The ground seemed to be moving beneath me, like a slow-motion earthquake. I felt nauseous, and as if that was only the merest symptom of a terrible illness that was coming my way, inexorable, impossible to sidestep.
“Where’s Kayla?” I demanded. “That’s what you’ve come to show me, isn’t it? That’s why we’re here, isn’t it? So where is she?”
The bell rang and the crowd, already thinned, evaporated with a loud banging of lockers, sneakers squeaking on fresh-waxed floor and the usual calls and jokes and promises to hook up later.
“Where is she? I want to see her. They’re going to announce it, aren’t they? They always do when there’s something awful that’s happened, they do, over the PA, Ms. Seabury, she’ll . . .”
I was breathing hard, though I wasn’t moving fast enough to warrant it. I moved with an ease I would have found impossible to believe days earlier, right through doors, into and out of classes, hurrying, searching faces for Kayla. AP Comp, that’s where she would be, first period.
I was panting now, my heart pounding madly in my chest, hurrying, a blur as I passed through solid objects, a ghost in my old school, because yes, it was my old school, my school, and there was J.P., as usual, clowning in the back of the Chem Lab, and I knew him. I knew Alison DeBarge, twirling her hair sullenly over close to the window in French. They were both part of my circle of friends.
My group. My friends. We weren’t the coolest of the cool, maybe, but the group around me, the ones who sometimes called me M-Todd.
M-Todd. Mara Todd.
M-Todd.
How had that gotten started, that stupid nickname? Someone . . . Shannon, yeah, it
was her, Shannon, my best friend, who had come up with that and for some stupid reason it stuck, even though it was stupid, as stupid as K-Mack.
I stopped suddenly. Stopped and stuck out my hand to hold myself up against a wall that avoided my touch.
Dread. It was coming for me. I felt it looming behind me, before me, all around me. Dread.
“No,” I whispered.
Messenger waited, knowing, waited. Waited, and I hated him for that patience, hated him for already knowing what I could only feel as a terrible beast coming to devour me.
“Where’s Kayla?” I demanded.
And he said nothing.
“Where is Kayla?” I cried out. “Where is she? Where is Kayla? Where is Kayla?” My whole body trembled. I shook like I was seized by fever chills.
“Where is Kayla?” I screamed.
And only then did Messenger say what I knew he must say. “There is no Kayla.”
23
SOMETHING INSIDE ME BROKE. CAN A SOUL break? I was hollowed out. I was nothing.
“No,” I pleaded.
And he said nothing.
“No,” I begged again.
“Mara . . .”
“No,” I said, but flat now, knowing at last that the moment had come for truth. Still, though, I bargained for some better answer, any other answer besides what I now felt as truth. “I saw her. We both saw her. We both heard her, Messenger. She has blond hair.” I grabbed a handful of my own black hair and held it out as evidence. “She’s white, I’m Asian. She’s . . . not me. Not me.”
“You were not ready for the truth,” Messenger said. “I hid it from you, with illusion and misdirection. With the face of a girl who looked nothing at all like you. You had things to learn first. You had things to understand. First.”
“Did I miss it? Am I too late?” Oriax. She was there, this time dressed head to ankle in a single, shiny black leotard. I looked down and saw that she no longer wore boots to cover her too-small feet. I saw there the truth, the glossy black hooves.
She was bending down to bring her face level with mine. “Oh, good. Oh, such lovely tears,” she said. She licked her green lips. “I would lick them off if Messenger would let me. Delicacies to be savored. The tears of remorse.” She shuddered like a person fantasizing about some imagined pleasure. “I’ll bet they are ever so bitter.”