I’m not in my body any longer. Like I don’t have a body or a past anymore, but I’m still more myself than I’ve ever been.”
Her eyes are shining with tears. “Yes,” she says very softly, “that’s what I wanted people to feel.”
I wait, sensing she has more to say.
“She wasn’t interested in any of this,” she tells me. “You’d know that as well as anybody. She would never have made this.”
She gazes at my wings, haunted. Her eyes brim and the tears spill down her face. Her voice breaks as she asks the question.
“She’s not here anymore, is she?”
I shake my head. Then Alisha begins to weep, and I know that, for her, the pretending is over.
10
Ghost
The city is always quieter on Sundays. And Sasha is always at her most restless on Sundays. A couple of weeks into our holiday, she begs to be taken into town for the day.
The house isn’t much fun for her. We do our best, Nikhil and I, but even we can’t keep Sasha from noticing that her mother is in desperate pain and her father has finally given in to his own grief. They act normally when we’re all together. They don’t treat me any differently; they tease Nikhil about being an old soul; they laugh and smile and play with Sasha the way they always did. But she’s not blind. She can see beyond it.
I take her out that Sunday, holding her firmly by the hand as we walk up our street. At the corner, I flag down a rickshaw. Sasha chatters excitedly.
“Where to, Sash?” I ask her.
She turns her face up to me doubtfully. “Anywhere?”
“Anywhere.” I wince. If she suggests Mysore Zoo, I’m in a stew. Mysore is three hours away.
“Lunch?”
“That’s all? Lunch?”
She nods eagerly. I can’t help smiling. She could have had anything, and she picked lunch. Not long ago, an ordinary day out was such a treat for me, too. I hear a ghost of a laugh, a boy telling me I don’t have to be ashamed, a flicker of green eyes. Sean. I swallow and push the memory away.
I consider the places I know and settle on a Chinese restaurant on Church Street. Sasha loves Chinese food.
I’ve been waiting for a blow. When Alisha realized Amarra was gone, I thought she’d be angry with me. But she’s only grieving. I waited for her or Neil to decide they don’t want to keep me, but it’s been more than two weeks and they haven’t said a word about a Sleep Order. Maybe they don’t want to get rid of me after having gotten to know me all these months.
Either way, it has made being at the house quite stressful, and I am as eager as Sasha to get out for the day.
After lunch, Sasha and I go for a walk, past shops and vendors, ending up at Garuda Mall. It reminds me of my first day with Ray, but I don’t protest when Sasha asks to go in. She loves riding the escalators up and down. I buy her a lollipop, and in exchange she solemnly agrees to go with me to the bookshop and not protest that she’s bored. I lose myself in the aisles and the smell of paper. I am so immersed I don’t realize my small charge has disappeared until I turn around to look for her.
Confronted with empty space, my stomach drops. I look frantically around. There is no sign of her.
“Sasha!” I shout. “Sasha, where are you?”
When I find her at last, standing near the best-seller shelf, I almost collapse with relief. Then I realize that she has company. There’s a dark-eyed boy with her. His T-shirt has French words over his breast pocket. My body tenses.
“Eva, look who I found,” says Sasha happily, clinging to his hand.
I force a smile. “Oh, golly, what a treat,” I say, hoping he can hear the venom in my voice.
Judging by his response, I think he did. “Better be more careful,” says Ray. “You don’t want to go back to the house and explain they’ve lost another child, do you?”
“That’s a horrible thing to say, even for you,” I snap. “Come on, Sash, we’re going.”
“She doesn’t want to leave,” says Ray angrily, holding up their entwined hands as if to prove this.
“Don’t test me, Ray.”
“Or you’ll what?” His glower softens slightly. “I’m sorry I said that about losing her. It wasn’t fair. But you could at least try to be friendly, for her.”