The Host(234)

CHAPTER 59

Remembered

The beginning would feel like the end. I’d been warned.

But this time the end was a greater surprise than it had ever been. Greater than any end I’d remembered in nine lives. Greater than jumping down an elevator shaft. I had expected no more memories, no more thoughts. What end was this?

The sun is setting—the colors are all rosy, and they make me think of my friend… what would her name be here? Something about… ruffles? Ruffles and more ruffles. She was a beautiful Flower. The flowers here are so lifeless and boring. They smell wonderful, though. Smells are the best part of this place.

Footsteps behind me. Has Cloud Spinner followed me again? I don’t need a jacket. It’s warm here—finally!—and I want to feel the air on my skin. I won’t look at her. Maybe she’ll think I can’t hear and she’ll go home. She is so careful with me, but I’m almost grown now. She can’t mother me forever.

“Excuse me?” someone says, and I don’t know the voice.

I turn to look at her, and I don’t know the face, either. She’s pretty.

The face in the memory jerked me back to myself. That was my face! But I didn’t remember this.…

“Hi,” I say.

“Hello. My name is Melanie.” She smiles at me. “I’m new in town and… I think I’m lost.”

“Oh! Where are you trying to go? I’ll take you. Our car is just back —”

“No, it’s not far. I was going for a walk, but now I can’t find my way back to Becker Street.”

She’s a new neighbor—how nice. I love new friends.

“You’re very close,” I tell her. “It’s just around the second corner up that way, but you can cut right through this little alley here. It takes you straight there.”

“Could you show me? I’m sorry, what’s your name?”

“Of course! Come with me. I’m Petals Open to the Moon, but my family mostly calls me Pet. Where are you from, Melanie?”

She laughs. “Do you mean San Diego or the Singing World, Pet?”

“Either one.” I laugh, too. I like her smile. “There are two Bats on this street. They live in that yellow house with the pine trees.”

“I’ll have to say hello,” she murmurs, but her voice has changed, tensed. She’s looking into the dusky alley as though she’s expecting to see something.

And there is something there. Two people, a man and a boy. The boy drags his hand through his long black hair like he’s nervous. Maybe he is worried because he’s lost, too. His pretty eyes are wide and excited. The man is very still.

Jamie. Jared. My heart thumped, but the feeling was peculiar, wrong. Too small and… fluttery.

“These are my friends, Pet,” Melanie tells me.

“Oh! Oh, hello.” I stretch my hand out to the man—he’s the closest.

He reaches for my hand, and his grip is so strong.

He yanks me forward, right up to his body. I don’t understand. This feels wrong. I don’t like it.

My heart beats faster, and I’m afraid. I’ve never been scared like this before. I don’t understand.

His hand swings toward my face, and I gasp. I suck in the mist that comes from his hand. A silver cloud that tastes like raspberries.

“Wha —” I want to ask, but I can’t see them anymore. I can’t see anything.…

There was no more.

“Wanda? Can you hear me, Wanda?” a familiar voice asked.

That wasn’t the right name… was it? My ears didn’t react to it, but something did. Wasn’t I Petals Open to the Moon? Pet? Was that it? That didn’t feel right, either. My heart beat faster, an echo of the fear in my memory. A vision of a woman with white-and-red-streaked hair and kind green eyes filled my head. Where was my mother? But… she wasn’t my mother, was she?

A sound, a low voice that echoed around me. “Wanda. Come back. We aren’t letting you go.”

The voice was familiar, and it was also not. It sounded like… me?

Where was Petals Open to the Moon? I couldn’t find her. Just a thousand empty memories. A house full of pictures but no inhabitants.

“Use the Awake,” a voice said. I didn’t recognize this one.

Something brushed my face, light as the touch of fog. I knew that scent. It was the smell of grapefruit.

I took a deeper breath, and my mind suddenly cleared.

I could feel that I was lying down… but this felt wrong, too. There wasn’t… enough of me. I felt shrunken.

My hands were warmer than the rest of me, and that was because they were being held. Held in big hands, hands that swallowed them right up.