The Lost Girl

6

Spider



I stay in the car for a moment longer than I should, watching him through the open window. He’s sitting on the steps of the patio area around Garuda Mall, and he hasn’t yet spotted me. I can’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, but his head is pointed the other way. He looks like a model from an aftershave ad. No, he looks rawer than that. More interesting.

Alisha pushes her sunglasses up onto her head and squints past me at Ray. “What’s wrong?” she asks. “Nervous?”

I nod. “It feels like it’s all starting again.” I can imagine how Amarra used to feel when they first went out, how nervous, how her heart stopped every time he looked at her, how she felt like she was constantly on her toes. It’s a little like how I feel now. And it’s how I felt last year, with Sean.

“The pieces will fall into place,” Alisha assures me. “These things take time.” She brushes hair out of my eyes. “You don’t have to get out and see him today. You can call him, tell him something came up.”

It’s so tempting. He’d be disappointed, but at least I wouldn’t have to keep lying. I feel like I’m caught in a web. Each time I lie, I spin the web tighter around myself, until some days it’s hard to breathe.

But I won’t run away. I’ll get out and I’ll walk up to him. I just need to muster the courage to do it.

I will have to cling to my excuse: the supposed gaps in my memory, my uncertainty after the accident. There’s no other way to be with him. No one ever trained me to be a girlfriend, a lover, a love—there hadn’t been enough time, after discovering Ray existed, to start lessons and better equip me for it.

“No, it’s okay,” I say, “I’ll get out now.”

Ray suggested meeting here. Apparently it was one of their favorite places. They liked the air-conditioning inside, going up and down the escalators, eating at the food court, watching a movie, getting ice cream on their way out, just wandering.

“Have fun,” says Alisha. “I’m going to drop some things off for next week’s exhibition at the gallery, but I shouldn’t be long. I’ll call you on my way home. If you’re ready to go back too, I’ll come and get you.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

She drives off, almost hitting a car parked nearby on her way. As soon as I’m out of the air-conditioning, the heat hits me and sweat prickles on the back of my neck. I wish I could have put my hair up into a knot or ponytail, but I don’t want to draw anyone’s attention to the shiny white bandage I’ve taped over my Mark. Especially not Ray’s. It’s bad enough having to do it during PE.

I walk toward Ray, twisting my hands. He stands when he sees me, but he doesn’t come any closer, just waits for me. His face lights up.

“What?” I ask, when I’m right in front of him and he’s still staring silently at me. “Have I got something on my face?”

“No,” he says sheepishly. “Sorry. I just always forget how beautiful you are.”

My face burns hot.

“A blush!” he teases. “Hey! Point for me.” I give him a bewildered look, and he explains, “Oh, maybe you don’t remember that. You always gave yourself a point when you made me blush. We both did, but you had way more points.”

It would be lame if I were to pretend I remembered this. Instead I smile and say, “Maybe we could start counting points from zero again?”

He strokes his thumb down my cheek, a quick touch before pulling his hand away so as not to alarm me.

“Sorry.”

“If you’re apologizing about the accident again, I’m not listening,” I say, maybe a tad more firmly than Amarra would have. “I’m okay.”

“You look okay,” he says, and there’s something in his voice that makes me tense. “Jesus, it’s amazing, actually. I saw you, lying there in all the broken glass. I even tried to crawl to you, but I must have blacked out in seconds. There was so much blood. It drove me crazy when I woke up, not being allowed to see you until you came back to school. Not even being able to talk to you. I was so scared something was seriously wrong.” He stops abruptly, as though aware of how much pain there suddenly is in his voice, in his eyes. He smiles to lighten his expression. “I expected you to have cuts, bruises, scars all over. But you don’t seem to have a scratch on you.”

My heart thumps very fast, and I have to swallow once or twice to moisten my dry throat. “I have scratches,” I say, forcing myself to meet his eyes, trying to lift that glimmer of suspicion out of them. “But most of them aren’t places you can see.”

His face softens. That confusion isn’t completely gone, but I think he believes me. “I know.” He gestures at the sliding doors. “Let’s go inside, I’m about to fry out here.”

The air-conditioning is a blessing. The heat on my skin cools and I feel less sweaty, less edgy. I feel in control of myself again. I watch a last bead of sweat trickle down Ray’s forehead, by his dark, dark eyes. I can’t help looking at him; my eyes keep pulling that way. I don’t know if it’s the residue of Amarra’s feelings or if it’s the constant refrain in my head, reminding me that I am supposed to love him.

“Love him, then,” a painfully familiar voice says in my ear. “Go on.”

I jerk my head around. Sean always sounds so real.

“Amarra?”

I swallow back the silly, sudden tears in my throat. “Nothing, sorry,” I say. “I just thought I saw someone I knew.”

Ray frowns down at me, concerned. “You okay?”

“Yes. Really.”

This is ridiculous. I can’t keep doing this. I can’t look at Ray and wish he was Sean. I can’t keep thinking about Sean. They belong to two different worlds; they shouldn’t collide. I am Amarra. I must be Amarra. I have to stop thinking about Sean and everything else that belonged to that other life.

As if he could hear my thoughts, Ray reaches out and carefully takes my hand, linking his long fingers loosely with mine. The touch startles me.

“That okay?”

I nod and keep my fingers entwined with his.

He grins slightly. “I’d kiss you, but I might shock the old ladies.” Irritatingly, I blush again. He quickly adds, “I mean, I wouldn’t just pounce and kiss you. I know you’re still shaky.”

“I haven’t forgotten you completely, you know,” I feel compelled to say. “It’s just a few pieces that are missing, that’s all.”

“Really?” There’s something challenging in the way he says this, something almost desperate in the way he searches my eyes again. My heart sinks. He’s looking for her and he’s not sure if he sees her.

“Yes,” I say, making myself squeeze his hand, though my voice chokes on the lie. “I know I’m different, but it’s only for now. It won’t last forever.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. It’s just that you seem different. It makes me think about what you told me—”

He stops.

“What I told you?” I prompt, alarmed.

“Never mind,” he says, “it’s not important. Do you want to go up to the food court? Or we can leave, go get dosas at Airlines if you want.”

“Erm . . .” My eyes travel upward, past an escalator to the floor above us, where I can see the shiny, gleaming sign of a Crossword. I’ve obviously never been to one before, but I read about them in Amarra’s pages enough times to know instinctively that Crossword means books.

Ray follows my gaze and starts to laugh. I notice his body relax slightly, as though I’ve done something to reassure him.

“We can go in there,” he says, tugging my hand. “I know it’s your temple.”

I hop eagerly onto the escalator. Amarra loved stroking the spines of books, like I do. She loved reading, loved the smell of paper. She made a face at her father’s Kindle because she didn’t think an ebook was the same. She called it cheating and made him laugh. I feel an unexpected pang in my chest. Sorrow. Loss. For her. In spite of everything.

It occurs to me then, for the first time, that I have always been one of two. A copy. A mirage. I had her, even when I hated her.

Now I’m alone. Singular.

Something about the bookshop sets me at ease. It makes me feel more like myself and more like Amarra simultaneously. Consequently, Ray relaxes too, and for an hour we have fun. He affectionately rolls his eyes at my enthusiasm, and I barely notice that he’s still holding my hand as I race around the store like a chicken without a head. Ray offers to buy me a book, but I decline. I sniff the spines, which makes him laugh so hard he chokes.

It sets me giggling too, and quite abruptly I flash back unexpectedly to another memory, of a zoo, and pulling on a boy’s hand, and popcorn, and the smell of elephants under a bright blue sky.

I blink, trying to shake off the memory. I banish the flash of green eyes.

Ray is watching me and I catch that flicker of suspicion again. It keeps coming and going and probably won’t entirely go away until I am flawless, constant.

“What do you think about?” he asks. “When you go away like that?”

“Nothing,” I say too sharply.

His eyes narrow. I wonder if Amarra ever used that tone of voice in her life.

“I just—” I falter in a panic, trying to recover, fix the mistake. “I just remember things. They come back to me, stuff I didn’t even know I had forgotten.”

He doesn’t say anything for a minute. He watches me carefully. There’s nothing more I can say without sounding like I’m desperately scrambling for excuses. I think of Neil, his description of the ways I am different from Amarra, and I feel a paranoid surge of fear.

Finally Ray says, “Stuff about me?”

“Sometimes,” I lie, the taste sour on my tongue.

He hesitates a moment. Then he kisses my forehead and I almost faint with relief. “Well, if it makes you feel any better,” he teases, “I only think about you sometimes too.”

“Liar.”

“Yeah.” He sighs. “I am.”

I find a new book to fawn over, my hands still trembling slightly. Ray shakes his head but grins. He has no problem with reading a book, but it’s obviously not the first thing he’d think of doing on a cold rainy afternoon. Still, he makes every effort to share my enthusiasm, and if he’s bored, he hides it well. It makes me feel guiltier to see how much he loves her. It also makes me feel a stab of envy.

He will be so angry and hurt if he ever discovers my deception. He’ll be in so much pain if he realizes she’s gone.

He’ll never forgive me. And for some reason, that bothers me.

Alisha rings me a little while later, to let me know she’s leaving the gallery and can come get me if I want her to. I glance at Ray, who shrugs as though to say “it’s up to you.” Amarra would want to stay out with him. But the risk is too high. The more time I spend with him, the more likely I am to take a wrong step. So I give him an apologetic smile and ask Alisha to pick me up on her way past. Ray looks disappointed, but he accepts the excuse that my mother wants me home and resting as much as possible.

It’s raining when I get in the car, and halfway to the house there’s a patch of bad traffic, so we stay in almost the same spot for half an hour. Alisha puts some music on. Gipsy Kings. It’s not enough to drown out the honking of impatient cars and trucks. There is no such thing as a quiet, orderly traffic queue in India. I roll the window down to get some fresh air, but all I can smell is dust and gasoline, so I put it back up. In the end I fall asleep.



The weeks following my Saturday with Ray have a certain rhythm. An exhausting rhythm. I’ve always had to work hard at learning Amarra, but there used to be breaks, respites, time to sit still and be myself with my guardians. I’ve never worked as hard at anything as I am forced to do now.

I exchange polite conversation with Neil and painstak-ingly pretend for Alisha. I watch telly—no, TV—with Nikhil and Sasha. They treat me like me when their parents aren’t in the room, and it’s nice. Soothing. I go to school and learn. I see Ray outside of school. I try spending more time with him, which is more enjoyable than I had expected, but it only leads to the inevitable slips. In response I can only pull away, and it heightens his suspicions. Whichever way I turn, I cannot convince Ray, not entirely.

When I can’t avoid them any longer, I go out into town with Sonya and Jaya, to Coffee Day, to a movie, to Brigade Road, where we sit on the steps of the Barista and eat flavored corn on the cob. I get through these hours by staying absolutely alert, my memory like a book I’ve propped open so that I can find answers the moment I need them. I muddle some things up, usually things Amarra never told me about, like the fact that Sonya once had a gloomy-rocker boyfriend they nicknamed Kurt Cobain. I make mistakes, but they believe me when I say my head’s still not quite better.

I have one close shave before PE that December. It’s a chilly winter and everyone is gearing up for the Christmas holiday. In the girls’ bathroom, the talk is all about going to Goa and the beaches, who’s going to which New Year’s Eve party, who’s decorating a tree, who’s got to spend their holiday with millions of annoying aunties and cousins in Delhi.

While I change, I put my hair up into a ponytail. I’ve had to do it since my first PE class, but it never gets any easier. Keenly aware of the accident, Amarra’s friends and classmates have restrained themselves from asking about the white gauze and surgical tape on the back of my neck. I knew their restraint wouldn’t last. After all, it’s now been more than three months since I arrived.

“So,” says Sonya, choosing today, the last PE session of the calendar year, to confront me. “It’s time you told me what the hell that bandage is doing on the back of your neck!”

“Sonya—”

“I’m only asking her, Jaya. I’m just worried there’s something wrong that you haven’t told us about.” She stops in the middle of the bathroom in her bra and shorts, halfway changed. “It’s not an open wound, is it? Shouldn’t that have healed by now? It’s been months!”

I tense. “It’s an ugly scar. I don’t like people seeing it.”

“Since when do you care about having a scar?” Sonya demands. “You’ve never been vain in your life!”

“Sonya, leave it alone,” Jaya says. “It’s Amarra’s scar, not yours.”

“But—”

“I’ve never had a scar like this one,” I reply.

She snorts. “It can’t be worse than the scars on your stomach.”

I stare at her in horror. Oh. God. I had completely forgotten about the stupid scars from the time Amarra was bitten by a dog, scars I never had. I’ve been changing in front of them for weeks now and it’s obvious that no one has noticed their absence on my belly. Yet.

“Come on,” says Sonya. “Show me? I won’t make fun, I promise. It’s not like having a scar is the worst thing in the world. You could have been dead.”

I press my hand to the gauze, afraid she’ll try to pull it off. “No,” I say, too firmly. It’s not like Amarra at all. Amarra would have sighed and given in to avoid a silly scene. But here I am, standing my ground in a fierce and entirely un-Amarra-like way.

“But—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” cries a high, clear voice from less than ten feet away. “Not another spider!”

Sonya shrieks and skitters six feet in the opposite direction. I look around. I don’t see the spider; it’s not anywhere near me. I search for the source of the cry and find Lekha, the girl who called Sam tactless on that first day. She’s sitting on the edge of a sink and doesn’t look very alarmed at all. In fact, she’s clearly fighting the urge to laugh at the ridiculous spectacle Sonya and the other girls are making of themselves.

As the panic dies down, I can’t help glancing over at her, my brow knit in confusion. Lekha and I say hello when we see each other, and more often than not we’re the only two who raise our hands in English Lit. She seems nice. Funny. She says strange things, mixes her words up all the time. She and Amarra had known one another since they were little but didn’t often see much of each other outside school, so I’ve never stopped to think about her.

But she has my attention now. There is no spider in the bathroom, I am quite certain of that.

“Don’t be paranoid,” I mutter to myself. If Amarra’s best friends haven’t noticed that I’m not her, why should a classmate who barely spends time with her?

I escape that PE class without discovery, but the Christmas break isn’t much of a break for me. I still see a great deal of Amarra’s friends, still see Ray. He seems more cautious, and it leaves me helpless because there’s nothing I can do to be more convincing.

Over time, the strain begins to show. I never feel fully rested. The faint shadows beneath my eyes become purple bruises.

At night, I lie awake and think about danger. A man leaning against a lamppost with an old map. The zoo. The feel of Matthew’s hand closed over on my wrist. Running off a train to Sean. Adrian Borden’s golden eyes. When I finally fall asleep, I dream of strange things. Clock towers and Weavers and hunters prowling the dark. A sad-eyed woman, asking me what my heart wants. I dream of ghosts with Amarra’s face, and green nurseries, and canals, and cities full of cemeteries and yellow fog.

But the most unsettling dreams are the ones of hourglasses and spiders crawling up the glass. I’m always trapped in the glass and fine white sand begins to fill it up. And I know that I’m going to be smothered if I can’t break out of the hourglass in time.