The Lost Girl

7

Monster



For someone so tiny, Sasha’s yawns are enormous. I can practically see her dinner. I stand at the top of the stairs while she and Nikhil watch telly below, and marvel at her.

“Shouldn’t you be in bed, miss?” I ask with false severity.

Sasha giggles. “It’s a Power Rangers thingy—”

“Marathon,” says Nikhil.

“Marathon,” she repeats. “Mummy and Dad said I could stay up and watch it.”

I smile. Her parents spoil her rotten.

“Do you wanna watch with us?” Sasha asks, her eyes huge with excitement. “It’s really good!”

Nik gives me a look that says otherwise, but he’s also smiling. In the months I’ve been here, I haven’t pushed him to like me. I haven’t pressed him with attention or excessive kindness to try and win him over: it was always clear that he’s too smart to be taken in by things like that. Instead, I have had the luxury of being myself. I’ve taken pains not to act like Amarra when I’m alone with him and Sasha. It was the right thing to do. He has slowly warmed to me. One time, during a late-night movie, he even fell asleep on my shoulder. It surprised me, both that he did it and that a slow warmth filled my chest when he did.

I curl up on the sofa next to Sasha and quickly grasp the general plot of the show: teenagers turned secret heroes make a habit of saving the world from ugly evil types.

“Dad told me and Sash that your name’s Eva,” Nikhil says. “I don’t think he likes it when we call you Amarra.”

I turn to look at him, my attention diverted. “It’s true,” I say cautiously. “I named myself after an elephant.”

They love that so much, they make me tell the story.

“He said not to tell Mummy,” Sasha says shyly when I’m finished, “but we can call you it when she’s not here, can’t we?”

“Yes,” I tell her, “I’d like that very much.”

“Nik says Amarra’s not coming back,” she says. “Is that true?”

“Yes,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

She considers this for a few minutes. Then she nods and becomes deeply absorbed in the show again. I stroke her hair.

I glance at Nik. He looks a little sad, but he smiles. “It’s a good idea,” he says, “you naming yourself. I’ve been thinking about telling my echo about it. He might like a name of his own.”

“You have an echo?”

“Yeah,” he says, like this should be obvious, which I suppose it should have been. Why ask for an echo for one child and not the others? “So does Sash. Didn’t Amarra ever tell you?”

“No, she never mentioned it.” I frown. “How did your parents afford it? One of my guardians once said it costs a lot to have an echo made.”

“The Weavers made you and our echoes for free,” says Nikhil, to my surprise. “Dad told me. He said they pick and choose how much they want to charge someone. There’s no one else out there making echoes, obviously, so they can pretty much ask for as little or as much as they like.”

I remember Matthew and the odd way he and Alisha behaved with each other. “I suppose the Weavers liked your parents.”

“Yeah. Weird.”

“Is it hard?” I ask Nikhil softly. “Having an echo?”

“Not for me. Kind of like having a pen pal. My echo is really nice. I don’t know about Sasha’s, obviously. I’ve never spoken to her.”

“You talk with your echo? You like him?”

Nik nods.

I gaze at him, mystified. “But your sister hated me.”

“I’m not my sister,” says Nikhil, “and my echo’s not you.”

“But he might replace you someday. Don’t you hate that that might happen? That he might be here with your family?”

“No,” says Nik, so calmly I am exasperated. “I worry about what might happen to the people who love me if I die before them. I like knowing I have someone who will try to stop them from feeling so sad if that happens.”

I stare at him in astonishment. My heart twinges at hearing Nikhil, not even twelve years old, saying these words to me. He is so amazingly unselfish, his thoughts so clear and unconflicted. It puts me to shame.

“I don’t think of you as Amarra, anyway,” he goes on. “So it’s not like you’ve come here and stolen us from her. I think of you as Eva. I don’t see you as someone who’s replaced her. I see you as someone different who just happens to be here. I’d think of you the same way if you were both here at the same time.” He glances up at me. “And I like you. You try so hard to make us feel better.”

I try to smile back at him. It’s a moment I will remember later, and always. A turning point. Until now I’ve been trying to make them feel better for me. Because as long as Amarra’s family likes me and trusts that I am like their daughter, they will keep me. But as I stare into Nikhil’s eyes, I decide that maybe it’s time to start trying for them, too. Because if I do make them feel better in some small way, him and Sasha and even Alisha, that means something. It means they need me. I’ve helped. I’ve done, if only partly, what I was woven for.

“I like you too,” I tell Nik.

“And me!” cries Sasha.

“And you,” I say, mussing up her hair. I exchange a grin with Nik. “I like you best of all, Sash.”

“Goody,” she says, content.

I sit out the episode before going upstairs. There are only so many wisecracking superheroes and ugly villains I can cope with.

The first thing I see when I go back to Amarra’s room is the Lake District postcard lying on her desk. Though I knew I could be punished for it, I sent Sean a birthday card in early November. A couple of weeks later the blank postcard turned up. Like old times.

I go to bed, but when I shut my eyes I still see the postcard. The painting of the lakes and hills makes me think of home, and Sean, and Mina Ma, and it makes my chest hurt. I keep seeing them. A tourist on the street might be Erik, a man in a bookshop could be Jonathan, a flash of blond hair and I imagine it’s Ophelia. The smell of Mina Ma’s hand cream, a popular brand in Bangalore, follows me around like a pup. Once I had to switch off an episode of the BBC production of Robin Hood because the actor playing Robin had hair just like Sean’s. Every time I’m with Ray, I feel guilty, like I have broken a pact in some way, like I’m betraying them both. My past is haunting me and, like Amarra, it won’t go away.

I can’t sleep. I can’t stop thinking about him. Frustrated, I turn the light back on and search for something to read. I’ve read every book on Amarra’s shelf at some point in our lives, so I hunt for the book Sean gave me, British Romanticism.

It looks boring. I search for the blurb, but the back cover is blank. Touching the wrinkled spine, I notice for the first time that the cover is loose, made of old paper. I peel it away, revealing an old and tattered book beneath. The real cover has been blacked out with a thick felt tip. Bewildered, I flip through the first few pages.

I stop, frozen, on the inner page where the title of the book is usually repeated. I have to look twice to make sure I’m not imagining what I see.



Mary Shelley

FRANKENSTEIN;

or,

The Modern Prometheus.



“He didn’t,” I say out loud, in disbelief. My pulse races. Excitement and shock creep into my blood like a fever. “He didn’t.”

Sean broke the rule nobody ever broke in our cottage. My pleading and coaxing had no effect on any of them. Frankenstein, and everything based on it, was forbidden. Sean never bent, in spite of all those times I asked, begged. Then, when he knew I would be leaving England, he did.

I stare down at the book, at the faded pages, the loose binding. I hesitate, frightened of it, of the secrets and story that I might uncover, things the Weavers never wanted me to know.

Very gingerly, I pick the book up again, flip the page, and start to read.

I read well into the night, tucked beneath a soft shawl, eyes wide and worried as the terrible, terrible story unfolds. Bits and pieces stand out, voices from the book leap off the page and whisper in my ear. The voice of a man who made a person from scratch and paid a terrible price for rejecting him. Violence, darkness, tragedy. But something else, too. Strength. The creature, this monster, he wins. He beats the man who made him. More than that: he destroys him.

I read until I’ve finished and the clock tells me it’s far later than I’ve been awake in weeks. When it’s over, I put the book down and curl up into the smallest ball I can make.

“Sean, I think I’ve understood,” I say very softly.

He doesn’t reply. I can’t conjure him up. Instead I think of the strangest thing: a girl from long ago, faceless and little more than a myth to me. An echo who once defied the Weavers.

And her lips move. She’s telling me to defy them too. Because like Frankenstein’s monster, I could win.



I’ve almost forgotten how hot it was when I first arrived. The nights are cold now. This is the only time of year here that the air is sharp and smells of stars instead of dust and spices.

No one at the house makes a fuss for Christmas, but I see Alisha cast worried looks at Neil over dinner, which makes me suspect that she wanted to but he asked her not to. He probably can’t bear to celebrate Amarra’s favorite holidays. Nikhil confesses to me later that the family normally decorates a ragged old Christmas tree, they have fun, the kids get presents. They skipped over Diwali this year, too: most Novembers, they went out into the street with lamps and soft Indian sweets and fireworks, spending hours out there with the rockets and sparklers and lights. The conversation takes me back to Mina Ma and the lakes, and our silly Christmases, and the one year Erik surprised her by bringing over little lamps and a box of noisy firecrackers around Diwali time. Our neighbors hated us that year.

As we ease back into school in January, I explore the city on my own. Bangalore unsettles me, with its bustle and sounds. I’m fascinated by the spices and scents and such peculiarities as spotting men hunkered around a tombstone in a cemetery, drinking tea out of steel cups. If I could have chosen to come here, on holiday maybe, I would have loved this place and everything around it: the hills, the forests, the temples and statues. I would have wanted to go see an elephant in the wild or try and spot a tiger or panther in the forest. Jaya’s done these things; Lekha’s done these things; they tell me about it and it sounds incredible.

But the city is the place that shelters Amarra’s ghost. And yet being out alone is one of the few places I can let the mask slip away, and instead of walking in her shoes, it’s like we’re two girls, ghost and echo, walking side by side. No one looks twice at me. A couple of times I run into an old auntie or uncle of Amarra’s, someone who pinches my cheeks and asks about school and the family, but these occasions are rare.

So I go out when I can. I try food off the streets. I buy books at a little shop on Church Street. I drift through the malls looking for people I never find. I make a wish at a temple one silver morning. I wish to go home again.

Sometimes I have nightmares about the accident that killed Amarra. Awake, I try not to think about the bright lights flashing by and the motorcycle’s tires screeching and the shattered glass as we—she—flew out of the car. Amarra’s ghost hovers very close to me on those days. I wonder what she would have thought if she could see me, if she would have hated me even more, if, wherever she is now, she is willing me to fail.

If she does will that, she gets her wish. I make one mistake too many. It’s careless and I have no excuse for it. My attention slips, only for a moment, but a moment is all it needed.

During lunch on a Friday, Sonya rummages about in my bag, emerging with a packet of Ruffles crisps.

“American Cream and Onion?” she says, wrinkling her nose. “What happened to the usual Classic Salted?”

I am bent over my desk, desperately trying to finish some geography homework I was too tired to work on the night before, and I am barely listening to her.

“I don’t like the Classic Salted crisps,” I say distractedly. “They don’t taste of anything.”

“What’s a crisp?”

I look up at her, my mind still full of uninteresting details relating to rock formations and soil density. “What?”

“A crisp,” she repeats. “That’s what you called the chips just now.”

She doesn’t wait for a reply, simply opens the bag of crisps/chips and helps herself. I stare at her, my heart plummeting. Did she have to pick up on it? Did she have to question it? Worse, did I have to say it on a day when Ray is eating lunch with us?

I make myself look up at him, praying that maybe, just maybe, he didn’t hear. But he did. Oh, he did.

The look on his face is worse than I could have imagined. He’s stunned, like someone has hit him in the face with a sandbag. As he stares at me, his mouth moves wordlessly.

Such a small, insignificant mistake. And yet, to Ray, who knew every last nuance of Amarra’s speech, it’s the most significant thing in the world.

I watch his eyes dart this way and that, his mind fitting the pieces together, adding up all my mistakes, all those suspicious moments. I watch him relive every minute or day I have spent with him since I arrived. I watch the thing I dreaded most: the look of horror grow on his face as he realizes he touched me, laughed with me, held my hand, kissed my cheek and my forehead. And the whole time, it wasn’t her.

“Amarra . . .” he croaks.

But he’s not asking. He’s not saying my name. He’s calling for her, knowing she’s not here. My bones rattle, icy cold.

Ray blinks at me, once, twice, rapidly. Then he gets up and leaves the room, abandoning us without a word.

“What’s with him?” Sonya demands.

I don’t answer her. I spend the rest of the day feeling dizzy with fear.

In my distraction, I forget to take home a book I can’t do my math homework without. I leave Sonya and Jaya at the buses and hurry back to the empty classroom. I find the book, turn around, and Ray is standing in the doorway. He must have followed me back to catch me on my own.

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.