As I Wake by Elizabeth Scott

Also, everything is very strange, not at all like home and—” He blows out a breath, looking off to the side and then back at me as if he’s afraid I will vanish. There are freckles on his face, a tiny patch on his nose, and there are shadows under his eyes, deep and dark. A cut on his neck. Shadows of bruises on his jaw, faded faint yellow-green. I want to touch them, smooth them away.
    I want to touch him.
    He’s looking at me as if the whole world waits for my next breath, with an intensity that makes my heart pound and my palms sweat and then he smiles, a sweet curve of his mouth, and my breath catches, but then I freeze because there is something about it, something beyond it that I know, that makes my mind go blank with fear and pain. I shrink back and the room is a dream, the orange chair is a dream, I remembered Jane, I was here, I am here.
    I look at him, and then I close my eyes. Maybe I’m crazy.
    Maybe I’m scared.
    “Ava,” he whispers, pleading, but I keep them closed. I have to find out what is real. I have to wake up for real.
    “Hey,” someone says, and I open my eyes slowly, knowing Morgan will be gone. It is not his voice I just heard.
    But he isn’t gone, he is still here, still looking at me. He is here and the only change is that now a security guard is too, peering at my face and pulling Morgan’s arms tight behind him, so he can’t touch me. Can’t reach me.
    I don’t like that.
    “Are you all right?” the security guard asks and I stare at him blankly because I thought I was dreaming when I closed my eyes and fell into the attic, into listening, into hearing that voice. Hearing Morgan.
    I stare and Morgan says, “I’m sorry, Ava, I’m so sorry, maybe if there was a place here for me things would be better, maybe you and me—” and then jerks his arms free, the security guard stumbling back, saying, “Hey!” and grabbing at empty space as Morgan pulls the bathroom door open and runs through it.
    The guard runs out into the hall, leaving me standing there in the bathroom. In the mirror I see my face, my open eyes.
    I close them. After a moment, the door opens again. “Ava?” Jane says. “Oh, Ava,” and her voice is shaking and she is shaking, and the security guard is saying, “I’m so glad that woman called and said she thought she saw something, I’m so glad I got here—wait, hold on. Jerry, what do you mean you don’t see him? He ran down the stairs, how could you not see him?”
    “You’re all right?’ Jane says, touching my arms, my face, my shoulders, and I draw back, nodding, thinking of him looking at me. Of me looking back.
    Of how I remember something other than that brief, strange glimpse of a faraway, different Jane and me.
    I remember him.
    I remember Morgan in a way I didn’t—can all that I saw be memories?
    I know at least one of them is for sure.
    I know that I am from a place that is like this one but different, so different.
    But how did I end up here?
    And what did Morgan mean when he said there wasn’t a him here? How can that matter?
    I don’t know. I just know that Morgan—that I know him.
    I know him better than anyone here.

21.
     
    JANE FOLLOWS ME around when we get back to the house, asking if I need anything. Something to drink? To eat?
    “I’m fine,” I say, sitting on her sofa and trying to think—to remember—even though it makes my head pound so hard spots of yellow and red dance in front of my eyes.
    I’m not from here. That’s the drumbeat of words in my head, pounding along to the pain in my skull.
    I don’t belong here. I’m not the Ava who’s supposed to be here.
    I’m from somewhere else.
    Somewhere that isn’t here.
    “I have to check my work voice mail, but I’ll be right in the kitchen,” Jane says. “Call me if you need anything.” And then she stands there, hovering, waiting.
    Looking worried.
    “I really am fine,” I tell her, the words coming out poorly, shaking, and she looks like she wants to cry