As I Wake by Elizabeth Scott Page A

it.”
    “You fainted again,” Greer says, ignoring Sophy and looking at me. “That’s twice in something like twenty seconds, Ava. No, wait, maybe you shouldn’t sit up.”
    I do anyway, head spinning, and press my hands to my face to block out the world, to try and figure out what’s real and what isn’t. What I know and what I don’t.
    My hands smell like orange.
    I start to shake. Morgan.
    I pull my hands away from my face, and Greer and Olivia and Sophy are watching me, Olivia looking worried, Greer looking worried and a little annoyed. I can’t read the expression on Sophy’s face at all.
    Ethan is standing a little farther away, a blank, almost angry but more resigned light in his eyes that goes softer, kinder as he sees me looking at him. He knows what it’s like to be—to be hurt. I know that.
    I stand up, shivering, and they all reach for me, all of their hands are reaching for me, and I take a step back and then another and another.
    And then I turn around and run.
    Once I’m away from school—away from them—I slow down, trying to think as I walk along the road Jane uses to drive me to school. It takes me through neighborhoods full of houses that look just like the one she lives in, a whole tiny universe of sameness, and although I keep expecting to see someone, I don’t see anyone.
    There’s just me.
    I take a deep breath, startled to realize I’m still shaking. Whatever happened to me just now has gotten to me, broken past the fragile shell I’ve built. More than my memory is gone. My soul has wings that beat to a heart I don’t understand and I see things, feel things that I know aren’t from here, but that are so real.
    That are more real than Jane and the life she has made for me.
    I turn onto Homeway Lane, onto Ava’s street, my street, and see two people standing by Jane’s driveway, talking.
    One of them is Clementine.
    The other is Morgan.

31.
     
    I MOVE WITHOUT THOUGHT , my body dropping to the ground silently as if I’ve done it a thousand times before, and I roll into the narrow ditch that lines either side of Homeway Lane, ignoring the damp earth smell all around me.
    “What did you think I would do, throw you a welcome party?” Clementine says. “You shouldn’t be here, Morgan—there’s no you here, and I know you know that. I’ve told you what will happen if you don’t leave now. Why won’t you listen?”
    “What did you do to Ava?” Morgan says.
    Silence, and then Clementine sighs. “There was room for her here,” she says. “Jane wanted her, and there was space, so—”
    “So you just sent her here? Did you even think—?”
    “I’ve thought more than you have, that’s for certain,” Clementine says. “She fits here, Morgan. She fits, and I made sure that she’d forget before. Forget you . Do you understand me? She doesn’t know you, and you can’t be here. There’s no you here. You can’t be here, and you’ll disappear from everywhere if you stay long enough.”
    “But you won’t?”
    “I have someone here,” Clementine says. “She’s—well, she’s not who she could be, but she fits my needs.”
    “And you’ve killed her.”
    “So quick to assume the worst of me,” Clementine says, her voice thick with anger and something that sounds almost like sadness. “I wouldn’t hurt—”
    “Another you? But anyone else, well, that’s okay?”
    “Ava isn’t dead,” Clementine snaps. “She’s here, isn’t she? She’s got a new life, a good one. And look, I can’t explain everything to you—there isn’t enough time—but Morgan, if you go someplace where there is no room for you, where there isn’t a you that was or will be, what happens isn’t pretty. The universe recognizes wrongness and fixes it. You can feel it, can’t you? I know you can. You have to go back.”
    “Why did you do it?”
    “There isn’t time for this,” Clementine says. “Let me send you home. We’ll forget this ever happened. I won’t even ask how