The Lost Girl (4 page)

“I’m not supposed to think about that,” I say flatly.

“I’m asking.”

“I don’t really know,” I admit, “but I like not knowing. I could go to university when I’m eighteen, maybe, study art. I think I’d like that.”

It’s a nice thing to dream of. I look out at the sea and the sky, and then I look the other way at the passing street. And though I try not to, I see the laughing teenagers, the mothers and children, the families outside the restaurants and the pubs, and I think of how different I am from every single one of them.

Sean carefully touches my hand. I try to smile, and it’s easy to do with the sun in my eyes and the salty sea air blowing around us.

When we get there, the zoo is beautiful. Filled with brightly colored signs and little stalls and animals from the far-flung places of the world, it’s everything I ever imagined it would be. Sean has been here before, but he lets me take the lead and drag him every which way as signs and animals catch my eye. Many of the cages and enclosures have big signs with names on them: a chimpanzee is called Molly; a python is called Eduardo; the hippos are Daisy, Ju-ju, and Tom. Sean and I laugh over some of the names. He can’t believe anyone would name a hippo Tom.

“Clear lack of imagination, that,” he complains.

I try to remember the last time I was this excited, but the memory eludes me. Memories never elude me. Maybe this is the most excited I’ve ever been.

But I’m careful. I keep my eyes open; I glance over my shoulder. Once, I catch Sean with a tiny frown between his eyebrows, searching the crowds as though worried someone might be watching us. I let myself enjoy every minute, but the Weavers stay in the back of my mind. I can’t forget that I’m not like the happy, chattering crowds. I check my hair, making sure my Mark is covered.

“There,” says Sean, as we stop in front of a large enclosure. “That’s what I really wanted to show you.”

The elephants.

“Mina told me Amarra went to the zoo for the first time when she was seven,” he says, “and she wrote in the pages about seeing the elephants, but she didn’t put a picture in. And you cried and said you wanted to see them too.”

There’s a lump in my throat. “I can’t believe you know about that.”

“I know a lot of things,” he says. “You’re their favorite thing to talk about. Mina and Erik, I mean. You’re everything to them, you know.”

I wipe my eyes and watch the elephants. There are three adults and a couple of smaller ones nuzzling up to their mothers. They look happy, like they’re enjoying being out there in the sun with the grass to nibble on. One of the elephants uproots a tuft of grass with its trunk and dumps the grass and dirt on its back. They’re so beautiful.

I glance to the right and see a sixth elephant. This one is very young, smaller than the others, and seems to be in a separate enclosure. The sign at the front says she’s Eva.

“Why is she on her own?” I ask indignantly. “Won’t she be lonely?”

“Does seem weird, doesn’t it? There’s someone in a uniform right there. I’ll ask him.”

I watch Eva the elephant. She has a restless energy. She stomps at the grass beneath her feet, kicking up small mounds of dirt and soil. Occasionally she glances at the other elephants, and I imagine her expression is wistful. Then she lets out a defiant trumpeting sound and turns her back on them. I want to stroke her trunk, the short, bristly hairs on her back.

Sean reappears. “Apparently, she’s—”

“Difficult,” I guess.

“Yeah. When they’re all together, she is generally disruptive. So they put her on her own whenever she’s particularly difficult.”

“It won’t make her behave,” I say with certainty. “Look at her. She’s stubborn. They’ll just have to accept her for what she is.”

There’s a smile in Sean’s voice. “You like her.”

I nod absently.

After another half hour, I regretfully leave the elephants behind and follow Sean back in the direction of the reptiles. For a while there, with the smell of elephant and wet grass around us, I forgot about the Weavers. Now they’re back. I push them into the furthest corner I can find, but their murky, half-remembered faces keep coming back like a persistent jack-in-the-box.

Sean and I buy a box of popcorn and a Coke to share and wander around while we finish them. I sip the Coke noisily through my straw.

“Which way?” Sean asks me when we reach a fork. “Reptiles or birds?”

“Is a turtle a reptile?”

“More reptile than bird, I reckon,” says Sean, grinning, “so we’d better go that way.”

There’s a girl on the path ahead of us. She has dark hair and eyes like me. She falls and starts to howl. Her father leans down and kisses her knee and wheedles a laugh out of her. And for no reason at all it makes me think of the Weaver who made me. Of how he will never pick me up when I fall.

I want to be human so badly it hurts.

“Look at me,” says Sean, and the tone of his voice makes it clear he knows how I feel. “You’re different. We’ve always known that. But it doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Being different doesn’t make you something
less
than the rest of us.” I open my mouth, but he cuts me off. “And it does mean that you are
not
Amarra. You’re someone else. And you’re important. As a
girl
, not an echo. No matter what the Weavers take from you, you matter. To all of us.”

I stare at him. “I’ve always wanted to be a girl. Only a girl. To not be ‘the echo.’”

“You’re not ‘the echo’ to me.”

“But it doesn’t make me any less of one.”

“So?” he demands. “There’s nothing wrong with being an echo. You step in when someone else dies. That’s pretty glorious, don’t you think? You’re an angel among mortals. Echoes are asked to sacrifice everything to make another family, other people, happy. To give them hope.
You
are hope.”

He gestures at the little girl and her father on the path ahead. “Think of how he would feel if something happened to his daughter. But if that girl has an echo somewhere, he might find her again. He might get her back.”

I’ve never looked at it quite that way before.

“Dad used to say that if he could have an echo made for every person he loves, he’d do it.” He looks me in the eye. “You shouldn’t be ashamed of what you are. Or of not being like us. You should wear it like a badge of honor.”

I stare at him for a long time, and he stares back, until I can no longer see anything beyond him but a blur, and he’s the only clear thing in the world.

Then his phone vibrates and the spell is broken. He checks his text. “It’s Lucy,” he says.

Lucy. It takes a second to pierce my thoughts. For a moment there, I had completely forgotten he had a girlfriend.

But I still can’t help smiling. Because no one has ever said those things to me before. I look at the father and his daughter, but not with envy or longing this time. I imagine the man losing the little girl, like one of the five little ducks vanishing over the hill, and I think of the echo who could be good and perfect and replace her. I am not perfect, but I could be the thing that gives somebody hope. The thing that makes the loss of each little duck a bit less painful.

It doesn’t make everything okay, it doesn’t fix much, but it does fix
something
. It does force me to look at things differently. For the first time I see my own face through someone else’s eyes.

I’m not like these people around me, and I am not Amarra, but I can wear all my differences without shame.

Sean puts his phone away. “You look happier,” he says, smiling crookedly at me. “I must be good for something.”

“I’ve wanted a name, my own name, for so long,” I say, “and I think you just gave me one.”

“What is it?”

I smile. Here it is, at last, the one thing that belongs to me.

“Eva.”

4
Story

W
e get off the train in Lancaster and walk to Sean’s house. It takes us ten minutes, across a bridge, down two cobbled roads, and onto a street lined with old, pretty houses. Sean leads me to the third house from the top of the street, fishing a set of keys from his pocket. I stare at the house in interest, marveling at the fact that in all the years I’d known Jonathan, I’d never seen where he lived. Where Sean lives. Or Erik, or Ophelia. When they enter my world, they leave theirs behind.

I hope Sean’s mother’s not home. I always got the impression, from things Jonathan would let slip, that she doesn’t like me.

I’m sure she adores Lucy.

Something funny happens to my throat when I step into the house and smell the faint scent of cigars. Even nine months after his death, it feels like Jonathan is still here.

It reminds me of those late evenings at the cottage, when he would sit on the steps with his cigar and Ophelia would sit next to him and fish for a cigarette in her bag and the smell of smoke would waft into the house and mingle with Mina Ma’s hand cream and the tea brewing in the kitchen. And I’d hover in my pajamas outside the door, listening to them talk quietly about grown-up things. Now and then I would hear Erik laugh at something one of the others said. I always waited for that sound. If Erik was laughing, it meant nothing was wrong.

And one day, just like that, the cigars stopped wafting in through the door and it was only the three of them left. And the sound of their voices was different, no longer an old soothing lullaby but something new and, at first, strange.

It’s been a long time since I’ve missed Jonathan this fiercely.

“I know,” says Sean, like every thought is written clearly in my expression, “I can never walk in without it hitting me either. I think my mum lights his old cigars sometimes.”

“It must be hard letting him go.”

“I don’t think anyone ever really lets go of the people they love,” he says, putting his keys down in a big bowl by the door. “You’re living proof of that, aren’t you?”

“But is that the right thing to do?”

“I don’t know. Maybe there’s no right answer.”

I think about that. “No, I guess not.”

“Anyway,” says Sean, gesturing vaguely at the room around us, “this is home. We—” He cuts himself off, watching my eyes drift across the bookshelf and settle on one volume in particular.

“Don’t even think about it.”

It’s the novel
Frankenstein
, and it’s utterly forbidden and it’s so beautiful I want to snatch it off the shelf and read every last word.

“You can’t expect me
not
to think about it when it’s right there staring me in the face.”

“I can hide it if you like,” says Sean, unmoved by my piteous, pleading eyes. “You can’t break that law. You are not allowed to read it. The Weavers would have my head if I let you. And God knows what they’d do to you.” He crosses the room and plucks the book off the shelf. “So you’re pronouncing it
E
-va, then? Not
A
-va?”

A terribly unsubtle attempt to change the subject, but I let it go. “She was more of an Eva than an
A
-va. And I am too, I think.”

He cocks his head at me. “I think so too. I can’t wait to see Mina’s face when you tell her.” He grins wickedly.

I stick my tongue out at him, but have to admit I’m slightly anxious about Mina Ma’s reaction. Naming myself goes against everything that is expected of me. How will Mina Ma and Erik and Ophelia take to
that
?

“We have another half hour before the next train,” says Sean. “Do you want something to drink?”

“Yes, please,” I say, still eyeing
Frankenstein
.

“I’ll put some tea on.”

He leaves, taking the book with him. He knows I have few scruples when I’m curious.

While he’s out of the room, I look around. At the magazines piled neatly on the coffee table and the books stacked in order on the shelves. The house is tidy, but not pristine; it looks lived in. On the mantelpiece above the fire, lined up, are framed photographs. A younger Jonathan and a woman with blond hair on their wedding day. Baby Sean. Jonathan and Sean by the seaside. Sean and a group of boys in soccer shirts. There’s so much in Sean’s life that he leaves behind to come to us. He has given up a great deal, all that time he could be a normal kid, all that time he could spend with Lucy or his friends.

I hear him come in behind me, the teacups clinking in his hands, but I don’t turn around. “Why do you come?” I ask quietly.

I feel him approach, his voice by my ear. “Because he asked me to.”

This is so surprising, I turn. I notice he hasn’t got any tea for himself, just milk. Sean loves cold milk.

“Jonathan asked you to take his place?”

Sean nods. “When he got too sick to work, he asked me to go instead. He didn’t know what kind of guardian another replacement might be. He worried you’d get someone who was unkind, who would tell the Weavers every time you did something wrong. Ophelia’s supposed to, but we both know she doesn’t, and Dad was afraid someone else might. He thought I was your best chance.”

“That doesn’t seem fair, to ask you that when he was so ill and he knew you wouldn’t refuse.”

“I could have refused.”

I smile. “But you didn’t. You never would have.”

“It’s not as bad as it sounds, anyway,” he adds. “He only asked me to come until he died. He said, ‘When I’m gone, you can quit if you want. But you might find you don’t want to leave her.’”

“But you never quit.”

“No,” he says, “I stayed.”

I watch him with wide eyes.

“Why?”

“We should go,” he says, looking past me at the clock, “or we’ll miss the train. Drink your tea.”

I want to push the question, but I don’t. My nerves feel wobbly, and I drink the tea quickly to soothe them.

“Eva,” says Sean.

The sound of my new name is thrilling, and I look up at him, my skin as hot as the tea.

“I don’t agree with what they do to you,” he says. He lifts my wrist and turns it over to reveal the small, delicate stretch of skin where my tattoo will go. “But I like you a lot more than I hate this.” His fingers feel so light against my wrist, it might be my imagination. My pulse throbs faster under his thumb.

“Don’t,” I say unsteadily, pulling my wrist away.

He drops his hand. “I didn’t mean . . .”

Of course he didn’t. Why would he have meant anything by it?

“I know.” I force an easy smile, but it comes out a bit twisted. “I felt one of those static-shock things, that’s all.”

He doesn’t point out how lame that sounds. “Okay,” he says simply, “ready to go?”

It’s still light out when we get back to Windermere, the streaky pinkish-gold light that means the day is ending. The sky looks like it’s melting.

I check my watch. It’s almost seven. It’s starting to get dark earlier. I shove my hands in the front pockets of my jeans to keep them warm. It’s not as easy as it used to be in my old jeans: these are new, in the skinny style that Amarra recently discovered.

We turn the corner and are less than a hundred feet from the cottage when I feel Sean’s hand clamp down on my elbow.

“Keep walking,” he says in my ear.

“But—”

An exasperated breath hisses through his teeth. “Do it.”

I look quickly at his face. It’s completely calm. Wooden. Taking my cue, I try to hide my alarm. I keep walking, not slowing down or approaching the cottage. I look casually around and try to spot the thing that’s set him so on edge.

There’s a small park up ahead with a playground for children. I’ve been there a couple of times, always when it was empty because I wasn’t supposed to play with other kids growing up. It’s full of laughing children and parents and old couples strolling around. The road is mostly deserted, but there are a few people passing by and two teenagers standing outside a house, talking.

Then I see him. He seems ordinary, a regular guy in his thirties, but he’s the only one who might have spooked Sean. Unlike the others, he’s on his own and he’s standing quite still, leaning against a lamppost and consulting a map like he’s a tourist. This isn’t an unusual sight, and I open my mouth to tell Sean so, but then the man’s eyes flick upward and settle on the pair of us. I look away quickly to avoid eye contact, and my heart leaps into my mouth. There was something about the way he glanced at us. Something hopeful.

Sean turns abruptly and heads into the park. I follow him, glancing once at the man watching us. I could swear he looks disappointed.

“What’s going on?” I ask Sean once we’re by the edge of the playground, well out of the man’s earshot.

Sean shrugs. “Being careful, that’s all.”

I give him a disbelieving look. “You think he’s a hunter.”

“I think he might be.”

A hunter
. The word rattles around my head like loose change. I found out about hunters years ago. No one told me. I suppose they didn’t want to frighten me. Getting a secret out of Mina Ma is like trying to pry open a sealed pistachio, but she couldn’t stop me from eavesdropping. I used to hear her talking to Erik about the people who hunted and killed echoes all over the world. On the news they call them vigilantes. An old secret society set on stopping the creation and survival of unnatural things like me.

They are the reason I mustn’t tell people what I am. It’s why I’m tucked away in our cottage and not allowed to hang around normal people. It’s why Mina Ma has a pistol and double locks the doors and looks suspicious if strangers talk to us in town.

I’ve never been afraid of hunters. I think it’s like standing in a field, caught between a blind tiger and a healthy one. You can’t watch them both. So you ignore the blind one. It doesn’t know where you are; it can only try to sniff you out in the dark. You watch the other tiger, because it doesn’t have to find you. It can see you. It can catch you with a single leap.

I have always kept my eyes only on the Weavers. On their laws. Until now. Now, with Sean tense at my side and a stranger nearby, I feel a tiny prickle of unease.

“Sean, he’s just a
guy
.”

His teeth clench. “You think I’m being paranoid?”

“Yes, actually,” I say, trying to cast off my unwelcome doubts. “How would a hunter have even found me?”

The look on his face tells me the answer. The fight. Of course. Erik tried to stop the kids and their friends and their parents from talking, but one word slipped to the wrong person would have been enough. Any one of them could have tipped a hunter off about the rumor. Anyone could have told him which house to watch.

“He looked awfully disappointed when we came in here,” says Sean. “He was expecting us to go to the house. Or he hoped we would. If he
is
a hunter, he was probably waiting to find out what you look like. If he finds out, he can follow you, get you alone—”

“Stop,” I say sharply. “This is ridiculous!”

“That’s what they do.”

“He’s probably a tourist—”

“And if he isn’t?”

I’ve never tried so hard not to be scared. I bite my lip. “If he isn’t, then no harm done,” I say, trying to sound uncaring. “We walked right past the cottage, so he has no reason to think I’m the one he wants.” I put on my best brave face. “Sean, I know you’re just trying to be careful, but I think you’ve got him all wrong.”

“Either way,” says Sean, glancing over his shoulder, “he keeps looking at us, and I’m not going back to the cottage until he’s gone.”

Sean turns around and walks a few steps, to a young father playing with his daughter on the slides. I stay where I am, trying to hold on to my conviction that hunters are not worth being afraid of, that there’s no way even one of them could have found me.

When my palms feel less clammy, I approach Sean, in time to hear the father say, “Yeah, it
is
sort of weird. Think it would be overkill if I rang the police?”

“Might be,” says Sean, shrugging. “Dunno.”

The other guy rubs his jaw. “Ah well, it won’t do any harm. If he’s just waiting for someone or whatever, they’ll sort it. I’d rather look silly than risk the kids.”

I open my mouth to protest, then shut it again. I give Sean a dirty look as soon as the father walks away. “You told him there was a weird guy staring at the children?” I demand.

He’s unmoved. “Whatever it takes to make him leave.”

“Not exactly playing fair, though, was it?”

“Hunters don’t play fair.”

“We don’t know—”

“
I
know,” says Sean. “Everything about him is wrong. He’s pretending to be a tourist with a map, but you can see the date on the cover and that map is ten years out of date. He’s also got padding around one of his ankles. See, his jeans don’t quite sit right. What if that’s where he’s hiding a knife?”

I stare at him in silence, nauseated. How did he even notice such small things? How did I miss them?

For a minute he looks bitter. “You don’t consider them a threat. But hunters have killed others like you, all over the world, and there’s always a chance, however small, that they’ll turn up on your doorstep. Like
he
has. Maybe I’m wrong. But maybe I’m not. I just like knowing what to look for.”

I don’t say anything for a long time. I want to ignore everything he’s saying, but he makes sense. He always makes sense.

“Still think I’m paranoid?”

I shake my head. “Well, maybe a bit. But that wasn’t what I was thinking. I was thinking that Jonathan should have given you a chance to be a regular boy. He shouldn’t have ruined that for you.”

“If he hadn’t raised me the way he did,” says Sean, “I wouldn’t be here. Is that really the way you’d rather have it?”

I don’t know how to answer that. I glance at the lamppost. The man is gone, and a police car is vanishing back down the street.

“Don’t tell Mina Ma, Sean. You’ll scare her.”

“She’d rather know.”

“Please.”

“Fine. But I’m telling Erik. He’ll want to kill the rumors for good. It’s the only way to make sure they don’t come back.”