Lost in the Moment and Found (Wayward Children #8)(36)

“But—”

“No buts. Unless you want to open the doors yourself. You told me you were fifteen when you came here. How long ago was that? Twenty years?” When Vineta cut her eyes away, Antsy scowled. “Less than twenty years to spend an entire lifetime, and you’d have let me do the same before you told me what it cost. You people don’t deserve this place.”

“Perhaps not, child, but we have it all the same.” Vineta looked at her imperiously. “Go to your room.”

Antsy barked a bitter laugh. “I’m not a little girl anymore, because of you. You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

“Fine, then, stay with us and start the morning’s shopping,” said Vineta. “You know you can’t resist forever. The Doors will call you.”

“Promise me,” snapped Antsy. “Promise me you’ll tell them if I can’t. Promise!”

“Fine,” said Vineta. “I promise.”

Antsy shifted her attention to Hudson. “You should be ashamed,” she told him. “Your people should always have kept the promise Eider made. Now you make it too.”

“But the work…” he said, weakly.

Antsy stomped her foot.

“I promise!” he squawked.

“Good.” Antsy, who was still a child in all the ways that counted, narrowed her eyes before she whirled on her heel and stormed up the stairs, leaving the pair behind her. Hudson looked at Vineta, ruffling his feathers.

“Surely she won’t just disappear,” he said. “The shop’s aware, but not that delicate. Surely she’ll be down for lunch.”

“Surely?” asked Vineta. “When she’s not even sure she wants to be here?” She leaned on her cane, glaring at the space where Antsy had been. Truly, youth was wasted on the young. “If the shop sees fit to be rid of her, it’s doing us a favor. Promises are only binding if we agree to keep them.”

Hudson cocked his head, looking uncomfortable, but said nothing.

When Antsy reached the top of the stairs, she stormed for the room that had always belonged to her, the room where she had been safe for so many nights. The room that had never hurt her.

The door was closed. She barely noticed, grabbing the knob and shoving inward, and she never saw the words written on the frame above her head. The door opened and she saw her room, and she stepped through and was on the sidewalk outside a closed thrift store, the sound of honking horns in the distance, the smell of car exhaust in the air. The sun was high in the afternoon sky, and everything was normal.

Antsy froze for a terrible moment before she whirled and tried to yank the door that had never been a Door before open again. It was locked. Slowly, she sank to the ground, pulling her knees against her chest, and sobbed.





12

NOT EVERYTHING CAN BE FOUND




ANTSY HUDDLED AND CRIED for so long that the cold of the concrete seeped through her thin cotton trousers. When she started to shiver, she finally stopped sobbing and pushed herself to her feet. That Door would have cost her, what, two days at most if the math was always the same. Two days was nothing compared to what she’d already lost. Two days didn’t matter in the slightest. She was still the same person she’d been when she woke up that morning, and she could carry on with this.

She could. She could. She was going to have to.

She stood, and the feeling of static that sometimes meant she needed to find something specific in the shop filled her head. Turning a slow circle, she found the direction it was coming from and began to walk, taking inventory as she went.

She had nothing with her but the clothes she had been wearing and the note from Elodina, shoved down in her pocket and utterly without purpose here. At least she was wearing shoes. One instance where a careless footfall had driven a nail halfway through her heel had broken her of the habit of going barefoot. Face going blank, Antsy followed the sound of static, not fully aware that she was retracing her own footsteps from two years previous.

She wandered to the end of the block and turned, letting her feet choose the way. Suddenly, the static stopped, and so did she, in front of a house she had barely lived in long enough to recognize it. She didn’t recognize the car in the driveway, either, a blue sedan that looked as incomprehensible as anything after so long without cars.

The front door opened. A woman emerged.

She was shorter than Antsy by several inches, which was horrifying to realize, with straight brown hair that brushed her shoulders. She started for her car, and then froze, one hand coming up to cover her mouth as she stared at Antsy.

Hope burst in Antsy’s throat. Maybe her mother knew her. Maybe there was a similar static in her mother’s head, and they were connected, because they were always meant to be together. Maybe. Cautiously, she raised one hand in a small wave, and the woman came toward her, and the hope grew even bigger.

“I’m sorry to stare,” said her mother, polite as if she’d been speaking to any stranger. “It’s just that your hair … my daughter had that kind of hair. Same color, same curl, everything.”

“Oh,” said Antsy, hope withering in an instant. She had dreamt of this day, of finding her mother again, without Tyler, a world where it was somehow just the two of them again. She hadn’t had a baby sister long enough to be attached to the idea of her, and even though she knew it was selfish, those dreams had never included Abigail. Just Antsy and her mother, alone and happy and free.