As I Wake (19 page)
Authors: Elizabeth Scott
Tags: #Fantasy, #Fiction, #General, #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic, #Psychology, #Love & Romance, #Cognitive Psychology, #Law & Crime
My skin feels tight, my throat feels tight, I can’t get enough air, I am not the Ava I am supposed to be and something knows this, is calling me.
Someone.
I get up and look out the window, dread pouring over me, filing me up.
I see Clementine. She is standing on the lawn, standing right where I took my first steps out of Jane’s house.
She is standing there, and she is waiting for me.
I move out of Ava’s room quietly, slip downstairs and outside.
Clementine doesn’t look surprised to see me. She doesn’t look like much of anything. She looks worn out, drained.
“Thank you,” she says before I can say anything. “I—I wanted to make sure Morgan went home and you did that. He . . . I can’t feel him here anymore. Can you?”
“No,” I say, and she almost smiles at the anger in my voice.
But only almost.
I stare at her and she looks away, stares up at Jane’s dark bedroom windows. “It’s funny. I promised her I could bring her daughter back and I did, in a way. You fought me, you know. You—I put safeguards in place. Your memory was supposed to be gone and I even made it so you’d get headaches if you did remember anything. But you kept going. All of this—I did all this for Morgan, and I’ll never see him again.”
“He’s safe, then?” I say, meaning that he’s away from her, he’s free, and she looks at me then, sees what I mean.
“He’s more than safe, and no, I’m not sorry for what I did,” she says after a moment, her smile all teeth, and shifts her weight from one foot to another, making all of her blur for a moment, not like Morgan’s pale fading but something stronger, something that makes all of her vanish for a split second. “He’s alive. He’s alive and he—he’ll be fine. He’ll forget you, I know it.”
I stare at her smile, start to say something, and then see how pale she is. How faded.
No shadow.
“Yes,” Clementine says. “It’s happening to me too. I didn’t—my anchor died on me, you see. The Clementine here, who I kept so safe, who I made sure would sleep through all of this . . . she’s gone. Her heart stopped. Weak. I didn’t expect that, and now I’m stuck here. I thought I had it all figured out. I could come, I’d make sure the Clementine here was sedated so I could stay for a while. I just—all those years around death, watching my daughter throw herself away for what she thought was freedom, seeing her and her husband die, trying to keep an eye on Morgan while keeping my own head because I was sure I could find a way to make sure anyone dangerous could be sent somewhere else because there are always variations of where we are that need us. All that, and now—”
She laughs, a soft sound that is like a sob. “But I never thought about what would happen if I went to a place where I was, or would be, and the me who was or would be died. I ran tests. I’ve never died before and I’ve been in worlds—” She shakes her head.
“I never thought—I only thought about doing what I had to, and then going. But this self tied herself to me just like I did, didn’t she? I didn’t see—I never saw that if you went into a place where you already were, you had to deal with being two. Is that—is this how it is for you?”
“I—”
She shivers, and I fall silent. “I can feel all of them, all the versions of me I’ve seen and they—they’re calling me. I can’t hear anything but them. There are so many. I didn’t realize what I was doing. I should have thought about it more, but I wanted to stay alive. I’d gone from Security to Science. I was so close to dying myself and I wasn’t—well, I didn’t want to.”
She closes her eyes.
“That’s better,” she says. “It’s not you I don’t want to see, although that was always the idea. But now I just don’t want to see this place. I can’t believe—of all the places to die, this one?”
She shakes her head, and opens her eyes. “I didn’t think you’d do it, you know. But you really do love him. You never would have turned him in, would you?”
“No,” I say. “I wouldn’t have done that.”
“How do you know?” she says. “How do you know what’s really in your own heart?”
“I know,” I say, my voice strong, and it’s true. All I have now is my heart, and in every memory I have, in everything I know, I never once thought of Morgan as I was supposed to. He was never a number, never what he was supposed to be. I was afraid of it, intrigued by it—and him—and then lost my heart. And I lost it willingly. Gladly.
It has always been his and I broke it so he could live.
“You should have—if only you hadn’t been assigned to Morgan,” she says. “You are so loyal in the wrong way for—well, I suppose that’s why it was so easy for me to send you here. All I had to do was tell you he’d sent me to find you. To help you. That all you had to do was to take my hand and close your eyes.”
“That’s how you—that’s how it happened?”
She nods. “You were scared, and I knew—well, I knew who you were. I knew you had to go. So here you are. And now here I am. I—I’m almost sorry, Ava.”
I take a step toward her.
“Send me back,” I say, pleading, my voice cracking, and she shakes her head.
“I—even if I wanted to, which I don’t, I can’t. Everything is—” She closes her eyes again. “I can’t stop hearing them, all of the people I am—so many, desert, ocean, palaces, stars—and it—no. I can’t. It hurts, just being here. Just breathing. I don’t know how Morgan stood it.”
“He’s better than you.”
“Don’t be so obvious,” she says, and then opens her eyes, looks up at the sky. “But you’re right. He is. And I—I can see why he loves you now. “
“Who told you about me?” I say. “About us. At least tell me that. Just—”
“That, I would do,” she says. “But I don’t remember now. All I can still see is you there, waiting. I can still remember knowing I’d save Morgan, but the rest—it’s all fading.”
She smiles at me then, a real smile, sweet and true, and I see Morgan in that smile.
I think about Morgan then; I miss him, and nothing will change that, not ever, and then Clementine shudders again, her whole body shaking, and turns away, walking off into the night.
She doesn’t look back, doesn’t say anything else.
Doesn’t say she’s sorry.
44.
CLEMENTINE’S FOUND DEAD
in the morning. It makes the
Wake Up!
morning news because the person who finds the body, a neighbor who stopped by when she saw the front door open, swears the body she saw looked like it had died weeks ago, but Clementine had just talked to people at the hospital about moving. Been seen there a few days before that.
in the morning. It makes the
Wake Up!
morning news because the person who finds the body, a neighbor who stopped by when she saw the front door open, swears the body she saw looked like it had died weeks ago, but Clementine had just talked to people at the hospital about moving. Been seen there a few days before that.
And, if that wasn’t enough, the neighbor is sure that she saw two bodies for a moment, the long dead one and another, a “twin,” two bodies somehow twisted together, both of their mouths open in unheard screams.
The neighbor is currently in the hospital “under observation.” Seeing a dead body is hard for anyone, the doctor interviewed on television says. “The mind plays tricks,” he adds. “It will see things that aren’t there in an attempt to cope.”
“It’s—it’s hard to believe she’s really gone,” Jane says as she turns off the TV. “And poor Mrs. Dean, finding her that way . . . There are friends—were friends. No wonder she saw things that weren’t there.” Her voice is hesitant on the last words, uncertain.
“You think?” I say.
Jane looks at me.
“No,” she finally says. “I’m sure that—I’m sure there were things in that house that no one should see. But it’s over now, Ava, it’s really over. Clementine can’t—I know she hurt you, but she can’t anymore.”
Jane’s right about that. I think of how I asked Clementine who had told her about me and Morgan, and how she’d forgotten.
How she said she didn’t remember how to send me home.
How that, even if she did, she wouldn’t.
“It is over,” I say, and Jane frowns a little and touches my hands.
“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?”
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.
knew
her, now.
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