Witness

Lilia George.

Lil – ee – ah.

I couldn’t help but roll my new name around in my mouth like its own undulating tongue. It was amazing how on the inside I was the same person, the same bright eyed hopeful girl I had been twelve days ago, but with a new name, some new papers, and a new address, I took the form of someone else entirely. I took the form of Lilia George of Richmond, Virginia. Lil – ee – ah.

I’d never even been to Richmond, Virginia.

Before that day, I’d never even been on an airplane. I woke up that morning with my bags packed and was handed a free ticket across that glamorous glittering pond. Like Congratulations! You’ve been granted your life long wish to live in Europe! Hooray! But there’s a catch: you have to leave everything and everyone you know and love behind, never to see them again.

And you have no choice.

Even though you did nothing wrong to deserve this.

Lil – ee – ah.

“Miss?”

I nearly jumped out of my skin when the man in the middle seat of our row in first class addressed me. His tired green eyes were filled with concern – I could hardly see him in the darkness of the cabin, but I could see his eyes. The same way, at first, I could only see Damien’s eyes. The sleeping nature of those around us made me nervous; the way I’d so quickly become afraid of being alone hindering my ability to respond.

“Are you alright?” he spoke in a slow, British drawl. “You were hyperventilating.”

I hadn’t realized. “Oh,” I breathed awkwardly, trying to improvise an excuse that wouldn’t reveal my true thoughts. “Well... it’s my first time on a plane. I guess I just got a little nervous.”

The flashing light from the wing illuminated the man’s face to reveal he was just hardly a man - probably around my same age – with a wide, ameliorating smile.

“Well, if it’s of any comfort, I was recently inducted as an air marshal,” he confirmed confidently with a wink. “I’ll know just what to do in case of an emergency, along with our fantastic crew.”

He nodded to the front of the cabin. I peered around the seats in front of us to see the entire crew of stewardesses asleep in their jump seats, necks craned in awkward positions. I returned my gaze to the man, only to find his smile having grown.

Someone ahead of us flicked on their reading light, fully revealing the devastating good looks of the boy, the way my melodramatic best friend Amelia would describe him. His head was haloed in a thick mop of brown curls, luxury headphones settled around his strong neck. Lucky for me, I grew up with a rotating cast of characters and developed a particular nose for bullshit.

“I don’t know what an air marshal is,” I replied. “But I do know that you’re not a very good liar.”

The handsome boy exhaled a soft chuckle. “Let’s just say this,” he tried again in his rasping voice. “I’ve spent enough time flying that I have the safety speech memorized word for word. I could probably save you in case of an emergency.”

Oh how suave. After everything that happened with Thomas, the newness of that wound, I wasn’t much interested in the advances of men. I yawned involuntarily, being exhausted from the lack of sleep, turning my gaze out the window and away from the boy. Flying was the least of my fears at that point. Damien’s face appeared in the window, the same way it appeared everywhere I went now.

That’s the thing about seeing the face of your hunter. You’ll always feel hunted, even when you’re perfectly safe. Oh, the absolutely thrilling life I somehow came to lead. But that was not the life of Lilia George.

“So,” his voice came again in a whisper, still careful not to wake up the rest of the passengers. “Business or pleasure?”

“What?” I asked, my attention returning to his partially lit face.

“What brings you to the beautiful city of London? Business or pleasure?”

“Oh,” I hummed. “I’m moving.”

“To London?”

I sighed. Of course I would get stuck to the guy who wanted to have a drawn-out chat in the middle of the night – even if he was so deeply attractive, my eyes were beginning to fall closed from the outrageous fatigue. Was it even safe to disclose the real location of my new home? What if he was working for Damien? What if someone around us was working for Damien?

“Yeah,” I replied in my softest voice. “Right in the heart of the city.”

Just to be clear, I had never been a liar. All my life, I prided myself on my ability to maintain the truth in everything I did, which was a hard standard to keep when you were essentially assigned by the government to make up an entirely fictional life for yourself. Lying even to this perfect stranger was enough to make my skin crawl.

“And where are you from originally?”

“Uh… Richmond, Virginia.”

“Oh,” the boy murmured, his full lips curled at the corners. “And is that a particularly big city?”

“It’s the capital…” I intoned quietly. That’s literally all I knew about the city of Richmond, Virginia. Thank you, second grade geography.

“So London shouldn’t be that different!” he chirped, earning a hushing sound from the person reading in front of us. His small smirk turned into a full blow grin as he offered his muffled apologies, turning to me with a chuckle. My eyelids were growing heavy, unable to keep themselves open any longer.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered to him, stifling a yawn. “It really is late and uh… I haven’t been sleeping well lately.”

The boy’s face faded into an embarrassed grimace. “I was talking too much again wasn’t I?” he whispered, giving me a weak smile. “Of course, no problem. It is the middle of the night after all. Sweet dreams.”

And with that, he turned from me and pulled his luxury headphones over his head, returning to some app on his elegant smart phone. Moments later I was asleep.

I dreamt of Manhattan that night, my beautiful New York, the city I’d known ever since I took my first breath. I dreamt I was walking from my apartment to the Met, from the Met to the Brooklyn Bridge, across the sparkling river and catching glimpses of the Statue of Liberty, crawling through all the boroughs and scaling every skyscraper. It was choppy and it was inaccurate, but it was what my subconscious could piece together of my life on the coast. The city I kissed goodbye that evening as I departed JFK.

And suddenly I was running through New York City and he was chasing me, screaming my name in his bone chilling voice, my legs completely numb from sprinting as fast as I could – everything around was a blur. And suddenly I was aware that I was dreaming and began to try to do anything to make the mad dash stop, to tell my brain to make him disappear, to wake myself up, I was running out of breath, I was beginning to falter.

“Hey, are you okay?”

The voice right beside my ear ripped me from my nightmare, only to realize that I was safely in the plane. Resting my head on the shoulder of the badgering stranger next to me.

I sat straight up in my seat and looked around, gasping breaths escaping my lungs as I struggled to get a hold of myself. A quick glance out the window beside me revealed that we had landed – we were in London, taxiing to the gate. I glanced back at the stranger, only to see him staring intently at me.

“Yeah,” I breathed, pressing my face into my hand. “I’m okay. Sorry I fell asleep on you.”

“It’s okay. You were only there for like three hours.” He grinned winningly.

I grumbled. “That’s honestly the first time I’ve slept solidly in weeks,” I admitted, organizing my belongings into the backpack at my feet. I didn’t have much with me, just an issue of The New Yorker and my well-worn copy of The Interpreter of Maladies. “I’m sorry if I was grumpy with you last night – “

It was then that I realized I didn’t know his name; I’d been too rude to ask. “Harry,” he offered, extending a hand in my direction.

“Uh, Lilia,” I offered in return.

Lil – ee – ah.

He stood up with his Herschel rucksack slung over one shoulder, revealing his true height in the departing crowd. “Lilia,” he repeated with a bright smile before pausing thoughtfully. “And I didn’t find you grumpy at all. In fact, I found you quite lovely. Good luck with your move. Maybe I’ll see you around someday.”

“Maybe,” I responded with a small smile with a wave. Perhaps I’d been wrong about that boy’s annoying nature before. And even though I doubted we’d ever see each other again, I decided I wouldn’t mind. But again, I was used to saying goodbye to people without knowing them very well or having much warning. That’s why the difficulty of saying goodbye to my life in New York was so damn perplexing.

They told me at the Office of Enforcement Operations, or more fondly known as the O.E.O. by we witnesses in protection, that I would find a man at baggage claim with my name on a sign. He would be wearing all black except for a bright red poppy in his breast pocket, my favorite flower. When I spotted him, I would ask for his badge and he would show it to me, and that would be our cue to depart to his town car.

By the time I arrived, I found the man with the poppy standing with my single piece of luggage – my large rolling suitcase, stuffed to the brim with everything I could fit. That was all I was allowed to bring. Some of the bigger things that wouldn’t fit would be discreetly shipped by the O.E.O., but until then, I would be living out of that bag at the feet of my driver.

I was silent the entire ride to Holmes Chapel, a grueling three hours of contemplating what my new life would be like. In debriefing, I was told that it was a small town of a whole five thousand people, completely different from what I was used to in one of the most populous cities in the world. They set me up with a job bartending in the pub downtown in hopes that I would make some sort of living off tips – not exactly what I expected from my life, but it would have to do for the time being. And perhaps most kindly, they set me up with a place to live – oh joy! – alone.

The thought of sleeping alone petrified me. I was relocated to an agent’s place in New York during those twelve days of waiting and had grown used to the certainty of protection. And despite the fact that I was assured safety in Holmes Chapel, I was still afraid to my very core.

I knew no one in Holmes Chapel. Absolutely no one. I had no idea what the people were like – if they were friendly or if I would be the subject of town gossip for weeks on end, if they I would be able to carry on an intelligent conversation or if I was doomed to be living with a bunch of country bumpkins for the rest of my days in witness protection. I liked to think that I had a lot of mileage in my nineteen years of life, but none of the things I went through could have prepared me for this.

And it was as I expected: Holmes Chapel was quaint (if we’re being polite), the houses in neat, connected rows of brick and white stucco. The downtown was certainly smaller than the downtown I grew up with living in Alphabet City, but not unpleasant. I clutched at my backpack as if it was some sort of tether holding me down as I was thrust into my new, idyllic life. And I did not use the word idyllic lightly.

“This is it,” Hector, my otherwise politely silent driver hummed as we pulled into the driveway of a skinny brick row house, the front door painted a bright teal, the front path surrounded in a spattering of foliage. I didn’t know whether to smile or to cry. It was perfect, but perfect for someone who didn’t long for the noise of the city.

I got out of the car as he popped the trunk, tooling around the side to grab my full-to-bursting suitcase. Hector got out to shake my hand and wish me luck, offering me an awkward hug as an attempt at reassurance.

“Thanks Hector,” I mumbled into his chest. “I’ll call you if I need anything.”

“Please do, Lilia.”

Lil – ee – ah.

And as I watched him drive away, my eyes traveled along the street, only to land on a peculiar sight directly across the street from my new home. A man was staring at me with a perplexed expression, a halo of brown curls ruffling gently around his face in the breeze. My heart caught a hitch in my chest. It was the boy from the plane.

My file at the O.E.O. listed my departure for Holmes Chapel as September Second. What it failed to mention was that Harry Styles would enter my life on September Third.