The Lost Girl

by Anne Ursu

  “Did you see it, Iris?” their mom said. “It’s so big! Maybe it was a raven? I wonder what the difference is.”

  “Ravens are bigger, usually,” Iris said. “But that was still a crow. We don’t have ravens in Minneapolis.”

  (Iris is right—ravens provide ill omens for the north of the state only.)

  “That’s my girl,” said her mom with a grin. Whether she was talking about Lark or Iris, Iris could not tell.

  Later, the girls sat on the floor of Lark’s room, while Lark sorted together pieces for what looked to be the strangest dollhouse room yet. She had a ball of brown clay in her hands and was carefully fashioning it into something or other. Iris knew not to ask questions until Lark was ready.

  “So, I’ve decided I’m not going to be embarrassed about throwing up,” Lark proclaimed, studying the clay.

  “Good.”

  “It’s not my fault that the assignment was disgusting.”

  “Totally.”

  “This ogre’s not going to get to me that easily.”

  Iris leaned back on her hands. “Poor ogre had no idea who he was messing with.”

  She could hear that there was something missing behind her own words, that the enthusiasm she should feel at seeing Lark act like Lark again wasn’t quite there. But Lark was too absorbed to notice.

  “I figure the vomiting just lulled him into a false sense of security. He thinks he’s got me now. So he’ll let his guard down.”

  “Basically,” Iris said, trying to sound normal, “the vomiting was like your superpower.” There’s a species of baby bird that vomits goo at any seagull that tries to eat it, and the goo makes it so the seagulls can’t fly and then they drown in the ocean. Iris had read about this bird, and it was the sort of thing she might have told Lark if Lark were a completely different person.

  “I have a plan for the oral report tomorrow. I don’t have to just stand there and talk. I’m going to make a diorama and bring it up with me so I can talk about that and that’s not as hard, you know what I mean? I can look at it and not at Tommy Whedon’s blowfish face.”

  “Is that what this is?” Iris nodded at the clay ball, which was starting to look more and more like something, though she could not quite tell you what. “What’s the assignment?

  “Astronomy. So I’m going to do Andromeda.”

  “The constellation?”

  “Yeah, but I’m going to make a diorama of the myth,” Lark said. “You know, the story behind the constellation.”

  Iris chewed on her lip. She could say, Wouldn’t it be easier to just do the assignment? Because it would be easier—at least, easier on her. Less risky. But Lark probably thought she was doing the assignment; this was just how her brain worked. Astronomy = constellations = mythology behind the constellations = diorama of a girl getting eaten by a sea monster.

  Andromeda was a princess in Aethiopia, the daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia. Queen Cassiopeia bragged that Andromeda was more beautiful than Poseidon’s wife, and in Greek myths it’s really a bad idea to say that you’re better than the gods at anything, and anyway Poseidon had huge anger issues, and so Poseidon got really mad and sent a sea monster to ravage the town, and so naturally her parents chained her to a rock near the sea and offered her as a sacrifice to the sea monster.

  Lark’s diorama materials consisted of a giant rubber squid bath toy, a lot of blue glitter glue, a Lego Moana mini doll, some hot-pink duct tape, and her usual construction paper, paints, and clay.

  “Are you going to draw in the constellations somewhere?” Iris asked. “So you can explain the actual stars?”

  Lark wrinkled her nose. “That wouldn’t make any sense. How can there be constellations when the story hasn’t happened yet?”

  “Well, the stars will still be there. Just . . . nobody’s called them a constellation yet.”

  “Oh. Right. Still, it doesn’t make sense.”

  “But . . . maybe you should do it so you have the astronomy stuff in there?”

  Lark looked up at her. “. . . Do you think I’m doing it wrong?”

  “No! This is really neat.”

  “Do you think the kids will laugh at me?”

  “No!”

  “I mean, this is talking about astronomy, right? There’s constellations of the sea monster and Cassiopeia and Cepheus. I can say all of that.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  Lark grabbed a tendril of hair and started to pull on it. “Do you think it’s a bad idea?”

  “No! I think it’s a good idea.”

  “I mean, if I tell them the story that I know, and I’m just describing the diorama, then I won’t get all . . . freaked out, you know?”

  “Yeah! Yeah, I know.”

  Lark worked on her clay blob for a while more, while Iris thought of Alice’s fact book, of the angel wings on the Tyrannosaurus rex and the flowered hat on George Washington. Maybe Alice gave presentations in school about the flight patterns of brontosauri and about sea monsters instead of stars.

  “Hey, what about the antique shop?” Lark said all of a sudden. “Is the sign still there?”

  “What?” For a second, Iris was afraid she’d said something about Alice out loud. But she hadn’t—Lark just reached over to her mind and plucked things out sometimes, without even knowing it.

  “You know? Alice, where are you?”

  “Um, I’m not sure.”

  Yes, the sign was still there. But Iris hadn’t said anything about Treasure Hunters since before Lark lost her key, and she had no idea how to start now. Iris was the one Lark trusted.

  “Maybe we should bike over there this weekend,” Lark said. “See what we could find out.”

  Iris knew that look in her sister’s eyes, the one that saw the whole story play out. Alice had gone down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass, and only the intrepid twin sisters could find her.

  Yes, she would love it. And Iris couldn’t bring her there.

  “Yeah,” Iris said, for lack of anything else to say.

  But Lark was already onto something else.

  “Can you believe the crow came back? Finally?”

  “No,” Iris said. Of course the crow had been there for a couple of weeks, but Lark didn’t know that.

  “I know it’s silly but . . . it made me feel better. Like I don’t need to be scared of ogres. I have a giant crow for a friend.”

  “No, you don’t have to be scared,” Iris repeated. “You don’t.”

  “I’ll just bring my Cheerios to school and then my giant crow will sit on my desk and no one will mess with me. That’ll show ’em.”

  Iris hugged herself. She should feel better, she knew she should. All the strange birds were settling on their roosts. Lark was herself again, and that meant there was nothing she could not conquer. Even Mr. Hunt and Tommy Whedon, and the very literal nature of school assignments.

  But why could a crow do what Iris couldn’t?

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The Andromeda Project

  That night, Lark brought the diorama down to the kitchen and presented it to their mother, who oohed and aahed and texted a picture to their father, who would see it right when he woke up.

  Lark never mentioned that it was an astronomy assignment, and Iris did not either.

  Lark’s diorama may not have been the assignment, but it was probably the best not-doing of an assignment in elementary-school history. Lark had made the background so it looked like a dark white-capped sea disappearing into a stormy horizon, and the purple squid bath toy looked like it was rising out of the waves toward the town, with one of its tentacles rising toward the chained Lego Moana/Andromeda. Behind her rose the town, with the silhouettes of the huddled queen and king on the backdrop. As for Andromeda herself, she was wearing a red toga over her Lego outfit, and her thin arms were pinned against the gray craggy clay rock face by a pink duct-tape chain. Still, she wore her Lego smile, as if she were just off working in the cupcake bakery, about to go save
some dragon eggs with Lego Ella and Lego Azari Firedancer. The effect was impressive: here the sea monster menaces the people of Aethiopia, its long purple tentacle reaching out toward the chained princess; here in the distance the people who have condemned their princess to this terrible fate are huddled in fear; but Andromeda still smiles confidently, sagely, as if she knows something. As if she has a plan.

  In Greek mythology, Perseus rescues the princess on his way to defeating the Gorgon. In Lark mythology, that sort of escape would not be nearly enough. Andromeda would have a secret plan that would topple the whole monarchy, perhaps the gods themselves, and by the end the sea monster and Andromeda would be peacefully ruling the kingdom together, land and sea.

  And Iris could not help but wonder, would Lark tell the whole classroom that?

  No, probably not. She knew better. Just like Iris knew not to start talking about presidential assassination attempts in front of her classmates, Lark knew not to stand in front of a classroom and explain that the murdered wives of Henry VIII became vengeful ghosts and haunted him until he went mad and repented all his sins, or that the dinosaurs all escaped to a secret planet and lived there with Amelia Earhart. You learn these things, over time.

  Or had she learned?

  Lark was going to stand up in front of the class to give an oral report on Greek myths when she was supposed to do astronomy, and maybe she hadn’t learned. School wasn’t about being creative. It was about doing what you were told. Most kids learn that by fifth grade, but Lark had not. The best way to get by with someone like Tommy Whedon was to try not to draw attention to yourself at all.

  And Lark was about to draw a lot of attention to herself.

  It was Crow Girl all over again: Lark wanting the world to be one way, when really it was something else altogether.

  And maybe that was why Iris’s crow nightmare was so vivid that night. She awoke with the image of the gossipy, swarming crows overtaking her sister, and she could not go back to sleep. What if the project went wrong? What if Mr. Hunt asked her what it had to do with astronomy? What if Lark froze, and the kids laughed at her? And Iris wasn’t there to help her?

  Well, Iris would have to help her now. So she got up and padded down the stairs.

  The diorama was sitting on the kitchen table where Lark had left it. She’d put the lid back on so she could take it to school without anyone seeing what was inside. Lark liked to unveil things.

  Iris took off the lid and studied the project. No, it wouldn’t take much to make it work for the assignment—just talking more about the constellations themselves. Maybe she could even add a few details about constellations in general, and how they got named.

  So Iris sat down at her mom’s computer and made some notes—Andromeda was named a constellation by the astronomer Ptolemy in the second century, along with nearby Cassiopeia and Cepheus and Perseus (the hero who eventually rescued Andromeda) and the sea monster itself, called Cetus—and then printed up pictures of the constellations with illustrations of the figures drawn over them. Iris would not try to draw those herself—they would be all wrong.

  But she could draw the stars. That way Lark could just point to them if Mr. Hunt asked. She could gather her thoughts, show the stars, maybe then refer to Iris’s notes.

  Then it would be fine.

  So Iris took a gold Sharpie and carefully drew in dots for the Andromeda constellation, as well as Perseus and Cetus. She didn’t have Lark’s artistry, and some of the proportions might not have been quite right, but she did the best she could. Then she folded up her notes and printouts and tucked them in an envelope.

  And then Iris was able to sleep.

  Of course, Lark overslept the next day, and the morning was too full of Lark-getting-ready chaos for Iris to give her the envelope full of notes, and when Lark finally came downstairs (dressed like herself again in an Alice in Wonderland T-shirt, puffy skirt, and purple-and-black leggings), Iris suddenly couldn’t find the words.

  It had seemed so simple last night: She’d just do a little extra work and have it there if Lark needed it. And of course Lark would be delighted—who doesn’t want to have a backup plan?

  In the bright light of day she remembered that Lark did not particularly love a backup plan.

  So Iris slid the envelope in her own backpack. She’d wait until the time was right.

  But the time wasn’t right in the car, with Lark chatting happily away. Iris kept one eye on the diorama, which Lark hadn’t opened yet, and another out the window. It seemed like there were crows everywhere this morning.

  It will be fine, Iris reassured herself. It’s just extra facts. Extra facts never hurt anyone. It will be fine.

  And Iris kept telling herself that as Lark walked into school carrying her diorama as if it were made of fairy dust and wishes, and when they entered the fifth-grade wing they found Oliver, Jin, and Mira waiting for them.

  “Hi,” Iris said, glancing around.

  Oliver gaped. “Wow,” he said. “You’re identical!” He looked as if none of the dictionaries in the world could have prepared him for this moment.

  “Don’t stare, Oliver,” Mira said.

  “Find your chill, Oliver,” Jin said. “Hi, Lark.”

  “This is . . . my pod,” Iris said. Casually, she rested her hands on the ledge in front of her and tapped out, I’ll explain later.

  “Okay!” Lark said cheerfully, wrapping her hands around the box. Weirdo, she tapped.

  “We were waiting for you,” Oliver said. “We thought we’d walk you to class.”

  “Me?” Lark said.

  “Yeah, you’re our pod sister!”

  Oliver, Jin, and Mira all grinned, and Iris wanted suddenly to build a diorama for them all. They had planned this—the pod. They had planned to meet Iris and Lark outside the fifth-grade wing and welcome them with open pod arms, so Lark wouldn’t have to walk to class alone after the whole vomit episode.

  It was so nice. Like, really nice, not the kind of nice that old ladies in grocery stores and annoyed preschool teachers wanted you to be. Iris did not know what to do.

  “What’s that?” Oliver asked, pointing at the box.

  Lark grinned. “It’s a diorama. I have a presentation. It’s Andromeda.” She said it like it was no big deal, like Lark gave presentations all the time, with or without Greek mythology dioramas.

  “Like the myth?” Oliver said.

  Lark nodded happily.

  “Neat. I made a Gorgon head out of Legos once,” Oliver said.

  “They should have Lego Greek myth sets,” Jin said.

  Lark’s jaw dropped, like this was the best idea she’d ever heard. “They should! Can you imagine Athena coming out of Zeus’s head?”

  Mira shook her head ruefully. “You get to make dioramas? We never get to make dioramas.”

  Cool pod, Lark tapped.

  I know, Iris tapped back, the undercurrent between them crackling just as it was supposed to.

  But something was wrong. Iris had something to tell her and she could not just tap it out. She reached into her backpack and put her hands on the envelope.

  “Can we see?” Oliver asked.

  “The bell’s about to ring,” Iris said, squeezing the envelope.

  “Just a peek!” Jin said.

  As Iris’s heart went into her stomach, Lark grinned and said, “Okay!” She lifted off the top of the box and displayed her creation for them, and as the whole pod made appreciative noises, her smile only got bigger.

  She did not look inside. Maybe the stars would just disappear by presentation time. Maybe Iris had drawn them in magical disappearing Sharpie. Maybe Iris herself could disappear.

  “I wish we did Greek myth projects,” Jin said.

  “Why are there stars during the day?” Oliver asked.

  The bell rang then, and so Lark put the top back on, looking at Oliver like he was very random indeed. Mira yelped something about them being late and Iris motioned them on.

  “I’ll c
atch up,” she said, grabbing Lark’s arm.

  “I can’t be late,” Lark whispered, shoulders slumping, eyes widening.

  Iris breathed in. “Here,” she said, handing over the envelope. “I made you this. It’s just facts about constellations and some printouts with the pictures of all the Perseus constellations and stuff about Ptolemy and—”

  Lark’s face went from confusion to slow comprehension to something that looked very much like hurt. Iris’s words shriveled in her mouth; she could feel herself shriveling with them.

  Then red spread across Lark’s face, just as it had the first day of school. Mr. Hunt leaned out of the classroom and called for Lark, but for a moment she just stared at Iris as if she could not quite understand what she was seeing. Then she grabbed the envelope, turned, and stalked into the classroom.

  Iris skulked to her seat and spent the morning feeling shame bubble inside her like a lava pit. Please, she thought, please let it be okay. Please.

  Then, about halfway through math, Iris’s hand flew to her chest. She looked up and saw Mr. Hunt lurking in the doorway.

  That burning inside her changed, suddenly, in the blink of an eye. It wasn’t shame anymore, but it was still bright red and hot and poisonous. She stood up before Ms. Shonubi even had a chance to call her name.

  “Iris,” he said when they were standing in the hallway, hands folded and pressed against his chin, “there’s a . . . I was wondering if you could . . .”

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “Your sister is in the nurse’s office. I was wondering if you might go talk to her.”

  “What happened?” This was his fault. If he hadn’t made Lark feel horrible, if he’d understood Lark like Mr. Anderson had, none of this would have happened.

  “I’m afraid she got up to give a presentation and got very . . . flustered. Some of her classmates—there may have been some reaction to the incident on Monday. . . . There was some teasing and she was very upset and ran out of the room.”