“I still see Olivia, you know,” she says, and her hands are still twitching, shaping the air like she’s holding something. Someone. “I see her all the time, even when I’m walking or sitting down to dinner or trying to—trying to work. I see Sophy too and she’s here, she’s really here and you know Olivia never ever would have helped plot anything. She loved what she did, she loved listening to all those stupid conversations. She shouldn’t have been—it was wrong, what they did. Hitting her over and over and all that blood—”
“Stop it,” I say, and stand up.
“You were there,” she says, and grabs my hand. “You saw what they did to her, how they made us all sit and watch while they asked her what she’d done wrong and she never said anything, didn’t ever say what I know they wanted to hear, that we—” She breaks off.
“She kept you alive,” I whisper, and turn to smile at the far corner, as if I am just enjoying the view. The day. The park. As if I am not pretending I don’t know what Greer is talking about.
“She did,” Greer says, and she’s crying now, crying in the open, where anyone can see, and I can’t stand it, kneel in front of her and pray that there isn’t anyone around, or that if they are, they see that Greer is so broken she is no threat to anyone except herself.
“You can’t act like you care so much,” I say. “You know the rules. Involvement only with approval and only to provide children for the PDR. You and Olivia, if Sophy sees you weak, you know she’ll strike and then Olivia will have died for nothing. And she died for yo—” I break off, swallow. To even say what I have just said is to admit I knew what they were to each other. To admit I knew. And I did know.
I knew, and didn’t say anything. I looked at them and wondered what it was like to be in love.
“She’s dead because of me and I can’t bear it,” Greer says. “I can’t look at myself at this—at this world for another day. I can’t—”
“Greer—”
“If I don’t disappear myself, Sophy will make sure it happens,” she says and nods when she sees my face. “It’s true. She told me this morning. And she—she asked about you, Ava. You know not to let her find out anything, right? You know she talks to—”
Greer stops talking and looks around. “Yes, Sophy does work very hard,” she says, and then stands up, pushing her hair back from her face and smiling at me.
“I’m sorry, but these cavities of mine are causing me so much pain,” she says. “Please don’t tell anyone I cried over them.” A guy walks by, and I hear the soft whir of a camera clicking, see how he turns slightly toward us. How the second button on his jacket has an extra hole in the middle.
“Hello, Ethan,” Greer says, smiling, and he stops, looks fully at us and then blushes bright red, lowering his eyes to the ground.
“I’m sorry,” he mouths, glancing at us, and then hunches his shoulders and moves on.
“I hate him,” Greer says when he’s out of sight, but she’s still keeping her voice low again, barely a whisper now.
“He can’t help it,” I whisper back. “He’s a toy for Kale, who put him here. You know how bad he did in training, how awful his marks were. You saw his face just now. Kale is—it’s what he does to live and he’s sorry, he really is. Besides, we can’t turn our back on what our country needs us for.”
“I’ve heard you already have, so be careful,” Greer says. “But you—Ava, I think you can.”
“What?”
“You can,” she says again, leaning in closer, and her eyes are brighter. Happier.
Here.
“I said, you can wake up,” she says, and then turns, says, “I think she’s awake now,” and I realize I am lying on my back, lying cradled in the green grass.
“You—” I say, staring at the side of her face I can see. “I just saw you—”
“Yeah, you did,” she says, looking back at me and smiling. “You just fainted for a second or something. Oh, sit up, sit up.” She nudges me. “Your boy is coming over here. . . . Hi, Ethan.”
Ethan? But Greer doesn’t even like him anymore, doesn’t want to talk to him—
“Hi,” Ethan says and Greer likes him fine, waves a hello at him as she moves away, still smiling, still not the sad, lost girl I just saw and I don’t—
“Are you all right?” Ethan says, and he is crouching down next to me, one knee touching my shoulder. He has gorgeous deep blue eyes, and I know them. I just saw them when he said he was sorry, only he didn’t actually say it. He might have meant it, but he still didn’t say it.
But he isn’t—he isn’t in a jacket with a camera in it, and he’s not hunched over but moving easily, gracefully, sitting down next to me like he knows I want him there.
He seems so happy, but there is something scared in his smile. Not through it, not around it, not in the other him I saw. But here, now, just like how I noticed his smile never reaches his eyes.
It only lasts a second, though, and then it’s gone, vanished like everything else I’ve seen.
But nothing I’ve seen—none of these moments that feel so real, that feel like memories, that I know—none of what I’ve seen is from now. From here.
I squint my eyes closed, battling against the tight throbbing in my head.
“Are you all right?” Ethan asks, touching my shoulder, and I look at him, and then at Sophy.
She’s watching us. Staring, really.
“I have to talk to you,” I say, and watch her smile.
Ethan watches me get up and walk away like he can’t keep his eyes off me but he doesn’t like me like that, I know it.
I just don’t know how I know it.
I wish my mind wasn’t such a patchwork, that it wasn’t . . . broken.
“Well,” Sophy says, “good way to keep him wondering about you. Nice job.”
“I know who you are,” I say.
“Yeah, I’m Sophy,” she says. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I know,” I say again and she stares at me like I’m crazy but I’m not. I’ve seen her—not this her but still her and I know what she can do. What she’s done.
“Maybe you should sit down,” she says and I jerk my arm away from her when she tries to touch me and she looks surprised but behind it is fury and all around her I see her—the other her—standing proud and full of power, and Ethan and Greer and Olivia are here too, looking at me, but I see their other selves too.
I see everything, and it’s like I’m being pulled in two but no one is pulling me, it’s all in my head, my empty head that seems to be full of things I shouldn’t know but do and I don’t understand this, don’t understand me, and who am I?
Who am I, really?
I close my eyes.
29.
WAKE UP.
The chair squeaks as I rock awake, and the attic door opens.
It’s Morgan, a bowl of noodles in each hand, and my heart does a little skip-thump dizzy beat.
I want to tell myself it’s from the smell of food, but it’s not. I know it’s not.
He puts one of the bowls on the table that holds all my equipment. On screen, what I last typed is blinking, waiting. “56-412 makes lunch.”
“You didn’t come to the bar,” he says, glancing down at the floor and then back at me. I don’t have to guess what he’s remembering, because I’m remembering it, too.
I look away, stare at my keyboard. I don’t want to tell him that I started to go but was stopped on my way out, pulled back from the brink of whatever I was about to do by the clipped, unfamiliar voice that ordered me to go to the integration office.
I’d gone, terrified for myself—and watched Olivia die.
If anyone knew what I’d done—what I’m doing now, even—I could be where she was. I have to turn him in, create a story to explain away anything he might say.
I have to at least tell him to go and mean it.
I don’t say anything.
“Anyway,” Morgan says, as if I have spoken, “I had some extra food, and I
figured you might be hungry, so—” He breaks off, shakes his head, and then puts his bowl down next to mine. “Why didn’t you come? You only live fourteen streets away.”
I stare at him. “You—you’ve followed me home?” He’s watched when he leaves. I know this because when he leaves while I’m here, I send in notification, and whatever street surveillance is nearby watches him.
And now they will have seen him following me. Will guess that he has figured out who I am. And what if they find out everything? What if what we did, what I did—
“Ava,” he says. “I know how to—I was careful. The other one, who comes when you leave, has a . . .” He pauses. “He has a friend come and visit him. They are not always so quiet, and I have at least an hour to myself.”
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” I say, my heart pounding, thinking of stories I’ve heard. Of the shattered expression in Greer’s eyes. Of how I couldn’t look at Olivia, how I kept my eyes wide open but turned my mind away. “I told you to go last time, I did, and I—” I stop, new terror rolling over me. “You know my name.”
“You have a card on your buzzer.”
“I cleared my crèche status, I can’t be judged by just that,” I say, still panicked. “I—my buzzer?” I remember sliding the card into the little slot, thinking of the two rooms they claimed, and how they were now my own.
His eyes widen. “The crèche? But that isn’t—it’s all antigovernment talk. It’s not real.”
“No, of course it isn’t,” I say quickly.
“I didn’t—I didn’t mean to upset you,” he says carefully. “I just wanted to see you away from here. Wanted to see you for real. I was careful, I swear. I wouldn’t—I don’t want anything to happen to you because of me.”
I stare at him. He has no apparent beauty, no perfection of features. His mouth is thin, his face is narrow, and his hair is a short, spiky mess, neat only where the dark ends lay flat by his ears and the base of his neck. His eyes are lined with shadows underneath, and shaded with a knowledge that seems to mock everyone, the world and himself. He is thin, too, long fingers and the jut of his elbows visible through the thin fabric of the university shirt he’s wearing.
He is nothing to look at, and yet I can’t stop looking at him. There is something beautiful in how his face is made, how all the tiny flaws blend together into something more perfect than perfection could ever be.
There is something about the way he looks at me, as if there is something in me worth seeing.
I swallow, and then push up my right sleeve.
He looks at me for a moment, and then moves closer. I watch him see the mark on my wrist, the tiny symbol etched there, the C burned into the skin. I can’t remember when it was new and red. For as long as I can remember it’s been faded white, a scar.
“Oh,” he says, and his voice is quiet. Horror-filled. “But the crèche isn’t—it’s real?”
I nod. “I was—I was born in it. Lived there until I got lucky and got out, got sent to training.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, and touches the letter on my skin, gently, so gently.
No one has ever done that. No one has ever touched the scar. No one has ever said they were sorry.
When he picks up one of the bowls of noodles and offers it to me again, I take it. We eat in silence, watching each other the whole time.
I do not write anything about what happened—the food, what he said, what I let him see about me.
I keep it all to myself. A secret, when I know there are supposed to be none. When I know what they can cost.
I can’t sleep that night but I don’t go out. I lie in the dark, and when the sun comes up, faint yellow breaking open into the watery gray of day, I get up and eat breakfast, then go for a walk in the park.
I do this every morning, but on my way to the park I can hardly think, I am so tired and frightened. I am scared of what might happen.
I am scared of myself, and what I am hoping.
I sit down on a bench and look at the grass. It is dying. The grass is always dying. It is brought in to the park in long strips from the country, and rolled out and watered. I have heard people bet on how long it will last. Something in the soil here kills it.
The morning watch team comes by, stopping to tie their shoes when they see me. I rub my nose to let them know I’ve seen nothing and they move on.
Morgan shows up as they leave. I am not surprised when he sits down next to me.
“Are you all right?” he says, and that surprises me.
I fold my hands together so he won’t see them shaking and say, “You and I, we shouldn’t—”
“Ava,” he says, and gives me a tiny, lopsided grin. “You’ve said that before, you know.”
I do. I don’t know how, but I do. But I have to say it again.
And I do. “No, I mean you shouldn’t—you shouldn’t want to talk to me.” I look at him. “You know why I’m there, you’ve always known that. And now you know what I am. Where I come from.”
“I wasn’t going to talk to you,” he says. “At least, that was my plan. I was going to say hello, then grab your equipment and toss it into the street.”
I stare at him, horrified. He would die for that and I—well, death would have been a sweet dream for me. “You—”
“I hate what this—” He moves one hand out slightly, just slightly, indicating everything, the park, the whole world. “I hate what all this is. But then—” He shrugs.
“But then what?”
“You said hello back,” he says. “I didn’t think you would do that.” He looks away and then looks back at me, his grin showing again, but slightly bigger this time. “I don’t mind you watching me.”
I feel my face heat. “I’m not—I don’t see you. I’m just listen.”
“Is anyone . . .” He trails off, and circles an index finger around slowly.
“No,” I say. “No one is listening now.”
“So if I asked you to tell me your real name, would you do it?”
“No,” I say, and look straight ahead, at the shriveled grass.
“What if I asked you if you like oranges? Could you tell me that?”
“Yes.”
He grins again. “So there’s one thing I can ask you, then.”
I stand up, and he does too.
“I don’t have a name,” I say. “I’ve always been Ava.”
“And if there’s more than one Ava in the room?”
“There never is,” I say. “Ava is a crèche name. As soon as you are given permission to change it, you do.”
“You didn’t.”
“No,” I say, “I didn’t.”
When I walk away, he does not follow me, but when I look back he is still there, looking after me.
The next time I go to the attic—to work, I remind myself on the way there, to work—he is silent for a long time after I get there. I think he is reading, although I am not sure. I report that he is anyway.
“You never asked for permission to change your name, did you?” he says, breaking the silence, and hearing his voice in my ears is a surprise. He almost sounds like he is here, with me.
As if he is talking to me, and I know that he is.
I do not write anything down, and I rewind the last few moments of the recording, noting a glitch, and replace that question with silence.
Later, the attic door opens, and I turn toward it.
“I never asked,” I say. “Ava is my crèche name, but it’s also my real name. My mother must have—I guess she knew I’d end up there, and so she called me that. It’s all . . . it’s all I have of her.”
He walks toward me, not looking at the equipment, or the papers. He is looking just at me and when he reaches me he sits on the floor, and holds out both hands, curled into fists and facing down.
“Pick one,” he says, and as if we are playing a child’s game, I do.
He turns the hand I tap over, and opens it. Inside is an orange, small and slightly shriveled, but s
till bright even in the attic gloom. My vision blurs, eyes burning, and I see Morgan waiting for me, sitting on top of a wall, wearing some strange pants that end at the knees, an orange in hand, a smile on his face. I see him handing me one in the desert, his face gleaming in the sun.
“I—I saw . . . I don’t know how to explain it.”
“The weird pants? And the desert, with all the sun?”
I nod. “What—what is that?”
“I don’t know.” But I think we both do and there is a deep, charged silence for a moment. For how we are. For how we see each other and it—we see each other all the way through . . . I don’t know.
He clears his throat. “Anyway, I hoped the yes meant yes, you like them,” he says, and that’s when I know nothing will ever be the same again.
And that I don’t care.
30.
WAKE UP.
Everything is gone; the room, the orange, Morgan, and a moment I know. That I remember.
That changed me.
Greer is leaning over me, frowning.
“Wake up,” she says and Sophy says, “Her eyes are open, Greer. I don’t think you have to keep saying it.”
“You fainted again,” Greer says, ignoring Sophy and looking at me. “That’s twice in something like twenty seconds, Ava. No, wait, maybe you shouldn’t sit up.”
I do anyway, head spinning, and press my hands to my face to block out the world, to try and figure out what’s real and what isn’t. What I know and what I don’t.
My hands smell like orange.
I start to shake. Morgan.
I pull my hands away from my face, and Greer and Olivia and Sophy are watching me, Olivia looking worried, Greer looking worried and a little annoyed. I can’t read the expression on Sophy’s face at all.
Ethan is standing a little farther away, a blank, almost angry but more resigned light in his eyes that goes softer, kinder as he sees me looking at him. He knows what it’s like to be—to be hurt. I know that.
I stand up, shivering, and they all reach for me, all of their hands are reaching for me, and I take a step back and then another and another.
And then I turn around and run.