Echoes (US Edition)
Page 31
‘Yes,’ Mallory tells him, ‘I want to, Warden,’ and his smile lights up all over again and she feels it, feels it inside.
Then, his face drops a little, lips quirking to the side.
‘You probably shouldn’t call me that any more,’ he says quietly. ‘Might hurt our ‘I forgot’ cover story if we use those names, even when we think no one’s listening.’ He’s right, of course, and she knew it too, but said out loud it still snags at her. She nods.
‘Gilbert,’ she corrects, though it jars a bit.
‘I’m still me,’ he says, ‘and you’re still you, remember.’ He pauses. ‘Mallory, I – ’ His phone goes again. ‘I’m bloody coming!’ he snaps at his pocket. He looks at her again, looks like he’s going to say something, and then he doesn’t. He shuts his mouth and reaches down for the fallen crutch instead, then levers himself up onto his feet. ‘So, this is goodbye, I guess,’ he says, ‘for now.’ He leans forward, just a little, like he wants to hug her and Mallory’s heart skips and she tenses – though she doesn’t mean to, and she hates herself for doing it – but he stops because he noticed.
Damn it, Mallory thinks at herself. You fricking idiot!
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, the words tumbling out.
‘No,’ he replies. ‘It’s okay. I shouldn’t have.’
Mallory sends a stream of internal abuse at herself; Warden’s eyes seem to be darting anywhere but at her. She doesn’t want him to go on that note. She doesn’t want him to. She moves her hand out towards him and he hesitates a second, but then he rests a crutch against the bed and takes it. His hand wobbles a little and Mallory’s skin tingles at the touch, but she doesn’t pull back because it’s him, and though it’s still hard, it’s different with him. Their fingers brush together, moving across each other, then entwining. Mallory is grateful, for the second time, that they took her off the heart monitor. Warden smiles at her – and his phone buzzes a third time.
‘I really have to go,’ he says, though he looks like he doesn’t want to and at the words, Mallory grips a little tighter. He pauses, then slowly – very slowly – he lifts her hand to his lips and kisses it, the softest touch. ‘I’m going to miss you, Mallory Park.’
‘We’ll talk online,’ she tells him, feeling all twisted up inside. ‘We’ll keep talking online, you promise?’
‘I promise,’ he says. ‘I’ll talk to you for as long as you’ll listen.’ He smiles and places her hand gently back down on the bed. Then he hobbles back to the doorway.
‘Goodbye, Warden,’ she says, calling him it, just that one last time. He stares back at her and his fists clench a little. He starts blinking too hard, too fast.
‘Goodbye, Echo Six,’ he says.
And with that, he leaves.
Begin Again
Mallory drives the Chevy carefully into the school parking lot. Roger had offered to take her – had wanted to, she could tell – but she’d told him no. She has to do this herself, has to start making things normal again.
‘Are you okay?’ Jed asks. He’s been amazing these past few weeks, helping their dad take care of her, doing most of the cooking when Ruthie hasn’t dropped something over, and doing it so very well, following the 100 right step-by-step.
‘Yeah, I’m – ’ she begins. Then she follows his eyes and realizes her hand is visibly shaking on the wheel. She stills it and turns off the ignition.
You’re okay, she tells herself, trying to shut out the apprehension in her stomach. You can do this.
‘I’ll be okay,’ she says. She looks out the front windshield. Students are flooding into the school, a few even looking her way already. ‘Everything just seems so… fast.’ It’s not really the right word, but it’s hard to explain. Her physical hurts are pretty much healed, but she feels fragile in a kind of way she never did before. She was in hospital for three weeks and didn’t leave the house for another after she came home. She remembers clearly the first time she stepped outside, just to go to the store with Roger. Everything had felt like it was moving so quickly; people and bikes and cars, all seeming to whiz past.
‘You don’t have to do this yet,’ Jed says. ‘You can go back home. I’ll get the bus – ’
‘No,’ Mallory replies. ‘No, I want to.’ She’s been home two weeks now, and, though she still feels tired, she’s been the one pushing to go back to school. They’ve said she can take as long as she needs, but she doesn’t want to take a long time. She wants to get it over with, to move forward so she can stop thinking about what happened. ‘You go on ahead,’ she tells Jed. ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’
‘Mal – ’
‘Please, Jed.’
Four, three, four, two…
Four, three, four…
‘No,’ he says quietly. ‘I’m gonna stay with you. We can sit here as long as you need, but you’re not going in alone.’ He glances at her once, then folds his hands defiantly over the backpack on his lap and settles in to wait. Mallory bites her lip, feeling something that might be pride, alongside her impatience. If he doesn’t go in soon, he’ll get a tardy and he knows that. She tries to steady her breathing. She just has to get out the damn car.
Why is this so difficult? she wonders. Why does it have to be so difficult? She’s been kidnapped and shot and almost died, so why does she go all rattled at the thought of just going back into school? Why does it feel like she wants to curl up in that front seat and hide – or drive and drive and drive, as far away as she can…
And why are there so many people?
Were there that many people before? She thinks of the corridors, of the jostling, of the touching… Come on, she tells herself, just open the door. Just open the fricking door!
But she stays where she is, and Jed sits unmoving beside her.
Mallory had talked to Warden – no, she stops herself, to Gilbert – about it all last night, admitting how nervous she was. His first day back had been two weeks ago and it hadn’t exactly gone well. He’d caught a crutch in a broken drain and fallen into a hedge. She doesn’t have that kind of peril to contend with at least, but the thing he’d said to expect was people staring. He’d said even kids who had ignored him before had come up and kept asking him to recount how he’d got shot. He’d told her it got better, though, that he gradually got used to things again and soon went back to being just another nerd people tried to wedgie. He’d given her this whole pep talk – some parts less helpful than others.
She looks down at her hands, bare and locked against the wheel like vices. Maybe she’s just trying too many steps at once. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a pair of gloves. She’s been trying not to wear them since the hospital, like after what she’s been through, she should be able to go without them now, like it’s some show of strength or defiance or willpower. Some days she manages it, but it’s been hard. She’s still the same person inside, whatever she tries to choose, and it’s not going to change overnight. Maybe it will change, eventually, just like she’s been wondering if it can with Warden, but it will take time.
And she doesn’t have to change it all at once.
If the gloves are what she needs to do this, they are what she needs. She slips them on to her hands and feels her body loosen a little as the familiar fabric slips back over her skin. Jed looks at her then, but he just nods, no judgement on his face.
One step at a time, Mallory tells herself. Just one step. You can do this. Now open the door.
She does.
She gets out of the Chevy. It’s a cold morning, her breath fogging the air. She pulls Jeanie’s leather jacket tighter around her. She likes it, so she’s kept wearing it. She locks the car and starts across the parking lot towards the school, Jed sticking by her side, sticking past where he should branch off. People start to notice her. She can feel their eyes as she walks across tarmac and up towards the main entrance. Students stare, even teachers. They know she got shot, but due to the volatility that still exists online around Daedalus, her and Gilbert’s iden
tities have been classified regarding The Reckoning. People think she was mugged visiting New York with a friend. She can hear whispers about it as she passes. She holds her gloved hands in against her stomach and keeps walking, though. She keeps going.
You’re okay, she tells herself. You are damn well going to be okay.
***
Math is Mallory’s second to last class and she’s already tired by the time she sits down middle right of the room. People have been asking her questions all day, crowding her more than usual, just like Gilbert had said they would. Even Morgan Hale had – and Mallory had told her straight up where she could stick it because she’s not her friend and never has been. It hasn’t been as bad as it could have been, though; Heidi seems to have appointed herself her unofficial bodyguard, using her all-too-intense stare to great effect against anyone who seems intent on lingering too long. She had cried when she’d seen Mallory on that first visit to the store.
Mrs Fraser-Hampton hands round a mock midterm paper at the start of the class, telling Mallory she’s glad she’s back as she passes her hers. It brings home how much of the semester she’s already missed. She looks down at the sheets in front of her. The first question is on trigonometry. It’s not an area of it they’ve done while she’s been in class, but she can see the answer to it, see it as clearly as if it were written right there on the page with the question. She skims through the others. She could answer them all. Still, she stares back at that first for a long few minutes, even as pens scribble around her. She thinks about the decisions she made before and why she made them and, for the first time, she actually thinks about what she might want.
Not what someone tells her is good.
Not what someone tells her is what she should do.
Not what she does because she’s afraid.
But what she wants.
And what she wants is to put the right answer. She wants to put the right answer for all of them. She doesn’t want to end up dying in her bedroom like Daedalus, or an obsessive like The Asker. She wants more than that. Tiredness temporarily forgotten, she starts writing. No workings, just answers. When she’s finished, she puts her hand up and Mrs Fraser-Hampton comes over.
‘Is something the matter?’ she asks quietly.
‘I’m done,’ Mallory replies. She holds Mrs Fraser-Hampton’s gaze, and the teacher takes in the paper, only fifteen minutes after she gave it out. She marks it as the others work. Mallory studies her tabletop while Mrs Fraser-Hampton goes through, feels her glancing up at her within thirty seconds of starting. She doesn’t comment on it during the class, though. While the others finish the test, she roots a textbook out of her cupboard, skims through the chapter listings and opens it to about halfway through. Then she gets up and lays it down in front of Mallory with a note saying ‘Try this on for size.’ It’s a college book on advanced calculus. Mallory starts working through the given chapter. And it’s interesting. And she sort of finds she actually likes it.
When the bell goes for the end of class, Mrs Fraser-Hampton asks her to stay behind. Mallory braces herself as she stops by the middle front desk, preparing for the questions sure to follow.
Only they don’t come.
‘I just wanted to check how your first day back has been going,’ is all Mrs Fraser-Hampton says. ‘You doing all right?’ Mallory nods. She bites her lip and the teacher shrugs. ‘Great,’ she says, ‘that’s it.’ She sits down at her desk to start marking the other papers. ‘You can go now,’ she adds. Mallory nods again. She takes a step back towards the door. Then, she hesitates. ‘Something else?’ Mrs Fraser-Hampton says. Mallory swallows.
‘I just… I wanted to ask you about applications to MIT,’ she says. ‘I googled you and it says you went there.’ Massachusetts may be a long way from California, but Cambridge is only a couple of hours from Watertown – and Mallory’s been thinking about it and maybe, just maybe…
For a moment, Mrs Fraser-Hampton looks taken aback, her mouth slightly ajar. Then she starts to smile.
***
By the time Mallory gets back to her room that afternoon, she is exhausted. She sits down in her grey office chair. There were good things in the day, she tells herself, but it also felt like a constant defense against assault, her mind being a pain in the ass mess for the most part. Her whole body is stiff from it. She looks down at her gloved hands. It feels like some kind of failure, but she can’t bring herself to take them off again, not just yet.
One step at a time, she thinks. She wants to talk to Gilbert, but he won’t be online yet. She almost texts, then she stops herself. Damn it!
Sometimes she wishes it could be quiet inside her head for just one fricking second, but it only ever felt calm doing one thing. She tries not to think about that. She wonders, instead, if the parcel she sent him has arrived. It should have got there this morning, although he wouldn’t get it himself till he’s back from school – which isn’t going to be for at least two more hours. She’d found it on eBay two days ago and bid a crapload to ensure she won it; a Lampertz safe, the same model he’d been going to buy if he hadn’t bought that plane ticket to New York. She thinks about what he might say when he sees it, imagines his face and his smile – expressions that she knows now – and she feels a little better.
Two hours, at least, though.
No point turning her laptop on and staring at an empty chat box. That would be the very definition of a pathetic waste of time. She taps her finger on the desk. Jed and Roger are out in the yard, practicing on the punch bag. She’s not quite up to it yet, though she could go and watch them… She doesn’t want to watch TV. She’s watched so much in the past five weeks. Maybe she should start online gaming again, but she doesn’t feel like doing that just now. She used to when she was younger – tactics and mysteries and lots of forums, just the less dangerous kind. Not like…
Four, three, four, two…
Four, three, four, two…
Shit.
She misses it. Even now, even after everything, her fingers itch to log back in, though nothing is there any more, even the chat box shell deleted.
Four, three, four, two…
She gets up and closes her bedroom door. She shuts the curtains, though it’s still light outside. She just feels so damn tense. She sits back down in front of the laptop and stares at the blank screen and thinks and thinks and wants…
Echo Six is gone, she tells herself. All of that is gone.
The Feds think they caught everyone involved in The Asker’s other group, but she still can’t ever be that person again. It’s not safe… It’s not. Even if she uses a new name…
Even if…
But her fingers are wanting to move. After today, especially, her mind is wanting to work, to release into something she understands and can control again.
Yes, she misses it.
She misses the place where the rules were clear, where everything made sense, where she could be hidden away and protected and powerful all at the same time; where people were afraid of her and not she of them. Maybe she is stronger in real life than she thought she was, and maybe she can become stronger in time, but she will never be as strong as she was there.
As she can be.
She misses the Forum and, if she’s honest, she misses the person The Asker was to her, too. She misses Echo Six, misses being her.
She hesitates. Roger would positively freak if he knew what she was considering and Gilbert would say it was a bloody stupid idea, but…
But…
The internet is a big place. She was starting to master it way before The Asker ever found her. That’s why he asked her to join those two and a half years ago. Echo Six may be gone. She made a mistake. But maybe… Maybe she could try it out, be Echo Seven by another name, just for one night.
Just one night.
She’ll have to be careful. She’s fairly sure she’s on some kind of FBI watch list now, but there are ways around that. There are ways around everything if you look hard enough.
There are always loopholes. A single phrase keeps running through her head. It’s a phrase that’s bigger than the man who wrote it and what he came to represent for her. Just because he fell away, doesn’t mean those words mean any less;
There is truth to be shared.
And not just shared. It’s not even that part that matters most to her, it’s the discovered part. It’s the finding part. It is a purpose all on its own. It doesn’t have to be big or dangerous or anything people would notice, just something small to focus her, to ease away the tension.
There is truth to be shared.
The phrase repeats inside her mind. Then come the words that follow it – that have always followed it.
Let us begin.
She bites her lip. The tapping stops.
She turns on the laptop.
About the Author
Laura grew up in Woking, England, and graduated from the University of Surrey with a degree in music. Before starting Echoes, she worked mainly in theatre and wrote two musicals, The In-Between and Faerytale. For more information, please visit www.lauratisdall.com.
www.twitter.com/lauratisdall
www.facebook.com/lauratisdallwriter
Acknowledgements
Thank you to God, for your saving love and for always giving me a ‘next step’. Big thanks to all my amazingly supportive family and friends, especially Mum, Dad, Nan, Dave, Chris and Nat – I couldn’t have done this without your constant love, belief and significant patience (and that epic car journey ‘thought storm’). Thank you also to legendary proof readers Nadine, Miriam, Chrissi and James the Techie Genius (without whom Mal would have made a lot more mistakes); to Mike Butcher for all your ongoing help and for giving Echoes a cover that had me grinning stupidly for hours; to Jenny Glencross for massively helpful editorial notes, and to Nelle Andrew for your advice.