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She wonders, later, if the island will remembers her, and, if so, how.
There are sticking points on the island, spots where time pauses and backs up, doubling back on itself, repeating scraps of someone's (some thing's) memory. There are the ghosts, of course, restless and hungry spirits, as well as springs and trees, places that feel a little cooler than the rest, quieter even in the midst of an afternoon downpour. Time eddies and swirls, rushes and sweeps, hops and holds.
This place is alive, and dying, already dead, and being born.
*
Walt's waiting for her in #23. The alarms stop when the door latches shut. In the sudden silence, the room is even closer, darker and warmer, than usual, barely larger than a closet.
She has dreamed this dream -- if that's what this is -- now far longer than Walt's captivity ever lasted. Such, she thinks, is the power of guilt. He won't ever forget what they did to him. The least she can do is remember it, too.
*
The fall of her senior year in high school, Juliet had more college admissions interviews and scholarship tests than she could count. They'd been living near Nashville for a while now, almost two years; Rachel was in junior college and their mom delegated her to take Juliet to all the appointments.
"You've got this one," Rachel told her at the door to the office suite. She hugged Juliet, hard, then smoothed her hair back behind her ears. "Just be friendly and tell her about your awesome self."
Juliet nodded. When Rachel said things, they always sounded so straightforward, so doable. "I've got this."
"You've got this." Rachel clasped Juliet's neck and pulled her in close. "Don't let them see you're scared, and you win. I'll be in the car, okay?"
The office suite was drab; no secretary sat at the front desk, perhaps because it was a Saturday morning. Instead, there was a sign-in sheet on a clipboard and a handwritten sign pointing applicants down the hall.
Juliet knocked softly at the only open door.
Dr. Franklin waved her to sit down. Without looking up, she asked, "Do you remember me?"
Juliet smiled tensely. This must be some kind of trick question. "Should I?"
She thought that she would remember someone as imposing as Dr. Franklin. Even sitting down, the diminutive woman seemed to occupy more space than other people, as if air and gravity bent slightly when they encountered her.
Her pale hair, blonde-going-gray, reminded Juliet of driftwood, bleached by years in the sun, but where driftwood was all arrested motion, Dr. Franklin was perfectly still.
She was immovable, implacable.
Before her, Juliet felt all the more nervous. She was scrawny and awkward, too tall, liable to trip over her own feet or get blinded by her hair in her eyes.
"Yes. We met when you were, hmm --" Dr. Franklin checked the open file on her desk. "Five? Yes."
Try as she might, Juliet didn't remember anything like that, not at all.
"You performed rather poorly then, too."
"Oh," Juliet said. Now she did recall, barely, something about leaving morning kindergarten for tests with a mean old lady who made her guess what was on cards and imagine where different people were and what they were doing. "I'm sorry."
"For what?"
Juliet opened and closed her mouth. Sorry for -- everything. Her familiar sense of embarrassment, of not being quite right, of trying too hard but messing up anyway, crept over her, displacing her temporary bravado and killing the confidence she'd managed to summon up.
Dr. Franklin met Juliet's eyes and held her gaze. "Well, then, let's get started."
"What is your definition of a witch?" Dr. Franklin asked her.
Juliet swallowed hard. This wasn't, at all, the sort of question she had prepared for. She could talk about calculus, and being the only girl in her AP Chemistry class, and doing volunteer work with Ducks Unlimited in the wetlands last summer.
"Well?" Dr. Franklin's tone was sharp; Juliet, attuned to the slightest impatience, snapped to attention.
"A witch is someone who thought she could do magic." She worked hard to make it sound declarative, not at all like the question it really was. "I believe? And got burned at the stake."
Dr. Franklin shook her head. "Juvenile," she muttered, and closed the file folder.
"I'm sorry?" Juliet leaned forward. "I'm not sure what you want me --"
She closed her eyes for a long time, then opened them and regarded Juliet coolly. Juliet was not used to feeling quite so small, so insignificant. She fought, and lost, the urge to shift in her chair.
"This is an interview for WINS?" Juliet added. Suddenly, it seemed all too possible that she was in the wrong place, the wrong time, that despite her file there on the desk and Dr. Franklin's acquaintance with her, this was all a terrible mistake. "Women in the Natural Sciences?"
"The Centre for Independent Research and Critical Evaluation," Dr. Franklin replied. "We're a sister organization."
Disappointed, as if her one chance of escape had been snatched away, Juliet could only nod. She didn't know what she was agreeing to, but she felt that she'd made a deal she couldn't back out of.
"Tell me, what are the principal threats to the life cycle of the Everglades' crane population?"
That was exactly the sort of question for which Juliet had prepared, but she was still confused. She struggled to pull her thoughts together. She stammered out a poor account, so bad that, later, she would want to curl up and die at how bad it was.
"And what are some of the leading biochemical contributions to ecological degradation?"
She felt slightly better about her answer to that question, and the next one. Her confidence returning, Juliet sat up a little straighter and made sure to meet Dr. Franklin's eye.
"What would you consider an efficacious remedy for ghost infection?"
Confusion sliced right back through her, taking hold, making her shiver and blink fast. She tried to focus on the brooch on Dr. Franklin's lapel. At first, the silver scrollwork had resembled a coiled snake, but as Juliet looked at it now, it looked more like a cresting wave.
The longer she looked at it, the more it felt like it was looking back at her.
*
She hadn't thought about that interview for almost two decades. In the end, she did receive a small stipend, enough for half a semester's worth of books, from CIRCE, but it was not renewed for her sophomore year.
"I did tests, too," she told Walt early on.
She didn't know how to reach him; finding common ground seemed to be the best approach. Ben told her to "talk to him" and "administer some easy tests", but that was far, far easier said than done.
Walt just scowled. When he hunched his shoulders like that, his clavicle stood out sharp and thin. He was just a kid.
"They tested me," she continued, "cards and goggles and everything they're showing you --"
"They?" he asked. "Who's they?"
"-- but you're much better at --"
"You're testing me," he said. "There's no 'they' here, there's just you."
He was right. She turned her hands over in her lap, palms up. She knew what was coming. She could only wait and count to ten, then ten again. Walt shuffled the deck of DHARMA Zener cards and started dealing out a game of solitaire.
When he had laid out the whole deck, the thump came, sure enough. A squawk of pain, the rattle of the metal siding, another bird dead.
*
Later, Ben took her by the elbow, guiding her into the control room. "You have a knack for this, Juliet," he said, rewinding the surveillance tape. He did not release her elbow; his touch was dry and firm. "Excellent work."
She choked on a small laugh. "I have no idea what I'm doing in there. He's a scared kid, Ben, and --"
"Remarkable," Ben murmured, gazing at the tape. She saw herself from above, scrawny back, hair standing out in a frizzy halo, looking for all the world like the baby whooping crane Rachel used to tease her about resembling. "Look at you."
"I don't see it," she replied. On the monitor, she and Walt sat across from each other, his arms crossed, while she held up cards and asked him to guess their face value. Without sound, the scene appeared fairly innocuous, even given Walt's posture.
*
"You're not like me," Walt told her, near the end of his time on the island. He had hardened from the time she first met him; he didn't hunch or cut away his gaze any more. He looked everyone right in the eyes and they knew exactly what he thought of them.
"No," Juliet said, turning over the Zener cards. "No, I guess not."
"Nothing like me."
In the end, he was right. He got away, after all.
*
"You have a knack for this," Ben said. He gazed at the monitor, its bright screen painted back over the wet surface of his eyes. In his cell, Jack Shepard paced quickly, fists at his sides, back to the camera.
Juliet shifted her weight. "I don't know about that."
He turned to regard her, his stare unwavering. "Oh, I do. I know." He smiled slightly, adding, "trust me."
*
One afternoon, Ben suggested that she and Alex take Zach and Emma for a hike. "Pack a picnic," he said, "make a day of it. Give them a treat."
Of course, it wasn't a suggestion at all; Ben never left anything to chance. If he seemed to suggest something, then you complied at once (and thanked him for the opportunity).
"Oh, and Juliet?" he added just as she turned to go. There was always just one more thing, one tiny extra detail. He used details like fish-hooks in your skin, tugging you back, reminding you not to stray too far. "Make sure the kids practice their Latin."
She nodded. "Sic utique." Smiling thinly, she waited for the next instruction.
"Did you need something?" he asked, outwaiting her.
"No, sorry, zoned out." She was two steps out the door this time when he called her back.
"Be nice to Alex, will you?"
"I'm always --" she started to say but he waved his hand to quiet her.
"She could use a day out, that's all," he said.
She knew he wanted her to get closer to Alex. Alex knew it, too; that much was clear from the suspicious sidelong glances she gave Juliet, from her crossed arms, her defensive posture, her monosyllabic replies.
The idea of being Alex's mother -- of being anyone's mother -- was enough to make Juliet convulse with laughter. And a little nausea.
Still, that day she found herself having a wonderful time. Zach was a very sweet, gentle boy and Emma was quite bright. Alex actually spoke in complete sentences; it helped, Juliet thought, that they had the kids as both buffer and focus.
Around the kids, Alex was almost a different person. She grinned a lot at Zach, matching his terrible jokes with some of her own ("What's black and white and red all over? A zebra in a blender."), and held Emma's hand to help her over a tricky, narrow path crossing some fast-moving water.
"Let's go up this way," Alex said, tipping her head to the left.
"The picnic rock's down there," Juliet said. There it was, right on time, the creepy-crawly anticipation of doing something wrong, triggering Ben's disapproval. She wished she could slip out of her own skin, stop feeling like a persistently naughty child. These actual children could, but she couldn't.
"We can go swimming up there, though." Alex grabbed Zach's hands and spun him around. "Don't you want to go swimming, squirt?"
"I do!" Emma shouted, running ahead of Alex into the trees.
"Sorry!" Alex called over her shoulder. "You're outvoted."
Juliet swung the pack again up onto her back and trudged after them.
Alex led them through the dense forest, up a very steep, rocky outcropping, and around to a clearing where a small spring emerged from the exposed roots of a huge banyan to spill out into a broad, deep pool before running over the edge into a narrow creek.
It was silent there, open to the sky, the light bouncing off the water. Juliet laid out their lunch and rubbed sunscreen on Zach's back. Emma was too old, she claimed, to have someone do it for her, so she tried it herself.
"Alex? Want me to do you?" Emma asked. Juliet recognized, all at once, like a switch being thrown, the quality in Emma's voice, in how she looked at Alex, studiously, almost thirstily. It was more than admiration; it was the sort of crush you couldn't resist. Beyond romance, close to identification, well past idealization: Juliet used to follow Rachel around with exactly those big eyes and hope in her voice.
"Why bother? It's just going to wash off," Alex said critically. She pulled off her t-shirt and shucked off her shorts. Bare, save for her panties, Alex was tan from forehead to toe, somehow golden and pink simultaneously.
"Oh my god!" Emma squealed at the sight of Alex naked and crossed her arms over her chest, hiding her face in Zach's shoulder.
"Dummy," Alex scoffed and dove into the pool. She surfaced at the other side, spouting water out her mouth and shaking out her hair. "Are you coming or not?"
Juliet watched Emma. The little girl straightened her back, took a deep breath, and pulled her shirt off over her head. There was something neat and decisive about her movements. Her strength of mind, the power of her resolution, was remarkable. "Coming!"
"Me, too!" Zach shouted, wriggling out of his shorts and shoving past Emma.
"Be careful," Juliet called. The words felt hollow in her mouth.
She missed Rachel so much; the grief radiated from the inside of her bones, deep in the marrow, outward.
Of course, it wasn't quite grief. You grieved the dead, not the living.
Walt had reminded her of that. "I miss Vincent and my dad," he'd said. "Not like with my mom. She's dead. They're not."
She suspected that even his mother's status couldn't stop him, not if he really wanted it to. But she nodded and dropped the subject.
When she managed to herd up the kids and get them hiking back to the compound, Zach on her back, Juliet moved as slowly as she conceivably could get away with. It was absurd, avoiding going home, since she was here already. Always.
Up the trail, Alex was telling Emma a scary story, something that, no doubt, Ben had told her at the same age.
"-- so to get back at the girl, the mean old witch made a potion deep in the woods, with tears of babies and ashes of the dead, and she poured it into the girl's bath, and the girl turned into a..."
"What?" Emma asked, stopping short on the path. "What happened?"
"A monster!" Alex made claws out of her hands and roared right in Emma's face. "A horrible, disfigured, unlovable monster for the rest of time."
Emma stood stock still, mouth open.
"Alex --" Juliet started to say, but went quiet when Alex patted Emma's shoulder consolingly.
"But you know what's the worst part?"
"What?" Emma asked, her voice high and squeaking.
Zach stirred on Juliet's back, his arms tightening painfully across her windpipe. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Emma said, "it's okay, Zachy, it's just a story."
"The worst part of all," Alex said, her tone almost mournful, "is that the poisoned pool was the very one we just swam in."
Emma shrieked and Zach slid off Juliet's back, stumbling as he ran towards her. He hugged her as he tackled her. They clung to each other and over their heads, Alex caught Juliet's eye, then glanced up to the nearest tree. Sure enough, there was the small box of a surveillance camera, its formerly green paint gone dark and flaking.
"Cameras start here," she said, moving off, disappearing around the bend. "Watch your step."
*
A year into their time with DHARMA, there's a party to send the eggheads off to Ann Arbor. They're saying goodbye to Daniel, the first time their strange little group has been broken since getting stuck here.
Juliet wears a white sundress -- snug halter top and long, loose skirt -- and a gardenia behind one ear. Her hair cascades loose down her back. As usual, Miles will complain about how well she blends in with the 70s, how unfair it is, so easy for girls.
But right now, they haven't met up with Miles yet. It's just her and James, and he managed to comb his hair and wear a clean shirt with only a minimum of complaining, so this counts as an extra-special occasion.
They hold hands as they take the long way around the compound toward Goodspeed's backyard. Ahead, tiki torches and paper lanterns wink and sway through the foliage, but it's dark back here. Her skirt, her arms, glow, unearthly, ghostly; when she glances over, James's eyes are wide and bright as an animal's in the underbrush.
And there it is, as they move through the trees, just a moment. If time gutters and hiccups all over the island, here it holds its breath. Stars still wheel overhead, the hippie pop song still tinkles over them, but here the island goes still. There it is, here they are.
She mouths the words to him, makes him bark with laughter: We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon,/And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.
James's hand in hers, Juliet dances a little. Her hair slides over her back, she swings out and back, then reels herself in, right up against him. James laughs easily, loudly, murmuring something into her hair. She shimmies away, never letting go, and urges him to follow.
He's shaking his head, grin gone lopsided, suddenly a bashful seventh-grader caught in the middle of the dance floor.
"No one's watching," she tells him, dancing back up, looping her arms around his neck. "Nobody's here but us."
He exhales through his teeth and shakes his head. Not quite disagreeing, but not acquiescing, either. His way of buying time, evaluating the situation, getting the lay of the land.
When she kisses him, however, he's fully there, hands on her waist, then tangling in her hair, backing up against a tree, knocking his head hard and hollow.
No one's watching. She can't see a thing, neither can he, it's only dark and warm and sticky and slick and, right now, it's never, ever going to end.
*
The next time she visits Room 23, Walt is taller, much older, a young man now. He wears an old white coat, frayed at the lapels and too short to cover his wrists.
The roof is gone from the facility, the walls are crumbling. Grass grows between the tiles on the floor; vines encircle the projector and screen. The island's taking it all back.
He hands her a dead parrot. It is still warm, but very still, and heavy in her palm.
"It's dead," she tells Walt. And, "I'm sorry."
"Look again," he says.
Its wings twitch against her palm; its tiny claws uncurl, then grasp at nothing, while it struggles to raise its head.
When it opens its eyes, they are blue as the sea, as James's eyes, as Rachel's.
The parrot blinks and caws as it struggles upright.
"Let it go," Walt suggests and Juliet raises her hands to the sky, feels its escape, watches it go.