“You want to get out of here?” he says, and I see Sophy glaring at me from the corner, a tiny spider whose web won’t set.
Who won’t trap me now.
I nod and he smiles, then takes my hand and leads me outside.
“Ava!” I hear as I am opening his car door, and look behind me, see Sophy coming toward us.
“Hey,” she says, panting slightly as she reaches me. “Where are you going?”
“Away,” I say, and can’t control my smile as I get in the car. As I shut the door, sealing myself inside. Sealing myself away from her.
“She looks pissed,” Ethan says as we drive off.
I look back. She’s still standing there, watching us, a frown wrinkling her face. I wave at her, and she turns away. I see her look down, shake her head, and then rub her eyes.
I guess now I know where all the tears I never saw Sophy shed are, and almost feel sorry for her.
Almost.
“Do you drink coffee?” Ethan says, and I don’t see why the other Ava’s heart beat faster for him, I will never see it, but I do see someone I know. Someone I remember.
“Sure,” I say, and smile at him.
He smiles back, sweetly, the exact smile of the Ethan I know—the smile I almost never saw—and we drive into the night. Leaving Greer and Olivia and their drama behind. Leaving Sophy and her plans that I won’t have to ever know—other than that here, they were nothing compared to what I know—behind.
46.
WE DRIVE TO A COFFEE PLACE,
bright and filled with people.
“I think it’s more crowded then Brent’s party,” Ethan says as we pull into the parking lot, and when I look at him, he looks a little overwhelmed. The Ethan I knew looked that way all the time.
We are waiting in line to find out what our assignments will be. Ethan is standing behind me, looking nervous. Overwhelmed.
“You’re going to be fine,” I say. “You’re someone, and if you want, I can go wait at the back of the line. I mean, we’ve always talked, but now I’m—I’m still going to be the girl from the crèche, you know. The one who was taken in to show that people like me can actually be taught.”
“You’re my friend,” Ethan says. “And you’re a survivor. Maybe I want that to rub off on me. I know you know about my test scores.”
I make a face at him, and he smiles, then whispers that Greer and Olivia are coming over, their assignments already in hand. “Brace yourself,” he says. “Aren’t they so happy you can’t stand it?”
“Jealous,” I say, and he shakes his head. “I don’t—I already know love doesn’t exist. I just . . . I want them to be okay. You—will you help me with that?”
I look at him and then nod once, fast.
“Ava,” he says, and—
“Ava?” Ethan says now, touching my arm, and I can almost hear the silence in the hall where we stood, can almost see the joy on Greer’s and Olivia’s faces. I can still feel the want that was in me then, the way I was so sure that getting an assignment would let me know what my life would be.
But then I found out. I found out what I was, who I was going to be . . . and then I met Morgan.
I met Morgan, and everything changed. Love does exist.
And now all I have are memories of it.
“Sorry,” I say. “I was just . . . I was just thinking that you’re right, it is crowded in there.”
“I could make you coffee,” he says. “At my house, I mean. If you want. Not that I—I mean, we’d be in my house, but I’d never try—”
“I know,” I say, touching his arm, because I do. This Ethan, the one the other Ava loved, is not so different from the one I knew. I wonder why she didn’t see how anxious he was under all his beauty.
Maybe she did, and that’s why she liked him. I wish . . .
I wish I could feel like she did, I wish I could just slide into her life, but I can’t, I won’t.
I don’t want to.
I remember Morgan still, and too well. I remember love. I still feel it, the way it made me believe anything was possible. The way it set me free, opened up a world I hadn’t known I could ever have.
“You know, you’re not—you were different before you lost your memory,” Ethan says. “More . . . I don’t know.”
“More innocent,” I say without thinking, still half locked in the world I know. In my memories of Morgan.
“No, not that. You were—you were happier,” he says, and touches my arm quickly, gently. “Forget coffee, okay? I’ll make us some hot chocolate, if you want. I like hot chocolate more than coffee anyway.” He grins at me. “Of course, if you tell anyone at school I said that, I’ll deny it.”
The Ethan I know never had the luxury of making a joke of any kind. He was cowed; anxious and then trapped by whoever it was that saw him, wanted him, and took him. At least here, in this place, someone is happy, and maybe he can teach me how. Maybe I can watch him and learn. Maybe—I can’t leave Morgan behind, I will never forget him, but maybe I can find a place here. Maybe I can find a way that will let me live in this world in peace.
“I promise, your secret is safe with me,” I say, and we leave the bright, bustling coffeehouse and head back into the night.
47.
ETHAN’S HOUSE IS BEAUTIFUL,
hidden up a steep driveway cut into a hill, a long, low wooden building nestled high up among a carefully cultivated body of trees.
“It’s gorgeous,” I breathe, and it is; it’s like the forest is just around the house but in it and it makes me think of waiting for Morgan, of waiting to leave the city, to start our lives together.
I wonder if everything will always somehow remind me of him.
“You think?” Ethan says, turning the car off before we even get close to the garage. “I don’t get the whole log cabin in the sky thing, actually. But then, I’m not a million years old like my stepfather.”
He turns the car off and looks at the dark house for a moment.
“I’m pretty sure everyone’s asleep,” he finally says. “You don’t mind being quiet, do you? I don’t want—I hate the questions that come when people wake up and find out someone’s come over or something, you know?”
I nod because I understand. I know questions.
Who are you? What are you doing here?
I heard those question asked before, in another place, a place where I was truly me. I never asked them—I was never trusted like that—but I heard how people sounded when their dreams were shattered, when their lives were turned into a waking nightmare.
And beyond that, back to that very first night, to opening my eyes and seeing the nothing that lay beyond them. Feeling the nothing.
Who am I? Where am I?
Wake up,
I thought then,
wake up
, but I couldn’t, I was already awake.
I was here.
Ethan’s house is dark, but I can see that it’s huge and open, all tall ceilings and long walls that seem to stretch out into the trees themselves, walls made of glass that take the night sky, the dark trees, and absorb their darkness, casting it as darker shadows all around us.
“Careful,” he whispers, touching my arm as we tiptoe down the hall, and this is what being other Ava is like, this what she would have wanted, the simple, silly joy of creeping down a hall in a beautiful house with a boy.
The kitchen is all gleaming steel, shining even in the faint light that Ethan switches on, casting a soft puddle of light around the stove and leaving the glass wall and windows, all the rest, dark.
He makes the hot chocolate with ease, putting generous spoonfuls of it into milk and then heating it on the stove. There is a microwave behind him, gleaming like the rest of the kitchen, and when he sees me looking at it he smiles and says, “The stove is quieter. And besides, things should—they should be real sometimes, you know?”
He hands me a cup full of dark, delicious-smelling liquid. He pours another one for himself, turning the stove off and coming to stand next to me.
“Better than coffee,” he says after he takes a sip and I take one too. It is better than coffee, sweeter and richer, and creamy, and I start to tell him that, start to say thank you, when Ethan hunches into himself, turning into the Ethan I know right in front of me as he stares past me.
Stares down the hallways that lead out of the kitchen. That led us in here.
“I didn’t—I thought you’d be asleep,” he says, and his voice is quiet. Scared.
“Who is this?” a voice, back in the dark hallway, back in the shadow of glass and wood, says, and I feel my skin prickle, a weird skittering sensation crawling through me.
“Just a friend,” Ethan says, and puts his cup down. His hand is shaking as he does. “Is Mom awake?”
“No, she’s asleep. She had a long day.” A man steps into the kitchen, tall and wide, with shoulders that look like they could hold up the sky. He slides one glance at me—dismissive but angry—and then looks back at Ethan. “You know you aren’t supposed to bring guests here without permission.”
“Mom doesn’t care if people come over,” Ethan says, and he is standing straight and tall again but all around him, everywhere I look, I see the Ethan I know, shrunken and scared, trapped in a place he didn’t want to be, gifted with everything he could ever want but expected to give so much—everything—in return.
“I care,” the man says, walking into the room, filling it, short gray hair, striped pajamas, a dad like I’ve seen on television with Jane, over-worried and carefully checking to make sure Ethan is okay.
Too carefully.
He’s looking at him like he owns him. Like everything Ethan is, inside and out, belongs to him.
“I—I need to take Ava home,” Ethan says, taking a step back toward me, not to shield me, but as if I am shielding him, as if standing near me means something. Shows something. “I’ll be back in a little while, I promise.”
“Ava?” the man says and comes into the room fully, comes into the light, and I don’t know him. I have never seen him—not even in my memories—but I don’t want to be near him. His eyes, his walk, everything about him, screams that this is someone who knows how to succeed. Who gets everything he wants. “You never said anything to me about an Ava. About anyone. You know I don’t like that. You know I don’t like lies.”
Who is dangerous.
“I do need to get back to—back to Jane,” I say. “She’s my—she’s waiting up for me. I’m sorry if I—”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” the man says gently, as if he is just a dad, and I’m so wound up from Sophy and things I remember, things that aren’t here, that I must be seeing things, must be—
The man hits Ethan. Casually, carelessly, as if it’s nothing. As if he’s done it so many times before that it requires no thought. As if Ethan’s nothing.
I think of Ethan’s photos, then. All those open, lonely spaces. All those places where no one else was around.
He is trapped too.
Ethan is forever, always trapped. Even in this shiny world, he’s lost too.
“You know how I feel about you bringing people here,” the man says. “You know this house is mine. You know everything in it is mine.” He leans in toward Ethan and Ethan doesn’t move away, doesn’t run, doesn’t flinch, just stands still, frozen. “Now say it.”
“It’s yours, it’s all yours,” Ethan says, his voice gone distant, numb, and I know that voice, I know the face he’s making, the one that sees but doesn’t, the one that exists but doesn’t really live. “I’m yours. Just—just let me take her home and I’ll come back right away, I promise. I swear.”
“Good,” the man says, and smiles at me, actually smiles at me, like I don’t know what he is, like I don’t see the rot inside him. “Have a good night, Ava.”
“Come on,” Ethan says, his voice low, barely a mutter, barely anything, broken, and this can’t be what I have to live in, this can’t be the world I have to be in, everything is still so wrong, still so full of anger and fear.
I don’t want this.
“Hurry back, Ethan,” the man says, smiling, his teeth all white and ready to snap. Ethan takes my arm and I stop.
“No,” I say, “you don’t get to—you’re nothing. Nothing.”
Ethan looks back at me, his eyes huge and scared and sorry and I know that look, I have seen it—but where? when?—and then, when the man stares at me, violence in his eyes, Ethan is shoving him, hitting him, fists flying, pounding, and the man is staggering back, shocked and reeling into the wall, glass cracking under him, around him.
“You little weasel,” he says. “You little nothing.”
And then he shoves Ethan, shoves him hard, cocks a fist and smashes it into Ethan’s face. Ethan rocks back, stumbling into me, dropping to his knees as I am falling away, back into the dark, into the wall of glass behind me, a strange splintering noise in my ears, pain all around, all over, and I have been here before, I have seen Ethan turning toward me with that look on his face, so scared and so sorry and then the memory is there, all around me,
Ethan looking at me, shaking his head, and I see sorrow in his eyes, real sorrow, and then Clementine waves one hand and he is pulled away, grasped tight by large, hairy hands, hands sticking out of a government uniform, hands that pull Ethan away, drag him into the woods, and I hear Ethan sobbing but I want Morgan, I only want Morgan but he isn’t here and—