The Lost Girl

by Anne Ursu

  Iris turned to ice. Lark went straight and haughty. “Yes, I’m Lark,” she spat back. “Don’t you dare hurt my sister.”

  “Sooooooo, how’s school going for you these days?”

  Lark flinched. “How does he know about that?” she whispered.

  “Don’t whisper in here! Acoustics! I can hear everything! I know because your sister here has told me all about you.”

  Lark glanced to Iris. But her face was confused, not hurt. She still did not understand the extent of her sister’s betrayal. Iris was dissolving in her own shame.

  “Yes,” he continued. “How you’re not quite made for this world. How you’re just too sensitive.”

  Now Lark understood. Now the hurt splashed across her face. “You told him that?”

  Iris opened her mouth helplessly.

  “Oh, yes, she told me everything. How you can’t even handle throwing up in school. How she needs to take care of you. How she’s so worried you’ll just walk off the face of the earth one day. What do you think, Lark? Do you think Iris needs to protect you?”

  “Stop talking,” Lark gasped.

  “Did you know she was visiting here? Did she tell you about Alice?”

  “The girl on the sign?”

  “Oh, much more than that. She was my sister. And Iris knew all about it. We had extensive conversations about how similar you two are. She couldn’t take care of herself either. She was broken, our Alice.”

  The look Lark was giving her, like Iris was hollowing her out.

  “What?” Mr. Green said. “She didn’t tell you any of this?”

  Before Iris’s eyes, Lark seemed to collapse into herself like a dying star.

  What could Iris do? There was nothing she could do. What he’d said wasn’t true, not really. But it wasn’t not true either.

  Satisfied, he turned to Iris. “And you,” he said. “You think you’re special? You’re not practical at all! You’re impractical! Don’t know what’s good for you, don’t know what’s best, think you can just say no to me. To me? I gave you the chance of a lifetime. All of this could be yours! But no. You’re too foolish. You’re just like your sister. Both of you, all wrong. Not made for this world.”

  He was railing at them now, and he seemed to take up the whole mansion.

  “Both of you, weak. Too weak. Too needy. Can’t live without each other. I can’t believe I thought you could help Alice, Iris. You’re just like the rest of them, useless. I’d never expose her to you. You’re a terrible sister.”

  “Stop it,” Lark hissed, grabbing hold of Iris’s arm again. “She is not.”

  “Did you contradict me?” he spat.

  “Yes. You’re horrible. You’re a monster. You’re an ogre banging your silly club around.” Lark straightened. “Think you’re special because you have a fancy house and lots of stuff and a big club and a collection of people’s hearts, but everyone knows you’re nothing but a smelly ogre. The worst.”

  Iris might have been made of ice, but Lark was made of fire now, spitting words back at him.

  “How dare you,” he growled.

  “You’re an ogre. Everyone’s laughing at you. No one’s impressed by your stuff. You’re the weak one. You’re pathetic and everybody knows it.”

  Just then, a large crashing sound came from the distance. Mr. Green’s attention broke from the girls and he looked behind him. Lark stiffened, and her hand tightened around Iris’s arm.

  “I—” began Mr. Green.

  Crash.

  He exhaled. “I need to attend to something. Don’t go anywhere.”

  And then he was gone.

  Lark turned to Iris, cheeks red, breathless. Iris could barely look at her, but needed to look at her; she needed to look her in the eye. So she willed her eyes up to meet her sister’s.

  “I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Not now.” Lark had followed him to the door and was listening carefully.

  “I didn’t mean it. Any of it.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this right now,” Lark said, her teeth gritted. She’d stooped down and was examining the small keyhole.

  “I do!” Iris exclaimed. “Something bad could happen and you’d think I thought all of that stuff about you.”

  Lark turned around with a sigh. “Iris. You kind of do.”

  “I don’t!”

  “You do. You wrote on my project. You talk about me with random ogres. You go running around the school yelling at everyone. Because you think I can’t take care of myself.”

  A protest rose in Iris’s mouth.

  “Can you please not talk for once?” Lark snapped. “Your job is not to take care of me. Not any more than my job is to take care of you. We take care of each other. We’re a team. Iris and Lark. That’s it. What would I do if something happened to you? What? What if you go and get yourself killed trying to take care of me?”

  “I—”

  “No, you didn’t think about that part, did you? You’re going to leave me all alone? I don’t have you, and it’s my fault you’re dead? And it’s because you thought I needed you to protect me? If you of all people think I’m totally helpless . . .”

  Lark could not finish her sentence, but Iris didn’t need her to. She was supposed to be the one who saw Lark for all she was. It was just that everything had gotten so jumbled up.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t think you’re helpless.”

  “If anyone needs protecting around here, it’s you.”

  “That’s obvious.”

  “You’re the one getting locked in rooms by an evil art thief.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s a lot of protection to need. I might have to clone myself. That would confuse people. No, this is my twin sister; this is my clone. I needed her because my twin sister is hopeless.”

  “Lark?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t do it again. Now, come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  “What? How?” Another huge crash came from the building somewhere. “What is that?”

  Lark held out her hand to show a small key. “We are going to get out of here with this key. And that crash, I believe, is us being rescued.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Lark

  Here, come with me.

  Let’s go back in time a bit.

  Lark was at home that afternoon while things were going missing around her, thinking of the person she used to be. She used to be a person with a bracelet the crows gave her; she used to be a person with a stuffed beanbag cat with magical healing powers; she used to be a person with a dollhouse baby that could have campfires on the moon. She used to be a person who went to school, and art camp. She used to be a person who could change the rules and make things and remake things, and now no one wanted her to be that anymore.

  Not even Iris.

  Even Iris thought she should be a girl with computer printouts of other people’s constellation drawings from the internet.

  She could have seen it coming. As soon as the school letters arrived, Iris had started getting more and more wound up inside, and this last week everything inside her had been so tight Lark herself felt the strain inside. She was wound up so tightly that she was bound to unwind.

  If Lark had been able to keep it together, none of this would have happened. If she’d adjusted to Mr. Hunt, if she’d ignored Tommy, if she’d been able to get through the owl-pellet ordeal—which really was the most disgusting and sad thing she’d ever seen in her life, but if she’d been able to get through it anyway—she’d have been able to help Iris unwind. That was what she did. It was her job.

  So she was going to need to show her sister that she was okay, and then she could help make Iris okay too.

  And then tell her to never ever draw on any of her projects, ever again.

  She was struck then with an overwhelming desire to see her sister—right then, right now. Like if she didn’t go find her, Iris herse
lf might disappear.

  And so when her mother told her she was going to work for the afternoon, Lark asked if she could drop her off at the library. Her mom had no problem with that—she seemed to unwind a little, seeing Lark wanting to go out—and she even offered to pick them up and drive them home after Iris’s camp was over, though she couldn’t get there until a little before seven o’clock.

  And that was fine. Lark wanted some time with her sister.

  At the library, she got some books and parked herself in a chair near the community room so she could catch Iris as she went into Camp Awesome.

  And then she would say—

  What?

  I miss you.

  I am not weak.

  We can both be the strong ones.

  We can get through this.

  I am mad at you.

  I miss you.

  Lark eyed Iris’s camp mates as they went into the room; Iris had told her all about them. Perky Abigail with the bouncy ponytail. Hannah, the Ravenclaw with the sparkly glasses. Eerie Emily in the softball clothes. Amazing Amma, who fenced and did gymnastics. Maleficent Morgan with the freckles and range of Disney T-shirts. Preeti with the purple streaks in her hair. Tall sixth grader Gabrielle, who had four cats. Small Novalie with the curly blond hair. All these girls who were now in the regular cast of her sister’s life, and Lark didn’t know them at all.

  She would like to know them. She would like to know the people that Iris knew.

  And then the door to the community room closed. No Iris.

  Something was wrong.

  No, Lark told herself immediately. This was a perfectly normal thing and there was a perfectly normal explanation for it and even if it was perfectly normal for her to worry she also needed to understand that the truth was likely perfectly normal.

  Obviously Iris must have gone home after school for some reason. And she’d figure Lark and her mom were at her mom’s office, and maybe then she’d draw all over more of Lark’s homework.

  And even though Lark had a terrible feeling in her stomach, she should recognize that that was her worries making her feel that way and nothing real.

  Right?

  When the girls came out of the community room for their break, Lark popped up. Amma cocked her head and studied her for a second, and then grinned and waved her forward.

  “You’re Iris’s sister!” she said.

  These were strangers, and she did not feel comfortable talking to strangers—and for a moment her words caught in her throat like they always did. But that only lasted a moment, because Iris knew them and that made them okay.

  “Yes, I’m Lark. I was looking for her?”

  “I thought maybe she was sick?” Amma said.

  “No,” said another girl. Gabrielle. “I saw her get off the bus and go into that weird antique shop.”

  Lark gaped at her.

  “Have you been in there?” the third girl breathed. Hannah. “I went in with my parents. That guy creeped me out.”

  “What do you mean?” Lark asked.

  Gabrielle repeated herself—yes, she’d seen Iris get off the bus and go into Treasure Hunters. And not only had Iris gone in there today, but she often went there after Camp Awesome was over. Gabrielle had been in there once too and thought the guy was weird.

  “My dad said it was mean to say that guy was weird,” she added. “But—”

  “He’s super weird,” Hannah finished.

  Now there was no explaining away the feeling in Lark’s stomach.

  Soon the other girls had gathered around Lark, and Novalie said that Iris had never really talked before yesterday, and Lark could not believe that. And then Hannah said that Iris had gotten really sad about fairy-tale girls yesterday and actually cried in front of everyone—and Iris never did that, either; Lark was the one who cried.

  Thoughts fluttered frantically around Lark’s head, looking for somewhere to roost. Iris was keeping things from her. Iris was sad. Iris was crying in camp. Iris was skipping camp. Iris had been wound up so tightly, and now she was unwinding everywhere.

  “Something’s wrong,” Lark said quietly. “Really wrong.”

  She almost swallowed the words. She did not need to hear right now that she was being silly, that she was imagining things, that it was probably all fine.

  But no one said that. Instead they all looked at her as if her words were very serious, and then Morgan said, “Well, if she’s in trouble, we have to rescue her.”

  All seven of the Awesome girls nodded, and the fluttering things in Lark’s head found perches and settled there.

  “I’m going to go over to the shop,” she said.

  “By yourself?” Preeti asked.

  “We should come with you,” said Amma.

  “We’ll all come,” Gabrielle said.

  “Like a girl gang,” Morgan said. “Girl gangs are the best way to fight bad guys.”

  “But what do we tell Abigail?”

  Lark needed to go. This second. “I’m going to see if I can find Iris. Then we’ll come back here. And if I don’t come back—”

  “Should we call the police?” Emily asked.

  Preeti shook her head. “What if they don’t listen to us? There’s no time. We have to do this ourselves. If you’re not back by the time camp is over, we’re going over there too.”

  “What do we do?” Morgan asked.

  Preeti lifted her chin in the air. “I have an idea.”

  And it was sealed. The girls went to call their parents and tell them they were staying at the library late, and Lark was going to go get her sister back.

  “Are you okay?” Amma asked her.

  Lark nodded.

  “It must be nice to have a twin sister.”

  “. . . It is.”

  Lark does not remember much of being in the hospital when she had meningitis. She does remember the emergency-room trips when she was little, though: that terrible feeling of her lungs trying so hard to get air, the feeling that no matter how hard they worked she would never get enough breath.

  This is how she felt leaving the library.

  And then, something very strange happened.

  When she walked out of the library all the crows of the neighborhood started cawing to one another and fluttering their wings and strutting around on their various perches—a hundred birds calling attention to themselves at once.

  And across the street, perched on top of the sign in front of the antique store, was a giant crow. The biggest of them all.

  Her crow.

  It cocked its head, listening to the cawing around it. And then it saw Lark.

  Come here, the crow said.

  And so Lark crossed the street. As Lark approached, the bird took off from its perch on the sign and flew to a hole in a nearby tree. It emerged a moment later with something small and shiny in its mouth.

  A key.

  Lark held her hands out, and the bird dropped the key in them and then alighted on the sign again, watching Lark.

  “Is it dangerous?” Lark asked.

  The bird blinked.

  “Is Iris in there?”

  Blink.

  Lark gulped. “Can I save her?”

  Blink.

  Lark’s body did not always do the things she wanted it to do. Including breathe right. She spilled things, broke things, knocked things over, bumped into things. She didn’t have a lot of strength. She flunked all the presidential fitness tests. Something about having been born too early: nothing quite worked the way it should. She was not the girl anyone would send into a dangerous situation.

  But she would be that girl for Iris.

  If Iris was trapped in some nightmare, Lark would have to rewrite it for her. That was what she did, after all. And she was not alone. Lark had the Awesome girls behind her, and the crows on her side.

  Her sister needed her. So, she took a deep, full breath and went into the shop, where she was greeted by a beautiful green-eyed cat who meowed insistently at her.

/>   And that meow said, very clearly, Follow me.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The Flock

  Noise filled the gallery as Iris and Lark crept back through it. Chaos. From the shop came the sound of Mr. Green yelling and things breaking. Through the gap in the curtains Iris could see Hannah and Morgan standing on a counter grabbing plates off the wall and throwing them. Preeti had grabbed a fireplace poker and was smashing vases with it while Mr. Green tried to grab her. Amma was wielding what seemed to be a small sword and was swinging it wildly.

  “They said they’d create a diversion,” Lark whispered.

  That they had.

  They were all there—Emily, Novalie, Gabrielle, too—and Mr. Green was in a corner holding a table clock menacingly, dodging the plates being hurled at his head.

  “I don’t understand,” Iris whispered.

  “Iris. They came to save you.”

  The words flew around Iris, unable to find a place to land.

  They came to save her.

  The Awesome girls.

  Iris should do something, she knew she should do something. Grab a poker and start breaking things. Come up with a clever plan to lead Lark and the rest of the girls to safety. Stomp over to Mr. Green and dump magic on his head. But she could not seem to move, could barely seem to think.

  He was an evil ogre, swinging his club around wildly to protect his mountain of treasure.

  And Iris had caused every single one of these girls to come to his lair.

  “Iris,” Lark hissed. “Stop it.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “It’s entirely my fault.”

  “It’s not your fault. It’s his fault. He’s the monster, do you understand? And who are we?”

  They were Iris and Lark. “A team.”

  “Right. And what else?”

  Iris swallowed. “We’re the girls who defeat the monsters.”

  “That’s right. Come on.” Lark started to pull her forward.

  And now, a scream from the room.

  “Hannah!” yelled another girl. And then the sound of heavy feet pounding toward them.

  Mr. Green came running back, holding a writhing Hannah in his arms. Hannah, who had seen Iris keeping track of all the girls in her journal. Hannah, who had forgiven her for it. He was leading all of the girls into his lair.