The Lost Girl (15 page)

I take a step away, like an animal preparing its defenses. His eyes are dreadful and dark with hatred.

“I know what you are,” he says harshly.

“I—”

“I’ve been an idiot,” he says. “I should have seen it at the start. Jesus, I’ve spent whole days with you! I
touched
you.” He covers his face. “I knew something was wrong. I knew you were different, but I
hoped
—shit, I’ve been so stupid! I believed you when you talked about how you hurt your head, how you had problems with your memory. What a joke. I
wanted
to believe you. I didn’t want to
think
that she might be gone, because it means I killed her; it means she’ll never come
back
—”

I retreat instinctively, as though the sound of his voice is a rush of air that has pushed me backward. He sounds like his pain and fury have been bottled up too long.

“Ray—”

“
Don’t
say my name! Don’t ever say it! I don’t know how you can stand to be what you are. Doesn’t it make you sick, stepping in and stealing her life? Or do you not feel things like that because you’re not actually a person?”

I take a deep, shuddering breath, trying to hide my hurt and my anger. I open my mouth to deny it, to tell him he’s got it wrong, to convince him the way I ought to. But I can’t speak. I can’t do it. I can’t look at him, not the way he is now, wracked with grief and fury, and tell him he’s wrong. He’d be more likely to hit me than believe me. Rightly, too.

“Just go away,” he snarls. “Why did they send you here? You’re not even supposed to exist anymore!”

I stare at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I thought—” He stops, almost visibly bites his tongue. His fists clench and unclench by his sides. “Why did you come?”

“I had to.”

“Well, we don’t want you here!” he almost shouts. “Stop pretending to be someone you’re not; stop trying to be
her
. You’re not! You’re
nothing
, you’re not even
human
.” His voice drops, becomes low and deadly and pained. “You’ve been lying to everyone. But it stops now. I’ll make them see how you’ve tricked us. They’ll all see you for what you are.”

“If you’d listen to me—”

“Why?” he demands. “What do I owe
you
? All you’ve done is lie to me. You let me believe you were her. Didn’t you think we deserved to know she’s gone?”

I try to say something, but nothing comes out; my lips move soundlessly. Ray strides past the door. He turns back once to say one last thing.

“You’re nothing but a cold, lying monster,
echo
.”

The classroom door slams shut after him. I flinch and swipe angrily at my eyes, making sure no tears have slipped out onto my cheeks.

So that’s it, then. I stare dully at the windows, the afternoon light, the sky. It’s finished.

8
Stolen

M
y force of will has never been tested so severely. As I get off the bus, it’s all I can do to keep chatting to Nikhil and Sasha without breaking off, or crying, or frightening them. I do my best to seem normal. But only one thought runs through my mind as I look into their faces: their parents might go to prison because I made a stupid mistake. The ground beneath my feet feels shaky; it’s not solid enough to hold me up anymore.

Erik
warned
me. He told me what exposure would cost us. I tried. I pulled it off for months. But I slipped in the end. I grew up refusing to be Amarra, and now I’m paying for that.

At the house, I settle Sasha in front of the telly and wait until Nikhil heads out to play cricket with some of the neighborhood kids. The moment he’s gone, I race up the stairs. I can hear Alisha in her attic studio, clattering away, working feverishly on something new.

“Ray knows,” I burst out before she can speak. “He knows about me. What I am.”

Alisha’s eyes widen. “You’re not a what,” she says. “You’re a
who
.” She rubs her forehead, leaving behind a patch of paint. “So he knows about the new body?”

“Yes.”

“But doesn’t he know it’s you?” she demands.

“He doesn’t believe it is,” I falter. “Like—like Dad.” The word is alien to me. “He said he’d tell everyone in class, make sure they knew the truth. He could go to the police. Anyone else could. I just—I wanted to warn you. You could take Nik and Sasha and go away somewhere so the police don’t find you. Leave the country—”

I sound hysterical, but I can’t stop myself. I
can’t
watch them go to prison. How can I let that happen to Nikhil and Sasha? Or to Alisha? After all this time living with them, I care. I even like Neil. He doesn’t care much for me, but he’s been kind to me regardless.

“Amarra,” says Alisha, very calmly and firmly, “take deep breaths.” She holds my face in her hands and looks me in the eye. “We’re not going anywhere, not yet. If Ray won’t listen to you,
I’ll
talk to him. You know him. He always acts before thinking about it. But he’s not cruel or cold. He’d never betray you.”

“He doesn’t think I’m that person,” I miserably remind her. I think about that intense hate in his face. How the light died and he became someone else. I liked who he’d been: that he was nice and funny and moody. I liked it when he liked me. I never deserved it. I tricked him. I lied to him. Now he will always hate me.

“But you are that person,” Alisha insists.

I nod. Even now, I have to pretend. I could tell her the truth, scream that they’re right and I’m
not
Amarra. But I’ve seen the pain that truth has caused. I saw it in Ray’s face only an hour ago. How can I tell her that her daughter’s dead? If her own family won’t take what little hope she has away from her, how can I?

“I’ll talk to him,” says Alisha. “If I can make him understand what his lack of belief will do to us, he may be willing to keep quiet.” She straightens. Her eyes are anxious, but she smiles at me. “You stay here and watch Sasha, baby. I’ll go see Ray.”

“But—” I want to tell her it’s futile, but she has to do this. She won’t give up her life and her husband’s life, her children’s, if there’s a chance she can make Ray understand how she feels.

So I step back. “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

Her face softens. “Everyone makes mistakes,” she says. “It’s not a crime.” For a moment, something flickers in her eyes, something that makes me wonder if she sees me and not Amarra. She blinks. “I’m the reason you’re here. In a shitty situation. You can forget I said shit, by the way. Ray drove that car too fast, and he’s also the reason you’re here. We gave you a body and all these
rules
, shoved you into something strange and different.” God, she could be talking to either of us. “When you’ve been put in such a small box, there are really only so many steps you can take before you hit something.”

She kisses the top of my head, then walks past me down the stairs.

I sit on the steps and wrap my arms around my knees. I messed up, but maybe it would have happened anyway, sooner or later. Ray was never entirely sure of me. Amarra must have told him she had an echo. He always knew I existed. But if he tells the rest of the class, someone’s bound to go to the police. I wish I knew how to protect us all. How to make sure Nikhil and Sasha don’t lose something else.

Can they prove I am an echo? I don’t know if the Mark can be removed with laser surgery, but it surely can’t withstand a knife removing the skin? I almost laugh at how reckless and awful that idea is, but if I can replace the Mark with a wound—a scar from the accident splitting open, perhaps—if I can somehow replicate Amarra’s old scars in time, maybe no one will be able to prove that I am not her. Or maybe they will. I don’t know. I don’t know how the Weavers and my familiars arranged this.

My panicked, rash thoughts tumble one after another as I sit there on the steps. It’s only the thought of Sasha downstairs, knowing I should check on her, that makes me get up and go down again. I sit on the sofa with her and wait for Alisha to come back.

It’s a couple of hours before she does. She goes to the kitchen to talk to Neil, and I run in after them. I don’t know how Neil feels about me right now, but I have to know what happened.

“He was angry,” says Alisha, “and in pain. He wouldn’t believe me. He told me that you and I, Neil, we had no right to keep the truth to ourselves, that we aren’t the only ones who loved her. And he wouldn’t make any promises not to tell the rest of your classmates. He thinks they should know. But,” she adds as both Neil and I stare at her in alarm, “he did say he wouldn’t tell the police. He seems to understand that it’s the kids I’m worried about.”

She smiles. I can’t help feeling relieved too. At least no matter what happens at school, Nikhil and Sasha won’t suffer for this.

But Neil says, “Can we be sure someone else won’t go to the police? If he tells her friends—”

“He seems to believe they’ll keep their mouths shut,” says Alisha, rather tiredly. “He says no one would show so little respect for Amarra’s memory or so little care for two innocent children. I did try,” she says to me. “I tried to tell him, but he refuses to believe you’re you. I’m worried about how your friends will treat you if they won’t believe it either.”

“That’s okay,” I say, giving her the most reassuring smile I can muster. “Honestly, it’s going to be fine. As long as no one tells the police, nothing else matters.”

I catch Neil’s eye, and there’s a look on his face that tells me he knows I’m lying. If Ray tells everyone, he knows they will never forgive me either.

“You don’t have to go back to school,” he offers. It’s kind of him. Kinder than I deserve right now.

I shake my head. Turning away from school will only reinforce his belief that I’m nothing like his daughter. It will only shake Alisha’s belief. It won’t make them any happier.

“They’re my friends,” I say, because that’s my line and even Neil might believe it. “I can’t
not
see them again. They’re too important to me.”

We look at one another in silence for a minute or two. Typically, it is Alisha who regains her composure first.

“It’s time to eat,” she says firmly. “Why don’t we make Sasha happy and pick up some malai chicken from the club?”

I spend the night and the rest of the weekend fighting a constant urge to be sick, my nerves all knotted up into dread. Every time I think about school my stomach hurts, and I have to take Alisha’s sleeping pills to get to sleep at all. I don’t know who Ray might have talked to over the weekend. It wasn’t Sonya or Jaya: both called me a couple of times and sounded normal. But Ray will have plenty of opportunities to talk to them and everybody else at school.

Neil offers to call school on Monday morning and tell them I’m not feeling well, but I say I will go. Alisha seems pleased. She’s the kind of person who thinks hiding is the wrong way to deal with a problem.

I scramble to get ready, looking for a set of my uniform that’s not in the wash, finally finding a spare skirt and shirt in the closet. I grab one of Amarra’s favorite necklaces, for no reason other than I feel like I have to try doubly hard to look like her today, and I curse myself the whole way through. I so, so badly don’t want to go to school today. Or ever again, really, but I have to. If I don’t, the illusion breaks and I transform into an echo my familiars don’t need to keep.

On the way to the bus stop, I have to be sick by the side of the road, a gesture that excites no little attention and thoroughly alarms Sasha and Nikhil. Nik suggests I go home, and he even offers to walk me back most of the way.

“It’s okay,” I insist. “I’m better now.”

Hardly.

I straighten up, rub my eyes, drink some water, and get on the bus. As we rumble away, I fend off Jaya’s concern, my tongue growing thicker and heavier with each mile that takes us closer.

When we arrive at the high school courtyard, I spot Ray immediately. He’s on his own, at the far end, half concealed behind a wall sheltering the watercooler. He has his back to me. I take a quick look around the courtyard to see if anybody’s looking at me funny. They don’t seem to be, everyone’s busy with the usual Monday morning chatter, and I turn my attention back to Ray.

I am so intent on him I walk straight into Lekha.

“Sorry.”

“That’s okay, I’m too sturdy to knock over!”

I’m about to walk away when I realize she’s staring at Ray too, her eyes beady and alert, her head tilted to one side like a bird.

“Amarra?” she says before I can turn away. “I know you feel like you’re all on your own and there’s nobody to rely on, but that isn’t true. It will be okay, you know. No one’s ever alone.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I say, stopping her midstep. “Why would I feel like that?”

Lekha raises her eyebrows, surprised. “We both know you’re not the Amarra who was in the accident. Now it looks like Ray knows too.” She tilts her head again, ignoring my shocked expression. “If
I
were you, I think I’d be feeling lonely. And scared. And I’d wear that necklace more often, it’s very pretty, but that’s beside the point.” A smile brightens her eyes.

I open my mouth to offer a panicked denial, but she gets there first.

“Try lavender,” she recommends. “Or sage! Don’t you love the word
sage
? Such a nice
round
word. Math exams give me panic attacks. Sage helps. Or maybe I mean rosemary. I can never tell them apart.”

She beams at me and wanders off to see a couple of her friends. I watch her go and I realize that, for the first time in two days, I could actually laugh.

Ray doesn’t speak to me all day. But as far as I can tell, he doesn’t speak to anyone else about me either. Once I catch Sam, the boy who first spoke to me on my first day at school, shooting me a strange look, but he looks away so fast I don’t know if I imagined it. The waiting is agony.

He doesn’t make me wait long. Just until PE, two days later.

I get changed as usual. I put my hair up, making sure the gauze is firmly taped over my Mark, and Sonya tries to get a look at it, also as usual. I swat her hand away and she laughs as we all traipse outside onto the fields to wait for the PE teachers.

We’re about halfway across the field when I feel a pair of hands on my shoulders. I know the feel of those hands. He must have touched my shoulders any number of times on those days we used to spend together. But never like this.

Startled, I jerk forward, but it’s too late to pull away. Ray’s fingers bite painfully into my skin.

I stop, go still. A dull, resigned kind of relief sweeps over me. It’s done, and I don’t have to feel guilty about tricking these people any longer.

“What the
hell
are you doing?” Sonya demands angrily, and her voice is so loud that the rest of the class turns our way.

Ray ignores her. He’s speaking to me, his voice harsh. “No one believes me,” he says, with a short, humorless laugh. “I tried telling them, but they won’t believe me.
They
think I’ve lost my mind. You know, maybe I have. Maybe that’s what happens when someone you love dies.”

“Ray,” Jaya pleads. “Ray, stop—”

“Ray, this is crazy—”

“I’m not crazy,” he tells them, and his voice is so sad. “I wish I was. I wish it wasn’t true, I want it so badly to be her.”

The field has gone very quiet. Ray grips my shoulders to keep me from moving. He doesn’t have to. I couldn’t move even if I wanted to right now. My knees feel like jelly. I might be sick again.

“You’ve been on and on about some shit for two days, and I’m sick of it,” snaps Sonya. “Why are you trying to convince us that Amarra’s not Amarra?”

“It’s not,” he says. “It’s an echo.”

Sonya utters a sharp, incredulous laugh. “You’re completely bonkers. Amarra doesn’t have an
echo
. Ew.”

Ew
.

“She did,” Ray snaps back at her. “She told me she did!”

There’s a split second of shocked silence, and then Sonya’s face turns purple. “She told
you
she had an echo?” she shouts. For a brief moment, she is outraged, jealous. A thousand times angrier with Ray than with me.

“Ray, you’re hurting her,” Jaya says very softly. “Can’t you let go?”

“You don’t believe me?” Ray challenges them. “I have proof this time, I can show you. Want to see that
scar
she’s been hiding?”

In one sharp, savage move, he rips the gauze off my neck. He turns me around so my back is to the rest of the class. His face is satisfied, furious. Sad.

We both hear the gasps. Ray has been touched by a magic wand, transformed. He’s not crazy, he’s been wronged.

“There,” he says bitterly. “Now you know what she is.”

“But—” Sonya falters, her voice cracking in dismay. “But that means . . . that means Amarra is . . . she’s—”

Ray releases me abruptly. “Yeah,” he says, and there’s so much pain in his voice, “I know.”

“No!” Sonya cries. “No, she’s not! She’s not!”