Виктория Шваб: The Archived

I feel Emma’s hand twist nervously in mine.

“It’s okay,” I say quietly as we reach another hall of unmarked doors. “We’ll find it.” I hope. I haven’t exactly had a wealth of time to learn the layout of this place, but just as I’m starting to fidget too, we turn onto another corridor, and there it is.

Emma pulls free and runs up to the door, stretching her small fingers over the chalk circle. They come away white as I get the key in the lock and turn, and the Returns door opens, showering us both in brilliant light. Emma gasps.

For a moment, there is nothing but light. Like I promised.

“See?” I say, pressing my hand against her back and guiding her forward, over the threshold and into Returns.

Emma is just turning back to see why I haven’t followed her when I close my eyes and pull the door firmly shut between us. There’s no crying, no pounding on the door; only a deathly quiet from the other side. I stand there for several moments with my key in the lock, something like guilt fluttering behind my ribs. It fades as fast. I remind myself that Returning is merciful. Returning puts the Histories back to sleep, ends the nightmare of their ghostly waking. Still, I hate the fear that laces the younger eyes when I lock them in.

I sometimes wonder what happens in Returns, how the Histories go back to the lifeless bodies on the Archive shelves. Once, with this boy, I stayed to see, waited in the doorway of the infinite white (I knew better than to step inside). But nothing happened, not until I left. I know because I finally closed the door, only for a second, a beat, however long it takes to lock and then unlock, and when I opened it again, the boy was gone.

I once asked the Librarians how the Histories got out. Patrick said something about doors opening and closing. Lisa said the Archive was a vast machine, and all machines had glitches, gaps. Roland said he had no idea.

I suppose it doesn’t matter how they get out. All that matters is they do. And when they do, they must be found. They must go back. Case open, case closed.

I push off the door and dig the slip of Archive paper from my pocket, checking to make sure Emma’s name is gone. It is. All that’s left of her is a hand-shaped smudge in the white chalk.

I redraw the circle and turn toward home.

THREE

“G ET WHAT YOU WANTEDfrom the car?” asks Dad as I walk in.

He spares me the need to lie by flashing the car keys, which I neglected to take. Never mind that, judging by the low light through the window and the fact that every inch of the room behind him is covered with boxes, I was gone way too long. I quietly curse the Narrows and the Archive. I’ve tried wearing a watch, but it’s useless. Doesn’t matter how it’s made—the moment I leave the Outer, it stops working.

So now I get to pick: truth or lie.

The first trick to lying is to tell the truth as often as possible. If you start lying about everything, big and small, it becomes impossible to keep things straight, and you’ll get caught. Once suspicion is planted it becomes exponentially harder to sell the next lie.

I don’t have a clean record with my parents when it comes to lying, from sneaking out to the occasional inexplicable bruise—some Histories don’t want to be Returned—so I have to tread carefully, and since Dad paved the way for truth, I roll with it. Besides, sometimes a parent appreciates a little honesty, confidentiality. It makes them feel like the favorite.

“This whole thing,” I say, slumping against the doorway, “it’s a lot of change. I just needed some space.”

“Plenty of that here.”

“I know,” I say. “Big building.”

“Did you see all seven floors?”

“Only got to five.” The lie is effortless, delivered with an ease that would make Da proud.

I can hear Mom several rooms away, the sounds of unpacking overlapped with radio music. Mom hates quiet, fills every space with as much noise and movement as possible.

“See anything good?” asks Dad.

“Dust.” I shrug. “Maybe a ghost or two.”

He offers a conspiratorial smile and steps aside to let me pass.

My chest tightens at the sight of the boxes exploding across every spare inch of the room. About half of them just say STUFF. If Mom was feeling ambitious, she scribbled a small list of items beneath the word, but seeing as her handwriting is virtually illegible, we won’t know what’s in each box until we actually open it. Like Christmas. Except we already own everything.

Dad’s about to hand me a pair of scissors when the phone rings. I didn’t know we had a phone yet. Dad and I scramble to find it among the packing materials, when Mom shouts, “Kitchen counter by the fridge,” and sure enough, there it is.

“Hello?” I answer, breathless.

“You disappoint me,” says a girl.

“Huh?” Everything is too strange too fast, and I can’t place the voice.

“You’ve been in your new residence for hours, and you’ve already forgotten me.”

Lyndsey. I loosen.

“How do you even know this number?” I ask. “ I don’t know this number.”

“I’m magical,” she says. “And if you’d just get a cell…”

“I have a cell.”

“When’s the last time you charged it?”

I try to think.

“Mackenzie Bishop, if you have to think about it, it’s been too long.”

I want to deliver a comeback, but I can’t. I’ve never needed to charge the phone. Lyndsey is—was—my next door neighbor for ten years. Was—is—my best friend.

“Yeah, yeah,” I say, wading through the boxes and down a short hall. Lyndsey tells me to hold and starts talking to someone else, covering the phone with her hand so all I hear are vowels.

At the end of the hall there’s a door with a Post-it note stuck to it. There’s a letter on it that vaguely resembles an M , so I’m going to assume this is my room. I nudge the door open with my foot and head inside to find more boxes, an unassembled bed, and a mattress.

Lyndsey laughs at something someone says, and even sixty miles away, through a phone and her muffled hand, the sound is threaded with light. Lyndsey Newman is made of light. You see it in her blond curls, her sun-kissed skin, and the band of freckles across her cheeks. You feel it when you’re near her. She possesses this unconditional loyalty and the kind of cheer you start to suspect no longer exists in the world until you talk to her. And she never asks the wrong questions, the ones I can’t answer. Never makes me lie.

“You there?” she asks.

“Yeah, I’m here,” I say, nudging a box out of the way so I can reach the bed. The frame leans against the wall, the mattress and box spring stacked on the floor.

“Has your mom gotten bored yet?” Lyndsey asks.

“Sadly, not yet,” I say, collapsing onto the bare mattress.

Ben was madly in love with Lyndsey, or as in love as a little boy can get. And she adored him. She’s the kind of only child who dreams of siblings, so we just agreed to share. When Ben died, Lyndsey only got brighter, fiercer. An almost defiant kind of optimism. But when my parents told me we were moving, all I could think was, What about Lynds? How can she lose us both? The day I told her about the move, I saw her strength finally waver. Something slipped inside her, and she faltered. But moments later, she was back. A nine-out-of-ten smile—but still, wider than what anyone in my house had been able to muster.

“You should convince her to open up an ice cream parlor in some awesome beachside town.…” I slide my ring to the edge of my finger, then roll it back over my knuckle as Lynds adds, “Oh, or in, like, Russia. Get out, see the world at least.”