Fractured by Teri Terry

you don’t look surprised to see her here, and why you are the one asking me if I know what happened.’
    ‘I heard something,’ I say, guardedly.
    Mac puts up one hand. ‘You don’t have to tell me how you know about Ben’s parents. You do know, don’t you.’
    I nod, slump into Skye once again.
    ‘Skye here is a lucky dog.’
    ‘Yeah. First the boy she loves then the rest of her family are gone: very lucky.’
    ‘She’s a survivor. Not sure if she was out, or got out, or what. But Jazz’s mate found her the next day. Jazz brought her round here. None of the neighbours wanted to be seen to keep her in case anyone official got offended she escaped.’ The way he says the words I can tell he thinks about as much of that as I do.
    ‘Stay there,’ he says, and gets up, goes into the kitchen. Comes back a moment later with a bowl in his hand. ‘See if you can get her to eat.’
    And so I sit on the floor with Skye half on my lap, feeding her bits of meat. She eats some, then closes her eyes and goes to sleep.
    Her solid warmth and doggy smell, even with smoky undertones, feel good, real, and I don’t want to move. But I have other business with Mac. I ease her off my legs, and find him in the kitchen.
    My breath catches when I see the owl on top of a cabinet: the metal sculpture Ben’s mum made from a drawing I did once, then gave to me. So beautiful, and deadly. So much talent she had, and this is all that is left of it now. I run fingertips across its feathers; inside, pain is welling up, wanting out.
    I fight to contain it, hold it inside. I’m here for a reason.
    ‘Can I look at MIA?’ I ask.
    Mac stares levelly back at me, then nods. I follow him to the back room and he uncovers his highly illegal, not government-issue computer. It doesn’t block websites Lorders don’t want seen, like legal computers do. Soon the MIA website fills the screen: Missing in Action. Full of missing children.
    It was me asking Mac about Robert that made him show me this computer the first time. Mum’s son Robert is on the memorial at school as having been killed on a bus with thirty other students when they got in the way of an AGT attack. But Mac was there, too. He knew Robert didn’t die on the bus, and thought he was probably Slated. It was when he was showing me on MIA how many children go missing in this country without explanation that we first stumbled on Lucy. Me.
    Somehow I have to do it, to check again. I enter into the search box: girl, blond, green eyes, seventeen. Hit the search button.
    Pages of hits come up but it isn’t long before I spot her, and click on her image to enlarge the listing.
    Her face – my face – fills the screen. Lucy Connor, ten years old, missing from school in Keswick. Seven years ago now, but you can still tell it is me. She looks absurdly happy, smiling at the camera holding a grey kitten.
    A birthday present.
    I gasp as the knowledge hits me. The kitten was her – my – tenth birthday present.
    ‘Are you all right, Kyla?’ Mac asks.
    Tears are smarting my eyes. I’ve never had a memory like that, of Lucy’s life, just appear in my mind before. Ever. Only snippets in dreams. Mostly nightmares of horrible things, until the chess-playing dream the other night. But dreams access the unconscious. This time, I was awake. She should be gone, completely gone; Nico said so. What can it mean?
    Mac puts a hand over mine. ‘What is it?’
    ‘It’s just that for a second there, I thought I could remember something. That kitten.’ I sigh. ‘I must be going mental.’
    ‘Have you changed your mind about MIA?’ he asks. He looks at the screen and I follow his eyes. There is a button, marked ‘found’. One click of the mouse and I could find out. Who reported Lucy missing? Maybe my dad. Maybe we could play chess again.
    I shake my head. No. My life is enough of a mess, and apart from a few fragments of dreams, I don’t even know my real family. Anyhow, I can’t risk Free UK or