Replica (Replica #1)(40)

“Hot,” she managed to say.

“Come on,” he said. “With me. You need water. And shade.”

Almost directly across the street was a park that reminded her of the courtyard at Haven, down to the statue standing at its center. This one was of a woman, though, her hands held together in prayer, her head bowed. Tall trees cast the lawns in shade, and benches lined the intersecting pathways. 72 kept a hand on her elbow even though she insisted he didn’t need to.

She did feel better once she’d taken a drink of water from a water fountain and found a bench in the shade where she could rest for a bit. Somewhere in the branches birds twittered out messages to one another. It was pretty here, peaceful. The park ran up to an enormous redbrick building, portions of its facade encased in glossy sheets of climbing ivy. Lyra saw another cross stuck above the glass double doors and the letters beside it: Wallace High School. Her heart jumped. Wallace. The girl on the street had mentioned Wallace.

“What do you want to do now?” 72 was being extra nice, which made Lyra feel worse. She knew he thought they’d failed. She knew he knew how sick she was. Without answering him, she stood up. She’d just seen someone moving behind the glass doors, and she went forward as if drawn by the pull of something magnetic. “Lyra!” 72 shouted after her. But she didn’t stop. It didn’t take him long to catch up with her, but by then she was already standing in front of Wallace and a woman had emerged, carrying a stack of folders.

“Can I help you?” the woman said, and Lyra realized she’d been standing there staring.

“We’re looking for Emily Huang,” Lyra said quickly, before she could lose her nerve. Remembering what the girl had said, Lyra added, “We think—she may go to Wallace.” She wasn’t sure what that meant, either, and she held her breath, hoping the woman did.

The woman slid on a pair of glasses, which she was wearing on a chain. Blinking up at Lyra, she resembled a turtle, down to the looseness of the skin around her neck.

“Emily Huang,” the woman said, shaking her head. “No, no. She never went here.” Lyra’s heart dropped. Another no. Another dead end. But then the woman said, “But she came every career day to talk to the kids about the work she did. Terrible some of the stuff they said about her later. She was a good girl. I liked her very much.”

“So you know her?” Lyra said. She was dizzy with sudden joy. Nurse Em. She would help. She would protect them. “You know where we can find her?”

The woman gave her a look Lyra couldn’t quite read. “Knew her,” she said slowly. “She lived right over on Willis Street, just behind the school. Can’t miss it. A sweet yellow house, and all those flower beds. Woman who lives there now has let it go to seed.”

And just like that, the happiness was gone. Evaporated. “She’s gone?” Lyra said. “Do you know where she went?”

The woman shook her head again, and then Lyra did know how to name her expression: pity. “Not gone, honey,” she said. “Never left, some say. Hung herself right there in her living room, must be three, four years ago now. Emily Huang’s dead.”


Lyra didn’t know what made her want to see the place where Emily Huang had lived. When she asked for directions to Willis Street, 72 didn’t question her, and she was glad. She wouldn’t have known how to explain.

Behind the school they found quiet residential streets running like spokes away from the downtown, and houses at last, these concealed not behind walls but standing there pleasantly right on their lawns, with flowers waving from flower boxes and vivid toys scattered in the grass. It was pretty here, and she couldn’t imagine why Emily Huang would have been so unhappy, why she would have killed herself like poor Pepper had. Then again, she remembered how Nurse Em had sobbed and Dr. O’Donnell had held her by the shoulders. I know you, she’d said. You’re a good person. I know you were just in over your head. So maybe she was unhappy even then.

Nurse Em’s old house had once, the old woman had told them, been the yellow of sunshine and thus easy to spot. Now it was a faded color that reminded Lyra of mustard. The flower beds looked scraggly, and there were four bikes dumped on the front lawn and so many toys it looked as if these were coming up from the ground. Loud music came to them across the lawn.

She closed her eyes and arranged all her memories of Nurse Em in a row: Nurse Em bathing Lyra and a dozen other replicas when they were too young to do it themselves, plunging them into the bathwater and hauling them like slippery, wriggling puppies onto the cold tile floor afterward. Nurse Em standing with Dr. Saperstein in the courtyard, speaking in a low voice, and the way he said, “It’s nothing. They don’t understand,” after Nurse Em turned around and caught Lyra staring; the time in the janitor’s closet with Dr. O’Donnell.

“I’m sorry,” 72 said, and Lyra opened her eyes. Maybe he wasn’t angry at her anymore. His eyes were softened with color.

It was the first time anyone had ever apologized to her. “For what?”

“I know you were hoping she would help,” 72 said.

“Now we have no one,” Lyra said. She pressed a hand to her eyes. She didn’t want 72 to see how upset she was. “Nowhere to go, either.”

72 hesitated. He touched the back of her hand. “You have me,” he said very quietly. She looked up at him, surprised. Her skin tingled where he touched her.