The Almost Girl – ebook edition (2 page)

The sky above me is dark and wide with nothing in it. No stars, no moon, nothing. Just blackness. I suck in a shallow breath, keeping my jaw tightly closed, knowing how easily I can bite my own tongue off if I’m not careful. My chest aches with the strained intake of air, but I already know from years of training that it’s mostly bruises, and nothing’s broken. Hot white dots cloud my vision and I focus myself, searching for my backpack. It was flung from me upon impact with the ground, but it’s just a foot away.

Reach out slowly, the bag is right there
, I tell myself, but my body refuses to cooperate. Inside I know that it is too late, I can feel myself shutting down. I should have rested today, stayed in bed and given myself a chance to recuperate from the jump, but I’d been stupid, arrogant. I hadn’t wanted to lose any time, and now I’m going to pay the price. My eyes slip shut.

As if from afar, I hear a rustling and then a loud banging. Someone yelling. Shadows flit across my closed eyelids. “Help,” I whisper. “Help.”

“Oh god! She came off a bike. Don’t move her; she could have a concussion.”

“Hey! Hey, you OK?”

The voices are dull as if coming from far away. My thoughts won’t even turn toward them. Noises followed by a dull thud as someone stoops beside me. Gentle fingers slip across my arm, moving upward to open my visor.

Backpack.
I try to say my single thought but my tongue is thick against my teeth. I can only open and close sticky lips that taste like metal.

“She’s alive! Help me get this helmet off. Careful with her.”

My head lolls backward as the helmet slips off, but I’m caught by strong hands and cradled gently. A bottle is placed against my lips and I feel cool water trickle into my mouth, washing away the coppery taste. It hurts to swallow, but I ignore the pain. The water moistens my gums and loosens my tongue.

“Injector… backpack…” It won’t be long before I go into shock. “Have to… stick…”

“Don’t worry, I got it. I’m allergic, too,” one of the voices says. I hear a rustle and feel the rough jab of the needle piercing into my skin through my jeans, and then soft fingers are brushing against my forehead. “Hang on, it’s going to be OK.”

“Should we call 911?” the other voice asks. “What’s with the needle?”

“No hospital, please. Be OK…” I direct my plea to the one who’d administered the auto-injector. “Please, can’t afford…”

“Rest,” the voice says. “It’s OK, Jake, looks like an allergic reaction. Could be peanuts, bees, anything, don’t know.” I hear the rustling of a wrapper. “My aunt’s off tonight. I’ll take her home with me and see what she says. If she says to go to the hospital, I’ll take her.”

“What about her bike? We shouldn’t just leave it, right? We can probably get it in the back of my truck,” the voice belonging to Jake says. “I can take a better look at it tomorrow.”

“OK. Help me get her inside first. Careful, she may be hurt from when it went off the road.”

“Thank you,” I murmur as they lift me gently into the backseat of the truck. They are the only words I can manage before my brain shuts down. I can feel the serum making its way through my body, stopping my cells from going into anaphylactic shock.

The boy’s right – I am having an allergic reaction, just not to any food.

In some dark corner of my mind, I know that I should be worried or be afraid that I have fallen into the wrong hands, but somehow I know… I
trust
that I am safe. The thing, is I can’t remember the last time I felt safe. Oblivion sweeps my remaining consciousness away.

 

When I open my eyes again, I’m lying in a bed in an airy room. It’s quiet and peaceful. A fan on the ceiling wafts cool air into my face, and for a second it feels as if I’m in some kind of dream. Then I see the boy slumped in the armchair in front of the window and instantly know that this is reality. He seems asleep, although I can’t really tell from the way his hair is curling into his face. I search for my backpack. It’s sitting next to him on the floor. Sitting up gingerly, I swing my left leg over the side of the bed and wince at the pain now radiating up my back and around my ribs.

“You shouldn’t really move, you know.” The boy is awake now and I can feel him watching me carefully. I ignore him and shift my other leg to the floor. The pain is excruciating, echoing along every nerve ending like fire.

“My aunt says you need to keep that leg up,” he says and moves to stand next to me, his hand pressing onto my shoulder. With his free hand, he carelessly shoves the hair out of his face and sits beside me on the edge of the bed. “You’re pretty banged up.”

Our eyes collide and it is like I am being sucked into a vortex that I can’t control.

It’s
him
.

The boy I’m supposed to find.

His hair is lighter, almost golden brown, and swept to the side around his face, but his nose and chin are the spitting image of the one I know. And his eyes… those impossibly green eyes, filled with vibrant life. I’d prepared myself that he would look like him but they’re
so
alike that it leaves me speechless.

And he found me. He
saved
me.

I shake myself hard. What are the odds? Searching for someone for nearly three years only to find them via an accident of fate? The questions make my head pound, and I blink, disoriented.

“Where am I… What happened?” I croak. My voice is unfamiliar. Weak.

“Don’t you remember? You crashed your bike and had some kind of crazy allergic reaction. You’re at my house now. You didn’t want me to take you to the hospital because you said something about money, so I brought you here,” he says in a rush and then clarifies, “My aunt’s a doctor.”

“How long have I been here?” I say and try to stand, gasping at the soreness of my ribs.

His nearness is overwhelming, confusing me as thoughts of Cale race through my clouded brain. My throat is raw, and the effort to swallow makes my head pound. A wave of dizziness overcomes me and I fall back to the bed. A knife-like pain slices through my leg.

The boy leans forward to grasp my shoulder gently. “Look, you really should–”

“Don’t touch me,” I snap, flinching away from the warmth in his fingers. My body may be beaten, but it’s still poised to attack. The boy’s offended expression throws me, and my anger fades as my brain struggles to keep up. “Sorry, I’m still a little freaked out, and I don’t like people touching me,” I say by way of apology. He still looks miffed so I force a tiny smile to my lips. “You go to Horrow, right?”

“Yes, we’re in the same Physics class,” he says, the hurt look draining away slowly, “and in the same project group. I only knew who you were because Mrs Taylor asked me to help you out if you needed a hand since you’re new. You started last week, right?”

“Yes,” I say, remembering the profile of a boy I’d barely given a second glance to. I grind my teeth together – that had been sheer carelessness on my part. Or maybe all those jumps are finally catching up to me; otherwise, why else would I be lying here in this bed, weak as a newborn kitten?

“I’m Caden, by the way,” he says, sticking his hand out. Staring at his fingers as if they’re snakes, I raise my hand in an awkward half-wave. My smile feels forced. His hand falls away, and the weird look returns to his face. “You’re not too friendly, are you?”

I breathe out the pent-up air in my lungs and feel the rush of adrenaline recede. I stare at the boy through the corner of my eye who could be Cale. No, not Cale. They may look the same, but they’re entirely different people underneath their doppelganger skins.

“Sorry. I mean, I know who you are,” I whisper under my breath.

It’s not Cale
, I remind myself for good measure.

My head still feels wobbly like some kind of horrible hangover. Only, I wouldn’t know what that would be like – the only time I’d tasted spirits had been with Cale, celebrating the Winter Solstice when I was ten. It was an experience I never want to repeat. But I’d seen other people drunk enough to guess what a hangover would feel like.

A tremor runs through my hands and I flex them automatically. My veins are blue against my skin, the tendons still corded and raised along the backs of my hands. Black and blue bruises mottle the length of both arms. My torso probably looks worse. A hollow feeling fills my stomach as I realize just how close the shakes had brought me to an irreversible outcome last night. Too close… and now that I’d found the boy, I needed to have all my wits functioning. Others would be close too. The ones who would also come for him.

“I like your tattoo,” Caden says, interrupting the turn of my thoughts. Instinctively, my fingers touch the gold circular seal and the three black lines – two whole and one broken – beneath it on my neck. “Does it mean anything?”

I almost want to laugh. A filial brand and a line for each traitor I’d killed? He’d be running away as fast as he could or calling the police if he even guessed what it meant.

“No.”

“So, what’s your name?” Caden asks, shoving his hands in his pockets. I had to give him credit for trying. In that, he was just like Cale – neither of them took “no” for an answer.

“Riven.”

“I thought that was your last name?”

“Riven is my last name,” I say, and bite back a grin at his immediate frown. “I only have one name. Where I come from we don’t have two names, just one.” I see his frown deepen, and kick myself for my telling choice of words.

“Where you come from,” he repeats slowly. “Everyone has two names here, unless you’re like Usher or Madonna.” At my blank stare, he clarifies, “You know, the singers?”

I nod quickly. I’ve seen them on the television. “Just Riven,” I say.

“Just Riven.” He draws my name out slowly like he’s trying to taste it or something. “That’s a weird name. I mean, unique,” he says hastily. “Does it mean anything?”

“It means ripped apart.”

“Oh.” I can see that he’s at a loss for words. I don’t blame him. Back home, my name strikes fear into anyone who hears it – but that’s more a factor of the reputation that precedes me than anything else.

From his expression, I can see him wondering why someone would name a child with such an odd, violent name. I feel my lips curling in a smile – as far as names go, I like the fierceness of it, the simplicity. In a weird way, it fits me.

After a couple minutes, Caden speaks. “No idea what mine means. So, is that from Asia or Africa, then? You know, where people have one last name? Is that where you grew up?”

I can only manage a terse nod. At Caden’s questions, I wish I could pull out the notebook in my backpack and leaf through it. Even after three years of blending in—appearance, accent and behavior-wise—I’m still not familiar with the exact geographical topography of this world. His questions are making my head spin, and I can’t afford to make any more mistakes, not when I am almost home… now that I’ve finally found him.

I shake myself mentally once more. If my body were stronger, I’d grab him and go, but in my weakened condition, that would be sure suicide for us both. I’d die, and he’d never make it without me. Not there.

My eyes fall to the glass of water sitting on the bedside table next to an alarm clock, and I take a slow sip. It’s almost 11 on Saturday morning. I need to make some kind of exit and compose myself for travel. And the travel I’m talking about is not as simple as buying an airplane ticket and showing up at a mass-transit airport; it’s way more complicated. Any number of things could go wrong, especially when there is more than one traveler – one of them a fugitive, the other a target.

“You don’t look Asian,” Caden continues his monologue, considering I’m barely participating in the conversation. “I mean, you look like me, well, except the hair. Yours has green and blue in it,” he points out. I touch the strands and remember that I’d dyed it four schools before, after the incident with the police. It was haphazardly chopped around my face except for a single braid that wound down one side.

“It’s cool, your hair,” Caden adds and then reddens. “For a punk look, I mean.”

I’d butchered it myself when I’d been short on time, leaving only the slim blue and gold braid. I hadn’t been able to let it go – the only reminder of my position, my
rank
. But overall, it was an edgy, fierce look that tended to make people stay away, which I’d liked.

It wasn’t doing much to shut Caden up, though. “You definitely stand out, especially at Horrow,” he remarks. “The girls are all pretty much vanilla. You meet any of them yet?”

“No. I keep to myself.”

A wry smile. “I get it. You don’t like being touched, you want to be alone, and you’re not looking for any friends.”

Caden moves to stand near the window and moves my backpack from the floor to the chair. He doesn’t open it but just stares at it thoughtfully. It’s a brief respite from the conversation, so I use the silence to figure out how to tactfully say thank you and leave.

He eyes me. “What exactly happened to you last night?”

But I’m saved from having to respond to Caden or tell him rudely to shut up, when a neatly dressed woman enters the room. She is no taller than I am but sturdily built; she looks like a strong woman. Her dark hair is pulled off of her face into a tidy bun at the base of her neck. She has kind eyes with lines at the corners, but there’s something else in them, too… warning that her kindness shouldn’t be mistaken for weakness.

“How’s our patient doing this morning?”

She glances at Caden, who is still flushed, and then back to me where I’m sitting on the edge of the bed with a frown on my face. A strange expression curls the corners of her lips upward, and I can feel my brows snapping together even more tightly. I don’t recognize or like the amused look on her face, as if she thinks there’s something going on between the two of us.

“I’m Caden’s aunt,” she says to me. “He’s been in here constantly. I’ve never seen him so solicitous of anyone.”