Replica (Replica #1)(42)

Lyra knew she wasn’t expected to answer. Sheri went on. “Too sad. She was still young, too. Thirty-four, thirty-five. I think there must have been a man involved. Maybe more than one. Well, I suppose there were signs. You know, after they found her body I did a little bit of Googling. Found out some of the warning signs. Of course, I didn’t see them before. But she did give away some of her things the week before she died, and that’s right up there to look for. Giving away prized possessions. Of course at the time I thought she was just being nice.”

“What do you mean, there was a man involved?” 72 asked, and Lyra was surprised, as ever, to hear him speak. She realized he hardly spoke unless they were alone. Somehow, this made her feel special. Her glass was empty but still cold, and she pressed it to her neck.

“Well, isn’t there always?” She raised her eyebrows. “Besides, it would’ve been hard not to notice those men in and out. Just once or twice, of course, as far as I could tell. Suited-up types. Like in finance or something. But mean-looking.” Lyra thought of the Suits who’d come to inspect Haven sometimes and felt a curious prickling down the back of her spine. Those men. Like the nurses had always called them. Sheri shook her head. “But there’s no accounting for taste, I always say.”

Lyra grasped for some idea of what to ask next, of what any of this meant or whether it mattered. “You said she was giving away her things,” she said, suddenly struck by what this might mean. “She gave you something, didn’t she?” Lyra asked. Maybe, she thought, Nurse Em had left Sheri something important—maybe she’d left her something that related to Haven and to the work they were doing there. To the prions.

To a cure.

Sheri had taken a seat. Now she placed both palms on the table to stand up. “Never been able to find a place for them. But can’t bring myself to throw ’em out, either. Oh, she told me I could. Told me I could take the damn things apart and sell the frames, if I wanted. But of course I never would.” She moved off into another room. 72 gave Lyra a questioning look and she shrugged. She didn’t know what she was waiting for or looking for anymore. Only that out there, in the real world, there were no answers—nothing but vastness and things she’d never seen in real life and experiences she couldn’t understand and strangers who didn’t know what she was and would hate her if they did. Nothing but the disease. Nothing but being nothing and then dying nothing.

At Haven she’d never wanted anything, not in any way that counted. She’d been hungry, tired, bored, and sick. She’d wanted more food, cold water, more sleep, for the pain to end, to go outside. But she’d never had a want that moved her, where the goal felt not like an end but a beginning. She’d never had a purpose. But now she did. She wanted to understand.

And this single fact made her feel more human, more worthy, than she ever had before.

She was shocked to feel 72’s hand in hers. She looked up at him and felt the same strange thing happen to her body, as if she was transformed to air. He pulled away when Sheri returned to the room, carrying three framed photographs. She plunked them down on the table.

“Well, you see, they’re not exactly my taste,” Sheri said. The pictures were all illustrations. Lyra guessed they came from the same anatomy textbook. She’d seen many similar pictures in the medical textbooks at Haven. “I like my kittens and my watercolors and oils here and there. Never been much for drawing.”

Lyra thought the drawings were beautiful—she loved the sinewy look of the muscles, the precision of the bones, and even the faded lettering too small to make out, labeling different physical features. But even so, she was horribly disappointed. There was nothing here, no secret message or miracle cure.

Somewhere in the house, a phone rang. Sheri stood up again. “It never ends, does it?” she said. “Give me just a minute.” As soon as she left, another cat, this one gray, leapt onto the table, and Lyra instinctively grabbed one of the framed illustrations to keep the cat from stepping on it.

“Why have cats in a house?” 72 whispered to her. But she couldn’t answer, even though she’d been wondering the same thing. She’d felt an irregularity in the canvas backing, and she flipped the frame over, her chest suddenly cavernous with hope.

The canvas had at one time been stapled to the wooden frame. On two sides of the rectangular canvas, the staples were in place. But on two sides they were missing, and instead had been replaced with gobs of glue at inch-long intervals, some of which had seeped out and hardened onto the wood. Lyra and the other replicas had spent too long at Haven searching for places to hide their limited belongings not to suspect that the picture Nurse Em had given Sheri was in fact concealing something else behind it.

Nurse Em had told Sheri she could take the damn things apart. What if she had meant that Sheri should take the damn things apart?

The phone had stopped ringing, and Sheri’s voice, muffled by the walls, was now nothing more than tones. She must have closed a door. Before she could lose her nerve, Lyra pried a corner of the canvas from the frame and ripped.

“What are you doing?” 72 reached out and seized Lyra’s wrist as if to stop her.

“Nurse Em gave these pictures away before she died,” Lyra whispered. “Maybe she was hiding something.” Fearing both that she would find something and that she wouldn’t, she slipped a hand behind the canvas. Almost immediately, her fingers landed on several loose items, glossy-slick. Photographs.