Replica (Replica #1)(38)

“But who is the Little Prince?” 72 asked.

“The Little Prince has golden hair, a scarf, and a lovable laugh,” Lyra said, reciting from memory.

“What’s lovable?” 72 asked.

Lyra shifted. “It means . . .” She didn’t know. “I guess it means someone loves you.”

72 didn’t say anything. She was going to continue her story, but she felt a bad pressure in her chest, as if someone was feeding a tube into her lungs.

“How do you get to be loved?” 72 asked. His voice was quiet, slurred by sleep.

“I don’t know,” Lyra answered honestly. She was glad when he fell asleep, or at least pretended to. She didn’t feel like telling a story much after that.


Turn the page to continue reading Lyra’s story. Click here to read Chapter 11 of Gemma’s story.





TWELVE


IN THE MORNING THEY WERE woken by a shout. Lyra thought they must have been spotted. Instead she saw a man in thick gloves loading trash from the Dumpsters into an enormous truck. Momentarily hypnotized, she watched the trash flattened by machinery that looked like metal teeth. The smell was sweet and vaguely sickening. Still, she was hungry.

Then she remembered the money they’d stolen from Gemma’s wallet. 72 was awake now too, and the man in the gloves stared at them as they stood and rolled up the blanket, stuffing it in their backpack, but said nothing. Lyra was beginning to understand that humans outside Haven didn’t seem to care about them. Maybe their world was simply too big. They couldn’t pay attention to all of it.

72 was hungry too, so they went to the diner next to the gas station and took turns in the bathroom washing their faces and hands. Lyra even wet her scalp and brushed her teeth. There was a stack of small paper cups and electric-blue mouthwash in a dispenser above the sink. When she returned to the table, 72 was fumbling with Jake’s stolen phone.

“It won’t stop ringing,” he said. And in fact the phone lit up in his hands, sending out a tinny musical sound.

“Let me try,” she said. She’d seen cell phones before but had only ever handled one once, when Nurse Em, years ago, had shown Lyra pictures of her dog at home on the mainland. A Pomeranian. White and fluffy but otherwise ratlike, Lyra had thought, but hadn’t said so. Maybe the dog was still alive. She didn’t know how long dogs normally lived, and whether they outlasted replicas.

She managed to get the phone to stop ringing and returned it to 72, who put it in his pocket. She wondered why he liked carrying it around if they had no one to call. Maybe it was because of what he’d said and why he’d escaped: just to see what it was like. Just for a little.

The menu was so full of writing that Lyra’s head hurt looking at it. There was a whole section named Eggs. How many different ways could eggs be eaten? At Haven they were always scrambled, crispy and brown on the bottom.

“It’s a waste,” 72 said. He seemed angry about the menu. “All this food.” But she thought he was just angry about not being able to read. He made no mention of the story she’d started to tell him last night, of the Little Prince, and Lyra was glad. His question was still bothering her, as was the feeling she’d had afterward, a strange emptiness, as if she was already dead.

A woman came to ask them what they wanted to eat. Lyra had never been asked that question before, and in that moment she deeply missed the Haven mess hall and the food lit orange beneath heating lamps and the way it was deposited onto their plates by sour-faced women wearing hairnets. 72 ordered coffee and eggs. So she ordered the same thing. The eggs were burned on the bottom and tasted like they did at Haven, which made her feel better.

They paid with two of Gemma’s bills and got a bewildering assortment of change back. Lyra couldn’t help but think of the younger replicas and how they would have loved to play with all those coins, skipping them or rolling them across the floor, seeing who could get the most heads in a row. She wondered where all the other replicas were, and imagined them in a new Haven, this one perhaps on a mountain and surrounded by the clean smell of pine, before remembering what they were. Carriers.

Disposable.

Lyra asked the waitress about Palm Grove, and she directed them up the road to the bus depot. “Can’t miss it,” she said. “Just take the twelve up toward Tallahassee. Soon as you see the water park, that’s Palm Grove. You kids heading to the water park?” Lyra shook her head. The woman popped her gum. “That’s too bad. They got one slide three stories tall. Cobra, it’s called. And today’s gonna be a bruiser. Where you kids from?”

But Lyra only shook her head again, and they stepped out into the heat.


By the time they reached the bus depot, Lyra’s shoes felt as if they were rubbing all the skin off her feet. She wasn’t used to wearing shoes, but the asphalt was too hot for bare feet and the shoulder was glittering with broken glass. While they waited for the bus, 72 lifted his shirt to wipe his face with it, and she saw a long trail of sweat tracking down the smoothness of his stomach and disappearing beneath the waistband of his pants. It did not disgust her.

When the number 12 came, 72 was obviously proud, at least, to be able to read the number—he nearly shouted it. But once they boarded, they learned they’d have to have a ticket. They had to get off the bus again and return inside, where the man behind the ticket desk shouted at them for holding up the line, for struggling with their dollars and giving over the wrong bills, and Lyra got flustered and spilled coins all over the floor. She was too embarrassed to pick the money up—everyone was staring at her, everyone knew—and instead, once they’d gotten their tickets, she and 72 hurried back outside despite people calling after them. But the bus had gone and they had to wait for a new one. Mercifully, the bus that arrived was mostly empty, so Lyra and 72 could get a seat in the back, far from the other passengers.