The Lost Girl

by Anne Ursu

  There was a stack of brightly colored note cards in front of each girl’s place. Gabrielle immediately started separating hers out by color, and Hannah spread hers out into a rainbow. Iris just stared at hers, feeling like Lark in a math drill.

  “Now that you girls have really gotten to know each other,” Abigail said, “I think you will all agree that each girl in here is awesome in her own way.”

  A couple of the girls giggled, and Abigail took that as affirmation. Iris just flushed.

  “So take some note cards and write the name of each girl on top of one. And then write down a compliment for the girl. Tell her what makes her awesome. When you’re done, you’ll slide them into the boxes. You’ll all take home your boxes tonight, and whenever you need a reminder about how awesome you are, you’ll have it.”

  Abigail beamed like the sun.

  Iris sank in her seat. This was going to be a disaster. She’d barely said a word at camp besides “I don’t know” and “I couldn’t think of anything.” What were the girls going to say about her?

  Iris, you are awesome because you sure don’t know much.

  Iris, you are awesome because you can’t think of anything.

  This wasn’t her. She knew that. She’d never been this way before; it was like she was playing this role here and she couldn’t get out of it. Whatever the other girls put in her box, it wouldn’t be about her; it would be about this other-Iris, the one who possessed her when she crossed the threshold of the community-room door.

  As for her own compliments for the other girls, she had no idea what to say. She’d been observing them all as if behind glass this whole time.

  While the other girls worked on their note cards, Iris got out her journal for inspiration and flipped to the chart she’d kept about them. Would anyone notice if she used the adjectives the girls used about themselves? Novalie, you are nice. Amma, you are amazing.

  “What are you doing?” Hannah asked.

  “Uh—just checking something . . .”

  Hannah’s eyes flicked over the journal page where Iris had been keeping her chart. “You’ve been writing down everything we say?”

  “I guess?” Though it was rather obviously true. This was the thing that other-Iris said. “I guess.” She never guessed. That was the point of trying to know things—so you didn’t have to guess.

  “Why?”

  “I just—” Why? What was she supposed to say? She had no good reason at all. Because she couldn’t decorate her journal. Because she didn’t even know what kind of superpowers she wanted. Because she liked the other girls. Because she didn’t know what to say to them. So instead she wrote things down.

  Something like that, she guessed.

  Hannah peered at Iris through her glasses. “Are you some kind of spy or something?”

  “What? No.”

  “Like from Camp Not-Awesome or something?”

  “No.”

  “That stuff is private.”

  “I’m not going to show anyone!”

  A couple of the other girls looked up at them, and then back down at their cards.

  “But—it’s still private. How would you like it if I wrote everything you said down?”

  She probably wouldn’t. She knew she wouldn’t. But then, she never said anything.

  “I just . . . I want to keep track. So I know who you are.”

  “But that’s not who I am. That’s just . . . stuff. You could know who I am by, like, talking to me? But you don’t want to talk to anyone, do you? You’re too good for that.”

  Words choked up into Iris’s throat. Hannah’s usually bright, open face was twisted in—was that anger? And it looked all wrong, like getting glared at by a daisy.

  Iris closed her journal. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  Hannah narrowed her eyes, as if she doubted it, she doubted it very much, and turned away.

  Iris stared at her cards, cheeks burning.

  Around her, the other girls were starting to get up and slip their cards in the boxes. Hannah stacked hers and banged the edge of the pack on the table, perhaps a little more firmly than was strictly necessary, and then got up haughtily and went to the boxes.

  Iris watched as Hannah slipped a card into her box. Maybe it would say, Iris, you are a spy, or Iris, you are creepy, or Iris, you should go to Camp Not-Awesome.

  This was not going to end well.

  The other girls were sitting back down and talking and laughing together as Abigail grinned like a mad scientist whose preposterous experiment had suddenly come to life.

  Iris’s own cards were half blank, and so she scrawled messages—Amma, I think it’s awesome you know how to fence; Morgan, you know lots of interesting books; Hannah, the monsters on your notebook are so cool—all these girls who were so good at things, who had stuff to say, who were not creepy at all.

  Now the girls were circling up, and starting a sound-and-motion exercise, and Iris hurriedly slipped her alleged compliments into the array of boxes, when there was a knock on the door. And another. Everyone else was too absorbed to hear it, but it didn’t matter, because whoever was knocking just opened the door anyway.

  A tall overly-polished-looking man in a business suit stood in the doorway, surveying the group. “Is there someone in charge here?”

  Abigail turned around. “This is a private class. Is there something I can help you with?”

  “I’m afraid the noise from your group is making it difficult to concentrate. Could you ask your girls to keep it down? They’re making quite a ruckus.”

  The girls all stopped and stared at him. Iris sank into the shadows.

  “We were not making any kind of ruckus,” Abigail said.

  “There’s no need to be rude. I’m just asking that you control your girls here. And if it continues, I’ll have to talk to the library board.”

  Abigail drew herself up. “My girls can take care of themselves. Feel free to talk to whomever you like, and in the meantime, I ask you not to violate our space again.”

  From her corner, Iris was impressed. Abigail had lost her bounce and her bubbles. Suddenly she was tall and firm and still, a warrior at the gates. Do not mess with my girls. This, Iris understood. This was the sort of awesomeness she could get behind.

  After the man left, stalking out like he was heading straight for his man meeting, Abigail whirled around and faced the group.

  “Girls, listen. There are people in this world who will tell you you need to dim your flame. That it’s better to be nice all the time, and you should be ashamed for making noise. But you don’t have to listen to them. You have a right to be loud! Do you hear me?”

  The girls mumbled assent.

  She put her hand to her ear theatrically and repeated, “Do you hear me?”

  “Yeah!” the girls shouted.

  “Do you hear me?”

  “Yeah!” they all yelled at the top of their lungs.

  “Now,” she said, grinning, “let’s make some noise.”

  Abigail waved Iris over and led the girls in some kind of collective stomping exercise, and Iris tried to stomp along with them.

  Once upon a time, she was a girl who knew how to stomp. If Lark had been there, Iris would have had no trouble stomping; she could have made enough noise for her and Lark both. If Lark had been there, Iris would have stomped up to Abigail and said that some people were not stompers and that did not make them less awesome.

  But now she was not stomping, not really. It was like her legs didn’t know how to do that. Maybe soon she’d stop being able to talk, or clap her hands, or make any noise at all. Maybe soon she’d just fade away.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Sisters

  When camp was over, Iris snuck up to the top floor of the library with her compliment box and lifted up the box lid warily, as if all manner of flying snakes might leap out and bite her.

  But there were no snakes, just a pile of folded-up note cards, along with some stray glitter blobs. Stiffening
a little, Iris unfolded each of the cards and spread them on the table.

  I like your freckles.

  You are nice.

  You don’t say much but I bet if you did say stuff it would be funny.

  You’re nice.

  Your sneakers are cool.

  You’re really nice.

  And, clearly from Abigail, Iris, you are awesome!

  And one that had her name on it but nothing else.

  Iris had to hand it to Hannah—she could simply have not written a card at all, but then Iris might simply not have noticed and not understood the full extent to which she hated her. The best way to get Iris to see what a terrible person Hannah thought she was was to put in a blank card.

  Hannah knew how to stomp.

  Iris stared at the rest of her compliments. She should value them while she could: Hannah was probably telling all the other girls what a creep Iris was right now, and pretty soon there would be no more You are nice for Iris.

  And really, she wasn’t nice. She knew that. It was the one thing about her that was consistent from her not-Awesome life and her Awesome life, though perhaps she hid her not-niceness better at Awesome. Lark was the nice one. Iris was just Iris.

  In fact, for most of her life people had told her she should be nicer. A preschool teacher. A babysitter, who did not understand how things in the house were done. A neighbor dad. A neighbor mom. A cashier at Target. Some kid at a lemonade stand.

  But you don’t just transform your personality. They could tell her, Iris, you should be purple. And she could try to be purple. She could cover herself in purple paint. But eventually all that paint would wash off and she would still be Iris. Plus, all that paint would probably give her a rash.

  You are nice.

  Who was this strange girl, who was still not nice, but was not anything else, either?

  And who was Iris, now, if she didn’t know how to be herself anymore?

  Her head was starting to hurt. She dumped the whole box into the garbage.

  Then she left the library and crossed the street to the antique shop.

  Mr. Green was behind the counter when Iris got there, along with Duchess, who brushed up against Iris’s legs.

  “Oh, don’t pretend to be nice,” Mr. Green snapped at the cat.

  Duchess glared at him, then turned her back and strutted away, tail puffy and perfectly erect.

  “Hello, Miss Maguire!” On the counter in front of him was a green plastic bottle of fizzing pop with a slowly inflating balloon over its mouth.

  “What happened to Alice’s book?” she asked, nodding to the shelves. There was a gap where the Child’s Guide to Our World had been.

  “I took it away. It will go back to her room. For when she comes back.” He said this with such confidence, as if he was saying that the sun would set tonight and come up tomorrow, and the words squeezed Iris’s heart.

  “You still think she’ll come back?”

  “I know it,” he said. “I am a powerful man, and I have a lot of resources at my disposal. Wherever she is, I will find her. I promised her that.”

  She took a step closer. She wanted to ask, How can you be sure? In a world where people could just disappear, how could you be so sure they would come back?

  Or . . . was he sure with the part of him that did kids’ science experiments and called them magic? There was no way to ask that question. So she watched the fizz in the pop bottle dance.

  “I have a sister, too,” she said, after a while.

  “Ah. You do. Is she a practical girl, like you?”

  “No,” Iris said. Fingers of guilt pressed against her temples for a moment, but Iris brushed them away. Lark wouldn’t mind her saying that. Lark would not want to be practical.

  Would she?

  “She’s . . . she’s had a hard year at school,” Iris continued, playing with a strand of hair. “She always does, but this year is worse because I’m not . . . She doesn’t . . . work like other people work. She gets hurt easily and feels everything and she’s really creative and does the coolest stuff but she can’t deal with math drills or owl pellets or loud noises. But crows love her. They were leaving her things for a really long time, but then they stopped and that hurt her too, and she just can’t, like, throw up in class and have it be okay, and so she’s terrified to go back to school but she has to go back and something bad is going to happen when she does. Someone will say something or not say something and either way it’s going to be bad and I’m scared.”

  Iris closed her eyes for a moment so the wetness in them would not escape, in the way all those words had escaped from her mouth. She was like a fizzing bottle. She should not be saying all these things about her sister to Mr. Green, and yet she had no one else to say them to, and it was too hard to hold on to them. She could barely hold on to anything anymore.

  Some practical girl.

  But Mr. Green only nodded. “She’s not made for this world.”

  “. . . Not really.”

  “She’s like Alice.”

  “Yes.”

  “But she has something Alice didn’t.”

  “What?”

  “You.”

  Iris stared at the ground. And there, that pressure again.

  “I cannot help but wonder what I could have done differently,” he said. “I believe in self-reliance, but, as you say, some people are not made for the world as it is. I should have been more attentive. I let her fancies get the better of her.” He gazed at the bubbling beaker for a second. “But that will not be the fate for your sister, Miss Maguire. You take care of her. You protect her.”

  “I try.” Once, she would have believed this. But she didn’t even know who she was anymore. She had no adjectives.

  “I wonder,” he said, “if you are happy.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. Does the world ever seem too small to you, Miss Maguire?”

  She bit her lip. What a question. No. It was way too big.

  “It is like that for some of us. We must not worry so much about others that we lose track of ourselves. There are worlds to conquer, Miss Maguire.”

  Suddenly Duchess let out a long meow and darted over to the clocks. As Iris watched, she turned around and gazed at Iris, giving her one long slow blink.

  Do I have your attention?

  She did.

  Are you sure?

  Yes.

  Good. Watch now.

  The cat jumped on one of the tables and stretched all the way up to the face of the grandfather clock next to it. It batted at the minute hand once, twice, three times.

  “Miss Maguire!” said Mr. Green.

  “What?”

  She glanced back at Duchess, but the cat was gone.

  Travels through clocks.

  “Where did she go?” Iris said. “I don’t understand.”

  “Miss Maguire, your sister . . .”

  “What?”

  “Do not tell her about the magic.” He gestured to the experiment on the table.

  “Why not?”

  “We do not want her to get lost.”

  There is the thing you never say out loud. No one wants to hear it; they just want to hear about mistaken identities and Parent Trap–style hijinks. They don’t want to hear that the earth has edges, and that you fear that the person who is everything to you could fall off at any moment.

  The truth is, Iris’s Pied Piper nightmares had never really gone away. They’d just changed. Now the piper was leaving town with just one child in his wake—just Lark, who was so enchanted by his beautiful music she did not see Iris running out of the house yelling at her to stop. Iris knew that if she could just get Lark to see her, the spell would be broken and Lark would be saved.

  But Lark did not stop, no matter what Iris did. The Pied Piper marched her right out of town.Whatever promises the flute was making to Lark, Iris could not hear them, could not understand. How could she save her from what she did not understand?

  They were identical, bu
t not the same.

  She wanted to tell Lark; she wanted Lark to solve it for her. This was dream language, symbols, truths underneath lies. This was the language Lark spoke.

  How do you say: I have nightmares that I watch you go and I don’t do anything to stop it?

  How do you ask your sister: What is it about the music that you hear and I don’t?

  How do you ask your sister: What is it about that music that takes you away?

  As Iris biked home, Mr. Green’s words swirled around in her head. We do not want her to get lost. Of course she was not going to tell Lark about the “magic” that Mr. Green seemed to believe in so thoroughly. She had not even told Lark she’d been visiting him.

  Magic has a cost.

  What would Lark think if Iris told her about the cat and the clocks and the notes in Alice’s book and the disappearing girl? What kind of story would she write? And what would she think if someone opened the door to magic being real?

  What would keep her from walking right through that door?

  As Iris turned down the street to her house, she realized she’d been at the shop longer than she’d thought, far too long, and the guilt burned at her stomach. It was late enough that her mom would be back from work, and Lark with her. She should have been there when Lark got home.

  And yes, her mom’s car was in the garage when she got home, and Iris prepared frantic apologies for Lark. Another flare of guilt when she saw her sister on the back step—had Lark been waiting outside for her?

  The answer was no. No, she was not waiting for Iris at all. For near her, with its head in a giant bowl of Cheerios, was an enormous crow.

  “Look!” Lark said. “It was in the birdbath when we got home! It—oh!”

  Iris had pressed the button to close the garage, and the creaking of the door startled the crow and it flew away.

  “Well, anyway,” Lark said, “I talked to it for a while and then came back and got the Cheerios.”

  Lark sounded like a bird herself, chattering away. She wasn’t withered anymore; she was Lark again, and you could feel her happiness in your toes. Their mom appeared behind the back door looking like she’d found everything she’d ever lost.