by Kat Zhang
The door slammed. Silence reigned, iron-fisted. But only for a moment.
The whispers started like a rustling in a field. All work was abandoned in a heartbeat. Heads bent together, shoulders hunched, eyes glued on the door. The watcher was gone. Everyone came alive. Across the room, Devon and Lissa were speaking quietly to each other, and both looked over at Addie and me.
The hand on our arm—we’d forgotten it was even there—tightened. “You’ve got to pretend he’s not there when he does that,” the dark-haired girl said. “Unless he gets violent. Then you can run away. But we’re not allowed to talk to him whenever he gets like that.”
“Why not?” Addie said.
The girl frowned. “Because he’s sick,” she said. “And the doctors are working on making him better. We might mess him up again.”
“This is better?” Addie said. “What was he like before?”
The girl didn’t have time to respond. Because just then, Eli screamed.
Footsteps came pounding from all directions. Muffled calls and commands filtered through the door. The boy screamed again, and this time, the tenor was different. Off.
“He’s Eli now,” the girl said. She tugged at her hair, nervously winding long, dark strands around her fingers.
Addie frowned. “What do you mean? Wasn’t he Eli before?”
The fairy girl pressed her lips together.
“They say it’s Eli,” said a boy from the table on our right. “They pretend, because it was always Eli who was dominant before.” He looked around at the other kids. No one met his eyes, and he shrank a little.
“Shut up,” said the blond girl. The one with her hair in long, thin plaits tied off with black ribbons. Bridget, Lissa had whispered in our ear as we trekked through the hall after breakfast. “Shut up. Now.”
The door opened before anyone could speak further. Dr. Lyanne scanned the room, meeting every eye that didn’t look away.
“Everything’s fine,” she said. Her ash-brown hair was slipping from its ponytail, but she ignored it. Her voice was calm, modulated. “Go back to work.”
Mr. Conivent slipped in after her, and the two exchanged a few quiet words before sliding past each other. We heard only the very end of their conversation: Take care of it before they come.
“All right,” Mr. Conivent said to us. “You heard what Dr. Lyanne said. Back to work.”
We worked in absolute silence until ten, when a nurse came to retrieve Devon. Lissa’s fingers twitched. She seemed to check herself from grabbing on to her brother’s arm. Instead, the two of them met eyes before Devon set down his pencil, rose, and left.
No muss. No fuss. Just a quiet exit.
While we watched, terrified.
Seventeen
Lunch was at twelve thirty exactly. At twelve fifteen, Mr. Conivent told us to put away our things and line up by the door. The nurse led us back to the breakfast room, and we ended up sitting across from the dark-haired fairy girl, who had her head bowed. Lissa grabbed the seat to our left, and I felt a pang of relief when Bridget chose one near the other end of the table.
The nurse set down our trays one by one, sliding them from her silver cart. Mashed potatoes. A pool of thin, yellow-brown gravy. Something that was probably a fried chicken cutlet, but who could tell under all that soggy breading?
Like at breakfast, a murmur of conversation started up when the nurse retreated to her corner.
“Jaime didn’t go home,” Addie whispered in Lissa’s ear, our voice so low I wasn’t sure Lissa would understand. But she went still. “I saw him. In a gurney. With a bandage around his head.”
“Devon,” Lissa said too loudly, and people turned to stare. She hardly seemed to notice, looking at us with wild eyes. “Devon. They took Devon—”
“They only took him for a test,” the fairy girl said. She was poking at her cutlet, her eyes flickering to the nurse before settling back on us and Lissa. “They do a lot of those when you first get here. He’ll be back.”
Lissa looked too stricken to speak, and Addie said quickly, “Are you sure—?” She hesitated.
“Kitty,” the girl said.
The name didn’t fit her. It was too ordinary, too sweet. This girl deserved a name from a fairy tale. Kitty stopped chewing and stared at us. She flushed, glancing at the kids on either side of her before mumbling, “Yes. I think so.” She tugged on a lock of hair, which was held away from her face by two wedge-shaped clips. They still bore traces of color, a deep red, but most of the paint had been chipped off to reveal the metal skeleton.
“Is that what they do here?” Addie said. “Tests and things? All the time?”
The little girl swirled her gravy into her mashed potatoes. “Not all the time. We do school. And we play board games. Sometimes they let us watch a movie.”
“They ask us questions,” the blond boy on our right said quietly, looking at the nurse while he spoke. Addie jumped, but he kept talking as if he’d been a part of our conversation the entire time. “They make us talk to them about the things we did that day, or that week or whatever. We have to tell them about things that happened when we were little.”
Kitty nodded. “Sometimes they make you take pills, too, like Cal—” She blanched, her voice faltering, then continued so quickly her words were garbled. “Like Eli. Like Jaime did.”
“What kind of pills?” Lissa said. “What do they do?”
“They make us better,” Kitty said.
Lissa’s face twisted, and Addie interjected before she could speak. “What did that boy mean this morning? In the Study room. He said . . . he said the doctors said it was Eli, that they pretend, because Eli was dominant . . . before?”
Kitty bit her fork. The blond boy’s mouth twisted downward.
“Hanson’s just messed up in the head,” he said finally, gruffly. “Eli’s dominant. Always has been.”
“Well, of course,” Addie said, “But—”
The boy looked away from us.
Our eyes met with Lissa’s. Addie tried another question: “Isn’t Eli too young to be here, anyway? He can’t be ten yet, can he?”
Eli sat five or six seats farther down from Lissa. No one spoke to him. Because he was so young? Or because of what had happened earlier in the Study room? Dr. Lyanne had returned him to the group at the beginning of lunch, leading him in by the hand. The animal wariness was gone, replaced by a vapidness in his eyes and a stumble in his step.
“He’s eight,” Kitty said, just as the blond boy said, “His parents got rid of him.”
“Why?” Addie said. “He’s got two more years.”
Kitty shrugged, her thin shoulders barely tenting up her short sky-blue sleeves. “They didn’t want him. Didn’t want him hybrid, anyway. Maybe if they cure him, they’ll take him back.” She pushed a forkful of mashed potatoes into her mouth, swallowed, and looked at us. “They should, if he’s cured.” But there was a tremor in her voice that matched the tremor in the blond boy’s eyes and the tremor in Lissa’s chin and the tremor in every movement of every child at this table. The undercurrent of fear.
A whole tableful of children, pretending we knew nothing, pretending we trusted our guardians. Pretending we weren’t afraid.
Today turned out to be a board game day. Everyone split into small groups, each with their own box or deck of cards. Kitty’s eyes trailed after us, so Addie motioned for her to follow us and Lissa into a corner of the room.
We chose our pieces and rolled to see who would go first. The door opened just as Addie reached for the dice. First a nurse walked in. Then came Devon. A little shaky, a little pale, but Devon.
Lissa jumped, her hand shooting out to grab our wrist. To keep us from going anywhere? Or to keep herself?
The nurse who’d come in with Devon spoke quietly with the one already in the room. Then they turned and looked in our direction. No, not just in our direction. At us. At Addie and me.
One of them nudged Devon, who stumbled forward.
<
What’s wrong with him?> Addie said. Caught up in her swirl of fear was an unexpected splotch of anger, dark red.
“Addie?” one of the nurses called. Our eyes didn’t leave Devon. “Addie, come here, please.”
Addie didn’t move. Her voice was tight.
And then Devon seemed to see us for the first time. His eyes focused. His steps quickened. “Addie—” he said.
“Addie!” the nurse said, sharper this time. “Come here.”
“Go,” Kitty whispered. But Lissa didn’t loosen her grip on our wrist, and Devon was still calling us.
Except it wasn’t Devon. I recognized Ryan only when he was less than two feet away, but I recognized him, even if Addie didn’t.
“Addie,” he said, dropping down beside us. “Addie. Don’t—when, when they . . .” He frowned as if he couldn’t find the right words to put on his tongue. “It’s a lie, Addie—”
A hand pulled us up—tore us from Lissa’s grasp and Ryan’s muttered, cluttered sentences.
“Didn’t you hear me?” the nurse said.
Addie strained to look behind us, trying to catch Ryan’s last words. “No, I—”
“Well, Dr. Wendle is waiting for you. Come along.” To Lissa, who stared after us with frightened eyes, she said, “You look after your brother. He’s a little woozy from the medicine, but he’ll be fine in a bit. Don’t worry.”
“What medicine?” Lissa said.
But the nurse didn’t—or pretended not to—hear. She pulled us away from the others, away from Kitty’s wide brown eyes and the black-and-white dice and the colorful, forgotten board game.
The last thing we heard before the door shut was Ryan’s voice, finally having found what he’d wanted to say.
“Don’t believe them, Addie. Don’t—”
And that was all.
Dr. Wendle smiled when we walked in. I’d thought we were going back to his office, but we were in a much smaller room instead. Here, the walls were a dull gray-blue, the floor shining from the luminous overhead lights. Dr. Wendle stood beside something vaguely resembling a dentistry chair.
“There you are, Addie,” he said, as if we were a lost penny. He reached toward us, and Addie flinched. “What’s wrong? Oh, it won’t be anything like this morning. I promise.” He pointed at the chair. “All out in the open, see?”
“Devon,” Addie said. “Devon, he—”
“Was a little woozy? Don’t worry, it’s just a sedative. He’ll be back to normal soon.”
Addie dodged another attempt to grab our arm. “Why’d you give him sedatives?”
Why did Eli—or Cal, or whoever he was—quake in his own skin until I was afraid he’d shatter or tear apart? What did you do to Jaime Cortae?
And why did you tell the other children he’d gone home?
Dr. Wendle had a laugh like a wheeze. He readjusted his glasses, setting them higher on his short nose. “It was to help him calm down a little. You know, like how they give you laughing gas at the dentist’s?”
Calm him down for what? I wanted to ask, but Dr. Wendle allowed us no more time for speech. He patted the chair. “Sit. It will only take a moment, and then you can rejoin your friends.”
A metal tray sat on the counter, a syringe glinting inside.
“Addie? Hurry, please.”
Addie walked step by laborious step to the dark blue chair and climbed on, leaning back against the headrest. What else could we do?
“I was looking through your records,” Dr. Wendle said. “You’re missing a vaccination you should have gotten a few years ago.”
“For what?” Addie said. Our nails dug into the padded chair arms.
“Tetanus. I’m surprised your school didn’t make you get it.”
We’d had all the required vaccinations before, of course. Measles. Mumps. That sort of thing. Failure to have a child vaccinated was punishable by hefty fines. But most of the shots had been when we were a baby or toddler, far too many years ago to recall. The tetanus shot must not have been compulsory.
Addie eyed the needle in Dr. Wendle’s hand. “Are you sure?” she said. “Can’t I—can’t I call my parents first?”
“It says it right here in your file,” he said, though he wasn’t looking at the file at all. “It’s no big deal, Addie. It’ll just be a pinch.”
It wasn’t the needle we were afraid of.
“But I—”
“Hold still,” Dr. Wendle said. “It’s only a shot, and an important one at that. Do you know what tetanus does?”
We didn’t. And before we could protest further, he’d somehow positioned the needle and slid it into the crook of our elbow.
Addie cried out, but Dr. Wendle’s free hand gripped our arm and held us still as he pressed the plunger. We fell silent as he matter-of-factly pulled the needle out and briefly pressed a cotton swab against our skin.
“There,” he said. “No need for a fuss, see?”
We couldn’t speak. Our eyes were glued to the tiny red dot on our inner elbow. Then Dr. Wendle covered it with a Band-Aid, and that was that.
“All finished,” Dr. Wendle said with a smile.
We just sat there for a second, staring at him. He was so short that we hardly had to look up. The tender skin of our inner elbow throbbed.
He coughed and gestured toward the door. “I’ll call a nurse, and she’ll take you back to the group.”
“What?” Addie said. “What about—about the test?”
“Afraid that’s not quite ready for you yet,” he said. “You might have to come back before dinner.” He’d already turned back to his instruments. “Now go stand by the door, please. The nurse will be here soon.”
We stared at him a moment longer. Then, slowly, Addie did as he bid, walking to the door and stepping outside. As he’d promised, a nurse showed up a few seconds later.
We walked in a daze, all our built-up adrenaline crashing down around us. Just a vaccination. Come back later for the real test.
“Come on, dear,” the nurse said. She was farther ahead of us than we’d thought. Addie quickened our pace, but it didn’t help. The woman walked too quickly. In fact, everyone seemed to be walking too quickly. A blur was stuck in the corner of our vision, moving when we moved, stopping when we stopped.
“Don’t lag, now,” the nurse said, doubling back. She reached out, frowning, as if—as if ready to . . . catch us. “The others are waiting, and we wouldn’t want—”
We never heard what it was we wouldn’t want.
There was a muffled cry.
A weakening . . .
A fall.
Darkness.
Eighteen
Her name was the first thing that entered my mind as I woke. When we’d been children—before the doctors, before the fear—we’d almost always called to each other as we emerged from shared dreams. It had happened less and less as the years passed, until the habit faded away completely.
We lay very still. I stretched in the fog of our mind, reaching for Addie. She couldn’t still be asleep, but sometimes she got up slower than I did.
<. . . Addie?>
She didn’t answer. I searched harder, fear’s sharp, cold blade peeling away my slumber.
Memory and awareness hit me all at once. Hospital. We were at the hospital—the clinic. We’d been in the hallway. There had been a nurse. And now? Now what?
My voice rang out and echoed back with the tremor of déjà vu. This was the second time I’d called Addie’s name like this—scrabbling through our mind for a shred of her existence.
The first had been more than a month ago, when we’d drunk the drug-laced tea. Refcon, Ryan had called it.
What’s it usually for? I’d managed to say. It
had been one of the later sessions, when I had better control of our tongue and lips. Ryan had said something about specialty care and psychiatric wards.
Psychiatric wards. Psychiatric hospitals.
Nornand Clinic of Psychiatric Health.
Here.
No reply. I was alone. This was not Hally’s home. No Ryan sat beside us, talking to pass the time.
I forced our eyes open.
Wherever we were, it was dim. There were no windows. A yellow glow lined the bottom of the door, but that was all. I closed our eyes again. <. . . Addie?>
But I didn’t hope for an answer, and none came. She was gone. For how long? At Hally’s house, it had never been more than an hour. But at Hally’s house, I’d never fallen unconscious along with Addie, either.
I couldn’t think about it. The more I thought about it, the more nauseated I felt.
It was okay. Maybe we’d already been unconscious a long time. Maybe Addie would be back soon. I’d just lie here on this bed and wait.
I didn’t let myself think about what I’d do if I kept waiting and waiting and nothing happened.
Our chest moved gently up . . . down . . . up . . . down. Our eyes stayed closed. I kept my distance from the hazy darkness that had swallowed Addie. Usually when she came back, I’d feel her pressing at the edges of it, folding away the emptiness like a blanket, flowing into the space next to mine. All I had to do was wait until the drug wore off and she woke up.
I wouldn’t think about anything else. I wouldn’t think about why we were here, why they had done this to us, why they had lied. What we would do once Addie was awake.
No. I’d wait until she came back. Until we were whole again. Then we could worry about things like that together.
Our breathing was calm, smooth. The breathing of a girl asleep. For all our body knew, we were asleep. Addie was, anyway, and that was all that mattered. How long had it been since my anger could quicken our breaths, my fear make our heart pound, my embarrassment make us blush? Of course, usually when I was angry, frightened, or embarrassed, Addie was, too, so it wasn’t such a big deal.