“Oh,” Lucy said, a little taken aback. Right. That text that had upset her so much, that day of the party. She’d completely forgotten it. “It’s okay. I mean…not okay, but…don’t worry about it anymore. I know you didn’t mean it.”
“But I have been worrying about it,” Jillian said. “My dad—he said something to me, before he died. He said you were going to fly the nest one way or another, and I could choose how far. He knew I was going to drive you away. And he was right.”
“That’s the thing though, Mom,” Lucy said. Yesterday she wasn’t sure if she would have been able to put any of this into words. Now it was pouring out of her. “I guess what I’ve been trying to explain to you is that the distance isn’t a punishment. I wasn’t looking at a map thinking,What’s the farthest away I could possibly be from my mother?But…Ididneed to be somewhere away. I just thought the best place for me to be away was here.”
“I get that. I heard you, I swear. I just don’t understand it.” Her voice was still a little sleep-blurred. Maybe that was why she sounded confused instead of hurt. “I don’t understand what you can get there that you couldn’t get here. There are other schools that you’d like. Schools closer to your aunts and uncles, or friends of mine. Places where someone could look out for you.”
Lucy closed her eyes. Her head was starting to throb again, making it that much harder to get the words right. But she had to get them right. She wasn’t going to get another try.
“There are things I’ve never done, Mom. Until I got here last week, I’d never seen mountains in person. And according to a Californian I talked to the other day, the Appalachians are ‘barely mountains anyway,’ so apparently I could go see even bigger mountains, if I wanted to. I’ve never been in a place without cell phone signal, I’ve—” She laughed wryly as she shivered. “I’ve been cold before, but I’ve never seen snow. I know there’s a lot of sadness in our home. But I didn’t just want to get away. I wanted to be somewhere where I could see past it. I wanted to know what might make me happy. Not knowing what I wanted…it felt like being dead.”
The next throb was the sharpest yet. Enough to draw a little gasp out of her. “Lucy?” Jillian asked.
“Sorry.” Lucy breathed slowly. Whatever respite the woods had given her was quickly evaporating. “I just wanted to tell you—I want this for you too. You know? I want you to see beyond the sadness in that house. You’re allowed to figure out what you want. You’re not leaving Grandma or Grandpa or Dad behind if you figure out what you want.”
Her chest clenched. It felt so strange, so surreal to explain a hope that she was watching shrink away in real time. She wished she’d taken Laurentius’s offer while it was still her choice to make. Although even now, she couldn’t say if she wanted it.
It took her by surprise when her mother spoke again. There was a firmness in her voice that Lucy barely recognized. “Lucy, I’m getting online and buying a plane ticket now. Can you tell me how I can get to campus from the airport?”
“Mom?” Lucy’s heart jolted. “I just told you—”
“I heard you. I promise I did.” It really wasn’t Lucy’s imagination. Jillian sounded nothing like the scared woman who had answered the phone. It had always been so much easier for Jillian to beina crisis than to be anticipating one. “But something is wrong. I can hear it in your voice. I know you, sweetheart. You didn’t call me at this hour just to talk.”
Lucy was breathing fast enough now that the cold air stung her chest. She’d made a mistake. Of course Jillian knew something was wrong.
“Mom,” Lucy said. “I’ll call you tomorrow, when I have more time to talk. Please don’t buy a plane ticket until then. Please just wait for me.”
But she was lying. Of course she was. And her mother always knew when she was lying. “It looks like the earliest I can get there is tomorrow night,” she said. “But Iwillget there. Lucy, please don’t hang up. Please tell me what’s wrong.”
The pain in Lucy’s skull felt like a knifepoint now. It was almost over. She wouldn’t make Jillian listen to it ending. “I have to go,” she said. “Goodbye, Mom.”
The woods were so quiet when she hung up. Quiet enough, for a moment, that Lucy risked scrolling through her texts once again. She dismissed Jillian’s return call, though she felt the red voice’s longing to answer it.There would be more food, after all, if her mother came. And her sisters were so hungry.
She could feel herself crumbling by the time she opened her text threads again. But this time, she didn’t try Athena’s name. In one final burst of inspiration, she scrolled to Natalie.
Vanya has Mila, she typed.Tell Athena get out of studio. IF YOU SEE ME, RUN.
After she hit the send button, Lucy started to throw her phone out of reach, in the direction of the nearest tree. But when her arm was halfway through the air, she stopped. Lowered it. Very neatly tucked her phone back into her purse.
And then Lucy Easting was gone.
The thing that was not Lucy Easting walked out of the woods.
The campus was as empty as it had been before. Only the lamplight was there to greet her. It didn’t hurt her eyes this time. Everything was so much harder when one was fighting their own nature. Lucy had gotten so close to understanding that.
It was just past four a.m. now. In less than two hours, the first light would start to touch the sky. As she wound her way through the arteries of Rollins University, little signs of life tugged at her hearing. Low voices in the science building, babysitting their experiments. The slow, syrupy heartbeat of someone in the student center, fast asleep over his studying. His blood was sluggish in his sleep. It could have been enough to make Lucy hungry again. But that wouldn’t do. Her sisters hadn’t eaten yet tonight. Nor had her maker.
Lucy turned past the student center, onto the path that would take her downhill. And she followed the path to the radio station.
Athena would still be there. Natalie said she had to be moved out by morning, and she didn’t have the courage to leave in the dark. Even off the air, the studio was still the safest place in the world for her. It must have been hard for her to let Lucy into that place, knowing what would happen. She should have listened to her own instincts.
The thing that wasn’t Lucy Easting reached into her purse and withdrew her ID card. Then she swiped into the building and walked, languidly, down the now-familiar halls. She was in no rush. Two hours was an abundance of time. Though the quicker she finished, the quicker she could eat.
Mila would be upset. The thing that wasn’t Lucy Easting found, to her irritation, that this bothered her a little. But there was only so much she could do. When she brought him Athena Barnes, her maker would let Mila go free. The thing that wasn’t Lucy Easting couldn’t ask for any more kindness from him than that. Maybe Mila would come to understand that, in time.
She swung open the door to Athena’s suite.
And the room was silent.
