by Kat Zhang
He didn’t look down, either, just kept staring back at us. Wondering, maybe, at our shallow breaths and the tension in our limbs. Finally, Addie lifted our hand higher, almost to the level of our mouth. The light glowed red between us and Devon, a Cyclops’s eye on a round, black face.
This seemed to snap Devon back to attention. “Yes, that.”
He dug an identical circle from his pocket and raised it next to ours. It also shone red. Every shift he made meant Addie had to move as well, a giving and taking of space, of air. I tried to think of something else, something good, something nice, and all that came to mind was the day Ryan tried to explain ampacity and I decided he was probably the worst teacher I’d ever had.
“Well, what is it?” Addie said.
“Not much,” he said. “Not enough. But it was all we had at the moment. There wasn’t time to make anything else.” He pointed. “See the light?”
“Yes,” Addie said.
“Ryan fixed the light to glow when the chips are together,” he said. “If we were a little farther apart—”
“They’d flash?” Addie said.
He nodded. Addie brought the chips closer to our eyes, studying the light and the tiny screws in the back. “Was it hard? To make them?”
“Easier than hacking into your school files,” he said.
Addie looked up sharply. Then, to my surprise, she cracked a smile. “I’d imagine so.”
A moment passed, less tense now, but more awkward. The sink’s sharp edge still dug into our back.
“I should go,” Devon said. “He’ll wonder why I’m taking so long.”
“Mr. Conivent?” Addie said. “Is he sitting by you?”
Devon nodded. “And you?”
Addie gave a tiny jerk of our head. “Down that way. Thirty-four-something. I guess . . . I guess my ticket was sort of last-minute.”
His eyes were steady, unblinking. “Did he say they were just going to do a few tests?”
Addie nodded, then finally broke eye contact. “He said I’d be back in two days.”
Devon slipped his chip back into his pocket, but he didn’t move to leave. The plane rumbled. Addie looked down at our fist, our elbow clamped against our side.
“They might not be able to tell,” Devon said. “With how things are, with how weak Eva still is, she might not show up on the scans. You might still be able to go home.”
“Yeah,” Addie said quietly.
“I’ll go out first since Conivent’s waiting,” Devon said. “Wait a few minutes before leaving.” He and Addie shuffled awkwardly in the cramped space until he could reach and unlock the door. His eyes shifted back to our face. “Keep denying everything. And keep the chip with you, so we can find each other again.”
“I will,” Addie said. He nodded, opened the door, and shut it again before anyone in the nearby seats could realize there was more than one person inside. Addie relocked the door, sat on the toilet lid, and put our head in our hands. She trembled in the confinement.
Addie stared out the window for the rest of the flight. The lights multiplied below, popping up like fairy rings. A rumbling lay below every seat like an enormous slumbering cat. Once, a baby started screaming. Its mother hushed it with coos and a rattle.
The men sharing our row were both asleep by the time the captain announced our impending descent. We began dropping just as the sun came up, the plane plunging into the gold pool seeping from the horizon. Squinting, we watched the skyscrapers draw closer and closer. We hadn’t seen such tall buildings since we’d moved. Already, my mind swam with memories of sterile waiting rooms, too-big hospital gowns, ticking clocks, and distant doctors.
Addie took deep breaths as the plane hit the runway, the purring engine intensifying to a growl, then a snarl, and then an all-out roar. The air screeched past. We barreled forward so fast I was afraid we’d take off again. But little by little, the plane slowed until we were just rolling along the runway. The lights came on. Beside us, the businessmen stirred.
The captain welcomed us to the city and state as the plane turned a corner, then told us the temperature and time.
We sat and waited. We sat and waited as the plane slowed and came to a stop. We sat and waited as everyone else stood, yawning and stretching.
“Time to get up,” the man beside us said. He rolled his shoulders and rubbed the back of his neck.
“I’m waiting for someone,” Addie said.
The aisle filled with people pulling luggage from overhead compartments. The man on our left joined them while the one on our right kept giving us meaningful looks. Addie was about to say something when we heard a commotion a little ways up the corridor.
“Sorry,” someone repeated, threading through the people in the aisle. “Sorry. Excuse me.”
An airline stewardess tumbled into the hollow by our seat. She smiled, a little unsteady on her black heels, and tried to brush her bangs from her eyes.
“Mr. Conivent sent me to get you,” she said. “He’s a little caught up over there and doesn’t want you to wait too long—or get in anyone’s way.” The man stuck between us and the window gave her a grateful smile.
Addie stood, holding the seat in front of us for balance.
“Which bag is yours?” the flight attendant asked as she looked toward the overhead compartment.
“The red duffel,” Addie said. She slid out into the corridor, squeezing in beside the woman. “Where are we going?”
The lady tugged our bag free and set it in our arms. “Just to the terminal. He’ll come find you as soon as he gets out.”
Addie checked the chip in our hand a few times as we edged toward the front of the plane. The light stayed steady. Devon and Ryan were here somewhere, close by.
A sliver of dawn peeked through the crack between the edge of the plane and the tunnel. As Addie stepped over it, hugging our duffel bag to our chest, the chip’s light changed from a solid glow to a rapid blinking. Devon must have moved farther away.
“Coming, honey?” the flight attendant said.
Addie closed our hand and quickened our pace.
The terminal was bright and bustling. People scurried about, their suitcases bumping along behind them. A disembodied voice announced the name of a lost child. Electronic panels blared a list of flight times, delays, and cancellations.
I’d thought we’d just wait by the door, but the stewardess led us through the tiled corridors, her black heels clicking. There were windows everywhere. Outside, the sun had broken through the horizon. It hung in the golden air, half asleep but stretching yellow-tipped fingers across the sky. In our hand, the light on the chip pulsed slower and slower until it went out completely.
The flight attendant kept walking until we reached a noisy food court. Addie looked around, taking in the smell of coffee grinds, the early morning grease of biscuits and fried chicken, the overbright menu of the sandwich stand. The flight attendant steered us to a table but didn’t sit.
And so we stood, two statues in a sea of tables and coffee drinkers and too-big muffins. One tall, thin statue in smart black heels. A shorter statue in a school uniform’s patent-leather shoes. The silence was like an unwelcome child, pulling at our hair, running its fingers over our lips.
What were our parents doing now? We’d flown west, so it was later in the day back in Lupside. They’d be up by now, probably. Had they even slept last night? Or had they stayed up the way they used to sometimes before our childhood appointments, emerging from their rooms the next morning looking like ghosts?
What had they told Lyle?
Addie said.
I started to speak, but she interrupted me, words bursting from her like bubbles—fragile, transparent.
It was a moment before I could reply.
The wall between us was crumbling down, down, down. Her emotions washed over me, a sea of worry and fear and . . . guilt.
Addie sighed. The last fragments of her wall swirled away in eddies of some emotion I could not name.
“Ah, there he is,” the flight attendant said, interrupting our conversation. Relief seeped into her voice, tucked itself into the corners of her smile.
Mr. Conivent parted the crowd with his brisk steps and stiff shoulders. Neither Devon nor Ryan was in sight.
“Thank you,” he said to the flight attendant, then turned to us. “You’re ready?” Addie nodded. “Wonderful. Let’s go, then.”
Addie slung the duffel bag over our shoulder and followed him out of the food court, walking in the shadow of his fine leather shoes.
Fourteen
A driver met us at the curb outside the airport, opening the door to a sleek black car much like the one Mr. Conivent had used in Lupside. Addie climbed into the backseat, holding our duffel bag tight against our chest. Other than a quick, murmured sentence or two, Mr. Conivent and the driver didn’t speak to each other, and neither said a word to us.
We stared out the window as the foreign landscape flashed past. At first it was just highways, broader and busier than the ones at home. A city shone in the distance—a proper city, with skyscrapers gleaming silver and gold in the morning sunlight. But eventually, we left the city and the highway behind. By the time we reached the clinic, we hadn’t seen another building in ages. The land here was untamed, and the sun had baked the life from all the plants, leaving the trees stunted and the grass barely green.
In contrast, Nornand Clinic of Psychiatric Health loomed over a wreath of shrubbery and trimmed green lawns, a silver-and-white oasis in the desert. Three stories tall, the building was full of strange angles and enormous panes of glass, all reflecting the light. Addie and I stared as our car pulled into a parking space up front. Other than two men doing some sort of maintenance work on the roof, the building looked deserted.
The air here was dry, no trace of the humidity that had plagued us back home. But it was just as hot, and Addie squinted as we got out of the car.
All traces of the sweltering summer day disappeared as soon as we entered Nornand’s lobby. Here, the air was cool enough to make us shiver. Mr. Conivent headed for the front desk, and Addie glanced at the security guard standing nearby before following after him.
The receptionist checked Mr. Conivent’s ID, then nodded and motioned for us to continue to the elevators. I wanted to ask Addie to check the coin in our pocket, but didn’t dare. There were too many eyes here, too many windows, too many shiny, mirrored surfaces reflecting our every move.
Flat green and yellow flowers carpeted the elevator. There was a mirror in here, too; instead of one man and one girl, there were double of each. But the mirror helped. It made the already good-sized elevator seem even more spacious. Our heartbeat quickened anyway.
Mr. Conivent pressed the button for the third floor, and our stomach dropped as the elevator lurched up. As kids, we’d jumped whenever the elevator at the shopping mall started or stopped, feeling the split second of weightlessness and its parallel moment of double gravity. It had distracted us from the fact that we were stuck in a small metal box.
A bell dinged. The elevator slowed to a stop. I didn’t whisper to Addie, Hey, let’s jump. Instead, we stood very still and very straight until the great silver doors slid open and Mr. Conivent stepped out.
The long, white corridor stretched to infinity on both ends, lit by row upon row of fluorescent lights. A faint scent of disinfectant clung to every surface like death to gravestones.
A nurse in a gray-striped dress bustled toward us. “Speak of the devil,” she said, smiling, and waved forward a delivery boy standing behind her. “I was afraid I’d have to make him wait.”
The delivery boy couldn’t have been more than two or three years older than we were, with an impressive but lanky height. He carried a small brown package in one hand and held out a clipboard for Mr. Conivent with the other. He also kept staring at us. Just quick looks at first, then more brazenly when Mr. Conivent bent down to sign the papers on the clipboard.
“Perhaps next time, I could just ask Dr. Wendle to sign,” the nurse said. “Or even Dr. Lyanne—”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” Mr. Conivent said.
The nurse nodded, but we saw that only in the periphery of our vision. Addie was too busy staring back at the delivery boy. His eyes were a cold, clear blue, like a doll’s eyes.
But she was looking away even as she spoke. She’d spent too many years fighting to avoid attention. Old habits are hard to break.
“Oh, hello,” the nurse said, as if noticing us for the first time. She was pale and thin. The corners of her mouth crinkled with a smile. “How are you?”
“Good,” Addie said.
Mr. Conivent had taken his package from the delivery boy and was already turning away. “Put her in a room for tonight, please, but bring her to Dr. Wendle first.”
“Certainly,” the nurse said. “Come on, dear. What’s your name?”
“Addie,” Addie said.
“Well, come along, Addie.” She moved down the hall in the opposite direction, away from Mr. Conivent.
Addie followed her, our bag thumping against our thigh with each step, a shock of red in the midst of Nornand’s silver and white. What would the delivery boy tell his friends, I wondered, about the pale-faced girl in the rumpled school uniform?
What would he say about us, locked in here, when he’d long since gone home?
We walked and walked and walked through the long halls. Nornand wasn’t as busy, it seemed, as the hospitals we’d visited as a kid. There were a few nurses chatting in doorways, and once we saw a man in a white doctor’s coat swish past, but that was it. No people in plain clothes waiting anxiously outside examination rooms, no mothers or fathers or adults of any kind other than the nurses and the doctor. No patients. Except for us. Once, Addie dared a peek at the chip in our pocket, but it was cold and dead.
Finally, the nurse stopped in front of a door labeled 347 in small black letters.
“Dr. Wendle?” she said, knocking.
There was a shuffling sound before a voice called back. “Yes? Come in.”
She opened the door and hustled us inside. “This is Addie, Dr. Wendle. Mr. Conivent just brought her in.”
Dr. Wendle was a short, sturdy man with a dark-brown comb-over that Addie might have snorted at any other day. He squinted at us through thick-framed glasses before jumping up from his desk. His lab coat flapped behind him.
“Oh, yes, yes,” he said, shaking our hand. His eyes flitted over us: our face, our hands, our legs—like we were some new archaeological find. “Mr. Conivent told me to expect you.”
I wished someone would tell us what to expect.
The nurse tried to take our bag, and when Addie resisted, smiled indulgently. “I’ll put it in your room for you, dear. It’ll be safe. Don’t worry.”
She gave one last hard tug and the bag slipped from our hands. We teetered, off balance. Without the bag, I felt small and exposed.
“Come,” Dr. Wendle said as the nurse left. “Pull up a chair.”
We looked around and saw nothing but a tall metal stool that squealed as Addie dragged it over. Dr. Wendle settled into his own seat, smiling. The tall-backed chair dwarfed him. “I wanted to ask you a few things before we began our testing.” He adjusted his glasses and leaned forward. No preamble. No How was your flight? You must be tired. Wh
ere are you from? Just an eagerness in his eyes that made me feel like the moth the second before the pin goes in. “First, how have you been dealing with Eva?”
Addie jerked backward. “What?”
“Eva,” he repeated, his smile dimming a little. He tapped one of the dozen sheets of paper sprawled across his desk. “It says here you had a lot of trouble settling—didn’t until after your twelfth birthday, am I correct?”
Addie didn’t nod, didn’t speak, didn’t even move, but the doctor seemed to take her silence as agreement.
“So, it’s been about three years. Honestly, I can’t believe things have gone on this long. But what can I say? People get lazy, officials get lax, or . . . well, anyway.” He steepled his hands. The smile grew again. “So, here’s your chance. Tell me. How have you been dealing with Eva?”
I should have been ready for this. The scene with Mr. Conivent last night should have prepared me for anything. But my name on Dr. Wendle’s tongue still sent waves of nausea swirling through me.
“No need to be shy,” he said. “This is all strictly confidential.” His thick lips strained now, fighting to keep their curve beneath his mustache.
Our stomach lurched.
“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Addie said. Our face was hot, our hands slick.
Dr. Wendle raised an eyebrow. “You don’t?”
“No,” Addie said.
His mustache seemed to emphasize his frown. “You do realize, Addie, that once we test you, we’re going to know the truth. So there’s no point in lying now.”
“I’m not lying.” Somehow, Addie kept our voice steady. “I think there’s been a mistake.”
We sat in silence for a long while, our eyes intent on our lap, the doctor just as quiet as we were. Finally, he sighed and stood, as sullen as a boy promised games and given coal. “All right, then; if you insist.” He motioned for us to follow him out of the office. “I’m going to run a test or two,” he said without looking at us. “A brain scan, a cog-phy . . .”