As I Wake (11 page)
Authors: Elizabeth Scott
Tags: #Fantasy, #Fiction, #General, #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic, #Psychology, #Love & Romance, #Cognitive Psychology, #Law & Crime
“Sophy, just relax,” Greer says to her. “Me and O still love you, you know. We loved you even when you were, well, you know. Nothing,” and when Sophy smiles I realize the one I have seen glimpses of—the other one, the one who is her but not—was never nothing. Never once found herself in a place where she needed someone else. But this one does.
Every—all the mes I am are different. And so are Sophy and Olivia and Greer and Jane.
Sophy says nothing now, but smiles as Olivia leans into Greer, who is fiddling with Olivia’s hair, trying to braid it. Smiles more as Greer runs a hand down Olivia’s hair without seeming to notice she’s doing it.
“How are things with the latest guy?” she says, and Greer flinches, the tiniest bit, and moves her hand away.
I look down at the grass then, smoothing one hand over it. I can’t get over how green it is. It doesn’t even crunch in my hands when I pull a few strands loose.
The wind blows them back toward me and I close my eyes, feeling them brush against my face.
“Please,” Greer says, “please,” and I open my eyes to see her looking at me. She looks different, paler and far more nervous, and her hands are shaking so hard I can see them moving. I know I am seeing a Greer that isn’t here but one that—
One that is in my head. One that I remember.
“You can’t—shouldn’t look so upset,” I say and she stares at me, her mouth working.
“I know,” she finally says, and then blinks hard, twice. “I just—it’s hard. I found a doctor who’d give me some pills, and when I take them things are better. Everything seems so far away.” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “Like a dream. I just—they make me a little . . . I don’t know. Like I’m not real. I’d like that.”
“Greer, you don’t mean that.”
“I still see Olivia, you know,” she says, and her hands are still twitching, shaping the air like she’s holding something. Someone. “I see her all the time, even when I’m walking or sitting down to dinner or trying to—trying to work. I see Sophy too and she’s here, she’s really here and you know Olivia never ever would have helped plot anything. She loved what she did, she loved listening to all those stupid conversations. She shouldn’t have been—it was wrong, what they did. Hitting her over and over and all that blood—”
“Stop it,” I say, and stand up.
“You were there,” she says, and grabs my hand. “You saw what they did to her, how they made us all sit and watch while they asked her what she’d done wrong and she never said anything, didn’t ever say what I know they wanted to hear, that we—” She breaks off.
“She kept you alive,” I whisper, and turn to smile at the far corner, as if I am just enjoying the view. The day. The park. As if I am not pretending I don’t know what Greer is talking about.
“She did,” Greer says, and she’s crying now, crying in the open, where anyone can see, and I can’t stand it, kneel in front of her and pray that there isn’t anyone around, or that if they are, they see that Greer is so broken she is no threat to anyone except herself.
“You can’t act like you care so much,” I say. “You know the rules. Involvement only with approval and only to provide children for the PDR. You and Olivia, if Sophy sees you weak, you know she’ll strike and then Olivia will have died for nothing. And she died for yo—” I break off, swallow. To even say what I have just said is to admit I knew what they were to each other. To admit I knew. And I did know.
I knew, and didn’t say anything. I looked at them and wondered what it was like to be in love.
“She’s dead because of me and I can’t bear it,” Greer says. “I can’t look at myself at this—at this world for another day. I can’t—”
“Greer—”
“If I don’t disappear myself, Sophy will make sure it happens,” she says and nods when she sees my face. “It’s true. She told me this morning. And she—she asked about you, Ava. You know not to let her find out anything, right? You know she talks to—”
Greer stops talking and looks around. “Yes, Sophy does work very hard,” she says, and then stands up, pushing her hair back from her face and smiling at me.
“I’m sorry, but these cavities of mine are causing me so much pain,” she says. “Please don’t tell anyone I cried over them.” A guy walks by, and I hear the soft whir of a camera clicking, see how he turns slightly toward us. How the second button on his jacket has an extra hole in the middle.
“Hello, Ethan,” Greer says, smiling, and he stops, looks fully at us and then blushes bright red, lowering his eyes to the ground.
“I’m sorry,” he mouths, glancing at us, and then hunches his shoulders and moves on.
“I hate him,” Greer says when he’s out of sight, but she’s still keeping her voice low again, barely a whisper now.
“He can’t help it,” I whisper back. “He’s a toy for Kale, who put him here. You know how bad he did in training, how awful his marks were. You saw his face just now. Kale is—it’s what he does to live and he’s sorry, he really is. Besides, we can’t turn our back on what our country needs us for.”
“I’ve heard you already have, so be careful,” Greer says. “But you—Ava, I think you can.”
“What?”
“You can,” she says again, leaning in closer, and her eyes are brighter. Happier.
Here.
“I said, you can wake up,” she says, and then turns, says, “I think she’s awake now,” and I realize I am lying on my back, lying cradled in the green grass.
“You—” I say, staring at the side of her face I can see. “I just saw you—”
“Yeah, you did,” she says, looking back at me and smiling. “You just fainted for a second or something. Oh, sit up, sit up.” She nudges me. “Your boy is coming over here. . . . Hi, Ethan.”
Ethan? But Greer doesn’t even like him anymore, doesn’t want to talk to him—
“Hi,” Ethan says and Greer likes him fine, waves a hello at him as she moves away, still smiling, still not the sad, lost girl I just saw and I don’t—
“Are you all right?” Ethan says, and he is crouching down next to me, one knee touching my shoulder. He has gorgeous deep blue eyes, and I know them. I just saw them when he said he was sorry, only he didn’t actually say it. He might have meant it, but he still didn’t say it.
But he isn’t—he isn’t in a jacket with a camera in it, and he’s not hunched over but moving easily, gracefully, sitting down next to me like he knows I want him there.
He seems so happy, but there is something scared in his smile. Not through it, not around it, not in the other him I saw. But here, now, just like how I noticed his smile never reaches his eyes.
It only lasts a second, though, and then it’s gone, vanished like everything else I’ve seen.
But nothing I’ve seen—none of these moments that feel so real, that feel like memories, that I know—none of what I’ve seen is from now. From here.
I squint my eyes closed, battling against the tight throbbing in my head.
“Are you all right?” Ethan asks, touching my shoulder, and I look at him, and then at Sophy.
She’s watching us. Staring, really.
“I have to talk to you,” I say, and watch her smile.
Ethan watches me get up and walk away like he can’t keep his eyes off me but he doesn’t like me like that, I know it.
I just don’t know how I know it.
I wish my mind wasn’t such a patchwork, that it wasn’t . . . broken.
“Well,” Sophy says, “good way to keep him wondering about you. Nice job.”
“I know who you are,” I say.
“Yeah, I’m Sophy,” she says. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I know,” I say again and she stares at me like I’m crazy but I’m not. I’ve seen her—not this her but still her and I know what she can do. What she’s done.
“Maybe you should sit down,” she says and I jerk my arm away from her when she tries to touch me and she looks surprised but behind it is fury and all around her I see her—
the other her
—standing proud and full of power, and Ethan and Greer and Olivia are here too, looking at me, but I see their other selves too.
the other her
—standing proud and full of power, and Ethan and Greer and Olivia are here too, looking at me, but I see their other selves too.
I see
everything
, and it’s like I’m being pulled in two but no one is pulling me, it’s all in my head, my empty head that seems to be full of things I shouldn’t know but do and I don’t understand this, don’t understand me, and who am I?
everything
, and it’s like I’m being pulled in two but no one is pulling me, it’s all in my head, my empty head that seems to be full of things I shouldn’t know but do and I don’t understand this, don’t understand me, and who am I?
Who am I, really?
I close my eyes.
29.
WAKE UP.
The chair squeaks as I rock awake, and the attic door opens.
It’s Morgan, a bowl of noodles in each hand, and my heart does a little skip-thump dizzy beat.
I want to tell myself it’s from the smell of food, but it’s not. I know it’s not.
He puts one of the bowls on the table that holds all my equipment. On screen, what I last typed is blinking, waiting. “56-412 makes lunch.”
“You didn’t come to the bar,” he says, glancing down at the floor and then back at me. I don’t have to guess what he’s remembering, because I’m remembering it, too.
I look away, stare at my keyboard. I don’t want to tell him that I started to go but was stopped on my way out, pulled back from the brink of whatever I was about to do by the clipped, unfamiliar voice that ordered me to go to the integration office.
I’d gone, terrified for myself—and watched Olivia die.
If anyone knew what I’d done—what I’m doing now, even—I could be where she was. I have to turn him in, create a story to explain away anything he might say.
I have to at least tell him to go and mean it.
I don’t say anything.
“Anyway,” Morgan says, as if I have spoken, “I had some extra food, and I figured you might be hungry, so—” He breaks off, shakes his head, and then puts his bowl down next to mine. “Why didn’t you come? You only live fourteen streets away.”
I stare at him. “You—you’ve followed me home?” He’s watched when he leaves. I know this because when he leaves while I’m here, I send in notification, and whatever street surveillance is nearby watches him.
And now they will have seen him following me. Will guess that he has figured out who I am. And what if they find out everything? What if what we did, what I did—
“Ava,” he says. “I know how to—I was careful. The other one, who comes when you leave, has a . . .” He pauses. “He has a friend come and visit him. They are not always so quiet, and I have at least an hour to myself.”
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” I say, my heart pounding, thinking of stories I’ve heard. Of the shattered expression in Greer’s eyes. Of how I couldn’t look at Olivia, how I kept my eyes wide open but turned my mind away. “I told you to go last time, I did, and I—” I stop, new terror rolling over me. “You know my name.”
“You have a card on your buzzer.”
“I cleared my crèche status, I can’t be judged by just that,” I say, still panicked. “I—my buzzer?” I remember sliding the card into the little slot, thinking of the two rooms they claimed, and how they were now my own.
His eyes widen. “The crèche? But that isn’t—it’s all antigovernment talk. It’s not real.”
“No, of course it isn’t,” I say quickly.
“I didn’t—I didn’t mean to upset you,” he says carefully. “I just wanted to see you away from here. Wanted to see you for real. I was careful, I swear. I wouldn’t—I don’t want anything to happen to you because of me.”
I stare at him. He has no apparent beauty, no perfection of features. His mouth is thin, his face is narrow, and his hair is a short, spiky mess, neat only where the dark ends lay flat by his ears and the base of his neck. His eyes are lined with shadows underneath, and shaded with a knowledge that seems to mock everyone, the world and himself. He is thin, too, long fingers and the jut of his elbows visible through the thin fabric of the university shirt he’s wearing.
He is nothing to look at, and yet I can’t stop looking at him. There is something beautiful in how his face is made, how all the tiny flaws blend together into something more perfect than perfection could ever be.
There is something about the way he looks at me, as if there is something in me worth seeing.
I swallow, and then push up my right sleeve.
He looks at me for a moment, and then moves closer. I watch him see the mark on my wrist, the tiny symbol etched there, the C burned into the skin. I can’t remember when it was new and red. For as long as I can remember it’s been faded white, a scar.
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