The Lost Girl

14

Judas



The fight on the pavement effectively ends our “accidental” encounters. Ray and I don’t have another exam together until the beginning of June. English Lit. It’s the last exam for most of us. It’s also the first time I see him again.

Whenever I think of what he said, I taste anger and hurt. I also feel guilty for my outburst. It was unfair not to listen, not to stay calm and explain things better.

And who am I to judge Ray for putting his hope in outrageous ideas when I spend every day thinking of insane and impossible ways to elude the Sleep Order?

He doesn’t look happy when I spot him outside the exam room. But he’s not angry, either. I’m used to his temper, but today his shoulders are hunched and his head hangs low, as though there’s a cold wind on this summer’s day. I try shrugging it off as we file into the exam room.

The exam goes better than I’d expected. It’s even relaxing, to forget about the real world and concentrate on Lady Macbeth and Heathcliff and Cathy and Keats instead.

After the exam, Lekha skips in circles around me as we leave, singing under her breath about holidays and freedom and death to all exams.

“Hey,” says Ray, coming up behind Lekha. “Sonya’s decided to have an end-of-exam party at her parents’ farm tonight. Everyone’s invited. Do you two want to go?”

“I don’t think she’ll want me there,” I point out.

He shakes his head. “She said you could come if you wanted. Asked me to tell you.”

Lekha raises her eyebrows. “And why is she being so magnanimous?”

“Dunno,” he says. “So. Going?”

“I can’t,” says Lekha, disappointed. “I’m going away with my mother for the weekend. I told you so last week,” she adds, as though Ray is personally responsible.

“Yeah, but even if I’d told her so, it wouldn’t have changed her plans. You do know we’re not exactly best friends, right? She won’t do anything to oblige me.”

Lekha sighs. “Alas. Take notes. I want to hear all about it later. Conceal no gossip from me, unless it involves Sam, in which case I just don’t care. Are you going to go, Eva?”

“I don’t think so. Isn’t her farm halfway out of the city?”

“I can give you a ride,” Ray offers.

I frown at him. “Why?”

“I guess it’s my way of apologizing for the other day,” he says. He glances at Lekha, who rolls her eyes and takes six pointed steps away. I stifle a smile. Ray gives me a miserable look. “I shouldn’t have said those things.”

“It’s okay. I didn’t mean to get so angry.”

“You could let me make it up to you. I figure that if we went to the party, everyone else will see us there. If they see us being friendly, they might decide they have no excuse not to act the same way.”

He has a point. And it’s a sweet thing to offer to do.

I nod cautiously. “Okay.”

He gives me a rather twisted smile in response. He doesn’t seem over the moon that I agreed, but I let it go. Lekha, who has obviously been listening in, skips back to us. “Can we get out of here?” She shepherds us in the direction of the gates. “I could fry an egg on my head right now, it’s so effing hot. And I need to get home and pack for this weekend in the wild.”

“You do know that saying effing makes you sound like a dimwit, right?” says Ray, sounding almost normal.

She beams back at him. “And you know that saying dimwit makes you sound like a dimwit, right?”

We separate at the gates. Ray goes off to his car, after asking me if picking me up at eight o’clock tonight will be okay, and Lekha and I go to find her mother’s car and driver. We’re about halfway back to Amarra’s house when Lekha sits bolt upright.

“Do you think Ray means tonight to be a sort of date?”

“No,” I say. “He’s just trying to be nice.”

“And he likes being around you,” she says shrewdly. “I can tell.”

“I’m not so sure like is the right word for it. He sees me and he’s talking to me, but he sees her, too. He has to. We look the same.”

“Heavens, I don’t know how you cope,” says Lekha. “It boggles my brain.”

I eat dinner early that evening because of the party. I help Neil cook, and while we’re eating, I tell them I’m going out. I don’t know if I’m supposed to ask permission. But of all people, Nik is the one who asks me when I intend to be back, which makes the others laugh.

“I’m probably not going to want to stay out late,” I say. “I should be back by ten-ish. I’ll call if I’m going to be any later.”

I don’t particularly want to be there well into the wee hours. My classmates don’t like me, no matter what Ray hopes to achieve, and if they keep feeling that way, it’s going to be an uncomfortable evening.

It takes me twenty minutes to decide what to wear. I’m tempted to wear the black dress Mina Ma gave me, but it’s too nice for a spontaneous end-of-exam party. I don’t want to look overdressed. Amarra’s style was casual and classy and it’s a style I like, but it leaves me very little room to go out tonight looking like me and not like she would have done.

In the end, I choose a pair of black leggings and a silvery tunic and I find a pair of black heels in the closet. I feel almost silly, spending this much time thinking about something I will only wear for a few hours, but I really want to look like me.

I don’t bother with makeup, apart from black eye pencil. I clip my hair up into a loose knot. There. I smile. Now I look like me. We aren’t going out in public, just to Sonya’s house, where everyone already knows what I am. And if they’re going to treat me like an echo anyway, why hide?

I’m ready in time and waiting outside when Ray drives up.

“I thought I’d have to wait,” he says when I jump in. “Amarra took half a year to get ready if we went out anywhere.”

“Was it worth it?”

“Every time,” he says, his eyes sad.

We make polite, strained conversation the whole way to Sonya’s farm. For once, Ray is more tense and uneasy than I am. His grip on the wheel is so tight I can see the veins pop in the backs of his hands. I wonder if he regrets asking me to go with him.

“Why are you so jumpy?” I ask.

“Why do you always ask so many questions?”

“Why are you answering my question with another question?”

He makes a half-irritated sound. “This could go on awhile.”

“I can ask questions till I’m blue in the face,” I assure him. “So I wouldn’t try to compete. And you still haven’t answered me.”

“I still don’t want to,” he replies.

I stare out the window, watching the flickering tubes of the streetlights flash by. They look like falling stars when Ray drives fast enough. The pattern is hypnotic. And eerily like the lights racing by on the night Amarra laughed in his car, flew through the shattered glass, and died.

I wonder if she felt any different that night. If she knew somehow, instinctively, that she was in danger. Does anyone know?

I shudder with cold, wondering why I thought of that.

“Why didn’t she have her seatbelt on?”

“A lot of people don’t bother wearing them here. Road laws are often held in contempt.”

“But she must have been the seatbelt type. She washed her apples, for heaven’s sake. Why didn’t she have her seatbelt on that night?”

“She was small,” he mutters under his breath. “As you probably know. If she had her seatbelt on, she couldn’t reach far enough to kiss me.” He touches his neck. “So she took it off.”

I wish I hadn’t asked.

Sonya’s farm is tucked away off the street, up a winding dirt road sheltered by trees and half-broken fences. There are ten or twelve cars parked in the large yard in front of the house when we get there, and I can hear the low throb of music. I feel a nervous twinge in my stomach. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ray checking his watch, looking strained and rather white. What on earth is he so edgy about? Maybe he’s worried about what his friends and classmates will think of him, hanging out with his dead girlfriend’s copy. It could go over very badly.

I reach for his hand and give it a tentative squeeze before letting it go. “Ray? Thank you for trying to change their minds about me.”

For some reason, this only seems to make him look slightly sick. “Come on,” he says.

It’s not as bad as his anxiety made me fear it would be. Sonya must have told people that I would be coming, and that Ray would be bringing me, because no one looks particularly surprised. People greet Ray and only a few seem a touch frostier than usual, their eyes judging, questioning. Sam avoids me, but others say hello, though they don’t say my name. They probably don’t know what to call me. “Amarra” is a bit of a faux pas now.

No one stares. They have their own lives. They go back to whatever they were doing before we came in: chatting or finding a drink or attempting silly dances on Sonya’s makeshift dance floor.

Ray and I find a table littered with bottles and cans by the kitchen doorway. As Ray pours a Coke into a glass, I spot Sonya in the kitchen. She’s alone and on the phone, with more drinks on the counter behind her. She waves her hand desperately at Ray.

“I think Sonya wants to talk to you,” I say. “Maybe she doesn’t like your shirt?”

Ray smiles almost unwillingly. “It’s definitely going to be abuse of some kind,” he says. “I’ll be back in a sec.”

He crosses into the kitchen to see what Sonya wants. I put my bag down on the table and stay where I am, drinking my Coke as fast as possible to look like I’m doing something. A girl called Tara, the older sister of someone in the class, strikes up a conversation. I only last ten minutes with her before the combination of Coke and nervousness makes me need the bathroom. I ask Tara if she knows where it is, and she points helpfully up the stairs. I thank her and follow her directions. I knock on the bathroom door first to make sure there’s nobody in there already, before going in and turning the lock. The music becomes a dull throb through the door. There’s a window open in the corner and the fresh air is lovely.

On my way down, I almost collide with Ray on the stairs. He looks like he’s downed three or four shots of vodka since I last saw him.

“Ray, are you—”

He puts a finger to my lips, stopping me. He isn’t moving like he’s been drinking. His hand is mostly steady.

“You’re beautiful,” he says. “She was. Is. Was. You are too. You both are.” He leans close and I am too startled to step back. “I called you a monster once. But you’re not. I am.”

His head draws in and he kisses me. So light, like the swipe of a fingertip against my lips. My heart jolts in shock. I respond instinctively without any thought or will of my own. I can’t breathe. I can taste the vodka on him. He tastes bitter.

Ray pulls back and rubs his eyes like he can’t understand how he ended up here. He leans his head against the wall. “You have to get out, Eva.”

“Wh-what?”

“You need to go,” he says. And I realize that behind the slightly drunken desire, the pain, the memories of someone else and of me, there’s something else. Guilt.

Fear.

“What are you talking about?” I ask more sharply. My heart’s still pounding. My mouth is dry and raw and soft. I bite my lip, trying to bite away the lingering traces of the kiss.

“Come with me.” He takes me by the elbow and pulls me back up the stairs. To the first door on the right. Behind us, someone hoots, someone else makes a lewd comment, and I turn red. But Ray ignores them and pulls me into the room and slams the door shut behind us.

He takes me to the window and draws the curtain back. “There,” he says urgently.

“You’re going to have to explain—”

“Just look,” he interrupts me.

I look. I have no idea what to look for, so at first I see nothing. Just the cars already parked outside, including Ray’s. The trees. The dirt road. And far beyond, twinkling between trees and fences, the faint lights of the main road about half a mile away.

Then I see someone moving. There’s a car parked behind Ray’s that wasn’t there before. It pulled in after us. There’s a woman standing by the passenger door, rummaging around inside. She’s in her twenties, in tight jeans, a leather jacket. I don’t recognize her. I watch as she pulls something out of the car, and then my eyes travel down to an odd bump at the bottom of one leg. Like she has some padding around her ankle.

My knees wobble. Suddenly I am somewhere else, staring at a man with an outdated map, and Sean’s voice is in my ear. His hand has clamped down on my elbow. He’s afraid.

The woman reaches into her car to pull something else out. She moves quickly, but not quickly enough. She hikes up one leg of her jeans and shoves two shiny things into a sheath strapped around her calf. They both flash in the lights from the house, flashing silver.

Knives.

In an instant I understand, though I can’t quite believe it. I turn to look at Ray, disbelieving, incredulous. This can’t be happening.

“Is she a hunter?” I ask very quietly.

He nods, jaw working like he can’t bring himself to speak.

“And”—something inside me splinters in two—“you brought me here so that she could find me?”

He nods.