’s definitely not the right thing to do, to keep Amarra’s last letter from her parents.

  But right now I’m safe. As long as Neil and Alisha don’t see this, as long as they don’t sign the papers and officially allow Amarra to pass the Sleep Order, I’m safe. I can’t show this to them. My life is at stake. And I made promises, too.

  I search Amarra’s desk for the box of matches she used to light scented candles. I strike one, hoping to burn the letter and the Sleep Order together and toss the ashes in the bin.

  Exactly at that moment, there is a knock on the door. Alisha comes in. “Eva,” she says in the kind of voice that suggests she isn’t used to using my real name, “have you seen Nik, he’s not in his—oh, here you are! I was—”

  She stares in confusion at the lit match, then at our guilty faces, and finally her eyes narrow in on the paper. We see the suspicion wiped clean off her face. We watch her go pale.

  “Is that—is that Amarra’s handwriting?”

  “It’s old stuff.” Nikhil tries valiantly. “Eva’s clearing the desk out—”

  But Alisha’s eyes are on my face and I can’t meet them. I’m never this shifty.

  “Can I see that, please?” she asks. Her hand trembles.

  I blow out the match and give her the papers.

  “Thank you,” she says, in a funny voice. Almost like she understands what handing the letter over is about to cost me.

  I close my eyes. Nikhil squeezes my hand, and in the dark behind my eyelids I listen to the wasps.

  11

  Bound

  I am an incorrigible eavesdropper. I always have been. I hover by the door of Neil’s study, to listen in on his conversation with Alisha inside. I don’t even feel guilty about it.

  “But you’ve heard her,” I hear Alisha protest. “You’ve looked at her. She’s been here, what, eight months now? Don’t you sometimes look at her and think she’s just like us?”