by Kat Zhang
She muttered something under her breath, so low and so fast we couldn’t catch it. Then she took our arm and guided us toward the door. “Come on, let’s get you something to eat.”
“You aren’t taking her to the other children, are you?” Dr. Wendle called as Addie followed Dr. Lyanne into the hall, trying to match our feet to the woman’s brisk steps.
Dr. Lyanne spared a glance behind her as the door swung shut. “Why not? She’ll end up with them anyway.”
“When can I call my parents?” Addie said as we hurried after Dr. Lyanne. Unlike the nurse, she didn’t check to make sure we were keeping up.
“Later, I’m sure,” Dr. Lyanne said. “It’ll be taken care of.”
We turned down a hall that looked much like the last. Nornand was a maze of white corridors. Our black skirt and shoes were like splotches of ink on a clean canvas.
“This is the way to the Ward,” Dr. Lyanne said. “You’ll always be accompanied in the hallways, so it’s unlikely you’ll ever get lost, but it’s good to have a general sense of the layout just in case.” She pointed down another hallway without even looking. “Over there’s the locker rooms, where the kids shower and get ready for bed. The Study room is in the opposite direction, but I’m sure someone will take you there later.”
“I was—I was told I’m only supposed to be here two days,” Addie said. “So I don’t really need to . . . I mean, I’m going home soon, anyway.”
Dr. Lyanne slowed, like she was ready to turn and face us. But at the last moment, she quickened her pace again. “Well, no harm in knowing. This whole wing of the clinic is dedicated to hybrids, but—”
She stopped walking. Addie almost slammed into her.
“What—” Addie said, then snapped our mouth shut as she saw the gurney round the corner.
We’d seen plenty of gurneys before, nameless people sliding past us in crisp, white beds, IVs drip, drip, dripping into their veins. Mostly frail old men and women—papier-mâché people who trembled with every breath.
The boy in this gurney was not papier-mâché. He was small and young and brown-eyed, staring upward at the ceiling as the nurse wheeled him across our path.
Dr. Lyanne made a soft, strangled noise. It lasted only a second before she muffled it. But it was enough to draw everyone’s attention—ours, the nurse’s, and that of the boy on the gurney with the bandages around his head. And it was enough for me to pick out the name buried in the cry.
Jaime Cortae?
Everyone else turned to Dr. Lyanne, but Addie couldn’t stop staring at the boy. He didn’t move, but his eyes met Dr. Lyanne’s for just one moment, and then he looked away. Jaime Cortae. Thirteen. Two scans. Two dates.
Two dates. Two scans of the same thing, but different. Jaime Cortae and a bandage around his head and the two scans of his brain—
Two scans.
A before and after shot.
And just like that, the world fell away.
Sixteen
The nurse quickened her pace, and soon she and the gurney were out of sight. But neither Addie nor Dr. Lyanne started walking again.
Surgery. I flashed back to all the doctors we’d seen before. All the treatments they’d proposed when Addie and I were children. There had been pills—so many pills. There had been the guidance counselor and the psychiatrists and the chilly white examination rooms. But there had never been talk of surgery.
“Breakfast,” Dr. Lyanne said, more to herself than to us. Her voice echoed. “Down this way.” And she threw herself forward again, walking even faster than before. She didn’t bother pointing out any more places. She didn’t speak at all until we reached a pair of double doors just as a nurse stepped out, pulling a large steel cart behind her.
“Oh, hello, Dr. Lyanne,” the nurse said with a smile. “The children haven’t finished eating yet.”
Dr. Lyanne touched our shoulder lightly but firmly, making us take a step forward. Her eyes were even more distant than before. “I’m just here to drop Addie off.”
“Of course,” the nurse said. She turned her smile to Addie and held the door open. “Go on and sit down. I’ll bring you a plate.”
Addie didn’t move. Surgery. Surgery.
Dr. Lyanne pushed us through the doorway, Addie twisting around just in time to see the door click shut. Dr. Lyanne and the nurse had remained on the other side. Our heart sat like a jagged rock in our chest.
The room looked like a miniature version of our school cafeteria. One long table stretched across the middle of the floor, surrounded by matching stools. The group seated on those stools was less uniform. All the boys wore light blue shirts and dark pants, all the girls a similar shirt and navy skirts—but the older kids looked about our age while the littlest boy, copper-haired and pale, was barely taller than Lucy Woodard. If he was ten, he was awfully small.
We didn’t focus on him for long. Because there, near the end of the table—half hidden by all the other kids—were Devon and Hally.
Devon was still in his regular clothes, but Hally wore the same blue uniform as the others. Our hands fisted, fingers curling inward, biting into our palms. Addie almost, almost cried out.
Devon’s mouth opened—
“Who’re you?” the youngest boy said.
Conversation ceased. All eyes shifted to us. Thirteen, I counted. Thirteen kids. Fourteen including Addie and me. . . . Twenty-eight, if they were really all hybrid, and we were being truthful. They filled the table almost to capacity. There were, however, a few empty seats, hiccups of space unshaded by blue.
“Shush, Eli,” said the blond girl sitting beside him. He did, but he didn’t stop staring. There was something unsettling in the way he watched us, something wary like a cornered animal. He shouldn’t have been here. Now that we looked closely, there was no way he was ten yet. He should have had at least another year or two with his family.
“It’s because Jaime’s gone home,” said another girl. She was probably two or three years Eli’s senior and built like a fairy, her long dark hair coming nearly to her waist. It looked heavier than she did. “They’ve brought somebody to replace Jaime.”
Silence wound around everyone’s necks, flicking scaly tails in troubled faces. Most of the children averted their eyes. Plastic forks sat abandoned on industrial yellow trays.
They thought Jaime had gone home.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” the blond girl said to us. She was among the oldest in the room, and her glare darkened an otherwise pale face.
Slowly, Addie walked over and sat in the empty chair diagonal from Devon. He nodded at us, a movement so slight it was barely noticeable. Next to him, Hally pressed her lips together and kept her expression more or less under control.
“What is your name?” someone said. It was disconcerting to be the center of so much attention after a lifetime of avoidance.
“Addie,” Addie said. Though the room wasn’t large, our voice echoed in the silence. Everything was so bright it was like being under interrogation.
“And?”
“Shh!” someone said. Nervous eyes darted about. I caught snatches of whispered sentences, arguing and denying and hushing—the nurse wasn’t here, so it was okay—but that didn’t mean anything, because they had cameras—they don’t have cameras in here—and even if they did—well, I thought—
“Shh!” everybody seemed to say at once.
And just in time, because the door opened and a nurse entered. She smiled at the silence and rows of round, staring eyes. “So quiet this morning. Are we not awake yet?” A special little smile was allowed to Eli, who didn’t smile back. “Well,” she said. “I see Addie already found a seat. Sorry for the wait, dear. I had to go back to the kitchen to get you a plate.”
Our tray looked exactly like the others. Each partition had its little scoop of breakfast food: sodden scrambled eggs; burned, brittle bacon; a pair of pasty pancakes.
“Thank you,” Addie said quietly.
The stillness lasted a moment longer. Then, like a movie winding into action, a murmur of conversation started up again. Silverware clacked as people stabbed at their hospital-brand breakfast. No one spoke above a whisper. Heads stayed bent, shoulders forward. Only Eli let his gaze roam to Addie and me, then across the room to the nurse.
“Addie . . . Addie.”
Our eyes flickered toward Hally, who gave us a tiny smile. Then her face crumpled. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t mean—I just—I had to see him. I couldn’t just—”
“Shh,” Devon said, tilting his head toward the nurse.
Hally swallowed the rest of her words. And I remembered what Ryan had told me about Hally, about how much she’d longed to meet other hybrids, to be with people like herself. Like us.
Addie hesitated. “It’s okay.”
“None of that matters now,” Devon said, working at a pancake with his fork and butter knife. His face was carefully expressionless, without even his customary frown of concentration or mild annoyance. “They’re here. We all need to get out.”
“How?” Addie said.
“Keep a low profile, for one,” Devon said. “Eat something, Addie—she’s watching. No, don’t look now. Just eat.”
Our hunger had dulled to an ache. The food did nothing to revive it, but Addie ate anyway, tasting the eggs first. They were rubbery on top, spongy in the middle, and salty all the way through. She chewed mechanically as Devon continued speaking, his lips barely moving. None of the other kids seemed to be listening to us, but it was hard to tell. The ones who weren’t talking to anyone stared at their trays. “Keep your head down. Deny everything. You’ve still got hopes of your tests coming back negative. Or shady, at the very least.”
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a cold rush of relief. Just hearing him say it made us both feel better, however slightly. But it was quickly overcome by another source of fear. “What about you two?”
“We’ll figure something out,” Lissa said; it was Lissa now—I knew it without thinking. Her voice almost broke a whisper. “You worry about yourself, okay? There’s something going on in this place, and—” She took a deep breath. “We don’t think Jaime went home, Addie. We—”
“Stop it,” someone said before Addie could shout the truth, before she could describe the boy we’d seen on the gurney, the before and after scans, the bandages wrapped around his skull.
Our head jerked up, a mirage of the nurse’s face already dancing before our eyes. But no, it had been a girl’s voice that had spoken. The blond girl with the neat, thin braids. She met our eyes unflinchingly, then glared at Lissa and Devon. “Don’t talk like that.”
Addie snuck a look at the nurse, but she was reading her magazine and didn’t seem to notice a thing.
The blond girl’s mouth tightened until, slowly, Lissa nodded.
Surgery rang inside us, louder and louder, but if the other kids thought Jaime had gone home, then we weren’t meant to know. Or we were supposed to pretend we didn’t know. Addie clenched our teeth.
The rest of the meal was eaten in silence.
Fifteen minutes later, the nurse stood, clapped her hands, and announced that breakfast was over. She led us from the room and through the halls, keeping us on the right-hand side. We made a messy line, many of the younger kids walking side by side.
It wasn’t long before we stopped in front of another door. Door, hallway, door. Door, hallway, door. Nornand, it seemed, was nothing but a series of hallways and doors and whatever horrors might lie within.
The room inside this particular door was carpeted in somber gray and blue. It was much larger than the room we’d just left, but narrower, like it had once been a conference room. Now, instead of one long table, there were six round ones staggered throughout and a large desk at the very end, farthest from the door. A man in a white button-down shirt nodded at the nurse, who smiled and turned to go. I recognized him immediately: Mr. Conivent.
“All right,” he said. “You guys know what to do. Eli, Dr. Lyanne is going to meet with you today instead of Dr. Sius.”
Eli turned at the sound of his name, but he looked away again without any sign of comprehension. The rest of the kids started drifting to the far side of the room, where a low bookshelf was pushed against the wall, and a couple of clear plastic drawers sat stacked on top of one another. We could see notebooks and a box of pencils.
Addie and Devon were about to follow Lissa when Mr. Conivent stopped us with a hand on the shoulder. “Hello again,” he said with a smile. He’d grabbed Devon, too, who shrugged off his touch, his face impassive.
“Hi,” Addie said softly.
“So,” he said, ushering us and Devon across the room, toward the bookshelves and the desk. “How are you two getting along so far? Had a good morning?” He grabbed a binder from a shelf. “Have you taken geometry yet? I have a few work sheets here.”
“Sorry?” Addie said, thrown by the sudden change in topic. Devon said nothing at all, watching Mr. Conivent as one might watch a particularly dull child who thought he was clever. “Geometry?”
Mr. Conivent smiled at us. “I’m sure your parents wouldn’t want you to lag behind in your schooling while you’re here.”
Of all the things to be worrying about right now. School. Geometry!
“It’s Saturday,” Addie said coldly.
“Yes,” Mr. Conivent said. “We don’t pay attention to things like that here.” His smile had gone hard, like cake left out too long. “Now, have you or haven’t you taken geometry?”
Addie wrestled the disgust from our face. “Yes, last year. And Devon’s two grades higher, so I’m sure he has, too.” Devon’s eyes shifted to us, but he remained silent, accepting Addie’s answer for him.
“Wonderful. Then this shouldn’t be too hard for either of you.” Mr. Conivent pushed a few sheets of paper into our hands. “There are pencils and calculators in the second drawer by the bookshelf. I’ll come check on you in a little while.”
“But—”
“Yes?” he said, still smiling. His expression was smooth, composed. Understanding.
Frightening.
The rest of her protest slid bitterly down our throat. “Okay,” she said.
Mr. Conivent’s teeth were very white and very straight. Perfect, just like his perfectly pressed shirt and perfect white collar. “Good girl,” he said, and extended the same work sheets to Devon. “Devon, you will be seeing Dr. Wendle at ten, so try to get your work done before then.”
No one looked up as we sat down, not even the kids to our left and right. The silence was oppressive. We bent over our papers and got to work, not knowing why or what for.
The math was even easier than we’d expected. We zipped through the first page in a few minutes. But instead of turning to the next work sheet, Addie glanced around the room. Each person sat focused on his or her own work—a book, a packet, a pile of work sheets. They all looked normal. If we’d met any one of them outside of Nornand—at school, maybe, or on the street—we’d never have known the secret in their heads. We’d never have known they were like us.
Eli.
It started with a twitching near his eyes—a blinking, winking, trembling motion. Then his forehead creased, his eyebrows jerking in and out of a frown. Soon it spread to his whole face, from his wide brown eyes to his mouth. Two different expressions battling for supremacy.
Our heart throbbed, thump, thump, thump against our ribs.<
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Eli groaned softly, covering his face with his small hands. The girl sitting next to him didn’t look up, but she stared a little too hard at her workbook, and the pencil in her hand shook. No one else seemed to have noticed.
“No!” someone whispered and grabbed our arm. Addie jerked around, coming face-to-face with the small, dark-haired girl. The fairy child. Her blunted nails dug into our skin. “No,” she repeated. “You can’t.”
“But—”
“No,” she said.
Eli cried out, burying his head in his arms. His entire body spasmed. Once, when Addie and I were very young, during one of our first trips to the local hospital, we’d seen a boy tumble from his bed in the frenzied grip of a seizure. The nurse didn’t make it into his room until he hit the ground, his head snapping back and forth so violently I feared his neck would break. Eli was approaching that now, but it wasn’t his head that moved. It was his fingers, his legs, his shoulders, his arms. Everything, as if he and the other soul sharing their body were trying to tear it apart.
But this wasn’t right—this wasn’t right. Addie and I had never been like this. Never, no matter how hard we’d fought for control as children.
Then Mr. Conivent was there, yanking the boy from his chair with one hand while reaching for a walkie-talkie with the other. “Dr. Lyanne, you’re needed. It’s Eli. Do you hear me? Dr. Lyanne, answer.”
A burst of static. Then: “Coming now.”
Eli writhed in the man’s grasp, his arms flailing—a jumble of pale skin and red hair and blue Nornand uniform. “Stop it,” he kept crying, the words half garbled. But to who? “Stop it. Stop it.” One of his sneakers smashed against Mr. Conivent’s shin. He grunted, nearly letting go. Eli jerked one arm free. But his movements were too muddled, his coordination too haphazard for him to make it far. The man half dragged, half carried him all the way from the room.