by Kat Zhang
“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 to 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 qu
iet 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.
Six
All 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?”