The Lost Girl Read online

  Sometimes I almost wish that Nikhil had handed over the letter right after the accident. At least it would have spared them this. They’d never have met me. They’d never have felt guilty. They’d still be mere photographs and stories in my head; none of us would have ever truly started to care. I would still be in England, spending my last months with Mina Ma and Erik and Ophelia and Sean.

  I go upstairs. “For someone who died,” I mutter at an imaginary Amarra, “you’ve done a very good job of hanging around.”

  But maybe that’s what the dead do. They stay. They linger. Benign and sweet and painful. They don’t need us. They echo all by themselves.

  That night, as I lie in bed, my thoughts start to look like a ballroom. It’s painted the color of burnished silver, the color of a Bangalore sky after the rains. In this ballroom there are angels and monsters, and Seans, and Rays, and echoes and others and guardians and Weavers and hunters, and families distorted in broken mirrors, and they are waltzing, to and fro, with one another. I fall asleep very quickly that night, too exhausted by the mess in my mind to think any longer.

  Over the next few weeks, I find myself bumping into Ray more often than I can pass off as coincidence. I see him at exams, but I also see him at the places I usually go. I wonder if he comes out hoping to see me. See her.

  “He loved her, but he wanted her, too,” Lekha says one time, hushed, as though discussing the greatest scandal of the nineteenth century. “You look like her. It must be hard for him, wanting you.”

  “I don’t think he does.”

  “I’m not interested in what you think,” she replies. “I’m much more interested in my eyesight and intelligence, both of which”—she blinks to adjust one of her contact lenses —“are above par. Now the next time I’m with you when you run into him, I’ll investixplore the situation. Then I’ll be able to tell you what’s what, all right?”

  After the promised encounter, Lekha says, “It’s very com-plicated.”

  “How ever did you work that out?” I say bitterly.

  Ray and I spend a long time together when we meet on these occasions. He gets angry less. We often snap at each other, but it’s without malice, and we talk, usually about Amarra.

  “Did you like her?”

  He waits curiously for a response. We’re walking to the school gates after an exam. Ray has offered me a ride back to the house.

  “No,” I say truthfully. “I didn’t like her much. She always seemed to be doing things to make me miserable, like swimming in the winter and getting a tattoo. At least that’s how I saw it. I brought out the worst in her.”

  “Yeah, I think you did,” he says. “She was amazing. She made me feel better just by smiling. You made her feel insecure, unsafe.” He smiles wistfully. “It’s weird, but the thing I think about most is how she used to wash her apples before eating them. I know you’re supposed to, but she was the only person I knew who actually did every time. I laughed at her and she said that even if I was dumb enough to eat a worm or traces of dog poo, it didn’t mean she was.” He kicks at a stone on the ground. “I always wash my stupid apples now.”

  Other times, he asks me about my childhood, my time with my guardians. Like Lekha, Ray’s terribly curious about what it was like, growing up an echo, and I don’t mind talking about it. It’s nice to wander back, to feel the cold and the water of the lake on my fingers and breathe in Mina Ma’s tea on a chilly afternoon. I tell Ray about Sean: about how Ray and Sonya and Sam thought I should have been ashamed of what I am, but Sean showed me I didn’t have to be. How Sean took me to the zoo and I found a baby elephant called Eva.

  Ray frowns, his expression, for once, unreadable. “Did you two—”

  “No,” I cut him off. “That’s against the laws.”

  “Can’t imagine that stopping you,” says Ray, quite accurately. “It wouldn’t have stopped me, and I get the feeling we have that in common.”

  “It could have killed me,” I reply. “So it stopped him.”

  “But you wanted to—”

  “We’re not talking about this,” I say hotly. “What do you care anyway?”

  He glares at me. “I don’t.”

  A few days after that, at Coffee Day, I ask him something I’ve wondered about for so long.

  “Why did she get her tattoo?”

  “Doesn’t seem like she was the tattoo type, does it? She wasn’t. Sonya couldn’t believe it was real. Amarra’s mother almost had a heart attack when she saw it.”

  “So why’d she get it? Why the snake?”

  From the way he hesitates, it’s clear Amarra’s tattoo had more to do with me than I realized. “She wanted something beautiful,” he says, “but also something she couldn’t trust. She said you were like the vases glassblowers make. Fragile and pure and lovely, but a sharp piece can cut you in two. So she chose the snake. It’s all nice to look at, but it’s a snake. She didn’t want to forget that the shiniest, prettiest things can be the most dangerous.”

  “If she hated me so much, why did she do everything she was supposed to? She kept her Lists, wrote her pages for me, told me stuff she probably didn’t want to.”

  “She loved her mum and dad,” says Ray. “It was important to them. So she did it. That’s the kind of person she was.”

  I gaze out the window at a pair of crows pecking at a discarded box of KFC wings. “But then there came a point when she couldn’t do it anymore,” I say. “You came along. And she asked to have me removed.”

  “She didn’t know what you were like,” says Ray defensively. “She expected you to be a robot or something, steel under the flesh. For all we knew, you could have been in a pod or a freezer until it was time to replace her! She hated you, but she would never have tried to destroy you if she knew that you were, you know, like this. With feelings and thoughts. She was better than that.”

  “All right,” I say, rubbing my wrist, where my tattoo stings.

  “Are they real?”

  I blink at him. “Are what real?”

  “Your thoughts and feelings? Or do you just react to things the way you’ve been told or taught to?”

  “Of course they’re real,” I say indignantly. The cheek of him. “Are your feelings real?”

  He reaches across the table toward me. His fingers very gently brush against my throat, a light, tracing touch, like butterflies’ wings against my skin. I jerk back, and all over my body my skin prickles with goose bumps. I think quite suddenly of a zoo, a house, a light thumb on the soft skin of my wrist. Of a dream, when somebody’s lips bent to my elbow.

  “You felt that,” says Ray. “You felt it like she did, like normal people do. Last year, when we used to go out on weekends, I sometimes touched you and you reacted like she did.”

  “Don’t do that again,” I say.

  There’s wild hope in Ray’s eyes. It’s like a fever. “I talked to someone a couple days ago,” he says. “She said Amarra might not be gone.”

  “What?”

  “She might still be alive. In you. The way it’s supposed to be. Don’t you think it would explain why her mother was so sure she saw her when she looked at you? And maybe the only thing stopping her from waking up, or however else you want to describe it, is you. Because you have your own mind and your own personality, so you’re kind of stamping her out.”

  I stare at him in disbelief. “You can’t be serious,” I say. “Was this person a Weaver?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then she doesn’t have any idea what she’s talking about,” I snap. “No one knows what we’re capable of except the Weavers. No one understands us except them.”

  “She seemed to know what she was talking about,” says Ray, gritting his teeth. “Why won’t you even consider it?”

  “Because it’s outrageous. Amarra’s dead, Ray. You can’t wake her up. I know you want her back, but I’m me.”

  I stand, ready to leave, my fingernails digging into my palms. Ray follows me out onto the street. His f
ace is pleading, desperate.

  “If there was a chance—”

  “All right, let’s pretend,” I repeat angrily. “Let’s pretend there’s a chance. So what happens now? You know me. You know I think and I feel like you do. Will you ask me to disappear, die, so that she can wake up?”

  “It wouldn’t be like that,” he says. “You have to know I don’t want to hurt you. You don’t have much time, anyway—”

  I could slap him. “Charming. Throw that in my face.”

  He flushes. “That just slipped out.”

  “But it doesn’t make this any better. Do you really think becoming Amarra is a way for me to escape being killed?”

  “Isn’t it, though? The woman I talked to, she said you wouldn’t die or anything, you’d just be different. She said that if it worked, Amarra would wake up and you’d have done what they made you for. You’d be perfect.”

  “Well, it seems to me that she’s off her head,” I snap. “I think I’d know if there was someone else sharing space in my body.”

  “Why would you? You told me you’ve always had her there, a part of her anyway, so maybe it wouldn’t feel any different—”

  “Stop! This isn’t possible. And even if it was, it doesn’t sound like perfect to me. It sounds like I’d be escaping the Loom, but I’d be dying anyway. I wouldn’t just step aside and sacrifice myself so Amarra can have another life. There are people I would give everything for, but she isn’t one of them.”

  “You were made so she could have that second chance!”

  “She didn’t want it!” I shout back. People on the street are beginning to stare, but I don’t care. “She didn’t want me, remember? I don’t owe her a bloody thing. She wanted her one life and she had it. You love her, you want her back, and I understand that, but all this”—I raise my hands, show them to him—“all of me? This is mine. You don’t get to think about taking it away.”

  I turn on my heel and run away. This time, he doesn’t stop me. I leave him shocked and dark-eyed on the pavement, in the blazing sun.

  14

  Judas

  The fight on the pavement effectively ends our “accidental” encounters. Ray and I don’t have another exam together until the beginning of June. English Lit. It’s the last exam for most of us. It’s also the first time I see him again.

  Whenever I think of what he said, I taste anger and hurt. I also feel guilty for my outburst. It was unfair not to listen, not to stay calm and explain things better.

  And who am I to judge Ray for putting his hope in outrageous ideas when I spend every day thinking of insane and impossible ways to elude the Sleep Order?

  He doesn’t look happy when I spot him outside the exam room. But he’s not angry, either. I’m used to his temper, but today his shoulders are hunched and his head hangs low, as though there’s a cold wind on this summer’s day. I try shrugging it off as we file into the exam room.

  The exam goes better than I’d expected. It’s even relaxing, to forget about the real world and concentrate on Lady Macbeth and Heathcliff and Cathy and Keats instead.

  After the exam, Lekha skips in circles around me as we leave, singing under her breath about holidays and freedom and death to all exams.

  “Hey,” says Ray, coming up behind Lekha. “Sonya’s decided to have an end-of-exam party at her parents’ farm tonight. Everyone’s invited. Do you two want to go?”

  “I don’t think she’ll want me there,” I point out.

  He shakes his head. “She said you could come if you wanted. Asked me to tell you.”

  Lekha raises her eyebrows. “And why is she being so magnanimous?”

  “Dunno,” he says. “So. Going?”

  “I can’t,” says Lekha, disappointed. “I’m going away with my mother for the weekend. I told you so last week,” she adds, as though Ray is personally responsible.

  “Yeah, but even if I’d told her so, it wouldn’t have changed her plans. You do know we’re not exactly best friends, right? She won’t do anything to oblige me.”

  Lekha sighs. “Alas. Take notes. I want to hear all about it later. Conceal no gossip from me, unless it involves Sam, in which case I just don’t care. Are you going to go, Eva?”

  “I don’t think so. Isn’t her farm halfway out of the city?”

  “I can give you a ride,” Ray offers.

  I frown at him. “Why?”

  “I guess it’s my way of apologizing for the other day,” he says. He glances at Lekha, who rolls her eyes and takes six pointed steps away. I stifle a smile. Ray gives me a miserable look. “I shouldn’t have said those things.”

  “It’s okay. I didn’t mean to get so angry.”

  “You could let me make it up to you. I figure that if we went to the party, everyone else will see us there. If they see us being friendly, they might decide they have no excuse not to act the same way.”

  He has a point. And it’s a sweet thing to offer to do.

  I nod cautiously. “Okay.”

  He gives me a rather twisted smile in response. He doesn’t seem over the moon that I agreed, but I let it go. Lekha, who has obviously been listening in, skips back to us. “Can we get out of here?” She shepherds us in the direction of the gates. “I could fry an egg on my head right now, it’s so effing hot. And I need to get home and pack for this weekend in the wild.”

  “You do know that saying effing makes you sound like a dimwit, right?” says Ray, sounding almost normal.

  She beams back at him. “And you know that saying dimwit makes you sound like a dimwit, right?”

  We separate at the gates. Ray goes off to his car, after asking me if picking me up at eight o’clock tonight will be okay, and Lekha and I go to find her mother’s car and driver. We’re about halfway back to Amarra’s house when Lekha sits bolt upright.

  “Do you think Ray means tonight to be a sort of date?”

  “No,” I say. “He’s just trying to be nice.”

  “And he likes being around you,” she says shrewdly. “I can tell.”

  “I’m not so sure like is the right word for it. He sees me and he’s talking to me, but he sees her, too. He has to. We look the same.”

  “Heavens, I don’t know how you cope,” says Lekha. “It boggles my brain.”

  I eat dinner early that evening because of the party. I help Neil cook, and while we’re eating, I tell them I’m going out. I don’t know if I’m supposed to ask permission. But of all people, Nik is the one who asks me when I intend to be back, which makes the others laugh.

  “I’m probably not going to want to stay out late,” I say. “I should be back by ten-ish. I’ll call if I’m going to be any later.”

  I don’t particularly want to be there well into the wee hours. My classmates don’t like me, no matter what Ray hopes to achieve, and if they keep feeling that way, it’s going to be an uncomfortable evening.

  It takes me twenty minutes to decide what to wear. I’m tempted to wear the black dress Mina Ma gave me, but it’s too nice for a spontaneous end-of-exam party. I don’t want to look overdressed. Amarra’s style was casual and classy and it’s a style I like, but it leaves me very little room to go out tonight looking like me and not like she would have done.

  In the end, I choose a pair of black leggings and a silvery tunic and I find a pair of black heels in the closet. I feel almost silly, spending this much time thinking about something I will only wear for a few hours, but I really want to look like me.

  I don’t bother with makeup, apart from black eye pencil. I clip my hair up into a loose knot. There. I smile. Now I look like me. We aren’t going out in public, just to Sonya’s house, where everyone already knows what I am. And if they’re going to treat me like an echo anyway, why hide?

  I’m ready in time and waiting outside when Ray drives up.

  “I thought I’d have to wait,” he says when I jump in. “Amarra took half a year to get ready if we went out anywhere.”

  “Was it worth it?”


  “Every time,” he says, his eyes sad.

  We make polite, strained conversation the whole way to Sonya’s farm. For once, Ray is more tense and uneasy than I am. His grip on the wheel is so tight I can see the veins pop in the backs of his hands. I wonder if he regrets asking me to go with him.

  “Why are you so jumpy?” I ask.

  “Why do you always ask so many questions?”

  “Why are you answering my question with another question?”

  He makes a half-irritated sound. “This could go on awhile.”

  “I can ask questions till I’m blue in the face,” I assure him. “So I wouldn’t try to compete. And you still haven’t answered me.”

  “I still don’t want to,” he replies.

  I stare out the window, watching the flickering tubes of the streetlights flash by. They look like falling stars when Ray drives fast enough. The pattern is hypnotic. And eerily like the lights racing by on the night Amarra laughed in his car, flew through the shattered glass, and died.

  I wonder if she felt any different that night. If she knew somehow, instinctively, that she was in danger. Does anyone know?

  I shudder with cold, wondering why I thought of that.

  “Why didn’t she have her seatbelt on?”

  “A lot of people don’t bother wearing them here. Road laws are often held in contempt.”

  “But she must have been the seatbelt type. She washed her apples, for heaven’s sake. Why didn’t she have her seatbelt on that night?”

  “She was small,” he mutters under his breath. “As you probably know. If she had her seatbelt on, she couldn’t reach far enough to kiss me.” He touches his neck. “So she took it off.”

  I wish I hadn’t asked.

  Sonya’s farm is tucked away off the street, up a winding dirt road sheltered by trees and half-broken fences. There are ten or twelve cars parked in the large yard in front of the house when we get there, and I can hear the low throb of music. I feel a nervous twinge in my stomach. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ray checking his watch, looking strained and rather white. What on earth is he so edgy about? Maybe he’s worried about what his friends and classmates will think of him, hanging out with his dead girlfriend’s copy. It could go over very badly.