The Sky is Everywhere

Chapter Fourteen

I flip faster through the papers, looking for the names of my friends, while my heart beats and beats and beats against my ribs.

Priya, Sonny, and Taffy are all marked as Prey.

"What the hell is this?" I mutter aloud.

I don't understand any of it, but there's a heavy, oily feeling in my stomach, creeping up my throat and settling on my tongue.

Dropping the file onto the desk, I turn my attention to the cabinets that stand on either side of me. None of them are labelled either, so I pick one at random.

Each file here is marked with a name, and like the lists on the desk, they are marked alphabetically, but I don't recognise any of them. I grab a couple from the middle and riffle through them. A handful of photos are clipped inside each of them, and when I look closer, I realise that I know these faces. I don't recognise the names, but I have seen these kids at breakfast every day for years. They're Seconds, but they're younger than me, so they live on a lower floor.

But the faces that I know are older than the ones in these photos. It's like someone has been documenting their lives here in photo form, and my heart gives a sudden, painful wrench.

For so long I have wondered what I looked like before the attack scarred my face, even though I was only five at the time, and wouldn't necessarily look much like I do now. But I always thought that my old face was something unknowable, something I could only imagine or dream about.

But what if it isn't?

I have to know.

My hands shake as I rummage through the drawers until I finally locate the file with my name on it. My skin is flashing hot and cold, and my head feels like it's spinning.

Since meeting Roan, I have come to accept myself in a way that I never thought I could, but . . . I can't shake this strange need to know what I looked like before. I can't ignore this chance that I never thought I would have.

I open the file.

The first photo is of me after the attack, and my face is a mess of stitches. Nausea curdles my stomach. I'm no stranger to my scars, but I don't remember much after the attack and I suddenly realise that I barely remember what my face looked like after it had been stitched up. Maybe I'd been too young when it happened, or maybe I've just blotted it out over the years, I don't know.

But staring down at that photo makes me swallow bile. My face looks like it is literally being held together by surgical stitching, and if someone were to cut those stitches, my skin and flesh would fall away, leaving nothing but gleaming white skull underneath.

Tears sting my eyes.

Unable to stomach it anymore, I turn to the next photo.

My heart gives a single, solid thump that I can feel in every bone.

It's everything I hoped for and everything I never thought I would see.

It's me before the attack.

A younger me stares out from the photo, my cheeks still round with baby-fat, my hair in little pigtails. It's blonder there than it is now, and wispy strands fly around my face.

My face.

I can't stop staring at it.

There are no scars on my skin, no marks splitting my face in two, and in that moment I feel like I am split in two – like I am the Caia in the picture, and the Caia of now.