The Lost Girl

2

Mistakes



I have two visitors while I’m recovering. The first is Lekha, who comes by on most days. She often brings a movie with her, something she’s bought off the man on Commercial Street who sells DVDs cheap. Neil has moved an old television and DVD player to my room for the time being. We rarely watch the movies, though: Lekha talks her way through them. Nikhil and I are used to her, so we only laugh, but Sean is constantly perplexed by her sketchy vocabulary.

The other visitor, who comes only once, is Ray.

I wake one evening to find him standing by the door. I scramble upright, pulling the covers to my throat. He looks guilty. He looks like he’s tearing himself to pieces with it.

“I have five minutes,” he says. “Nikhil wasn’t happy, but Amarra’s mother said I could come in. She’s waiting at the bottom of the stairs to get rid of me when my time’s up.”

I stare at him in silence. He doesn’t seem to know what to say.

“I don’t look like her anymore,” I say at last, gesturing to the scars on my face. “Happy?”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”

I stare back at him. “Is that it?” I ask. “Because you can leave now, if that’s all. I’d like to sleep.”

“Can I just say something?”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” I say. I sit up, both of my arms aching as they push me upright. “You warned me and I appreciate that. But I almost died—”

“I didn’t take you there so you’d die!” says Ray. “We were friends. I wasn’t pretending I liked hanging out with you all that time. You know how it was. I saw her, but I also saw you. I like you. I—I never wanted to throw all that away.”

“But you did. You say you didn’t want to kill me, but if things had worked out like you hoped, I wouldn’t be here anymore. You’d have given away my life to get her back. That means I never want to see you again. Please leave.”

Ray swallows. “But—”

“No,” I say, and to my horror my eyes fill with tears. “I don’t want to listen anymore.”

He stands very still, very quietly.

I wait.

“I’ll be around,” he says at last, “if you change your mind.”

I don’t reply.

He turns abruptly. I wonder if Alisha’s about to come in to tell him his time’s up. But it’s Sean, and his eyes are dark and the look on his face makes me shiver.

“Get out,” he says very quietly.

Ray bristles. “Who’re you?”

“The only one of us who didn’t take Eva off to die,” says Sean. “What more do you need to know?”

Ray’s face darkens. “I was only talking to her—”

“Leave,” says Sean, “or I swear I will kill you.”

I watch Ray’s hands fist by his sides. Sean’s eyes narrow. I almost fall over trying to get out of bed.

“Are you joking?” I demand, knowing fully well how ironic these words sound coming out of my mouth, “A brawl? Really?”

“Eva—”

“I want you to leave, Ray.” I cut him off. I’m so tired.

Although it’s obvious he doesn’t want to, Ray backs down. The anger blows out of his face and he nods. He stops at the door to look back once. “I mean it, you know. You’ll never know how sorry I am.”

When he’s gone, I sit down on the floor and swallow back a sob. Sean sits down next to me. I lean my head on his knee and breathe in and out. I’m tired of being afraid. I’m tired of being hurt. I’m tired of having no control over my life. This has to change.

I go back to sleep a little later, but it’s fitful and broken. I wake with a start, shivering, and I look around for Sean. He’s still there, sitting in the chair by the window. There’s a tray of sandwiches and cold lime juice next to him.

“Your leg seems better,” he says. “You practically sprang out of bed back there.”

“It feels better today.”

Sean hands me a sandwich. “Eat.”

I eat.

“I’d take you back with me if I could,” he says, quite out of the blue, and my heart stutters with longing. “I’ll probably drive myself crazy worrying about you when I leave. Would you come with me? If you could?”

“You know I would.”

He sighs. “I’m sick to death of worrying. I’ve spent months doing it. About whether you were safe, if you were happy. I even worried about whether or not you were with him. How childish is that?”

“Does that mean you were jealous?” I ask, smiling.

“Finish your sandwich” is all I get by way of reply.

So I do.



By mid-June, I am able to walk properly again. My wrist is still in a cast, still broken, but I feel more like myself. A small part of me wants to play up the pain when I feel it, to keep Sean here longer. But it isn’t fair to him. He has a life to live and it’s not here.

And my life? I have a life to fight for. Frankenstein’s Creature did unspeakably awful things, but he beat his uncaring creator.

I must too.

“I wish we could run away together,” I tell Sean dreamily. “I wish we could go away, you and me, and disappear. I think we could do it if we were together. I’d get in less trouble if I were with you. You’d laugh more if you were with me. We’d be like Cathy and Heathcliff. Harry and Hermione. Liam and Noel.”

“I didn’t know you liked Oasis.”

“You do, though, don’t you? You brought that CD to the cottage and you used to play it when it got late. You’d fall asleep on the sofa. And I’d come turn it off.”

“Well, I’m not sure they’re the best example anyway,” Sean points out, handing me a coffee. “Nor are the others. None of them exactly ended up together.”

“That doesn’t matter. What matters is what they did together, what they could achieve side by side. We’d be unstoppable if we were together.”

“I suppose,” says Sean. “You and I could burn the whole world down.”

I gaze at him for a long time, until his brow creases and his eyes grow wider. I watch my own disbelief mirrored on his face. I am thinking of that unthinkable alternative.

“You know it’s not possible,” he says.

I nod. “But if it was,” I say, “I’d go. I swear. I would go and never look back.”

There is such freedom in the words. For just one minute, I am flying, high into the sky, among the stars and the shining planets.

“I’d disappear. One night, before the dawn, poof. Like magic.”

Sean smiles faintly. “Where would you go?”

“Anywhere. I have that deposit box Erik and the others set up for me. Maybe there’s money in it. They said it would help me have a life.”

“And how would you survive? You’ve never been out there in the world. Who would help you? Anyone who did would be punished. But that’s nothing compared to what the Weavers would do to you when they found you and they would find you—”

“I wouldn’t expect your help. I wouldn’t ask you or Mina Ma or the others to risk so much for me. They did it enough while I was growing up.” I swallow. “I think I could make it. If I was clever and fast enough. If I only had the chance.”

“But you don’t,” Sean says very quietly.

“No,” I say, the lump in my throat hardening, “I don’t. I never will have that chance.”

It would have been a risk, throwing my life on the line to escape the Sleep Order. It might have been a fatal mistake. If I had found a way to get rid of the tracker, and run, and the seekers had found me, I’d have gone to trial and lost the rest of my time. But at least I’d have lost it by choice. Because I chose to take my chances with the unknown. It would have been on my terms. Not Amarra’s.

“I’m sorry,” says Sean.

I turn my face away to hide my despair and pain from him. We’re silent for so long I wonder if we’ve forgotten how to speak.

I swallow and clear my throat. I force a smile. “Do you want to play chess? It’s been a long time since we’ve played.”

“Longer still,” he teases, “since you’ve beaten me.”

So we play. I win the first game. But there’s not much satisfaction to be had in the victory, not when I know that I’m the king, white or black, and I have been thoroughly checkmated.

Until an unexpected move knocks every piece off the board altogether.

“All right,” says Sean. “If you’re willing to take your chances with a life of being on the run, I won’t stop you.”

“It doesn’t matter. They’d find me before I left the city. Matthew knows too much. And there’s the tracker—”

“The tracker’s the only thing that stopped you these last weeks,” he interrupts, “but you could get around it if somebody told you where it was. If they took it out for you.”

“Well, yes, but who would do that?”

“Your guardians could,” he says, “and one of them would.”

And just like that, checkmate becomes only check, and I see a single shining, gleaming way out.