As I Wake

by Elizabeth Scott

  “Yes, I sleep,” I say, and shove his shirt back at him, trying not to notice how soft the cloth is and failing. I have to stop this. I have to.

  Something is off with him. I can’t afford clothes like his. Even if I do well, I could serve the government for ten, fifteen years—a lifetime—before I would even be let into the stores that sell shirts like his.

  It takes a long time to move past being crèche. I was told that before I started training, reminded of it every day, in the years it took for me to make the few friends I have: Greer, Olivia, and Ethan. The three people who didn’t mind talking to me even though they came from where I want to be and I’m from where no one wants to go.

  “You look tired,” Morgan says, as if we are talking, as if he wants to talk, and I stare at him because we—he—can’t talk to me like this. I’m a listener now, I clawed my way out of a bed shared by four, in a hall shared by hundreds, to be someone. To be here. To listen to him, who has more than I can ever hope for and doesn’t seem to care that he’s so close to being lost. To disappearing.

  “Why are you here?” That is the one thing I can’t work out. I know there are always some who must test the government, that they can’t help themselves. But he does not organize protests in his apartment, doesn’t have dinners with careful conversations that will have to be picked apart. He goes to school, he reads, he eats. He lives.

  I don’t know why he is being watched. But then, I am not supposed to know. He just is, like most everyone is at one time or another, and I am not even supposed to think about it. I am just supposed to listen. To be invisible to him, and report on what I hear.

  I am not supposed to be sitting here watching him look at me. Watching him lean toward me.

  But I am.

  I am, and I wait, hoping for something I can’t even name but that I know. That I have been waiting for all my life.

  He touches me, a feather-light brush of his skin down my arm, a spark I feel even through the roughness of my shirt.

  I don’t mind being cold, or hungry, or sitting for hours and hours. It is familiar, it is the way things are. But this; the way he talks to me, looks at me, and now, the way he’s touching me—those things and the way they fill my heart—

  These things I do not know. I just want them.

  Want him.

  I touch him like he is touching me, tracing my fingers up his arms, resting my hands on his shoulders. His eyes widen, then flutter closed, as if I overwhelm him.

  He is so warm. He has steam heat in his rooms, I have heard their hiss and hum, and I can draw the layout of his apartment, his life there, in my sleep.

  I can’t draw anything now. I am lost, the two of us sliding together, as if the floor was part of a puzzle we needed to lock us together.

  “Ava,” he says, and then he kisses me.

  I don’t know how to kiss him back, but I want to, I have seen his mouth in my mind every time I close my eyes, so familiar, so—so gorgeous.

  He cups my face in his hands and there are freckles on his face, his nose, a few dotted on his cheeks, and there are gold flecks in his eyes.

  “This is crazy,” he says, but there is wonder in his voice, gladness and nothing more. He is not afraid of me, he is ready for me, for this.

  “Yes,” I say, because it is, but I don’t pull away. I let a lifetime of planning, of training, go in a moment, a heartbeat, and there is nothing in me that wants to stop.

  It is my first kiss and yet it feels like I’m coming home.

  “Come downstairs with me,” he says afterward.

  “Downstairs?”

  “Put the—” He points at the recording equipment. “Put it on a loop, play back all the silence it’s just heard and come back to my apartment. I want—I think about you there, about you sitting with me. Everywhere I go, I think about you. Want to see you outside this attic.” He grins at me. “Have to make sure you’re real, don’t I?”

  I stare at him, shocked. I thought—I could believe he wanted me. That is a simple thing. But this, what he’s saying—this I don’t understand. You don’t invite those who can destroy you into your life. You do not ask them to be part of it. Whatever I feel when I see him, I’m still SAT.

  I could destroy him.

  Myself.

  “Okay, the hall, then,” he says, still smiling. “Just come downstairs and stand in the hall with me. Then I won’t have to imagine what it would be like to see you there. No one is listening there, right?”

  I nod because this is the one room in the entire building where you can speak without your voice being heard by machines that note every syllable and save it forever. I have heard him in the hall, opening his door. I have waited to hear him breathe. I have waited to hear him.

  “Then out,” he says. “The bar two streets over, at the end of the block. Come late tonight. The lighting always goes bad then.”

  Of course it does. All lights do, all the power in the city being turned toward the computer that analyzes every word that was recorded starting then, filing everything away while the rest of the city wheezes darkly, supposedly asleep.

  “Tonight?” I say, and my heart is pounding more than it was before, when our skin was pressed together, and I see—I see us sitting together in the sun, our feet in the sand, together, looking out over a wall. It should feel like pretend, but it doesn’t, it feels right, and then Morgan leans over and kisses my hands.

  I shake my head, trying to clear the images in it out.

  But I already know they won’t leave.

  “You have to go now,” I say, frantic, and when he smiles at me, I ignore the way my heart twists, painful joyful scared all at once, and say, “Morgan, you have to go.”

  Wake up.

  26.

  “WAKE UP,” I hear and come back to myself, to now, gasping, and see I am standing in a shadowed corner of the school, tucked out of sight.

  And with me is Morgan. Not in the attic, but here, at the high school.

  “What happened? You—you were staring but you didn’t seem to see me. Are you all right?” he says, wrapping his hands around mine and I know this, I know his touch.

  I know him.

  And then I hear Jane saying “Ava? Ava?” her voice rising each time in panic, as if she’s afraid I’ve disappeared.

  “We should leave now,” Morgan says. “I know a way to get back home. Trust me?”

  “No,” I say without thinking, but it’s true, it’s right, the word comes out strong, and his face drains of expression, color, as if I’ve hit him. As if I’ve made something inside him bleed away.

  “Ava,” he says, his face going so pale the freckles on it stand out sharply, dark brown against chalk white, and Jane’s voice comes closer, still saying “Ava?”

  They both say the name like they know me, but I don’t know myself.

  I turn, and see Jane come around the corner. She sees me, sees Morgan, and sucks in a breath.

  “You’re that—you were at the doctor’s the other day,” she says, and wraps one hand around my arm, squeezing tight. Pulling me toward her and away from Morgan. “You—what are you doing to my daughter?”

  “She isn’t yours,” Morgan says, and Jane freezes. The two of them stare at each other for a moment and then Jane says, “Ava, we have to go. Now.” She starts backing the two of us away, as if he will lunge at us and tear us both to pieces.

  Morgan doesn’t move. He just watches us go, his shirt fluttering around him in the wind. With my eyes open, awake to here, to everything around me, I can still hear him saying my name. Still see attic walls and him smiling.

  Feel my heart race, my own mouth curve as I smile in return.

  When he is out of sight, Jane makes us run to her car, tugging at me until my feet stumble into rhythm with hers.

  “Are you all right?” she says when we’re inside, locking the doors and then touching my hair, my face. Her hands are cold.

  I don’t answer, and when the car shudders away, onto the road, I l
ook back but don’t see Morgan.

  “Turn around,” Jane says. “I don’t want you—I don’t want you to get hurt, Ava.”

  “There’s nothing to see,” I say, and when I look at her, her hands are clasped, white-tight, on the steering wheel.

  “Yes,” she says. “That’s right.”

  But she doesn’t sound like she believes it.

  27.

  JANE IS SO UPSET she goes to the police. I don’t want to get out of the car when we get to the station, everything in me freezing at the sight of all those uniformed people walking in and out of the building.

  “Ava, honey, we need to go in,” she says, and all around us, around me and her and the building, I see another building, almost like it but darker, bleaker, and the people in the uniforms have faces I can’t make out but know I don’t want to see.

  “I’ll be better, I promise,” I tell her, folding my hands in my lap so she won’t see them shake. “Just don’t take me in there. Don’t give me to them.”

  “Give you—Ava, what are you talking about?”

  “The police, please don’t take me there, they keep records and the crèche, I can’t go back, please—”

  “Ava, honey, I’m not—take a deep breath,” she says. “The police help, and there isn’t any of that thing you just said. Look, we have to tell them about that boy. I don’t want him to hurt you. I want you to be safe.”

  What are the police here? Not the end of everything? They must be, because Jane seems okay being here and I—I trust her.

  “But I—” I stop.

  I don’t know how to tell her that I know Morgan won’t hurt me.

  I’m not sure I know it. I just—

  I know I want to believe it.

  In the end, I agree to go in with Jane, and although at first I see strange, angry shadows through and around everyone, after a while they go away, replaced by Jane coming out to check on me every few minutes while she’s off talking to someone and by the candy bar she bought for me, creamy sweetness melting on my tongue.

  After my third candy bar, this one crunchy and sweet, Dr. Jabar comes in, looking upset. He and Jane both come out at the same time, a few minutes later, but he’s the only one who leaves. Jane asks me to come with her.

  “We just need to talk to Don for another few minutes and then we can go,” she says.

  “Don?”

  “The police officer I’ve been talking to,” she says, and Don, when I see him, greets us wearily, nodding at me from behind a desk covered with papers.

  “This must be Ava,” he says to her, and then looks at me.

  “I’m sorry about your accident,” he says, his voice very loud. “Would you like to sit down?”

  “She’s not brain damaged,” Jane says, voice sharp. “She’s lost her memory.”

  Don’s face turns bright red, and he clears his throat. “Of course. Sorry if I—sorry.”

  He turns to Jane then, talks to her.

  “We still haven’t been able to turn up anything on the young man in question,” he says. “The good news is, we have a good picture ID based on what the security guards told us. We’ll keep looking for him until something pops up.”

  “Nothing?” Jane says. “His family hasn’t reported him missing? I thought he was in the hospital.”

  “He could have come over from one of the state facilities,” Don says. “The paperwork there, it’s not so good. And if he doesn’t have relatives, that would mean he’s probably been moved around quite a bit, and you know how state paperwork—”

  “He didn’t just come from nowhere,” Jane says. “He shouldn’t just appear and disappear like that.”

  “We really are doing all we can. Do you—” Don glances at me. “When you saw this boy at the doctor’s office and then again at school, what did he say to you?”

  “That he knew me.”

  Don sighs. “Sadly, that’s typical. Do you remember what name he called you?”

  Ava. He knew my name. Knows it. Knows me. “Name?”

  “Who does he think you are? He probably sees you as someone he knows, and since you aren’t that person, what did he call you?”

  And I know him.

  “Nothing,” I say. “He just said he knew me.”

  “Anything else? Any . . .” Don looks at Jane, who gives him a pointed stare. He turns back to me. “Any threats? Or, er, suggestions?”

  “No.”

  We should leave now.

  “Look, is she is danger?” Jane says.

  “I don’t think so. He’s fixated, but it could transfer, and even if it doesn’t, he hasn’t done anything aggressive,” Don says. “We’ll certainly keep looking, but overall, I think Ava’s safe.”

  Safe.

  How safe can I be when I keep seeing things? Feeling—

  Feeling things for someone I’m not even supposed to know.

  That doesn’t seem to exist here.

  I’ve seen so many strange things, and it all started when I was in the hospital when I saw the old nurse who turned out to be—

  Everything in me stills.

  “Who called Dr. Jabar?” I say, and Don glances at me, as if he’s surprised I remember Dr. Jabar’s name.

  “He didn’t know. He did bring over the message one of his office assistants took about what the caller said, but it wasn’t much help. Would you like to see it anyway?”

  “Yes,” I say, and Jane says, “Ava, I don’t think—”

  “I do,” I say, snapping, and she sits up straighter, no longer looking at Don.

  “I have teenagers too,” he says, his voice kind, and then I am holding the paper Dr. Jabar brought in. Midway through the description of Morgan, I read, “Cl. states patient is not a danger to self.”

  “What’s this?” I say, pointing at it, and Don looks at the paper. “Clearly states not a danger to self,” he says. “You know doctors, always abbreviating things.”

  I nod, but I’m thinking Cl. Clearly.

  Clementine.

  28.

  I SPENT A SLEEPLESS NIGHT trying to think about Clementine. There are moments—tiny, fleeting fractions of a second—where I almost remember something. Almost know something. SAT, but now in Science, working on something. Knows everyone. Knows everything. I don’t know her but I see her, I see her smile and—

  And that’s it. Whatever it is, it stays locked away inside my head, in a place I can’t reach, and all I get is a headache, one that makes even the faint night light coming in through Ava’s curtains hurt my eyes.

  By the time the sun comes up, my head hurts a little less, and all I know is Clementine is definitely strange, and did come by the day I first saw Morgan.

  But then, I knew all that before.

  Maybe Cl. does just mean clearly. I don’t know.

  I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. That’s the one thing I do know.

  And Morgan—

  Morgan is part of me, but he isn’t even someone anyone here knows?

  “Ava?” Jane says, knocking lightly on Ava’s door before she comes in and I get up, get dressed. I drag it out, pretending I care which one of Ava’s endless array of black shirts I wear, and get to school late, too late to see Greer or Olivia or Sophy.

  Sophy finds me before third period though, comes up to me in the hall and says, “There you are! See you out in the garden, right?”

  Her smile is mostly teeth. I wonder why she doesn’t like Ava and then think of something else, something I see when she turns away and through and around her I see her again, still smiling that same sharp, cruel smile.

  Maybe Sophy doesn’t like me.

  Outside, I listen to the three of them talk. It’s like a fight without fists, Greer tossing out words and Sophy taking them on and somehow letting them get to her.

  Greer says, “Sophy, come on,” and Sophy smiles, sharp, and says, “Come on? That’s you, pleading? Better hope Olivia doesn’t hear that.”

  Greer pales and Sophy looks at me. “Ava,
you’ve got crèche taint, and you need to not let that show so much. Get away from Greer.”

  I don’t move. I won’t. Sophy is cruel and everything I hate, everything I’ve fought against to be here. I stay right next to Greer, who is shaking now, scared.

  “Sophy, just relax,” Greer says to her. “Me and O still love you, you know. We loved you even when you were, well, you know. Nothing,” and when Sophy smiles I realize the one I have seen glimpses of—the other one, the one who is her but not—was never nothing. Never once found herself in a place where she needed someone else. But this one does.

  Every—all the mes I am are different. And so are Sophy and Olivia and Greer and Jane.

  Sophy says nothing now, but smiles as Olivia leans into Greer, who is fiddling with Olivia’s hair, trying to braid it. Smiles more as Greer runs a hand down Olivia’s hair without seeming to notice she’s doing it.

  “How are things with the latest guy?” she says, and Greer flinches, the tiniest bit, and moves her hand away.

  I look down at the grass then, smoothing one hand over it. I can’t get over how green it is. It doesn’t even crunch in my hands when I pull a few strands loose.

  The wind blows them back toward me and I close my eyes, feeling them brush against my face.

  “Please,” Greer says, “please,” and I open my eyes to see her looking at me. She looks different, paler and far more nervous, and her hands are shaking so hard I can see them moving. I know I am seeing a Greer that isn’t here but one that—

  One that is in my head. One that I remember.

  “You can’t—shouldn’t look so upset,” I say and she stares at me, her mouth working.

  “I know,” she finally says, and then blinks hard, twice. “I just—it’s hard. I found a doctor who’d give me some pills, and when I take them things are better. Everything seems so far away.” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “Like a dream. I just—they make me a little . . . I don’t know. Like I’m not real. I’d like that.”

  “Greer, you don’t mean that.”