“Excuse me?” I say to a girl passing by. “I’m looking for this place. . . .” I describe it for her, and she gives me directions.
I end up back in the cobbled square. Next to the fountain.
The theater looks different in the dusky daylight. It doesn’t look like our sanctuary. I stand in the light and watch the color of the clear, cold water in the fountain change as the sun drops lower in the sky. The square around me is alive. The markets haven’t yet closed down for the day, and butchers, fishmongers, and housewives walk past me. I stand there as the water changes from blue to pink to gold.
I look into the fountain and see the pennies. And I laugh to myself, but I take a penny out of my pocket anyway. I drop it into the fountain and watch it spin until it hits the bottom. I want a wish. I could wish for an awful lot of things, but I’ve only dropped the one penny, so I take a deep breath and make one wish.
I wish as hard as I can.
I look up, and there he is. Like magic. He has his hands in his pockets and his face is bruised. It still looks like a war zone. He stands at the other end of the fountain. Too far away. But he’s alive and he’s safe and I wished and now he’s here.
He raises a hand. Like he’s waving. Like a hello. Or a good-bye. I try to raise my own. I try to open my mouth and speak. But nothing works. I can only watch him. He looks like a mirage. But then a child bumps into him and he helps her up and that makes him so solid, so real.
The fountain is bright gold between us. His eyes are the green of marbles and lagoons and nurseries and lights in the sky in the north. If I go to him he will taste of kisses and battles, of knights and promises. I don’t know how long we stand there. It could be minutes. Hours. Days. For the longest time we just stand there and look at each other across the water.
Acknowledgments
Enormous thanks to my agent, Melissa Sarver. For believing in me, for fighting for this book, and for just generally being all-round fantastic; and thanks, too, to Holly Root, for pointing me to Melissa.
To my editor, Sara Sargent, for being so much fun to work with, for remembering every romantic moment, and for loving Matthew (almost) as much as I do; and to Alessandra Balzer, Donna Bray, and the rest of the team at Balzer + Bray, for taking a chance on Eva and her story.
To Sarah Hoy and Michelle Taormina, for designing an amazing cover; to Anastasios Veloudis, for the gorgeous artwork; to Rosanne Lauer and Brenna Franzitta, for catching every inconsistency and making sure my disastrous typos don’t see the light of day; to Caroline Sun and Olivia deLeon, for getting the word out about The Lost Girl; and to marketing director Emilie Polster and her assistant, Stefanie Hoffman, for turning my manuscript into a real, live book. I honestly can’t thank you all enough.
To my parents, for being funny and clever and raising me in a house so full of books, it’s astonishing it hasn’t collapsed.
And finally, to Steve. For making me believe this book was worth it. For a real-life love story. For everything.
About the Author
SANGU MANDANNA was four years old when she was chased by an elephant, wrote her first story about it, and decided this was what she wanted to do with her life. Seventeen years later, she read FRANKENSTEIN. It sent her into a writing frenzy that became THE LOST GIRL, a novel about death and love and the tie that binds the two together. Sangu lives in England with her husband and son. You can visit her online at www.sangumandanna.com and follow her on Twitter @SanguMandanna.
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Credits
Cover art © 2012 by Anastasios Veloudis
Cover design by Sarah Hoy
Copyright
Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
The Lost Girl
Copyright © 2012 by Sangu Mandanna
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mandanna, Sangu.
The lost girl / Sangu Mandanna. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: “Sixteen-year-old Eva is the clone of a girl living far, far away on another continent—and when this ‘other’ dies, Eva must step in and take over her life.”—Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-06-208231-2
EPub Edition © JULY 2012 ISBN: 9780062082336
[1. Cloning—Fiction. 2. Science fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M31219Lo 2012
2012006548
[Fic]—dc23
CIP
AC
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12 13 14 15 16 LP/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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Sangu Mandanna, The Lost Girl
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