by Kat Zhang
“So we pretended.” Ryan shrugged. “And we kept on pretending. Hally and Lissa were seven then, and they didn’t show any signs of settling, either.” He laughed. “I think Mom and Dad were a little more worried the second time around. Hally’s kind of hard to keep hidden inside.”
“Hally was always the louder one, so they put her name down for school,” he said, as if he could guess what I might be wondering just by looking at me. “She pretended so well there, we started pretending she was dominant even for our parents. They were so relieved. And now they . . . well, we never talk about it anymore.” He grinned wryly. “We’re all such excellent pretenders, I suppose our parents think we’re normal. Or they tell themselves that, anyway.”
He fiddled with his latest project, a flashlight that didn’t need batteries but could be wound up like a clock. He had so many things stashed away in the basement: cassette players linked up to speakers, computers he’d built and others he’d taken apart, even dissected cameras. He’d promised to show me sometime, when I could move.
“I wasn’t sure if we’d ever find anyone else,” Ryan said. “Even if we did, I didn’t know—didn’t know if it would be safe. To try . . . to be . . .” He paused. “Hally wanted it so badly. More than all the rest of us. She just had to meet others, you know? To be with other people like us. But I thought—Devon and I thought it would be too dangerous to even try. It took a few months for her to convince us.” He looked at me, then back to his flashlight. “I’m glad she did, though.”
Me too, I wanted to say. I could have, probably. I could have said it, but somehow it didn’t feel like enough. Because if Hally hadn’t stopped Addie in the hall that day or insisted on us going to their house after the museum flood—or if Devon hadn’t agreed to break into the school’s files or if Lissa hadn’t made Addie listen or any one of a dozen other tiny things—I’d probably still be counting my existence in weekends and babysitting jobs. I’d still be nothing but a ghost haunting Addie’s life.
“Eva?” Ryan said.
I looked up, linking our eyes to his. So strange, to see how different this boy’s face could be when Ryan, not Devon, was in control. He had a smile that made me ache to reciprocate.
“Yes?” I said again. It was slightly easier the second time, like playing a song on an instrument after practice.
He took a minute to answer. A frown wrinkled his forehead—darkened his eyes. For a moment, I was afraid he’d shift. Devon hardly ever spoke to me. Ryan shifting now would mean the end of our conversation, would mean my lying on the couch alone until Addie woke up. But Ryan didn’t, though his next words were halting and forced.
“You ever wonder what really happens to those kids who’re taken away?”
I just stared at him. His frown deepened. His mouth opened and closed wordlessly.
Then: “Ever wonder how many hybrids are really out there—”
His face jerked away from ours and stiffened. And then he was gone. Devon angled his body toward the wall.
“Anyway,” he said quietly. “Not like you can answer yet.”
Hally came home just then, and Devon withdrew upstairs. I had no way to call him back, no way to speak with Ryan again.
The days and weeks slid by. I grew stronger at a snail’s pace, remaining glued to the couch and dumb except for fragments of sentences that got increasingly longer. But soon I could open our eyes regularly and wiggle our fingers and toes. The first time I lifted our hand a full six inches or so off the couch, Hally squealed and clapped her hands.
When I wasn’t worrying about regaining control of our body so slowly, I worried about doing it too quickly. Was it too fast for Addie? Sometimes, Lissa or Hally would tell her what sort of progress I’d made that afternoon. Addie never said much, just nodded and picked up our book bag so she could leave.
I could never help feeling hollow.
Nine
Addie wriggled out of our school uniform as fast as she could, reaching for a pair of shorts even as she stepped out of our skirt. Still, Lyle was pounding at our bedroom door before we finished dressing. “Mom says to hurry up, Addie. We’re going to be late.”
I’d been the one to suggest we skip going to Hally’s house today and go to the city instead—get a break from the repression drug and the forced sleep. Maybe Addie needed a day off from it all. We were keeping one of the biggest secrets anyone could ever hope to keep. We were stripping away years of counseling and doctors’ visits, going against everything we’d ever been told about settling.
And one day, I couldn’t help thinking, we might come to regret this. I’d done everything in my power to convince Addie to go to the Mullans’ because I’d been afraid of regretting it later if I didn’t. But this road was far from safe. Even if we were never discovered, how would Addie and I live as I got stronger and stronger? Would we eventually tear ourself apart, as the doctors claimed? The Mullan siblings seemed to be doing fine but . . . one never knew.
It was normal for her to be unnerved. For me to be unnerved, even as I relearned how to smile. So I wasn’t surprised when Addie jumped at the chance to tell Lissa we were going with our little brother to the city after school today. I was surprised, however, when Lissa asked, with that sideways smile she and Ryan shared, if we’d mind if she met us there. And I was even more surprised when Addie said we wouldn’t.
“We are not going to be late,” Addie snapped. “Go sit in the car and tell Mom I’ll be there in two seconds.”
He muttered something, but we heard him pound back down the stairs. Lyle always walked like an elephant, though he was built more like a crane . . . a baby crane with a flop of yellow hair and a complete lack of grace.
We and Lyle had both taken after Mom in looks: blond hair—though a bit of Dad’s curl had snuck into ours—and brown eyes. Dad, who was brown-haired and blue-eyed, used to say how cheated he felt in the genetics department. We’d all laughed about it, but under our laughter had been the awful wondering: where had our faulty hybrid genes come from?
Everyone knew hybridity carried some sort of genetic element. The rest of the countries were mostly hybrid, after all. The trait was suppressed here only because the victors of the Revolution had not been hybrid, and they’d taken care in their crafting of a non-hybrid country; they’d purged the hybrids who remained after the long war, linked the two continents, and shut down the borders.
Addie finished dressing and jerked a brush through our hair before dashing downstairs and grabbing our shoes. She half hopped, half ran for the car. Lyle was already buckled in back, a small pile of beat-up paperbacks beside him. He always insisted on having at least three whenever he went in for a dialysis appointment, and they were always adventure novels. He ate them up during the long hours he spent hooked to the machine, then made us listen to him recount them all the way home.
Lyle was always the first kid to tire when his class played soccer in gym. The last to finish in races. I guess it made sense that he wanted to lose himself in books about heroes who were forever breaking out of locked rooms and scaling the sides of crumbling buildings.
Mom sighed as we slid into the front seat, starting to back out of the driveway the second Addie slammed the door shut. “I don’t understand why you can’t just wear your uniform, Addie.”
Addie didn’t reply. She was too busy tying our shoes, and besides, she’d already told Mom a million times that no one wanted to be seen outside of school in their school uniform, especially not in the city. “Can you drop me off at that boulevard with the crafts store? The one near—”
“Yes, yes, I know, Addie,” Mom said.
Lyle strained against his seat belt, leaning forward between Mom’s seat and ours. “Can I go, too, Mom? After my appointment? Please?”
We nearly ran a red light, zooming through the intersection just as it changed.
“If there’s time, Lyle,” Mom said.
Lyle had dialysis at a clinic in the city three times
a week. Addie and I used to hitch a ride with him and Mom once a week or so, but lately we’d been too busy going to Hally and Devon’s house instead. Bessimir was a welcome relief from Lupside’s bland suburbs. It wasn’t nearly as big as Wynmick, where we’d lived before moving here, but it was something, at least. Even if the presence of the history museum darkened everything.
Talk had died down a lot in the month since the museum flooded, but the building was still closed, roped off with yellow police tape, a stark reminder of what had happened. And almost every night, the local news station mentioned the ongoing investigation or replayed clips from past hybrid attacks. These always ended with shots of the men and women tracked down and brought to justice, their hair messy and limp, the women with smeared or runny makeup, like clowns. Hybrids. The ones who’d hidden, as we were hiding.
Compared to the bombing in San Luis or the fire that had blazed across the Amazonia in the southern Americas, both also ultimately discovered to be caused by hybrid violence, a couple of inches of water and a few licks of flame at the Bessimir museum hardly seemed noteworthy. But it was discussed over and over and over again.
And each time, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t help remembering what the guide had said as Addie had pushed us up from the dirty water. It’s those pipes. How many times have we said to get those pipes fixed?
Mom dropped us off at the boulevard, reminding us to be back in three hours. We both knew it would take longer than that to get through Lyle’s session. It always did. But Addie promised to be here anyway.
Hally met us at the end of the street, wearing a bright yellow sundress with what seemed to be white puffed sleeves from a long-gone century. Somehow, she made it look good. We were so distracted by her clothes, we almost didn’t notice the boy standing a few feet away from her until we’d reached the corner.
“He wanted to come shopping,” Hally said. She managed to laugh with just a twitch of her lips and a lift of her eyebrows.
“I needed to come,” Ryan said. “I’ve got to get—”
“He’s lying,” Hally whispered, bumping her shoulder against ours. Ryan pretended very hard that he hadn’t heard.
If I could have, I would’ve smiled.
“Well, you lead the way, Addie,” Hally said. She grinned. “What did you need to get?”
“Art supplies,” Addie said, sounding like she was regretting having agreed to company.
Hally grabbed our hand as if she and Addie were friends, as if they were normal and safe, as if people weren’t already sliding looks out of the corners of their eyes at Hally and Ryan, at the foreign blood written into their faces. Both were so good at pretending they didn’t notice.
“I didn’t know you did art,” Hally said, forging ahead.
Addie quickened our steps to keep up. Ryan seemed content to let us walk ahead of him. “Oh. I—I don’t really do it so much anymore. I used to. When I was younger.”
“Why did you stop?” Ryan asked. So he was listening to their conversation after all. With Addie turned the other way, I couldn’t be sure if he’d even been looking at us.
Our shirt had rumpled a bit at the hem. Addie smoothed it down. “No reason, really. Because I got busy.”
Because she’d gotten good. She’d won two competitions before we turned twelve, before we realized winning meant attention, and attention was something we could never have. If attention lingered on something with imperfections long enough, the imperfections were sure to show, however small they were. And ours were far from small.
Addie still drew, but more privately. If anyone saw, even our parents, they always made a big deal of it, always called other people over to see. And sooner or later, someone would ask why we didn’t enter a contest. She no longer painted. That was harder to hide. And canvas was expensive, anyway.
Walking down the boulevard with Hally took twice as long as walking it alone. She was drawn to every second store window, fascinated by every bauble and length of fabric, every glimmer of jewelry or cleverly made toy. By the fourth or fifth time she demanded we pause, Addie stopped following her into the shops and just waited outside with Ryan, who somehow bore all this without comment. Addie was fairly humming with the desire to just get to the crafts store and get things over with.
Her hands. Not your hands but her hands. My hands. Of course, her hands was safer to use, in case anyone was listening, but a warmth spread through me anyway.
“No,” Addie said.
He smiled. “Not all the time, but sometimes. And we’re working on talking more. It’s nice to . . .” He paused, then laughed a little before continuing. “I mean, I’m sure she’s sick of hearing me going on all the time. And she’s got to have so much to say—”
He was looking at us, looking right at me, it seemed, and I said
“And—”
“Look, we shouldn’t be talking about this,” Addie said. “Not here.” She took a quick, shallow breath. “And stop talking about her like she’s a baby. Like it’s some big miracle she can make a fist and spit out words.”
Ryan blinked. “That’s not what I meant—”
“And she does have a lot to say,” Addie snapped. “I know because she says it to me.”
She slipped past him into the store, where Hally was getting the salesgirl to take down a ridiculously ornate clock from the very top shelf.
Hally smiled at us as Addie drifted closer, then looked over our shoulder and lost her smile a little. “Did something happen?” she said. Or started to say, anyway, because just as the words left her mouth, the sirens blared over them.
The first police car sped past before Addie even left the store, going so fast our hair whipped into the air. A second car soon followed. All along the street, conversations stopped as sirens stole sentences from mouths before they could reach anybody’s ears. People stilled. Turned. Stared. We were among them.
We couldn’t hear, but we could read the lips of the old woman a few feet from Ryan. “Hybrids,” she said, her face contorting. Addie almost lurched away from her. But the woman was talking to the man next to her, not us; she wasn’t looking in our direction.
A pair of boys ran past us, following the trail of police cars. They were farther away now, the siren wails fading but still ringing in our ears. And then something—someone—shot past us and darted after the boys.
“Hally,” Ryan shouted, running after her. “Hally, stop!”
Fear turned our limbs to stone. Was it true? Had someone made a mistake? Or lied, just to cause a commotion?
She did. She spun around, life springing into our legs, and ran away from the police cars, away from Ryan, away from Hally. Away from whoever they’d discovered. The streets filled with people running—streaming in or out of shops, of apartments. Somebody shoved up against us. Then another and another. Half were trying to get closer to the scene, filled with some morbid need to bear witness, the other half trying to flee.
In the space of a few seconds, there was hardly any room left to move. News had traveled.
Danger. A hybrid had been found, and the police had come collecting.
Addie whirled from one direction to another, fighting against the crowd. Bodies crushed against ours.
The crowd surged forward and swept us along with it, a river of bodi
es with Addie floundering in the current, fighting just to stay afloat. I was so disoriented I didn’t know which direction we were going until we hit a line of police officers, powerful in their dark uniforms, shouting for everyone to keep back, keep back. Their voices barely made it over the mob’s cacophony: the furious screaming, the cries of those who fell. Addie and I pinballed from left to right, wanting to close our eyes but not daring to.
A leg tangled with ours, wrenching us off balance. We jerked forward—we would fall—
A hand closed around our arm. An officer’s hand. He yanked us back onto our feet before pulling us through the crowd—a fish on a line, a bird on a string—and depositing us across the street. We breathed in gasps. When the officer looked at us, we stopped breathing altogether.
Did he know? He couldn’t know. Could he?
“You okay?” he said, releasing our arm. He was a big man. He could knock us down in an instant, and he had a look on his face like he’d do it. Addie nodded, unable to speak. Our eyes moved back to the protesters, drawn almost against our will.
“Idiots,” the officer said. “Don’t know how dangerous it is.” Dangerous? Did he mean the mob, or did he mean the captured hybrid, hidden somewhere in the center of that screaming throng, so crushed by the mass of humanity we couldn’t even see him? “You get away from here, got it?”
Addie nodded again. Our breath was returning, our lungs unclenching. The officer plunged back into the fray, joining the others struggling to contain the crowd.
We ran as far as we could from the screaming and the shouting and the sweating bodies. We didn’t go to the crafts store. We didn’t look for Ryan or Hally, who’d both been swallowed by the mob. We didn’t stop moving until the three hours were up and we had to return to the rendezvous spot.
By the time Mom pulled up nearly half an hour later, we were no longer shaking. All the police cars were long gone, their backseat prisoner subdued, the crowd dispersed.