Page 96 of Ringer

Lyra wondered whether anyone had told her about Calliope. She knew that Gemma would be sorry, even though Calliope was broken, even though Calliope had killed people. That was the kind of person Gemma was.

“That’s what friends do,” Lyra said. “They find each other.”

Gemma beamed. It was like her smile split her faceopen, and sunshine poured out of it. “Exactly.”

The look on Gemma’s face, the way she smiled, the understanding that Gemma would mourn Calliope even though Calliope had never mourned anyone—all of it warmed Lyra’s whole body and moved her forward, to Gemma’s bedside, compelled by an instinct that for years had remained buried. But now it broke free of its casing. She made her body into a seashell and gathered Gemma in the curve of her chest and spine. She didn’t think about doing it. Her body just knew it, remembered the impulse, the idea of warmth and closeness, as if all along the knowledge had been there, working through her blood.

And for the first time ever, Lyra and Gemma hugged.

“Thank you,” Lyra whispered into Gemma’s hair, which still smelled, faintly, like smoke. Words were funny things, she thought. The best ones carried dozens of other words nestled inside of them. “Thank you,” she repeated.

I love you,she thought.Good-bye.

Turn the page to continue reading Lyra’s story. Click here to read Chapter 28 of Gemma’s story.

TWENTY-NINE

THEY COULD HAVE BEEN ANYONE, going anywhere. There was a joy in that, in the absorption: they were caught up in the great big heartbeat of the world. They were infinitely large and infinitely small. They were a single vein of feeling, an infinitely narrow possibility that had somehow come to be.

They could have vanished, right there, from the bus stop, and who’s to say whether anyone would have noticed, what would have changed, and whether somewhere in the rippling universe a wave would turn or fall or change directions.

But they didn’t vanish.

They sat in the sun, sweating, holding hands, and avoiding the gum on the underside of the bench when they moved their legs. They breathed the smell of exhaust. They saw people pass, a wash of sneakers and colors andcell phones. They sat for hours without speaking, without moving, without impatience or desire. Their hands were so tightly intertwined that looking at them you could not immediately say whose was whose. The sun wheeled through the sky; it turned its infinite cartwheel and blinded them when they stared directly.

And Lyra, sitting there, knew at last that she had found her story. It was not, after all, a story of escape and fear and fences. It was not a story about power, and so, after all, she did not have to play the role of sacrifice.

The story,herstory, was about a girl and a boy on a bench, holding hands, watching bus after bus arrive and leave again. And because it was her story, that was all right: there was no hurry, no rush to get anywhere. The universe slowed, and both the past and future fell like a shadow flattened beneath the sun. The girl and boy sat, and watched, and time dropped a hand over them. It held them there, together, safe, and in love.

And in her story, they stayed that way.