Книга - What’s Left of Me
What’s Left of Me
Kat Zhang
HOW I LIVE NOW meets HIS DARK MATERIALS in a beautiful, haunting YA debut, the first book in The Hybrid Trilogy.Imagine that you have two minds, sharing one body. You and your other self are closer than twins, better than friends. You have known each other forever.Then imagine that people like you are hated and feared. That the government want to hunt you down and tear out your second soul, separating you from the person you love most in the world.Now meet Eva and Addie.They don’t have to imagine.
For my mother and father, in thanks for everything they have taught me about life
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE (#u2dd14c5f-6af3-5ad5-a5c0-ede640e134d4)
DEDICATION
PROLOGUE (#ulink_1f4f0265-20f2-5b84-b940-b0768b91055f)
ONE (#ulink_28047474-47b6-5c81-a551-e08688b5fb2b)
TWO (#ulink_908a207f-0340-50fd-b5b8-d0ef6e94c47f)
THREE (#ulink_99ae0a75-b9a4-553a-85d7-740cac25c3d1)
FOUR (#ulink_934caf53-5820-544c-af76-136084b6f766)
FIVE (#ulink_00053fa2-933e-55ee-9009-4f494665e5fb)
SIX (#ulink_a475b1d6-63d5-5161-bdd7-a95258c0bad1)
SEVEN (#ulink_782d16f6-ccf6-556d-ab6a-5cf75b7dd672)
EIGHT (#ulink_f448c2e4-1d43-5596-96eb-a09b077d103e)
NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
TWENTY - ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
TWENTY - TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
TWENTY - THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
TWENTY - FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
TWENTY - FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
TWENTY - SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
TWENTY - SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
TWENTY - EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
TWENTY - NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
THIRTY (#litres_trial_promo)
THIRTY - ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
THIRTY - TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
THIRTY - THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
THIRTY - FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
THIRTY - FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (#litres_trial_promo)
COPYRIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
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ddie and I were born into the same body, our souls’ ghostly fingers entwined before we gasped our very first breath. Our earliest years together were also our happiest. Then came the worries—the tightness around our parents’ mouths, the frowns lining our kindergarten teacher’s forehead, the question everyone whispered when they thought we couldn’t hear.
Why aren’t they settling?
Settling.
We tried to form the word in our five-year-old mouth, tasting it on our tongue.
Set—Tull—Ling.
We knew what it meant. Kind of. It meant one of us was supposed to take control. It meant the other was supposed to fade away. I know now that it means much, much more than that. But at five, Addie and I were still naive, still oblivious.
The varnish of innocence began wearing away by first grade. Our gray-haired guidance counselor made the first scratch.
“You know, dearies, settling isn’t scary,” she’d say as we watched her thin, lipstick-reddened mouth. “It might seem like it now, but it happens to everyone. The recessive soul, whichever one of you it is, will simply … go to sleep.”
She never mentioned who she thought would survive, but she didn’t need to. By first grade, everyone believed Addie had been born the dominant soul. She could move us left when I wanted to go right, refuse to open her mouth when I wanted to eat, cry No when I wanted so desperately to say Yes. She could do it all with so little effort, and as time passed, I grew ever weaker while her control increased.
But I could still force my way through at times—and I did. When Mom asked about our day, I pulled together all my strength to tell her my version of things. When we played hide-and-seek, I made us duck behind the hedges instead of run for home base. At eight, I jerked us while bringing Dad his coffee. The burns left scars on our hands.
The more my strength waned, the fiercer I scrabbled to hold on, lashing out in any way I could, trying to convince myself I wasn’t going to disappear. Addie hated me for it. I couldn’t help myself. I remembered the freedom I used to have—never complete, of course, but I remembered when I could ask our mother for a drink of water, for a kiss when we fell, for a hug.
And for a long time, I believed that someday, I would.
We saw our first specialist at six. Specialists who were a lot pushier than the guidance counselor. Specialists who did their little tests, asked their little questions, and charged their not-so-little fees. By the time our younger brothers reached settling age, Addie and I had been through two therapists and four types of medication, all trying to do what nature should have already done: Get rid of the recessive soul.
Get rid of me.
Our parents were so relieved when my outbursts began disappearing, when the doctors came back with positive reports in their hands. They tried to keep it concealed, but we heard the sighed Finallys outside our door hours after they’d kissed us good night. For years, we’d been the thorn of the neighborhood, the dirty little secret that wasn’t so secret. The girls who just wouldn’t settle.
Nobody knew how in the middle of the night, Addie let me come out and walk around our bedroom with the last of my strength, touching the cold windowpanes and crying my own tears.
I was terrified. I was eleven years old, and though I’d been told my entire short life that it was only natural for the recessive soul to fade away, I didn’t want to go. I wanted twenty thousand more sunrises, three thousand more hot summer days at the pool. I wanted to know what it was like to have a first kiss. The other recessives were lucky to have disappeared at four or five. They knew less.
Maybe that’s why things turned out the way they did. I wanted life too badly. I refused to let go. I didn’t completely fade away.
My motor controls vanished, yes, but I remained, trapped in our head. Watching, listening, but paralyzed.
Nobody but Addie and I knew, and Addie wasn’t about to tell. By this time, we knew what awaited kids who never settled, who became hybrids. Our head was filled with images of the institutions where they were squirreled away—never to return.
Eventually, the doctors gave us a clean bill of health. The guidance counselor bid us good-bye with a pleased little smile. Our parents were ecstatic. They packed everything up and moved us four hours away to a new state, a new neighborhood. One where no one knew who we were. Where we could be more than That Family With The Strange Little Girl.
I remember seeing our new home for the first time, looking over our little brother’s head and through his car window at the tiny, off-white house with the dark-shingled roof. Lyle cried at the sight of it, so old and shabby, the garden rampant with weeds. In the frenzy of our parents calming him down and unloading the moving truck and lugging in suitcases, Addie and I had been left alone for a moment—given a minute to just stand in the winter cold and breathe in the sharp air.
After so many years, things were finally the way they were supposed to be. Our parents could look other people in the eye again. Lyle could be around Addie in public again. We joined a seventh-grade class that didn’t know about all the years we’d spent huddled at our desk, wishing we could disappear.
They could be a normal family, with normal worries. They could be happy.
They.
They didn’t realize it wasn’t they at all. It was still us.
I was still there.
“Addie and Eva, Eva and Addie,” Mom used to sing when we were little, picking us up and swinging us through the air. “My little girls.”
Now when we helped make dinner, Dad only asked, “Addie, what would you like tonight?”
No one used my name anymore. It wasn’t Addie and Eva, Eva and Addie. It was just Addie, Addie, Addie.
One little girl, not two.
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he end-of-school bell blasted everyone from their seats. People loosened their ties, slapped shut books, shoved folders and pencils into backpacks. A buzz of conversation nearly drowned out the teacher as she yelled reminders about tomorrow’s field trip. Addie was almost out the door when I said
The school rang with noise—lockers slamming, people laughing—but I heard Addie’s voice perfectly in the quiet space linking our minds. There, it was peaceful for now, though I could feel the start of Addie’s irritation like a dark splash in the corner.
“Addie!” someone shouted, and Addie half-turned. “Addie—wait up!”
We’d been so lost in our argument we hadn’t even noticed the girl chasing after us. It was Hally Mullan, one hand pushing up her glasses, the other trying to wrap a hair tie around her dark curls. She shoved past a tight-knit group of students before making it to our side with an exaggerated sigh of relief. Addie groaned, but silently, so that only I could hear.
“You’re a really fast walker,” Hally said and smiled as if she and Addie were friends.
Addie shrugged. “I didn’t know you were following me.”
Hally’s smile didn’t dim. But then, she was the kind of person who laughed in the face of a hurricane. In another body, another life, she wouldn’t have been stuck chasing after someone like us in the hallway. She was too pretty for that, with those long eyelashes and olive skin, and too quick to laugh. But there was a difference written into her face, into the set of her cheekbones and the slant of her nose. This only added to the strangeness about her, an aura that broadcasted Not Quite Right. Addie had always stayed away. We had enough problems pretending to be normal.
There was no easy way to avoid Hally now, though. She fell into step beside us, her book bag slung over one shoulder. “So, excited about the field trip?”
“Not really,” Addie said.
“Me neither,” Hally said cheerfully. “Are you busy today?”
“Kind of,” Addie said. She managed to keep our voice bland despite Hally’s dogged high spirits, but our fingers tugged at the bottom of our blouse. It had fit at the beginning of the year, when we’d bought all new uniforms for high school, but we’d grown taller since then. Our parents hadn’t noticed, not with—well, not with everything that was happening with Lyle—and we hadn’t said anything.
“Want to come over?” Hally said.
Addie’s smile was strained. As far as we knew, Hally had never asked anyone over. Most likely, no one would go.
“For the Woodards?” Hally asked. “Rob and Lucy?”
“Robby and Will and Lucy,” Addie said. “But yeah, the Woodards.”
Hally’s dimples deepened. “I love those kids. They use the pool in my neighborhood all the time. Can I come?”
Addie hesitated. “I don’t know if their parents would like that.”
“Are they still there when you arrive?” Hally said, and when Addie nodded, added, “We can ask, then, right?”
Addie had her friends, and I, at very least, had Addie. Hally seemed to have no one at all.
“I don’t expect to get paid or anything, of course,” Hally was saying now. “I’ll just come keep you company, you know?”
“Well …” Addie said.
“Great!” Hally grabbed our hand and didn’t seem to notice Addie flinch in surprise. “I have so much to talk to you about.”
The TV was blaring when Addie opened the Woodards’ front door, Hally following close behind. Mr. Woodard grabbed his briefcase and keys when he saw us. “Kids are in the living room, Addie.” He hurried out the door, saying over his shoulder as he went, “Call if you need anything.”
“This is Hally Mul—” Addie tried to say, but he was already gone, leaving us alone with Hally in the foyer.
“He didn’t even notice me,” Hally said.
Addie rolled her eyes. “I guess I’m not surprised. He’s always like that.”
We’d been babysitting Will, Robby, and Lucy for a while now—even before Mom had reduced her hours at work to care for Lyle—but Mr. Woodard still had moments when he forgot Addie’s name. Our parents weren’t the only ones in town with too much work and too little time.
The living room TV was tuned to a cartoon featuring a pink rabbit and two rather enormous mice. Lyle used to watch the same thing when he was younger, but at ten, he claimed to have outgrown it.
Apparently seven-year-olds were still allowed to watch cartoons, though, because Lucy lay on the carpet, her legs waving back and forth. Her little brother sat beside her, equally engrossed.
“He’s Will right now,” Lucy said without turning around. The cartoon ended, replaced by a public service announcement, and Addie looked away. We’d seen enough PSAs. At the old hospital we’d gone to, they’d played them on a loop—endless rounds of good-looking men and women with friendly voices and nice smiles reminding us to always be on the lookout for hybrids hiding somewhere, pretending to be normal. People who’d escaped hospitalization. People like Addie and me.
Just call the number on the screen, they always said, displaying perfect white teeth. Just one call, for the safety of your children, your family, your country.
They never said exactly what would happen after that call, but I guess they didn’t need to. Everyone already knew. Hybrids were too unstable to just leave alone, so calls usually led to investigations, which sometimes led to raids. We’d only ever seen one on the news or in the videos they showed us in Government class, but it was more than enough.
Will jumped up and headed for us, casting a confused and rather suspicious glance at Hally. She smiled at him.
“Hi, Will.” She dropped into a squat despite her skirt. We’d gone straight to the Woodards’ from school, not even stopping to change out of our uniforms. “I’m Hally. Do you remember me?”
Lucy finally looked away from the television screen. She frowned. “I remember you. My mom says—”
Will jerked on the bottom of our skirt and cut Lucy off before she could finish. “We’re hungry.”
“They’re not really,” Lucy said. “I just gave them a cookie. They want another one.” She climbed to her feet, revealing the box of cookies she’d been hiding from view. “Are you going to play with us?” she asked Hally.
Hally smiled at her. “I’m here to help babysit.”
“Who? Will and Robby?” Lucy said. “They don’t need two people.” She stared at us, daring someone to say that she, at seven, still needed a babysitter.
“Hally’s here to keep me company,” Addie said quickly. She picked Will up, and he wrapped his arms around our neck, setting his tiny chin on our shoulder. His baby-fine hair tickled our cheek.
Hally grinned and wiggled her fingers at him. “How old are you now, Will?”
Will hid his face.
“Three and a half,” Addie said. “They should be settling in a year or so.” She readjusted Will in our arms and forced a smile onto our face. “Isn’t that right, Will? Are you going to settle soon?”
“He’s Robby now,” Lucy said. She’d grabbed her box of cookies again and munched on one as she spoke.
Everyone looked at the little boy. He reached toward his sister, oblivious to our scrutiny.
“Robby?” Addie said.
The toddler wriggled again, and Addie set him down. He ran over to his sister. Lucy dangled what remained of her cookie in front of his face.
“No!” he said. “We don’t want that one. We want a new one.”
Lucy stuck her tongue out at him. “Will would’ve taken it.”
“Would not!” he cried.
“Would too. Right, Will?”
Robby’s face screwed up. “No.”
“I didn’t ask you,” Lucy said.
To my surprise, Hally got there before we did, plucking a cookie from the box and dropping it into Robby’s outstretched hands.
“There.” She crouched down again, wrapping her arms around her knees. “Is that better?”
Robby blinked. His eyes shifted between Hally and his new prize. Then he grinned shyly and bit into the cookie, crumbs cascading down his shirt.
“Say thank you,” Lucy told him.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
“No problem,” Hally said. She smiled. “Do you like chocolate chip? I do. They’re my favorite.”
A small nod. Even Robby was a little subdued around strangers. He took another bite of his cookie.
“And what about Will?” Hally said. “What kind of cookies does he like?”
Robby gave a sort of half shrug, then said softly, “Same kind as me.”
Hally’s voice was even quieter when she spoke again. “Would you miss him, Robby? If Will went away?”
“How about we go into the kitchen?” Addie jerked the box of cookies from Lucy’s hand, inciting a cry of outrage. “Come on, Lucy—don’t let Robby eat that in the living room. Your mom will kill me if you get crumbs on the rug.”
Addie grabbed Robby’s hand, pulling him away from Hally. But she didn’t do it fast enough. Robby had time to turn. He had time to look at Hally, still crouching there on the ground, and whisper, “Yes.”
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t was getting dark by the time Mr. and Mrs. Woodard came home, the sky a layered wash of gold, peach, and blue. Addie insisted on splitting the babysitting money with Hally. When I commented on it, she shrugged.
I had to agree. Robby and Will—they switched twice more during the course of the afternoon—both adored her. Even Lucy had followed us to the door, asking if Hally was coming back next time. Whatever her mother had said about Hally—and, judging from the way the woman looked at her when she came home, it hadn’t been anything good—seemed to have slipped from Lucy’s mind.
Turned out we lived in the same direction, so Hally said she’d walk with us. We set out into the evening sun, the air dripping with humidity and mosquitoes. It was only April, but a recent heat wave had driven the temperature to record highs. The collar of our uniform flopped damply against our neck.
They walked slowly, silently. The dying sunlight lifted traces of red from Hally’s black hair and made her tan skin seem even darker. We’d seen people with her coloring before—not often, but often enough to not make it overly strange. But we’d never seen anyone with quite her shape of face, her features. Not outside of pictures, anyway, and hardly even then. We’d never seen anyone act like she’d acted toward Will and Robby, either.
She was half-blood. Half-foreign, even if she herself had been born in the Americas. Was that the reason for her strangeness? Foreigners weren’t allowed into the country anymore—hadn’t been for ages—and all the war refugees who’d come long ago were now dead. Most foreign blood still existing in the country was diluted. But there were groups, people said. There were immigrants who’d refused to integrate, preserving their bloodlines, their otherness, when they should have embraced the safety the Americas offered from the destruction wreaked by the hybrids overseas.
Had one of Hally’s parents come from a community like that?
“I wonder,” Hally said, then fell quiet.
Addie didn’t press. She was too wrapped up in her own thoughts. But I was listening, and I waited for Hally to continue.
“I wonder,” she said again after a moment. “I wonder who’s going to be dominant when they settle, Robby or Will.”
“Hmm?” Addie said. “Oh, Robby, I think. He’s starting to control things more.”
“It’s not always who you think it is,” Hally said, lifting her eyes from the ground. The little white gems studding her glasses frames caught the yellow light and winked. “It’s all science, isn’t it? Brain connections and neuron strength and stuff set up before you’re even born. You can’t tell those things just by watching people.”
Addie shrugged and looked away. “Yeah, I guess so.”
She changed the subject, and they chatted about school and the latest movie until we reached Hally’s neighborhood. There was a big black wrought-iron gate leading into it, and a skinny boy about our age stood beyond the bars.
He glanced up as we neared, but didn’t say anything, and Hally rolled her eyes when she noticed him. They looked alike; he had her tan skin and dark curls and brown eyes. We’d heard about Hally’s older brother, but we’d never seen him before. Addie stopped walking a good dozen yards from the gate, so we didn’t really get a close look at him today, either.
“Bye,” Hally said over her shoulder and smiled. Behind her, the boy finished inputting something into a keypad and the gate yawned open. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Addie waved. “Yeah, tomorrow.”
We waited until Hally and her brother were almost out of sight before turning and heading homeward, this time alone. But not really alone. Addie and I are never alone.
I said.
Addie hesitated.
Not where people might see.
They might turn out like us.
For years, our parents had struggled to discover why their daughters weren’t settling like normal. They blamed everyone from our preschool teacher (too unstructured) to our doctors (why was nothing working?) to our friends (had they settled late? Were they encouraging this strange behavior?). In the darkest hours of the night, they fired blame at each other and themselves.
But worse than the blame was the fear—the fear that if we didn’t settle, there would come the day when we weren’t allowed home from the hospital. We’d grown up with the threat of it ringing in our ears, dreading the deadline of our tenth birthday.
Our parents had begged. We’d heard them through hospital doors, pleading for more time, just a little more time: It will happen. It’s already working. It’ll happen soon—please!
I don’t know what else happened behind those doors. I don’t know what convinced those doctors and officials in the end, but our mother and father emerged from that room exhausted and white.
And they told us we had a little more time.
Two years later, I was declared gone.
Our shadow was long now, our legs heavy. Strands of our hair gleamed golden in the wan light, and Addie gathered them all into a loose ponytail, holding it off our neck in the unrelenting heat.
Neither of us mentioned all the ways in which Lyle wasn’t fine. The days when he didn’t want to do anything but lie half-awake in bed. The hours each week he spent hooked up to the dialysis machine, his blood cycling out of his body before being injected back in.
Lyle was sick, but he wasn’t hybrid sick, and that made all the difference.
We walked in silence, inner and outer. I felt the dark, brooding mists of Addie’s thoughts drifting against my own. Sometimes, if I concentrated hard enough, I fancied I could almost grasp what she was thinking about. But not today.
In a way, I was glad. It meant she couldn’t grasp what I was thinking about, either.
She couldn’t know I was dreading, dreading, dreading the day Will and Robby did settle. The day we’d go to babysit and find just one little boy smiling up at us.
Lupside, where we’d lived for the last three years, was known for absolutely nothing. Whenever anyone wanted to do anything that couldn’t be taken care of at the strip mall or the smattering of grocery stores, they went to the nearby city of Bessimir.
Bessimir was known for exactly one thing, and that was the history museum.
Addie laughed quietly with the girl next to us as our class stood sweating outside the museum doors. Summer hadn’t even started its true battle against spring, but boys were already complaining about their mandatory long pants while girls’ skirt hems climbed along with the thermostat.
“Listen up,” Ms. Stimp shouted, which got about half the class to actually shut up and pay attention. For anyone who’d grown up around this area, visiting Bessimir’s history museum was as much a part of life as going to the pool in the summer or to the theater for the monthly movie release. The building, officially named the Brian Doulanger History of the Americas Museum after some rich old man who’d first donated money for its construction, was almost universally referred to as “the museum,” as if there were no others in the world. In two years, Addie and I had gone twice with two different history classes, and each visit had left us sick to our stomach.
Already, I could feel a stiffness in our muscles, a strain in Addie’s smile as the teacher handed out our student passes. Because no matter what it was called, Bessimir’s history museum was interested in only one thing, and that was the tale of the Americas’ century-and-a-half-long battle against the hybrids.
The blast of air-conditioning as we entered the building made Addie shiver and raised goose bumps on our skin but didn’t ease the knot in our gut. Three stories tall, the museum erupted into a grand, open foyer just beyond the ticket counter, the two upper floors visible if one tilted one’s head back and stared upward. Addie had tried it the first time we’d entered. We’d been thirteen years old, and the sight of it had crushed us with the weight of all that history, all the battles and wars and hatred.
No one looked up now. The others because they were bored. Addie because we never again wanted to see.
Addie’s friend had abandoned her for someone who could still laugh. Addie should have gone after her, should have forced a smile and a joke and complained along with everyone else about having to come to the museum yet again, but she didn’t. She just drifted to the back of the group so we didn’t have to hear the guide begin our tour.
I said nothing, as if by being silent I could pretend I didn’t exist. As if Addie could pretend, for an hour, that I wasn’t there, that the hybrid enemies the guide kept talking about as we entered the Hall of Revolutionaries weren’t the same as us.
A hand closed around our shoulder. Addie whirled to fling it off, then flinched as she realized what she’d done.
“Sorry, sorry—” Hally put her hands up in the air, fingers spread, in peace. “Didn’t mean to scare you.” She gave us a tentative smile. We only had this one class with her, so it hadn’t been difficult for Addie to avoid her since last night.
“You surprised me,” Addie said, shoving our hair away from our face. “That’s all.”
The rest of the class was leaving us behind, but when Addie moved to catch up, Hally touched our shoulder again. She snatched her hand back when Addie spun around, but asked quickly, “Are you all right?”
A flush of heat shot through us. “Yes, of course,” Addie said.
We stood silently in that hall a moment longer, flanked by portraits of all the greatest heroes of the Revolution, the founders of our country. These men had been dead for nearly 150 years, but they still stared out at Addie and me with that fire in their eyes, that accusation, that hatred that had burned in every non-hybrid soul all through those first terrible warring years, when the edict of the day was the extermination of all those who had once been in power—all the hybrid men, women, and children.
They said that zest had died over the decades, as the country grew lax and trusting, forgetting the past. Hybrid children were permitted to grow old. Immigrants were allowed to step foot on American soil again, to move into our land and call it their own.
The attempted foreign invasion at the beginning of the twentieth century, during the start of the Great Wars, had put a stop to that. Suddenly, the old flame burned brighter than ever, along with the new vow to never forget—never, ever forget again.
Hally must have seen our gaze flicker toward the oil paintings. She grinned, her dimples showing, and said, “Can you imagine if guys still went around wearing those stupid hats? God, I’d never get done making fun of my brother.”
Addie managed a thin-lipped smile. In seventh grade, when we’d had to write an essay on the men framed in these paintings, she’d tried to convince the teacher to let her write about the depictions from an artistic viewpoint instead. It hadn’t worked. “We should get back to the group.”
No one noticed as Addie and Hally slipped into place at the edge of our class. They’d already made it to the room I hated most of all, and Addie kept our eyes on our hands, our shoes—anywhere but on the pictures hanging around us. But I could still remember them from last year, when our class had studied early American history and we’d spent the entire trip in this section of the museum instead of just passing through, as we were now.
There aren’t a lot of photographs salvaged from back then, of course. But the reconstructionist artists had spared no detail, no grimace of pain or patch of peeling, sunburned skin. And the photos that did exist hung heavily on the walls. Their grainy black-and-white quality didn’t hide the misery of the fields. The pain of the workers, little more than slaves, who were all our ancestors. Immigrants from the Old World who’d suffered back there for so many thousands of years before being shipped across a turbulent ocean to suffer anew in another land. Until the Revolution, when the hybrids finally fell.
The room was small, with only one entrance and exit. The crush of the other students made Addie hold our breath. Our heart thumped against our ribs. Everywhere she turned, we bumped into more bodies, all moving, some shoving each other back and forth, some laughing, the teacher scolding, threatening to start taking down names if they didn’t show a little more respect.
Addie shouldered our way through the room, for once not caring what the others might think. We were one of the first to get through the door. And we were going so fast, lurching past the others, that we were the first to hit the water.
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ddie slammed to a halt. The girl behind us couldn’t stop her momentum quite as well and plowed into us. We crashed forward onto the ground, our skirt and part of our blouse immediately getting soaked in the stream of water gushing through the room. The water?—
“What the hell?” someone said as Addie scrambled back onto our feet, our knees and elbow aching from taking the brunt of our fall.
The water barely reached our ankles now, but there was no saving our shirt, though Addie hurried to wring it out. No one was paying attention anyway; everyone stared openmouthed at the flooded exhibit hall. This was one of the largest rooms in the museum, filled with artifacts from Revolutionary times encased under glass and period paintings on the walls. Now it was also filled with several inches of murky water.
The guide whipped out a walkie-talkie and sputtered something. Ms. Stimp tried her best to usher everyone back into the room we’d just left, which was connected by a low step and remained dry—for now. Wherever the water was coming from, it was getting worse, spilling over the ground, soaking people’s socks—dirty water that would surely stain the white walls.
The lights flickered. People screamed—some sounding genuinely terrified, others with almost a laugh in it, like this was more excitement than they could have hoped for.
“It’s those pipes,” the guide growled under her breath, stalking past us. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes so bright they seemed almost wild. “How many times have we said to get those pipes fixed?” She clipped her walkie-talkie back to her skirt, then raised her voice and said, “Please, if everyone would just come back around through this room—”
The lights went out, cloaking everything in darkness. This time, they didn’t come back on. But something else did—the sprinklers. And with them, the earsplitting blare of an alarm. Addie clapped our hands over our ears as water sprayed down into our hair and ran over our face. Somewhere in the museum, something had caught on fire.
It took nearly fifteen minutes to get everyone back onto the bus. There weren’t too many other visitors at the museum on a hot Friday afternoon, but enough to form a sizable crowd as everyone poured out of the museum doors, confused and still clutching ticket stubs in their hands, mothers herding small children before them as they went, men with dark stains on their pant legs where they’d dragged in the water. Some of them were soaked through. All of them were complaining or demanding answers or refunds or just staring dumbly at the museum.
“Electrical fire,” I heard a woman say as Addie made our way back to the bus. “We could have all gotten electrocuted!”
By the time we got back to the school, our blouse was still damp and no longer completely white, but talk had turned from the museum flood to the end-of-year dance, still more than a month away. And when Ms. Stimp, frazzled and irritated, turned off the lights in the classroom and popped in a video, a quarter of our class went surreptitiously to sleep, even though we were supposed to be taking notes.
I said as Addie stared blankly at the screen. Bessimir was proud of so many things in that museum—those paintings; sabers and revolvers salvaged from the Revolution; an authentic war poster from the beginning of the Great Wars, dated the year of the first attack on American soil. It urged citizens to report all suspicions of hybrid activity. Teachers didn’t mention it in class, but I could imagine the finger-pointing that must have occurred. People back then couldn’t have been so different from people today.
Addie sighed, resting our chin in one hand and doodling the girl in front of us—who slept with her mouth half-open—with the other. It wasn’t like we needed to actually watch the movie to fill out a page or two of notes. We’d covered the Great Wars of the twentieth century so many times we could recite the major battles, rattle off the casualty counts, quote the speeches our president had given as we’d fought off the attempts at invasion. Eventually, we’d proven too strong for them, of course, and their attention had turned back to their own continents, chaotic and ravished. That was what war did. What hybrids did. What they were doing, even now.
On television, an airplane dropped bombs on an indistinct city. The boy sitting beside us yawned, his eyes drooping shut. We didn’t have much footage of the latter part of the Wars, since they’d happened so far away, but what we did have was shown over and over again until I wanted to scream. I could only imagine what we’d be subjected to if there had been such a thing as TV news during the invasions a few decades earlier.
I shoved my emotions away from Addie, shielding her from my frustration.
We watched as fire swept across the chaos-stricken city. Officially, the last Great War had ended when Addie and I were a baby, but the hybrids occupying the rest of the world had never stopped fighting among themselves. How could they? Addie and I had enough arguments, and we didn’t even share control. How could a society founded on two souls in each body ever be at peace? The individuals making up the country weren’t even at peace with themselves, and that led to all sorts of problems—constant frustration, lashing out at others, and, for the weaker-minded, eventual insanity. I could see the bleak prognosis on the pamphlets at the doctors’ offices, printed in boldface.
So I understood why the Revolutionary leaders had founded the Americas as a hybrid-free country, why they’d worked so hard to eradicate the existing hybrids of the time, so they could start clean and fresh and untainted. I could even understand, in the most rational parts of me, why people like Addie and me couldn’t, on the whole, be allowed free rein. But understanding a thing and accepting it are so very different things.
Addie dashed off some halfhearted notes as the movie came to a close and the bell rang. Normally I would help her, adding the facts I remembered to hers, but I was hardly in the mood now. We were out the door before our paper reached the front of the room.
We’d only made it a few steps down the hall when a second person shot out of the classroom and called Addie’s name.
“What is it, Hally?” Addie said, holding back a sigh.
To my surprise, Hally’s smile slipped a notch, but only for a moment. Enough, though, for me to say
“Want to come over for dinner?” Hally said.
Addie stared. The hall was filling with people, but neither she nor Hally moved from their spots in the middle of the corridor.
“My parents are going out,” Hally added after a moment. Her thick hair still wasn’t completely dry, and she wrapped a finger around a curl. “It’s just going to be my brother and me.” She raised her eyebrows, her smile returning to full force. “I’d rather avoid eating alone with him.”
“Oh,” Addie said. “Oh, well—I—I can’t.”
I’d never heard Addie turn down an invitation to go to someone’s house before—not without a very good reason. Many of the students at our school had attended classes together since primary; entering late had meant hitting a lot of walls when trying to make friends. Everyone already had a place, a group, a seat at the lunch table, and Addie had learned to grab on to what fingerholds she could. But Hally Mullan just plain being Hally Mullan was, I guess, enough reason to decline any offer of friendship.
“It’s my shirt,” Addie said, looking down at the stain in the white fabric. “I’ve got to get home before my parents and wash it. If they—” If they see it, they’ll ask what happened. And where. And then that look will fall over their eyes, the one that snuck onto their faces every time they saw another news report about a hybrid being discovered somewhere, or a reminder to watch your neighbors, to be forever on the lookout for the hidden enemy. It made our gut wrench. Made us want to leave the room.
“You can wash it at my house if you don’t want your parents to see,” Hally said. Her voice was softer now, less brilliant in its cheerfulness, but gentler. “I’ve got stuff you could wear while it dries, no problem. You could change back before you leave, and no one would ever know.”
Addie hesitated. Chances were, our mom was getting ready to drive home. We’d certainly get back before she did, but no way would our shirt be dry before then, and I told Addie so.
Addie said.
Hally took a step toward us. We were almost the same height, mirroring each other—or inverting each other. Hally’s dark, almost black hair to our dirty blond. Her olive skin to our pale, freckled arms. “Addie? Is something wrong?”
Again that question. Are you okay? Is something wrong?
“No,” Addie said. “No, nothing.”
“Then you can come?” Hally said.
I felt her waver and pushed harder. Addie might not have appreciated this girl who questioned Robby about Will and didn’t flinch from talking about settling, but I did. If nothing else, she intrigued me.
Addie chewed at our bottom lip, then must have realized what she was doing and said quickly, “Well … all right.”
(#ulink_f3227112-8821-5063-bd8a-bfbb15e0238f)
ddie had to run to the pay phone to tell Mom we wouldn’t be home for dinner, so by the time we reached the arranged meeting spot, most of the other students had gone. Hally stood alone by the school doors. She didn’t notice us until we were right next to her, and then she jumped as if we’d startled her from some quiet reverie.
“You ready?” she asked as soon as she found her voice.
Addie nodded.
“Great. Come on, then.”
The solemn contemplation of a moment ago disappeared. She was all bubbles and energy. Addie hardly got a word in edgewise as Hally blabbered on about how glad she was that it was finally Friday, how nice it was that it was almost summer break, how tiring the first year of high school had been.
Yes, said Addie. Yes, except for the mosquitoes and the humidity. Yes, but it had been fun, hadn’t it?
Neither she nor Hally brought up the ruined trip to the history museum.
We’d expected Hally’s house to be larger than it was, especially after all the pomp and circumstance of the wrought-iron gate guarding the neighborhood. It was bigger than ours, of course, but smaller than those of the other girls we’d visited after school. Whatever its size, the place was impressive, all worn brick and black shutters and a slender, pink-flowered tree in the front yard. The lawn was manicured and the door looked recently painted. Addie peeked inside a window while Hally rummaged for her keys. The dining-room table inside shone a deep mahogany. The Mullan family certainly didn’t need scholarship money to send Hally and her brother to our school.
“Devon?” Hally called, pushing the door open. No one answered, and she rolled her eyes at Addie. “I don’t know why I bother. He never answers anyway.”
I remembered the boy we’d seen at the gate yesterday, standing behind the black bars. Since he was two grades higher, Devon wasn’t as common a topic of gossip as Hally was, but our teachers mentioned him from time to time, and we knew he’d skipped a grade.
Hally slipped off her shoes, so Addie followed suit, undoing the laces and setting our oxfords side by side on the welcome mat. By the time we looked up again, Hally was in the kitchen with the refrigerator door open.
“Soda? Tea? Orange juice?” she called.
“Soda’s fine,” Addie said.
The kitchen was beautiful, with polished dark wood cabinets and granite countertops. A small, lushly colored statuette stood in one corner, a half-burned candle serving sentinel on either side. A tiny clementine lay at the figurine’s feet.
Addie stared, and I was too curious myself to remind her not to. Hally’s looks were one thing—she couldn’t help those. But to broadcast the family’s foreignness like this …
“I was thinking we’d get takeout,” Hally said. Addie turned just in time to catch the soda can she tossed at us. It was so cold we almost dropped it. “Unless you’re a brilliant cook or something.”
“I’m all right,” Addie said.
“But takeout sounds good,” she added.
Hally nodded without looking at us. She’d turned her head a little, her eyes focused on some point in the distance. Addie snuck another glance at the small altar. Was it Hally’s mother or father who’d so carefully arranged the candles and the statuette?
“Devon?” Hally called again. But there was still no answer. I thought I saw her mouth tighten.
“I’ve never actually met your brother before,” Addie said, looking away from the altar as Hally’s attention returned to us.
“No?” Hally said. “No, I guess not. You’ll meet him tonight, then. He really ought to be home…. I don’t know why he’d be late.”
Addie set her soda on the counter and pulled at the bottom of our shirt. “Well, while he’s not here, could I …”
“Oh, right,” Hally said. She blinked and brightened, all smiles again. “Come on. You can choose something from my room. That stain shouldn’t be too hard to wash out.”
Addie followed her up the stairs, which were covered with a rich, cream-colored carpet that extended to the upstairs hallway. Our socks, I realized, had been soaked in that water, too. They seemed too dirty for this house, this whiteness. Addie checked behind us to make sure we weren’t leaving marks on the carpet. Hally didn’t seem to care at all. She bounded on ahead, toward what must have been her room at the end of the hall, leaving Addie trailing behind.
We could see it in one of the rooms on the way to Hally’s, a large, complicated-looking thing sprawled over a desk. We’d used computers once or twice at school, and Dad had mentioned, a long, long time ago, getting one once they got cheaper, but then we hadn’t settled and Lyle had gotten sick and there was no more talk of computers.
Addie paused to stare at it and, by extension, the rest of the room. A bedroom, I realized. A boy’s room with an unmade bed and … screwdrivers on the desk. Even more strangely, there was a gutted computer in the far corner—at least I thought it was a computer. I’d never seen one with all the wires hanging out, bright silver parts naked and bared. This was Devon’s room. It had to be, unless there was another member of the Mullan family I’d never heard about. But what sixteen-year-old boy had computers in his room?
“Addie?” Hally called, and Addie hurried away.
Hally’s room was ten times messier than her brother’s, but she didn’t seem the least bit embarrassed as she invited us inside and closed the door. She threw open her closet and waved a hand at the clothes hanging inside. “Pick whatever you want. I think we’re about the same size.”
Her closet was full of things Addie would never wear. Things that said Look at me—too-big tops that hung off one shoulder, bright colors and flashy patterns and jewelry that might have gone well with Hally’s black-framed glasses and dark curly hair but would have looked like dress-up clothes on us. Addie looked for something plain as Hally perched herself on the edge of her bed, but Hally didn’t seem to own such a thing.
“Can I just, I don’t know … wear your spare uniform blouse or something?” Addie said, turning.
That was when I noticed something was wrong.
Hally looked up at us from her bed, but there was something in her eyes, something dark and solemn in her stare that made me stop, made me say
And then slowly, so slowly it was like something deliberate, there was a shift in Hally’s face. That was the only way I could put it. Something minuscule, something no one would have caught if they weren’t staring straight at her as Addie and I were staring now, something no one would have noticed—would have even thought to notice—if they weren’t—
Addie took a step toward the door.
A shift. A change. Like how Robby changed to Will.
But that was impossible.
Hally stood. Her hair was neat and tidy under her blue headband. The tiny white rhinestones set into her glasses twinkled in the lamplight. She didn’t smile, didn’t tilt her head and say, What are you doing, Addie?
Instead, she said, “We just want to talk with you.” There was something sad in her eyes.
“You and Devon?” Addie said.
“No,” Hally said. “Me and Hally.”
A shudder passed through our body, so out of either Addie’s or my control it might have been a shared reaction. Another step away from the closet.
Our heart thrummed—not fast, just hard, so hard.
Beat.
Beat.
“What?”
The girl standing in front of us smiled, a twitch of the mouth that never reached her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Let’s start over. My name’s Lissa, and Hally and I want to talk to you.”
Addie ran for the door, so fast our shoulder slammed into the wood. Pain shot through our arm. She ignored it, grabbing at the doorknob with both hands.
It refused to turn. Just rattled and shook. There was a keyhole right above the knob but the key was gone.
Something indescribable was rising inside me, something huge and suffocating and I couldn’t think.
“Hally,” Addie said. “This isn’t funny.”
“I’m not Hally,” the girl said.
Only one of our hands grabbed the doorknob now. Addie pressed our back against the door, our shoulder blades aching against the wood. Words squeezed from our throat. “You are. You’re settled. You’re—”
“I’m Lissa.”
“No,” Addie said.
“Please.” The girl reached for our arm, but Addie jerked away. “Please, Addie. Listen to us.”
The room was growing hot and stuffy and way too small. This wasn’t possible. This was wrong. Someone should have reported her. This couldn’t be real. But it was. I’d seen it. I’d seen her change. I’d seen the shift. And oh, oh, but didn’t it make sense? Didn’t it make sense for Hally to be—
“You,” Addie insisted. “You, not us.”
“Us,” she said. “Me and Hally. Us.”
“No—” Addie twisted around again. The doorknob rattled so hard in our hands it seemed ready to jerk right off the door. Lissa started tugging at us, trying to make Addie face her.
“Addie,” Lissa said. “Please. Listen to me—”
But Addie wouldn’t. Wouldn’t stay still, wouldn’t take our hands from the doorknob. And I was just there, stunned, unable to believe, until Hally—Lissa—Hally finally gave up pulling at our hands and shouted, “Eva—Eva, make her listen!”
The world shattered at the sound of her voice, the name that leaped from her tongue.
Eva.
Mine. My name.
I hadn’t heard it aloud in three years.
Addie locked eyes with the girl staring at us. Everything was too clear, too sharp. The headband slipping from her hair. Her perfect, glossed nails catching the overhead light. The furrows between her eyebrows. The freckle by her nose.
“How … ?” Addie said.
“Devon found it,” Lissa said. Her voice was soft now. “He got into the school records. They keep track of everything if you haven’t settled by first grade. Your oldest files list both names.”
They did? Yes, they must have. Back in the first years of elementary school, when Addie and I were six, seven, eight, our report cards had come home with two names printed on the top: Addie, Eva Tamsyn. In later years, Eva had been left out.
I hadn’t realized my name had survived the four-hour drive, the transfer of schools.
“Addie?” Lissa said. And then, after a long, shuddery hesitation, “Eva?”
“Don’t.” The word exploded from our chest, burned up our throat, and hit the air with a crackle of lightning. “Don’t. Don’t say it.” A pain slashed at our heart. Whose pain? “My name’s Addie. Just Addie.”
“Your name,” Lissa said. “But it’s not just you. There’s—”
“Stop,” Addie cried. “You can’t do this. You can’t talk like this.”
Our breaths shortened, our vision blurring. Our hands squeezed into fists, so tight our nails bit crescent moons into our palms.
“This is the way it’s supposed to be,” Addie said. “It is just me. I’m Addie. I settled. It’s okay now. I’m normal now. I—”
But Lissa’s eyes were suddenly blazing, her cheeks flushed. “How can you say that, Addie? How can you say that when Eva’s still there?”
Addie started to cry. Tears ran into our mouth, salty, warm, metallic.
“What about Eva?” Lissa’s voice was shrill. “What about Eva?”
Misery. Misery and pain and guilt. None of them mine. Addie’s emotions sliced into me. No matter what happened, what we said or did to each other, Addie and I were still two parts of a whole. Closer than close. Tighter than tight. Her misery was mine.
But Addie kept crying and Lissa kept shouting and the room packed to the brim with tears and anger and guilt and fear.
Then the world gave out.
Someone must have opened the door, because all of a sudden we were falling—falling backward, and I was screaming for Addie to catch us before we slammed onto the ground, and she was flailing, and I was bracing for the both of us, bracing for the pain, because that was all I could do, until the falling stopped. The falling stopped, and we were staring up, up at the ceiling, and Addie was still crying in her—our—fear, and because she was crying, I was crying, and everything was secondary to our tears. But someone had caught us. His arms were around our body, holding us up.
“What the hell did you do?” he said.
(#ulink_f88eabd7-34b0-5d82-a9bd-2dc9a98916bb)
hh, Addie> I kept saying.
We weren’t so much crying as just taking small, sharp breaths now. Addie wouldn’t—couldn’t—speak to me. But her presence pressed against mine, hot and limp with tears.
“I didn’t mean to,” someone was saying. “She wouldn’t listen to me. I didn’t know what to do. You wouldn’t have done any better, Ryan, don’t tell me you would’ve—you weren’t even home, and you said you were going to be—”
“I would’ve done better than this.”
I heard them speaking, but Addie had closed our eyes, and our pain overrode everything else in the world.
“Addie? Addie, please stop crying. I’m sorry. Really, I am.” It was Hally. Or was it Lissa? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was Addie. Addie, who finally took one long, shaky breath and rubbed away the last of her tears. “Are you okay?”
Addie said nothing, just stared at the ground, hiccupping. I felt the heat of her rising embarrassment, of her horror for having broken down like this in front of someone, for having reacted the way she had.
Finally, Addie looked at the girl crouched beside us, who smiled shakily.
“Hally?” Our voice was hoarse.
The girl’s forehead wrinkled. She hesitated, then shook her head once.
“No,” she said softly. “No, I’m Lissa.”
I said. But she didn’t need me to tell her that.
“And Hally?” Addie whispered.
“Here, too,” Lissa said. “Hally walked home with you. Hally stopped you after class.” She smiled a sad, crooked smile. “She’s better at those kinds of things. I wanted her to tell you, but she said I should do it. She was wrong, obviously.”
Our mouth kept opening and closing, but nothing came out. This was out of—of a dream. What kind of dream? A nightmare? Or …
“That can’t—” Addie shook our head. “That can’t happen.”
“It can,” said Hally’s brother. He stood a couple feet away, still dressed in his school slacks and shirt, tie not even undone. I barely remembered jerking away from his arms, barely remembered seeing him at all, just the screwdriver in his hand and the doorknob gleaming on the floor. He’d dismantled it. “We—” We, I thought wondrously. Did he mean him and Hally? Or him and Hally and Lissa? Or him and his sisters and some other boy also inside him, some other being, some other soul? Looking at him, seeing the way he watched us, I knew it was the last. “We know Eva’s still there,” he said. “And we can teach her how to move again.”
Addie stiffened. I trembled, a ghost quivering in her own skin. Our body didn’t move at all.
“Do you want to know how?” the boy said.
“Now you’re scaring her, Devon,” Lissa said. Devon. Right, her brother’s name was Devon. But I was sure she’d used a different name a few minutes before.
“That’s illegal,” Addie said. “You can’t. They’ll come; if they find out—”
“They won’t find out,” Devon said.
The public service announcements. The videos we watched every year on Independence Day, depicting the chaos that had swept across Europe and Asia. The president’s speeches. All those museum trips.
“I have to go,” Addie said. She stood so suddenly, Lissa remained crouching, only her eyes moving up with us.
“I have to go,” Addie repeated.
She shook our head. “I have to leave.”
“Wait.” Lissa jumped to her feet.
Our hands flew up, palms outward, warding her off. “Bye, Hally—Lissa—Hally. I’m sorry, but I’m going home now, okay? I have to go home.” She backed up, stumbling all the way t the end of the hall. Lissa started forward, but Devon grabbed her shoulder.
“Devon—” Lissa said.
He shook his head and turned to us. “Don’t tell anyone.” His eyebrows lowered. “Promise it. Swear it.”
Our throat was dry.
“Swear it,” Devon said.
But Addie just swallowed and nodded.
“I promise,” she whispered. She twisted around and darted down the stairs.
She ran the whole way home.
“Addie? Is that you?” Mom called when we opened the front door. Addie didn’t reply, and after a moment, Mom stuck her head out from the kitchen. “I thought you were eating at a friend’s house?”
Addie shrugged. She cleaned our shoes on the welcome mat, the rhythm of the action grinding the bristles flat.
“Is something wrong?” Mom said, wiping her hands on a dish towel as she walked over.
“No,” Addie said. “Nothing. Why aren’t you and Lyle at the hospital yet?”
Lyle wandered in from the kitchen, too, and we automatically looked him over, checking his skinny arms and legs for bruising. We were always terrified each bruise would develop into something worse. That was the way it always seemed to be with Lyle—food poisoning that had developed into kidney trouble, which had resulted in kidney failure. He was pale, as always, but otherwise seemed okay.
“It’s not even five yet, Addie,” he said, throwing himself on the floor and pulling on his shoes. “We were watching TV. Did you see the news?” He looked up, his face a mix of anxiety and excitement, eagerness and fear. “The museum caught on fire! And flooded, too! They said everybody could have gotten all electrocuted, like zzzzz—” He tensed and jerked back and forth, miming the throes of someone being zapped by electricity. Addie flinched. “They said hybrids did it. Only they haven’t caught them yet—”
“Lyle.” Mom gave him a look. “Don’t be morbid.”
We’d gone all cold.
“What’s morbid mean?” Lyle said.
Mom looked like she was about to explain, but then she caught sight of our face. “Addie, are you all right?” She frowned. “What happened to your shirt?”
“I’m fine,” Addie said, fending off her touch. “I—I just realized I’ve got a lot of homework tonight.” She avoided the second question altogether. We’d been so worried about our shirt before. Now it hardly seemed to matter.
Hybrids? Hybrids were responsible for the destruction at the museum?
Mom raised an eyebrow. “On a Friday?”
“Yeah,” Addie said. She didn’t seem to realize what she was saying. We both looked at Mom, but I didn’t think Addie saw a thing. “I—I’m going to go upstairs now.”
“There are leftovers in the fridge,” Mom called after us. “Dad will be home around—”
Addie shut our door and fell into bed, kicking off our shoes and burying our head in our arms.
If hybrids were being blamed for the flood and fire at the history museum, and if said hybrids hadn’t been caught yet, then … I couldn’t even imagine the frenzy that would sweep the city. It would reach us here in the outskirts for sure. Everyone would be on alert, nerves raw, quick to accuse. That was the thing about hybrids. You couldn’t tell just by looking at them.
The Mullans would be the first to have fingers jabbed in their direction, with their foreign blood and strange ways. No one with a shred of sense would have anything to do with them now.
But still, but still.
I could see Hally’s brother standing in the hallway, could remember his eyes on us, remember every word that had come out of his mouth. He’d said I could move again. He’d said they could teach me.
What if he and his sister were taken away? I might spend every burning second of the rest of my life thinking back on this day, ruing the things I did not say, the action I did not take, the chance I failed to seize.
Addie didn’t even reply. We lay there, our face pressed into the crook of our elbow.
Devon’s words were red-hot coals inside me, searing away three years of tenuous acceptance. The fire screamed to get out, to escape from the throat, the skin, the eyes that were mine as much as Addie’s. But it couldn’t.
Normally, I wouldn’t have responded. I’d learned not to speak whenever I felt like this. To stay quiet and make myself pretend I didn’t care. It was the only way I could keep from going insane, to not die from the want—the need—to move my own limbs. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t scream. I could only be quiet and let myself go numb. Then, at least, I wouldn’t have to feel anymore, wouldn’t have to endlessly crave what I could never have.
But not today. I couldn’t stay quiet today.
Addie shifted so we faced the wall.
I said.
My voice had turned pleading, but I was too desperate to care.
Our eyes squeezed shut. Addie said.
It was as if she’d sliced the tendons connecting us, leaving me raw and reeling. For a long, long moment, I couldn’t find any words.
Once, a few months after our thirteenth birthday, I disappeared.
Only for five or six hours, though it had seemed timeless to me. This was the year Lyle fell sick. The year we found out his kidneys were failing him, that our little brother might never grow up.
Suddenly, we were right back in those hospital hallways. Except this time, Addie and I weren’t the patient—Lyle was. And as terrible as the former had been, the latter managed to be ten times worse. The doctors were all different, the tests different, the way they treated him different. But our parents were just as wild with worry, and Lyle, sitting on the examination table, just as pale and silent as we’d been.
One night, he’d whispered a question in our ear as Addie sat at the edge of his bed, reaching to turn off his lamp.
If he died, did that mean he’d be with Nathaniel again?
Addie had to fight past the stopper in our throat before she could breathe, let alone answer. As was customary, no one had spoken of Nathaniel since he’d faded away three years prior. You’re not going to die, she’d said.
But if—Lyle had said before she cut him off.
You’re not going to die, Lyle. You’re going to be fine. You’re going to get better. You’re going to be fine.
She was short-tempered the rest of the night, and we’d argued over stupid things that had escalated until she shouted at me that our little brother was sick, couldn’t I be human and lay off her, and I’d screamed back that she’d gotten through the death of one little brother just fine, hadn’t she? Because I’d wanted to hurt her, as she’d hurt me.
And I was so scared, so scared.
So scared that just for a moment, I didn’t want to be there beside Addie. I didn’t want to know what tomorrow would bring, what Addie would say next, what would happen to our little brother, who’d asked us today if he’d ever see Nathaniel again.
I’d spent my whole life clutching on. To suddenly go the opposite direction—to curl up smaller and smaller, to sever my ties to our body and to Addie—it had been terrifying. But I’d been so angry, so hurt, and so scared—
And before I even fully realized what I was doing, it was done.
I spent those hours in a world of half-formed dreams while Addie panicked and screamed for me to come back. This she admitted to me more than a year later, but I’d felt her fear when I returned, cloudy-eyed and confused. I’d tasted her relief.
And I never disappeared again, no matter how hard we fought. No matter how scared I was.
But tonight, I got close. I flirted at the edge of it, too frightened to make the leap but angry enough to think I might.
I don’t know who suffers more when Addie and I don’t speak to each other. For me, staying silent all Friday night and Saturday made the time dreamlike. The world swam by like a movie, distant and intangible.
On the other hand, Addie had no one to remind her about the little things. She forgot to get a towel before getting in the shower. Our alarm clock blared us awake at seven o’clock on Saturday. She looked everywhere but the bookshelf for our hairbrush. I said nothing. Hadn’t I always known she couldn’t do without me?
I studied when she was too busy daydreaming or stressing to do anything but keep our eyes on the text and flip pages when I told her to. I put words on our tongue when she was too flustered to speak.
And so whenever we fell into sullen silences and refused to talk to each other, it was always Addie who broke down after a few hours—a day at most—and spoke first.
But Saturday melted into Sunday, and Addie stayed mute. I felt the emptiness beside me, the hard, blank nothingness that meant she was struggling to keep her emotions bound.
“Are you all right?” Mom asked when we came down for breakfast Sunday morning. I felt her eyes on us as Addie opened the cabinet and grabbed a cereal bowl. “You’ve been acting funny all weekend.”
Addie turned. Our cheeks tightened, stretching our lips into a smile. “Yeah, Mom. I’m fine. Kinda tired, I guess.”
“You’re not coming down with something, are you?” she asked, setting down her mug to feel our forehead. Addie pulled away.
“No, Mom. I’m fine. Really.”
Mom nodded but didn’t stop frowning. “Well, don’t share cups with Lyle or anything, just in case. He—”
“I know,” Addie said. “Mom, I live here, too. I know.”
Our cereal stuck in our throat. Addie dumped the rest in the trash.
When she went back upstairs to brush our teeth, I stirred enough to stare at our reflection in the bathroom mirror. Addie was looking, too. There were our brown eyes, our short nose, our small mouth. Our wavy, dishwater-blond hair that we always said we’d do something with but never quite dared to. Then Addie shut our eyes, and I couldn’t look any longer. She rinsed with our eyes still closed, felt for the washcloth, and pressed it against our face. Cool. Damp.
Addie always gave in first. I waited for some kind of satisfaction, some kind of relish that once again I had won and she had lost. But all I felt was a great sigh of relief.
I said.
We stood there in the stillness of that Sunday morning, a barefooted girl in a T-shirt and faded red pajama pants, water dripping down her chin, a terrible secret in her head.
The washcloth was suddenly hot with tears.
(#ulink_a8a8a911-7d2b-5503-944f-3090f23028dc)
ll Monday morning, no one talked about anything but the Bessimir museum flood. Those of us in Ms. Stimp’s history class suddenly became the most sought-after students in school, even among the upperclassmen, who usually paid attention to the freshmen only when they wanted us to get out of the way.
Addie hid from everyone’s eager questions as best she could, but she couldn’t avoid them all. Again and again, she had to describe the scene at the museum, estimate the amount of water there’d been, how our guide had reacted, had anyone screamed? Had she suspected it was an attack? Did she see anyone suspicious? Daniela Lowes said she had. What about the fire? Had anyone seen the fire? Oh, you’re the one who fell, aren’t you?
They always seemed disappointed by Addie’s answers. Apparently, everyone else had gotten soaked up to their knees and seen shady men in the corners—or at least caught sight of a tower of flames.
Hybrids, ran the whisper in the corridors, the bathrooms, the classrooms, while everyone pretended to pay attention to the teachers. Hybrids. Hidden, free hybrids. Here.
“They could be next door and you’d never know it,” said the girl sitting in front of us in math, her voice full of wonder and excitement. Others weren’t so bold. We found an upperclassman crying in the bathroom after second period, convinced that her father, who worked at Bessimir’s city hall, was in terrible danger. Addie fled from her tears.
By third period, we were pale, almost shaking. Our hands gripped the sides of our seat to stay still, to keep ourself in our chair until lunch. We’d both forgotten our money that morning, but neither of us was in the mood to eat, so it didn’t matter.
Finally, the bell rang. Addie all but ran into the hall. Shouting filled the air, bouncing off posters, banging into dented metal lockers. Addie jumped aside to avoid a boy’s elbow as he yanked off his tie.
Addie looked down the hall. <506> she said softly.
We pushed our way there, gathering speed as the crowds thinned. Addie walked stiffly, planting one foot in front of the other with the deliberate force of someone who had to keep going forward, never stopping, for fear of never starting again if she did. Soon we were jogging, then running, through the halls.
We crashed into room 506 with such a clatter and a bang that the teacher cried out and leaped to her feet. Addie threw out our arms, bracing against a desk to keep from falling.
“Sorry, sorry,” she said. She bent to right a chair we’d knocked over. “I’m—I’m looking for Hally Mullan. Was she here?”
“She just left,” the teacher said. Her hand was still pressed against her chest. “Really, is it such an emergency?”
Addie was already halfway out the door. “No, it’s not. Sorry.”
We scanned the faces in the lunchroom for Hally’s black-rimmed glasses, searched for a glimpse of her long, dark hair among the café’s coffee drinkers and newspaper readers. But she was nowhere to be found. By the time we left the café, lunch was more than half over.
Hally’s teacher eyed us as we reentered her room. Addie slid into a seat by the door, crossing our arms on the desk. We waited. And waited.
But she didn’t. The minutes passed, long and silent. Hally’s teacher cleared her throat. We ignored her. Finally, Addie stood.
But Addie shook her head and gripped our skirt, wrinkling the cloth in our fists. Taking careful, measured steps, she walked out the door.
Addie froze. I felt her mind go white. Hally hadn’t seen us yet. She stood by her open locker, fiddling with her books. Where had she been? How hadn’t we found her? That didn’t matter now.
But Addie didn’t budge.
Our feet stayed glued to the floor, our lips stapled shut. There were only half a dozen feet separating us and Hally, but it seemed like the world.
A fist closed around our heart. Addie took a painful step forward.
“Hally?” she said. Our sweaty hands fidgeted at our sides.
Hally’s head lifted just a little too quickly, her lips twitching upward. “Oh, hey, Addie,” she said.
Addie nodded. She and Hally stared at each other. I wrestled with my impatience. If I pressed her, it might snap her already slingshot-tight nerves. But if I didn’t, she might lose her courage.
Come on, Addie, I prayed. Come on. Please.
“I …” Addie said. “I … um—” She looked around, ensuring there was no one listening. “Eva,” she said, so quietly I feared Hally wouldn’t hear her. “Eva wants to learn.”
Our voice gave out. Addie wasn’t even fidgeting anymore, just staring straight ahead, not quite meeting Hally’s eyes.
“Oh, great,” Hally whispered. “That’s great, Addie. Just fantastic.”
Addie gave her a rigid smile.
The end-of-lunch bell rang. Hally grabbed one last book, then banged her locker shut. Her smile lit up her eyes. “I’ll meet you by the front door after school, okay?” she said. “We’ll go to my house. You’ll meet Devon and Ryan properly. It’ll be great. I promise.”
Ryan. The name of the second soul dwelling in Devon’s body. I tucked it away, another piece of these past few days that I just knew were going to change everything.
“All right,” Addie managed to say.
Some boys were already coming up the hall, chatting and laughing. Addie stood by Hally’s locker, watching her walk back to her classroom. But just as Hally was about to enter, she turned and darted back. The group of boys was almost upon us, but Hally leaned in and whispered with a laugh, “This is fantastic, Addie. Really. You’ll see.”
This time, Devon was sitting at the kitchen table when Hally opened the door. He had a screwdriver in one hand and what looked like a small black coin in the other. A mess of tools lay scattered across the table, half encircling him like some sort of wall. He looked up when we appeared in the doorway, then returned to his tinkering with only a nod hello.
“Hi,” Addie said. Her voice had none of the spark she usually pumped into first meetings. With other boys, she could craft a mask of smiles and laughter. She seemed to hardly want to glance at this one.
Why? Because he wasn’t really one boy, but two? Because hidden inside his body were twin souls, nestled side by side?
If so, then Addie looked away for exactly the same reasons I wanted to stare until I memorized the shape of his face. But I wasn’t the one in control.
“Want some tea?” Hally asked. She’d bustled inside after kicking off her shoes and was already halfway to the fridge.
“Tea?” Addie said.
“Yeah. It’s good. I promise.”
Addie bent to untie our shoes, picking at the thin laces. “Okay, sure.”
Nobody said anything about why we were here. Addie stood by the doorway, our arms crossed, our hands gripping our elbows.
I wasn’t sure. We looked to Hally, but she was too busy rummaging in the cabinets to notice. Devon tightened something in his coin, frowning as he did so. Addie and I might as well have not been there.
Finally, Hally turned and laughed. “Well, don’t just stand there, Addie. Come on, sit down.” She pointed to the chair across from her brother. “Devon, entertain her while I get something from upstairs.”
The boy raised an eyebrow without even looking at her. “Isn’t she your guest, though?”
Hally rolled her eyes. “Ignore him,” she whispered as she passed us en route to the stairs. “He’s just rude and antisocial like that.”
“Ignore her,” Devon said, still intent on … whatever he was doing. “She’s just upset Ryan took apart her doorknob.”
Hally pulled a face at him, and then she was gone, leaving us and Devon alone. Addie still hadn’t moved.
“You can sit down, if you want,” he said, finally raising his head.
Addie nodded and, after another awkward second, walked over to the chair. She sat. Devon turned back to his tinkering and tools. The seconds ticked by.
Devon looked up.
“So, um …”
He didn’t speak. Didn’t say Yes? Do you want to ask me something? He just watched us, his face still half tilted toward his hands.
“So are you really Devon right now, or should I be thinking of you as Ryan?”
The question burst from our lips, and no matter how fast Addie shoved our fist against our mouth, she couldn’t take it back. I was too shocked to speak.
Devon blinked. Or was he Ryan? No, he couldn’t be; he’d just referred to Ryan. The boy frowned, looking more nonplussed than truly annoyed. “No, I’m Devon. But if you’d prefer Ryan, we can—”
“No,” Addie said, leaning back. “No, that’s quite all right, thanks.”
Her coldness wiped the quiet puzzlement from his face, made his expression blank again. Devon nodded and turned back to his tinkering. Silence reigned, broken only by the click of his screwdriver when his hand slipped.
Heat rushed to our face.
I fell silent. A wall slammed down between Addie and me, sealing her emotions to her half of our mind. But she didn’t do it quickly enough. I’d sensed the tendril of guilt.
The kettle started to shriek.
“Coming!” Hally called, thumping down the stairs. She skidded to a stop by the kitchen counter and reached over to switch off the stove. The kettle’s screech puttered into a low whistle, then silence. There were a few moments of quiet, interrupted only by the clinking of mugs and what was probably a spoon.
Addie tore our eyes from Devon’s hands. “What kind of tea is it?”
“Oh, um, something my dad gets. I forget the name,” Hally said. She bent over one of the mugs, sliding the spoon out against its rim so it didn’t drip, then brought the steaming mugs to the table. “I put a little cold milk in it, so it’s not that hot. Try it. It’s good.”
She watched as Addie took a sip. We’d hardly ever had hot tea before. This tasted sweeter than I expected, milky and spiced.
“Lissa’s obsessed with tea at the moment,” Devon said. “A month ago it was those ornate pocketknives.”
Lissa. Was she Lissa now? Addie threw a sideways look at the girl sitting next to us, but of course she looked exactly the same. Same dark hair, same dimples, same brown eyes. I didn’t know her and Hally well enough to discern between them.
“I’m not obsessed,” Lissa said, taking a long drink from her own mug. “And I’d still collect the pocketknives if Mom would let me.”
“The tea does taste good,” Addie said quietly.
Lissa smiled at us. A bright, overeager smile. “It does, doesn’t it?”
A moment crawled by. Addie fingered the handle of our mug. Even through the wall in our mind, I could feel her tension mounting. It leaked through the cracks like steam.
“Why me?” she said.
Both Lissa and Devon looked up, the former from her tea, the latter from his tools. The strength of their stares, identical in so many ways, made Addie falter, but she soldiered on.
“Why did you choose me? How did … how did you know I was different?”
Lissa spoke slowly, as if weighing each word. “Remember last September, when you dropped your lunch tray?”
Of course we did. We’d been arguing about something or other, screaming at each other in our mind until the outside world faded away. The lunchroom had fallen silent as our tray slipped from our hands and smashed to the ground, mashed potatoes and milk flying through the air.
“Sometimes it seemed like you were talking to someone else, you know? Like someone else was there, fighting.” Lissa paused. “I don’t know. Maybe it was just a feeling.” She flashed a tentative grin at us. “A kinship?”
Addie didn’t smile back.
“Anyway,” Lissa said quickly. “We got Devon to check your files, and they said you hadn’t settled until you were twelve. That was a big clue that something was up.”
Addie hunched over our tea. The soft, sweet steam soothed our frayed nerves. “So you could tell. Just like that.”
“What do you mean?” Lissa said.
“It was so obvious I was different?”
“Well, it’s not like anyone could have hacked into your school files, so—”
“Is there really something so wrong with that?” Devon said. His voice was low. He’d finally set down his screwdriver, his attention completely focused on us. “With being different from the others?”
“You sound like a bad after-school TV special,” Addie said, laughing even as our fingers tightened around our mug. She twisted our voice into a mockery of a chirpy happiness. “It’s okay to be different.”
“Isn’t it?” he said.
“Not like this, it isn’t.”
“But you still came,” he said.
Addie was quiet. Then haltingly, she said, “Eva wanted to.”
Devon’s expression didn’t change, but Lissa smiled.
“I—” Addie frowned. Our head felt strange. Stuffy. Cottony. A little dizzy. She pushed away the mug of tea, but it wasn’t steaming that much, so that couldn’t be it. “I, um … I think—”
We swayed.
And then she was gone.
Darkness. We slumped forward, knocking our temple, hard, against the table.
I screamed.
Nothing.
It wasn’t just the silence. It was the emptiness, the lack of—of anything where Addie should have been. Even when we ignored each other, even when Addie tried her absolute hardest to hide her emotions, I could feel the wall she put up. There was no wall now. There was a chasm.
Nausea slapped against me.
“Move the mug. Thank God she didn’t knock into it.”
“She pushed it away herself. It was like she knew—”
“Well, you were being so obvious about it. I’m surprised she drank anything at all.”
The voices faded into murmurs. I delved as deep as I dared into the darkness and searched frantically for signs of Addie. The warmth of her presence, her thoughts, were gone. There wasn’t a scrap to show she’d ever existed.
Our body felt incredibly empty. Hollow. Too big. Of course it was too big. Our body had always held two. Now there was only one.
“Eva?”
“Can you hear us, Eva?” Lissa said.
But of course they heard nothing at all.
“Let’s lay her down first,” Devon said. “I’ll bring her over.”
Hands grabbed our arms and tilted us back in our seat. Someone pulled our chair away from the table. Then more hands, around our waist now. Finally, there was a heave and we were in the air, being carried slowly toward some unknown destination. And I, trapped inside this body that was and wasn’t mine, couldn’t even say a word aloud.
Where were they taking us? Had this all been a trick? A trap? Was this how the government rooted out hybrids who’d escaped institutionalization? By pretending they had friends, had people who understood? By letting them feel like they weren’t alone and then snapping them up while they were vulnerable? We’d walked right into it. Or I had, and I’d dragged Addie down with me.
I’d been so stupid. So trusting. So desperate to believe I might move again.
“Could you get that pillow, Lissa? That one … and just put it here …”
I felt something soft and solid below us. The hands let go. They weren’t taking us out of the house, then. Maybe they weren’t planning on kidnapping us. I didn’t even feel anything akin to relief—just a little less sick.
“Eva?” It was Devon. “Eva, listen.”
I was listening. I was listening, but they couldn’t know because Addie wasn’t here to tell them.
“Eva, if you’re freaking out, you have to stop. You have to listen to us. Addie’s fine. She’s just … asleep right now because of the medicine. We didn’t think she’d take it if she knew—”
They’d drugged us. They’d really drugged us. A flash of anger seared through me, singeing away just a little of the fear.
“Eva, can you move?”
Of course I couldn’t move!
“The medicine will help, Eva,” Lissa said. “Try and wriggle your fingers.”
I tried. I tried like I’d been trying for years—if only so I could get the hell away from here. Nothing happened. I was trapped in a dead prison of skin and bones, shackled to limbs I couldn’t control. What sort of plan was this? Were they trying to help us? Like this?
A hand enveloped mine, and I couldn’t jerk away.
“Eva,” someone said. “Eva, this is Ryan.”
Ryan. Devon’s voice, but Ryan’s, just as Addie’s voice was also mine. Had been mine.
“We haven’t really met yet, but we will. Right now we just want you to try and move your fingers. Move the fingers of the hand I’m holding right now.”
The gentle pressure on our right palm helped orient me. I mentally traced up to the tips of our fingers. Then I tried again to curl them. I tried. I really did.
“It’s been years, I know,” Ryan said. “It’s been a long time, but not too long. You can still do it, Eva.”
I said.
Not alone in the dark like this.
“Eva? Are you still trying?”
“I know it’s hard,” he said.
He didn’t hear, so he couldn’t respond. Instead, a new voice broke through the darkness. Lissa? Hally?
“Eva, trust us.”
Trust them!
“The medicine will wear off in a little bit,” she said. “So please, please try.”
I tried. I lay there in the dark, listening to them talk at me, and tried for what seemed like hours. Finally, exhausted and ready to scream, I stopped.
“That’s right,” Lissa said. “That’s good. Keep going.”
“You’ve almost got it,” Ryan said. He’d said it at least ten times.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough, wasn’t good enough, wasn’t tough enough. It had been too long. And Addie—Addie was gone. I couldn’t do it without her. I had never done anything without Addie.
I’d dreamed so long of being able to move again, every fantasy tasting equally of longing and terror. But I’d never dreamed I would be alone like this. That it would happen like this.
“Come on, Eva.”
No. No—
“You can do it.”
Shut up. Shut up shut up shut up. I can’t do it. I ca—
“Eva—”
“I can’t!”
Silence.
“Eva?” Lissa breathed. “Eva, was that you?”
Me?
Oh.
Oh.
“Ryan—did you hear that? Did you hear her?”
My head spun.
“Can you do it again?” Ryan said.
I’d spoken. I’d formed words and moved our lips and tongue and spoken.
They’d heard my voice.
From far within the abyss, a pulse.
Again the pulse. Then came a feeling like the drawing of a breath. A tendril of something as light and insubstantial as dawn haze floated from the chasm.
Then she was back, bleary-eyed and weak and confused, but back, back, back, filling that terrible hole inside us. Making us whole again. Making us how we were meant to be.
She believed me. She kept our eyes closed, and she relaxed little by little.
(#ulink_688647e9-33fc-5623-8bc4-ddbb3710e60e)
ddie was still woozy five minutes after she awoke, swaying when she tried to sit up. She moved as though through syrup, each limb thick and unwieldy.
she said. We could see Lissa and Ryan now, and they were crouched by the sofa. They kept talking, their words washing over us but barely sinking in. Addie wasn’t listening at all. I heard enough to know the drug would take a little longer to wear off completely.
I didn’t think she was ready to know.
Addie strengthened, her presence growing less tenuous beside mine. She kept blinking, like someone trying to clear away a dream.
“Addie?” Lissa said. She reached toward us, then pulled her hand away again at the last moment. “Are you okay now?”
Addie started, as if noticing her for the first time. “You—you drugged me.” Her words were slurred.
The siblings looked at each other.
“We had to,” Lissa said. “It’s so much easier with the drug—”
“What’s easier?” Addie said.
Another glance between Ryan and Lissa. The sofa was solid against our back. Our fingers dug into the rigid fabric.
“Didn’t Eva tell you?” Ryan said.
Addie’s frown deepened. “How would Eva know?”
“Well …” Lissa tugged on a curl of her hair, wrapping it around her finger. “Eva was awake, right?”
“Of course not,” Addie said. “That’s not pos—”
I said.
The rest of Addie’s sentence lodged in our throat. It hurt to breathe around.
I hesitated. Lissa and Ryan watched us, studying our face. But I knew Addie wasn’t paying them any attention.
I said.
Stunned silence. Her astonishment swirled bright and wild around me.
I said, unable to stand it any longer. The very knowledge pushed at our bones.
“Addie?” Lissa said. Her fingers hovered above our arm.
Addie looked up. Our lips parted. Then the sound came, hoarse and crackly. “Eva talked?”
Lissa smiled. “She did.”
Addie stared. She didn’t speak, not even to me. I matched her silence. I didn’t know what to say. And then, suddenly, she tried to stand. Our legs felt too frail to support our weight. “I’m … I’m going to go home.”
Lissa grabbed our arm as we wobbled. “No, Addie, stay. Please stay.”
“Wait a little longer. I’ll walk you back,” Ryan said. Addie looked at him. She didn’t even know he was Ryan, I realized. She thought he was still Devon.
“I’m okay,” she said. She tugged out of Lissa’s grasp and sleepwalked toward the kitchen. They hurried after us, their feet slapping against the hardwood floor.
“I’m coming with you,” Lissa called. “Just wait a second, Addie. I’m—”
Addie seemed not to hear.
She slipped into our shoes without tying the laces. But when she reached for our book bag, Ryan was already holding it. He nodded for us to go through the door first.
“I’ll go, Ryan,” Lissa said. “I can go—”
I didn’t know how the argument ended. I couldn’t hear because Addie had already stepped over the threshold, our shoelaces clacking as we walked. I heard the door close behind us. Then a voice by our ear: “You should tie your shoes or you’ll trip on them.”
Addie bent down and did the knots. Our fingers fumbled with the laces. When we stood again, Ryan was watching us.
“Well, come on,” he said, not unkindly. “I don’t know where you live, so you’re going to have to lead the way.”
They walked the first two blocks in silence, the mosquitoes out in full force. The humidity made it feel like we were slogging through sheets of suspended rain. The sky was straight out of a picture book, so perfect summer-spring blue it hurt to look at.
I couldn’t tell what Addie was thinking. Her mind was blank, her emotions boxed. The few cars on the road rushed by us as if we didn’t exist. They didn’t know who we were. What we’d done.
What I’d done. Spoken.
I’d spoken.
“What did she say?”
“Sorry?” Ryan said, turning to face us.
It took Addie a moment to repeat herself. “What did she say?”
“Who, Eva?” he asked.
She nodded.
Ryan frowned. “What do you mean?”
It didn’t make sense to him why Addie would ask him instead of me. I didn’t know, either. I didn’t think Addie knew.
“I want to know what Eva said while I was asleep,” Addie said. Our voice was low, almost raspy.
He was quiet for a second before answering. “She said: ‘I can’t.’” He inflected the last two words to show they were mine.
“Can’t what?”
“Why don’t you ask her?” he said.
Addie didn’t reply. Ryan looked away again, but he said, “Does that make you happy? That she spoke?”
“Happy?” said Addie.
Ryan stopped walking. Our eyes dropped to the ground.
“Happy,” Addie said again, softer. The lukewarm, water-logged air swallowed our voice.
“It’s okay,” Ryan said. “It’s okay if you aren’t.”
Slowly, Addie looked up and met his gaze.
“I think she understands if you aren’t,” he said.
They started walking again, taking their time in the heat even though the mosquitoes attacked with a vengeance. It wasn’t a day built for things like walking quickly.
Little by little, our house came into view. Squat, off-white, with a black-shingled roof and a row of straggly rosebushes, it had been one of the few we could afford when our parents decided to move. Our room was smaller than the one we’d had before, and Mom didn’t like the kitchen layout, but complaints had been kept to a minimum as we’d walked the halls for the first time. We might have been young, but not nearly so young we didn’t understand that doctors were expensive and government stipends only helped so much.
Soon, we stood in our front yard. The soft kitchen lights shone through the strawberry-patterned curtains.
“Here you go,” Ryan said, holding out our book bag. Addie looked at it as if she’d forgotten it was ours, then nodded and took it before turning and heading toward the house. “I’ll see you later, then, Addie,” he said.
He’d stopped at the edge of our yard, letting Addie walk the short distance to the door alone. There might have been a question buried in his words. Or it might just have been a reflex, a meaningless good-bye people passed around. I wasn’t sure.
Addie nodded. She didn’t look at him. “Yeah. Later.”
She was wiping our shoes on the welcome mat when he added, “Bye, Eva.”
Addie stilled. The air smelled of dying roses.
Our hand froze on the doorknob. Slowly, Addie turned around.
“She says bye,” she said.
Ryan smiled before walking slowly away.
After that day, Addie and Hally walked together to her house every afternoon after school. Addie no longer drank the tea; it was too hot for that. Instead, Hally dissolved the fine white powder into sugar water, which masked the bitter taste.
Addie and I didn’t talk about these sessions. I told myself I didn’t bring it up because I didn’t want to push my luck. Addie was risking everything by agreeing to go. What more could I ask for? But to be honest, I was scared. Scared of hearing what she might have to say, what she really felt.
Hally and Addie didn’t speak much, either, though it wasn’t for lack of trying on Hally’s part. Addie fielded all her attempts at conversation with an averted gaze and one-word replies. But as long as we didn’t have a babysitting job that afternoon, Addie never missed a day, either. Her friends invited her out shopping or to the theater, but she suggested skipping our trip to the Mullan house only once.
“I’ve got to go to someone’s house today,” Hally had said as she stuffed things into her bag that particular afternoon. “We’ve got a project due—”
Addie hesitated. “Tomorrow, then.”
“No, wait,” Hally said. She smiled. “I won’t be long. Half an hour at most, okay?”
I said nothing. Addie didn’t look Hally in the eye. She stared at the half-erased chalk marks on the blackboard, the graffiti on the tops of the worn desks, the bent plastic chairs.
“Devon will walk you—” Hally started to say, but Addie cut her off.
“I remember how to get to your house.”
“Oh,” Hally said and laughed, which should have eased the tension but only made the silence that followed more pronounced. She slung her book bag over her shoulder, her smile unfaltering but her eyes blinking a little more rapidly than usual. “Half an hour at most,” she repeated. “Devon knows where the medicine is. And he’ll make sure nothing happens to Eva while you’re asleep.”
Addie ended up walking home with Devon anyway, since we ran into him by the school doors. It was possibly the most uncomfortable ten minutes I could have imagined. He didn’t speak to Addie. Addie didn’t look at him. The heat made them both sweat, made an uneasy situation worse, and it was an even bigger relief than usual to reach the cool, airy Mullan house, to swallow the drugged water and lie down and wait for Addie to fall asleep.
It still made me sick to feel her ripped away from me, but I was getting better at keeping calm. She would come back. It was easier knowing that she would come back, that the drug’s effects lasted only an hour at most, and sometimes only twenty minutes or so.
Devon had been sitting at the table when Addie went to lie down, but about ten minutes after she disappeared, my name came floating through the blackness.
“Eva?”
He said my name like a secret. Like a password, a code whispered through locked doors.
I felt the warmth of his palm as he laid it softly on the back of our hand, the pressure of his fingers, the brush of his thumb against our pulse.
“It’s Ryan,” he said. “I figured you—that you’d like to know there was someone here.”
I tried to speak. I focused on our lips, on our tongue, on our throat. I tried to form thank you with a mouth that belonged to me yet didn’t want to obey. But it seemed I wasn’t going to be able to speak this particular day.
So instead, I focused on Ryan’s hand, which was easier. He’d slid his palm down over our knuckles, his fingers tucked beneath our hand. I curled our fingers around his and squeezed as hard as I could, which was barely anything at all.
I figured that was as articulate as I was going to get.
But the thought of one day being able to respond to him, to sit and laugh and talk with him as anyone else might have done, was added to my ever-growing list of reasons to keep on coming to the Mullan house. To keep fighting, no matter the cost.
(#ulink_fcff437a-bee0-5777-aa8e-7da15370fdfa)
he days passed. Then a week. Then another and another. I used to count my life in weekends or theater visits or Lyle’s dialysis sessions. I marked the days with school assignments or babysitting jobs. Now I tallied my life by the improvements I made lying on a couch with Ryan or Devon, Hally or Lissa, by my side. The number of words I managed to speak. The fingers I managed to move.
And for the first time, my mind filled with memories that were mine and mine alone. My first smile while Hally whispered to me all the stupid, crazy things she’d dragged her brother into when they were little. My first laugh, which startled Lissa so much that she’d jerked away before laughing, too. And even on the days when all my progress seemed to backslide and I lay mute and paralyzed on the couch, trapped in the darkness behind our eyelids, I had someone beside me, talking to me, telling me stories.
I learned how the Mullan family had moved to Lupside a year before Addie and I did, when their mother had changed jobs. How Ryan missed their old house because he’d spent twelve years there, had known the position of every book in the library, the creak of every step in the curved stairwell. How Hally didn’t miss it because they’d hardly had any neighbors, and the ones they did have had been hateful. How they both had fond memories, though, of the fields behind the house and childhoods spent running through them, pretending to be anywhere but where they actually were.
I remember with perfect clarity the first time I opened our eyes.
Hally had screamed, then scrambled to fetch Devon. “Look!” she’d cried. “Look!”
“Eva?” Devon had said. But it hadn’t been Devon.
That was the first time I caught them shifting, caught Ryan pushing through and looking out at me. I couldn’t even move our gaze or smile or laugh, could only stare up at his face. He was so close that I could pick out his individual eyelashes, long and dark and curved like Hally’s.
I remember that snapshot of him, smiling with only one side of his mouth, hair damp and curlier than normal from that afternoon’s rain. It was my first glimpse of him, really, because we hardly ever saw him at school, and even when we did, Devon always seemed to be in control. He rolled his eyes slightly as Hally nudged him aside so I was looking at her instead.
“Soon,” Hally said, grinning, “you’ll be doing cartwheels.”
At times like that, I believed her. Other times, I wasn’t so sure.
“Don’t worry about it,” Ryan said one afternoon. Hally and Lissa were gone again that day. They seemed to be leaving us with Ryan more and more now, and Addie had stopped asking where they went. I didn’t mind. I liked this boy who pulled up a chair next to the couch, who talked to me about wiring and voltage and then laughed and said I was probably bored out of my mind, that this was all incentive for me to get control of my legs so I could escape.
Ryan pulled his chair closer. “Devon and I never really settled. There were a few months when we were five or six when I kept losing strength. Everyone was sure I’d be gone by our seventh birthday.” His lips twitched into a smile. “But I came back. I don’t know how, exactly. I remember fighting it, Devon fighting it … and I don’t know. Our parents never told anyone. You remember our mom works at the hospital?”
I did. That was where the medicine came from—stolen one day when Hally had gone with her mother to work. Addie had barely kept from shuddering when she’d learned.
“She knows a bit about this kind of stuff. She thought maybe we were just late bloomers or something. Or she hoped, anyway. So she never reported it, and she made sure we hid it—she hid us. Donvale—that’s where we lived before—is this tiny, rural place, so it was easier to keep to ourselves. Our dad homeschooled us through first and second grade so we wouldn’t be in public so much during that time, when every-one’s newly settled. Our parents were afraid, you know?”
It took all my strength—all my strength and all my concentration—but I managed to force our lips, our tongue, to form one word: “Yes.” And in that one word, I tried to convey everything.
Ryan smiled, like he always did when I spoke, even when it was just a few syllables. But then his smile faded. “The officials wouldn’t have been lenient about the deadline—not with us.”
I was torn between horror and envy. If you knew your child was sick, wasn’t developing naturally, how could you not take him to the doctor? How could you not worry?
“But eventually, not going to regular school was attracting more attention than it was worth. Our mom thought Devon showed signs of being dominant, so when she finally registered us, she put only his name. Just pretend, she told us. We’d already learned how important it was that we did.”
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- Жанр: Детская проза, Детская фантастика
- Язык: Книги на английском языке
- Объём: 320 стр. 55 иллюстраций
- ISBN: 9780007476411
- Дата выхода книги: 10 мая 2019
- Версия: 📚 Электронная книга
HOW I LIVE NOW meets HIS DARK MATERIALS in a beautiful, haunting YA debut, the first book in The Hybrid Trilogy.Imagine that you have two minds, sharing one body. You and your other self are closer than twins, better than friends. You have known each other forever.Then imagine that people like you are hated and feared. That the government want to hunt you down and tear out your second soul, separating you from the person you love most in the world.Now meet Eva and Addie.They don’t have to imagine.
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