As I Wake (8 page)
Authors: Elizabeth Scott
Tags: #Fantasy, #Fiction, #General, #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic, #Psychology, #Love & Romance, #Cognitive Psychology, #Law & Crime
I look at her and see that she doesn’t like Clementine. I watch how her eyes move, how she blinks.
I see she is afraid.
Why?
“Oh, it was nothing,” Clementine says. “I just—well, you know how talk gets around the hospital and one of the nurses at Dr. Jabar’s called over to get some records sent and said that there was some sort of problem with Ava today.”
“Not with Ava,” Jane says. “Ava’s fine.”
“But I heard that—”
“My head hurts,” I say to Jane, cutting Clementine off. “Can we go in?”
“Oh, honey, of course,” Jane says, relief in her voice, and holds the door open for me as we walk inside. I look back before it closes and see Clementine still standing there watching us. Watching me.
She came here because of what happened at Dr. Jabar’s today.
Because of Morgan. I know it. I
know it.
know it.
She wanted to see if I’d seen him.
I think she wants to know if I remember him.
Why?
22.
THAT NIGHT
I sit on the floor of Ava’s room, going over the furniture with my fingertips in the dark, waiting to remember it. It’s starting to feel familiar, but that isn’t memory.
I sit on the floor of Ava’s room, going over the furniture with my fingertips in the dark, waiting to remember it. It’s starting to feel familiar, but that isn’t memory.
My mind has nothing but blankness behind a few bits and pieces of things that don’t add up. I remember Jane, but a different Jane, a Jane that left me, was taken away.
And Morgan. I remember him, this afternoon. The dreams I’ve had, the attic and the cold and him.
They aren’t dreams. I want to think they are, I want to think they have to be—this doesn’t happen to people, they don’t wake up and find themselves somewhere else but they aren’t dreams.
They’re memories.
They’re memories and if Morgan is real, and here, then how can I remember him—and me—somewhere else? Not to mention how I saw us in all those other times so fast, like there has always been him and me.
Like we have always found each other.
I don’t know how.
I just know what I saw. What I felt.
I walk out into the hallway. I know its darkness now too, and head for one of the closed doors, let myself into Ava’s bathroom.
I like Ava’s bathroom best out of every room in the house. I like her large white shower, her broad sink. I like the bottles and jars of lotion she has, like opening them up and sniffing them even though I can’t bring myself to use them, find myself clutching the large bar of soap she has in her shower each time I use it as if I have never seen it before.
I haven’t, not that I remember, but shouldn’t I be used to soap? Shouldn’t I not be so amazed by how it is so large and all mine?
I fall asleep in there, holding one of Ava’s soft, thick towels and a jar of mango-ginger body lotion, and wake up to see Jane looking at me, her face lit by the hall light and the sun that cuts through it from the open door of Jane’s bedroom.
“Did you sleep in here?” she says.
“I—” I say, and sit up, my body stiff from being curled up on the floor. Somehow, it feels more familiar than waking up in the softness of Ava’s bed. “I guess I did.”
Jane sits down next to me, touching the bottle of lotion.
“I keep telling Ava not to waste her money on things like that, but she . . .” She trails off.
“But she what?”
“But you keep buying it,” she says, smiling at me, but too late, too late, we both know what she said.
Ava. Her. She.
Not you.
Not one You.
I look at Jane. “I—I’m not her, am I? I’m not Ava.”
Jane stares at me.
“Don’t,” she finally says, looking at the floor, and then says it again, louder, before looking at me.
There are tears in her eyes.
My heart pounds.
“Don’t ever—please don’t ever think that,” she says.
“I can’t—just hearing you say it . . . You don’t really think that, do you? I know it’s hard for you and that things aren’t the same. The doctors said . . . they said you might not ever remember everything. That things might be a little different. That you might be a little different. But you’re still Ava. You’ll always—you’re forever my little girl.”
“But just now you said—”
“I know,” she says. “I’m—I’m tired, honey. I’m scared. I lie awake at night worrying about you. Wondering what it must be like to be here, with me, and to not know—” She breaks off. “Sometimes I think you must be so angry with me.”
“Angry?”
“You’re so—Ava, you’re so quiet now, and I—” She takes a deep breath. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I miss you yelling at me. You used to, you know, all the time, over your clothes, your hair, everything. But now you—you’re so nice to me. And I love it but I look at you and I know you don’t—you don’t remember me.”
“I did—”
“I know,” she says. “But one time, honey, and I—it’s something I don’t actually remember. I’ve been thinking about it all night and I just . . . it’s not there. I can’t see it.” She touches my hair with one hand, gently. “Is that what it’s like for you? Is that how—is that how everything is, you try to remember but nothing’s there?”
“Yes,” I say, my voice cracking, shocking me, making me cringe, and she says, “Oh, Ava,” and folds her hands together like she doesn’t know what to do with them. Like she doesn’t know what to do about anything.
“I’m sorry,” she says after a while. “I know that doesn’t make things better, but I wish it did. I wish I could. I wanted—I want you here and happy and safe.”
“I want—” I say, and then have to stop because I don’t know what words should come after those. I don’t know what I want.
And then Jane looks at me, so much sadness and worry—so much love—in her eyes—and I wish I could help her. I wish I could make things better for her. Be the Ava I’m supposed to be.
But I can’t.
I’m not her.
It’s a relief to get to school, or at least it is until third period, when I leave study hall like Greer and Olivia and Sophy told me to and make my way to the garden.
“There you are,” Greer says when she sees me.
“What happened to you this morning, you wench? We totally waited for you.”
“Late,” I say, thinking of the silent, strained breakfast Jane and I had shared, and the equally silent ride to school.
How Jane had leaned toward me when we stopped, like she wanted to hug me and then stilled, able to tell I didn’t know what to do. That my arms weren’t opening for her.
The look on her face when I got out of the car . . .
It made me think of the Jane I know, that I remember.
It made me want to open my arms but it was too late, I was out of the car and at school, swimming around in Ava’s life.
“Well, stop it,” Greer says. “Here’s a memory I’ll fill in for you: I don’t wait. Ever. Okay?”
“Greer,” Olivia says, elbowing her, and Greer rolls her eyes and says, “I’m kidding, Ava,” and looks at Olivia. “Thanks, Mom.”
Olivia giggles, and then turns away when she sees me looking at her.
She knows I see what’s in her heart. Who’s in it, and it makes her face turn deep, dark red.
How can Greer not see this?
“Guys, shut up,” Greer says. “Ava, don’t look, but you-know-who is coming this way.”
“I know who,” Sophy says, her voice a singsong mockery of Greer’s, and Greer and Olivia both look at her, Greer with both eyebrows raised, Olivia merely looking startled.
“We all know who, duh,” Greer says, rolling her eyes at Sophy, and then grins at me. “Well, don’t just stand there. Sit down and smile. But not at him! Smile at Sophy and then laugh like she’s said something funny. You’ll have to pretend hard for that one.”
Sophy, who is sitting down on a bench next to me, looks up at me, smiles, and pats the space next to her. The tips of her ears are a mottled, angry red.
I sit down, forcing my mouth into a smile, and look at the cover of the textbook Sophy’s fiddling with. The top right corner looks like it’s been gouged with something sharp, but the rest of the cover is spotless, the map that covers it glowing brown and green and blue, the whole world sketched out and divided up along curving lines.
It seems to grow larger, and paler, faded with age, and I shake my head to clear it, closing my eyes.
“Hey,” I hear, and open my eyes, see Ethan sitting next to me. His hair is short, cropped close to his scalp, raw red and freshly cut. He is taking furious, frantic notes.
“Hey,” I say, and he looks at me, sort of, a sideways, almost anxious glance.
“What are you doing here?” I say.
“You’re making fun of me too?” he says, his voice low and miserable. “I passed the first maps class, Ava. I did, I swear. And besides, you—you shouldn’t even be talking to me. You’re crèche, and just because Greer talks to you it doesn’t mean the rest of us can. You know how—you know how things are.” He turns away and opens a small tin on his desk, takes out a peppermint.
“Sorry,” he mutters after a moment. “I didn’t mean it. I’m just . . . you know how bad I am with maps. I didn’t really—I—” His voice cracks, and then he crunches the mint between his teeth and starts taking notes again.
“Is this a memory?” I say, but he’s silent, his mouth not moving even though he says “Ava.”
I hear it though, hear him, and I lean toward him, everything going blurry, fading as a headache bursts open behind my eyes, blinding me.
“Ava, sit up!” I hear, and blink, see Sophy next to me, watching me. See Olivia smiling at me, hear Greer saying, “Ava, sit up!” again.
“Oh,” I say, sliding back onto the bench, my head throbbing, and Ethan is standing a few feet away, looking at me.
He doesn’t look the same. His hair isn’t short, it’s longish like it was before, when Greer took me to see him, and has fallen so it shadows the side of his face, dark curls ringing the slight fullness of his cheeks, stopping by the curve of his lips. He has a full, smiling mouth.
He doesn’t look miserable. He looks happy.
I don’t understand.
But then I know I remember Ethan, but not this Ethan.
But why is this Ethan so happy when the Ethan I know wasn’t?
What am I not seeing?
As he sees me watching him, he winks and gives me a slow, small wave, a suggestive crooking of his fingers. When I don’t wave back, he gives a little sigh and then another, slightly smaller smile, like a secret, before he turns and walks away.
He looks so happy. So calm.
But his smile never touched his eyes, not even a little.
His eyes are . . .
They’re sad. They’re full of knowing that no one should have.
I know this Ethan’s eyes.
“Gah!” Greer says, grabbing my arm as the bell rings. “That was a total I-want-you thing, there. I wanted to have sex just watching you two.”
“I know,” Olivia says. “Ava, you should go for it already, okay? I mean, we all know what you’re thinking when you look at him, and now he’s totally thinking it too.”
He was? I didn’t see it. I didn’t—I didn’t feel anything. Not then. The maps—then I felt something.
I felt sorry for him.
“Are you all right?” Sophy says, touching my arm as Greer and Olivia head off to their classes. “I know you don’t actually remember Ethan—or anyone—and, well—we used to talk a lot about stuff, you know?”
I look at her, and I can’t tell if she’s lying or not. I can’t read her.
It makes me nervous.
“I’m okay,” I say, and when she smiles I see another smile under the one she wears, a deeper one, a stronger one. One that has power and uses it. Loves it.
Destroys with it, or wants to.
I know her too. Not this her, but another her, and that Sophy—
That Sophy was everything this one wants to be.
I shudder.
I’m Ava, I remember people from this place.
I remember them, but not from here.
How can I remember a world that isn’t mine? One that isn’t the one I wake up in every day now?
“Girls, get to class,” a teacher passing by calls out, and I’m glad to turn away.
Glad to walk away.
23.
IN CHEMISTRY CLASS,
I don’t understand why the teacher is going over the periodic table so slowly, or why he isn’t talking about the way each element can be used.
I don’t understand why the teacher is going over the periodic table so slowly, or why he isn’t talking about the way each element can be used.
I don’t know how I know the elements, or what they can do. Ava’s notes for this class are as empty as all her others. I doodle a little, copying Ava’s squares and spirals and then a few squiggles of my own, attaching letters and numbers to them that don’t mean anything but flow out of my pen anyway and then sigh, pull out my English textbook and hide it inside my Chemistry book.
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