“I’m Lyra,” Lyra said. “And this is seventy-two.” She was distracted. Outside the car, Jake was speaking on a cell phone. Lyra felt a twinge of nervousness. Who was he calling? Every so often, he glanced back into the car as if to make sure that Lyra and 72 were still there. What if 72 was right, and Jake and Gemma couldn’t be trusted?
“Seventy-two?” Gemma repeated. “That isn’t a name.”
“It’s my number,” 72 said shortly.
“I’m twenty-four,” Lyra said, by way of explanation. “But one of the doctors named me.” 72 looked faintly annoyed, but Lyra knew he was probably just jealous, because he didn’t yet have a name.
“Wow,” Jake said. “And I thought being named after my father was bad. Sorry,” he added quickly. “Dumb joke. Just . . . stay here, okay? We’ll be back in ten minutes.”
For a while, 72 and Lyra sat in silence. Lyra figured out how to roll down the window but found no relief from the heat outside. It was what Nurse Don’t-Even-Think-About-It had called molasses-hot. She watched Jake and Gemma as they narrowed into brushstrokes and then disappeared into W-A-L-M-A-R-T. Gemma’s reference to a grandmother bothered her—but it excited her, too, because of what it meant.
Finally she said, “I don’t think the girl knows she’s a replica.”
72 had been staring out the window—fists lodged in his armpits, hunched over as though he were cold, which was impossible. He turned to her. “What?”
“The girl’s a replica. But I don’t think she knows it.” The idea was taking shape now, and with it the simple suggestion of possibility, of a life that might exist on the other side of Haven. At the same time, she was afraid to voice the possibility out loud, aware that it would sound silly and afraid of what 72 would say. “Which means . . . well, maybe she comes from a place where being a replica doesn’t make a difference. Where they have families and drive cars and things like that.”
Lyra could see herself reflected in 72’s eyes. They were the color of the maple syrup served in the Stew Pot on special occasions, like Christmas and the anniversary of the first God’s death. “Is that what you want?” he said at last. “You want a family?”
“I don’t know.” Lyra turned away from him, embarrassed by the intensity of his stare, which felt like being back in the Box, like being evaluated, having her eyes and knees tested for reflexes. Her idea of mother looked much like the nurses and the Haven staff. Mother was someone to feed and clothe you and make sure you took your medicines. But now, unbidden, an image of Dr. O’Donnell came to her. She imagined herself tucked up in a big white bed while Dr. O’Donnell read out loud. She remembered the way that Dr. O’Donnell’s hands had smelled, and the feel of fingertips skimming the crown of her head. Good night, Lyra. And there were her dreams, too, impressions of a birther who held and rocked her, and a cup with lions around its rim. When she was younger she had searched the mess hall for such a cup before being forced to admit that all the glasses at Haven were plain, made of clear plastic. She knew her dreams must be just that—dreams, a kind of wishful thinking.
But she was too ashamed to confess what she was thinking: that she could find Dr. O’Donnell. That Dr. O’Donnell could be her mother. “What do you want?” Lyra asked instead, turning to 72. “You ran away, even if you didn’t get far.”
“I couldn’t,” 72 said. “I couldn’t figure out a way past the guards.”
“You must have been hoping that something like this would happen,” Lyra said, and a suspicion flickered: Could 72 have somehow been responsible for the disaster at Haven? But no. That didn’t make any sense. They were standing together when the explosion happened. They were touching.
72 frowned as if he knew what she was thinking. “I didn’t hope for anything,” he said. “I was just waiting for my chance.”
“But you must have had a plan,” she insisted. “You must have had an idea of where you would go on the other side.”
“I didn’t have a plan.” He leaned back, closing his eyes. As soon as he did, he once again looked much younger. Or not younger, exactly. Stripped down, somehow, naked. Lyra remembered that once she and Ursa Major and Cassiopeia had spied on the males’ dormitory from the courtyard. Through a partially open blind they’d seen the blurry and bony silhouette of one of the males shirtless and they’d stumbled backward, shocked and gasping, when he turned in their direction. Looking at 72 gave Lyra the same feeling of peering through those blinds, and left her excited and also terrified.
She was almost relieved when he opened his eyes again.
“You asked me what I want. I’ll tell you what I don’t want. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life being told what to do, and what to eat, and when to sleep, and when to use the bathroom. I’m tired of being a lab rat.”
“What do you mean, a lab rat?” It was so hot, Lyra was having trouble thinking. Once or twice she’d been sent into B-Wing for some reason or another and seen the milk-white rats in their cages, had seen when they threaded their paws through the bars the elongated pinkness of their strangely human fingers. And some of them were suffering in some stage of an experiment, bloated with pain or covered in dozens of tumorous growths, so heavy they couldn’t lift their heads.
“I watched,” he said simply. “I paid attention.” He turned his face to the window. “When I was little, I didn’t know the difference. I thought I might be an animal. I thought I must be.”