Echoes of Us
Page 6
Mr. Grey had disappeared upstairs. I was relieved to avoid his stone-faced discomfort.
“Do you want to . . . watch a movie or something?” Mrs. Grey said.
To my surprise, I discovered that part of me did. Part of me wanted to sit down with this woman, who I didn’t know at all, and playact a family.
But it would only be pantomiming a reality long lost. And Mrs. Grey didn’t really want to sit with us. The smile on her face was a sad, kind lie, but a lie nonetheless. Probably, she wanted nothing more than to join her husband wherever he’d hidden himself, and mourn. She’d just lost a daughter. Two daughters, if she’d known about Darcie’s hybridity for long.
“No, that’s all right.” Addie pretended not to see the relief her words brought to the woman’s face. “Can I—can I see Darcie’s room?”
“Your room.” The words were firm. Mrs. Grey was committed to this charade, no matter how much pain it caused her. Her daughter’s life was on the line.
“My room,” Addie echoed.
We followed Mrs. Grey up the stairs and down the hall. Darcie’s favorite color, judging by her room, was blue. Her bedspread was dyed the shade of summer sky. Her pillows rested like twin clouds against the headboard. Her curtains were a gauzy aquamarine, so long they trailed against the carpet.
Mrs. Grey lingered at the threshold, but didn’t step inside. Addie had to maneuver past her. We studied the posters on the walls. A few of soccer players. One of a band we’d never heard of. The rest were old movie posters, mostly comedies.
There was a small vanity table in the corner, the surface cleared but for a plastic jewelry box. We heard a sharp intake of breath as Addie reached out to touch it. Mrs. Grey looked away when Addie glanced over and we slowly retracted our hand. It wasn’t ours. None of it was ours.
Awkwardly, Addie went to sit on the bed. The mattress sank heavily under our weight.
“It’s a nice room,” Addie said.
“We were planning on painting the walls soon.” Mrs. Grey’s voice was a whispery, papery thing. “Cream instead of white. You—you wanted them cream.”
“Darcie wanted them cream,” Addie said. Mrs. Grey made to speak, but Addie interrupted her gently. “I’m not Darcie. I don’t have to be Darcie until tomorrow. Tonight, I—we’re still Addie and Eva.”
The woman hesitated, framed by the door of her daughter’s bedroom. Then, slowly, she came and joined us on the bed. Her fingers were cold but soft on our temple, against our cheek. She tucked a strand of hair behind our ear, and suddenly, we were fighting a battle against our tears. We won. Just barely, but we won.
“Lovely names,” she said and kissed us on the forehead as if we were hers.
A woman came the next day. She had dark red hair, and deep brown eyes, and a soothing voice. She had documents explaining why the government thought it best that Darcie Grey be taken away from her family and institutionalized. Her black car rumbled beneath us as it carried us away. Addie and I watched Darcie’s house, Darcie’s parents, get smaller and smaller in the rear window. They didn’t wave.
We were driven, then flown, then driven again. It all took less than a day. Addie and I spoke little, which seemed to suit the woman fine.
All too soon, we were emerging from a car in front of the Hahns institution. The mountain air was bitterly cold. When we’d arrived at Nornand, we’d clutched a red duffel bag and the chip Ryan had slipped into our pocket. Two things to remind us of the outside world. Now we stood in front of Hahns, staring and shivering, with nothing but Marion’s ring.
The first thing that struck me about the institution was how old it seemed. Nornand—even Powatt—had looked like a hospital. Cold and stark, yes, but beautiful in their own ways: Nornand with its enormous windows and bright steel; Powatt with its clean, white lines.
Hahns was like a crumbling stone prison. If I’d dared speak, I would have asked how long ago the institution had been built. Fifty years? Sixty? Longer? The earliest institutions had been constructed during the years after the start of the Great Wars, only a couple decades after the turn of the twentieth century. The invasions on American soil had been more than enough to incite hybrid hatred to new heights. Thousands had died or disappeared, either officially accused of treason, or simply vanishing at the hands of angry, fearful neighbors. Sometimes, angry, fearful family.
After the initial fervor, the institutions had gone up as safety boxes for hybrids. A means of protecting everybody. A shield.
Hahns did not seem like it could shield anything. I understood now why children died here in the cold. The wind whipped tears into our eyes, blinded us with our hair. I took as deep a breath as our rigid lungs would allow. Then adjusted the ring on our finger so the camera captured the institution’s facade.
“Come along,” the woman said, and led us inside.
The air stank of musk and the coppery, metallic scent of rust. A man slouched at the front desk, his face soft with weight. His eyes roamed over us without particular interest. “Name?”
“Darcie Grey,” the woman said, and as she said it—as both man and woman turned to look at us—I felt a sudden earthquake of fear. Of terror so deep it threatened to split us open, leave our insides naked in the pale light.
For as long as we stayed at Hahns, Addie and I were Darcie Grey. We were fourteen years old. We played soccer, and loved blue, and had once wanted to paint our bedroom walls cream instead of white.
The man jabbed a button on his phone. Said in a voice that was more bored than anything else, “Could I get someone down here to take care of a new child?”
The woman didn’t even wait to hand us off. Just peeled away from the front desk and disappeared down the hall. A few minutes later, another man appeared. A caretaker, judging by his tan uniform.
“Darcie, right?” he said as he led us to the elevator. He reminded us of a teacher we used to have, his voice a low grumble, his jaw darkly scruffed.
I nodded.
Hahns was known for being brutal.
Addie laughed again. It sounded off, the pitch twisted.
TEN
The ancient elevator took us up one floor.
Once upon a time, someone had painted the hallway two-toned: white on top, a thick swath of yellow on the bottom. Perhaps it had looked all right when it was first done. Now, the white had faded mostly to gray. The yellow had reduced to a sickly, muddy color. And everywhere, great flakes and gashes of paint had chipped off, revealing the bleakness underneath.
We passed several doors, each evenly spaced, before the caretaker stopped. The other wards, judging from the blueprint in our memory. The lock on the door was old-fashioned. No keypad, like the ones in Nornand’s basement. The caretaker only carried a single key. I tried to notice everything. There was no knowing what might become useful later.
Then the door opened, and we got our first look at our new prison.
At Nornand, we’d shared a bedroom with Kitty and Nina. It hadn’t been anything fancy—two beds, two nightstands, a few extra square feet of floor space. There had been a modicum of privacy.
There was no such thing as privacy here. The caretaker led Addie and me into a long, cold room. Dozens of cast-iron beds stood in almost-straight rows. The girls in, and near, and around the beds all looked up as we entered. They wore uniforms, as we’d worn uniforms. But theirs were eggshell colored, and they had no shoes—not real shoes. Instead, they wore strange, soft slippers, almost like ballet flats.
I took a deep breath. Fiddled with our ring.
I let our hands drop to our sides.
“There are plenty of empty beds, Darcie.” As the caretaker spoke, several of the girls moved surreptitiously closer to a bed, claiming it as their own. But the man was right. There were perhaps thirty or forty beds, but only about twenty-five girls. Almost all of them looked under thirteen.
After months of being the youngest running with Sabine’s group, it was strange to suddenly be the oldest. Our eyes went from girl to girl, watching them watch us.
I saw her, too.
Recognized her, too.
And from the look on her face, she recognized us.
Bridget Conrade, from Nornand.
Bridget, who had ruined our rescue plans. Prevented us from saving the other patients as we’d intended.
Bridget, who knew we were not Darcie Grey.
Bridget had never liked us. Had no reason to keep our secret. What were the chances that we’d come all this way, after all this time, and find her waiting beyond Hahns’s doors?
Bridget’s eyes locked on to ours. Her hair, which had always been braided back at Nornand, was pale gold around her shoulders. Had she lost her ribbons?
“I’ll find some clothes for you,” the caretaker said, and then he was gone. Left us in this room with these girls who didn’t know us, and the one girl who did.
As long as Addie and I didn’t try to take their bed, most of the girls seemed more than happy to pretend we didn’t exist. Even Bridget had turned away.
I made our way through the rows of beds. Some were scooted into little clusters, others lonely by themselves. It made a strange sort of chaos. The girls in their wrinkled uniforms added to the entropy.
A group of them sat in the corner, their heads bent together in hushed conversation. Most were by themselves. Some picked at the walls, stripping wallpaper and paint. Little piles of both littered the ground. No one had bothered to sweep the floor in weeks, at least. Someone lay buried in blankets in the far corner, coughing.
A single girl, hair clipped short to the nape of her neck, drifted around the perimeter of the room, her fingers brushing against the wall, her lips moving like she was speaking, or perhaps singing, to herself. Her eyes met ours at random, then skittered away again. Other than us and Bridget, she was probably the eldest in the room. There was something missing in her eyes.
Bridget knew we were approaching her. I could tell by the way she started to angle away from us, then caught herself and stubbornly, awkwardly, stayed exactly where she was. She stood by the foot of one of the beds, her hand planted on the metal railing.
Back in Anchoit, Addie and I had thought endlessly about the other kids at Nornand. The ones we’d meant to save. Would have saved. Should have saved. Addie and I had gone down to the basement because we insisted on freeing Hally and Jaime. Dr. Lyanne had been the one responsible for getting the other children out.
Whose fault was it that they’d never made it?
Ours, for breaking away from the group?
Dr. Lyanne’s, for not making it to the door, and Peter’s waiting vans?
Or Bridget’s?
Bridget, who told the nurse that something suspicious was going on, blowing Dr. Lyanne’s cover as she led the remaining children through the hall.
Bridget, who’d wanted so badly to be saved. Just not by Peter.
I drew up beside her. She was a little shorter than we were, her hair straighter, and even blonder than our newly bleached color. During our time at Nornand, I’d never seen her bite her nails, but they were ragged now, destroyed almost to the quick.
She fisted her hands when she caught me looking. “Darcie, huh?”
She looked around. Some of the other girls were watching us now. Curious, in a dull sort of way.
“Well, Darcie.” Bridget put the slightest bit of overemphasis on our fake name. “Like the man said. There are plenty of beds. Don’t feel obliged to choose one, you know, around here.”
There was something ridiculous about the way she spoke. Like she was drawing reference from half-forgotten movies or books on how to be haughty. She was a caricature of disdain, and suddenly, I couldn’t understand how Addie and I had ever seen her as more than just a thirteen-, fourteen-year-old girl utterly lost in a world that wanted her dead.
It didn’t alter what she had done. But it softened my anger, and my fear.
“I’ve done nothing to you,” I said.
She gave a bitter, huffing laugh. “You change things. You come, you mess around and—and things change for the worse. So please—” Her voice caught. She wrestled with it. Won. “Please pick a bed far over there and try not to ever talk with me again.”
“Do they listen?” I whispered.
Bridget frowned and looked around at the other girls. Then realization dawned over her face. Her gaze darted up to the ceiling. A security camera perched up there, its tiny light blinking red.
“No,” she said. “They watch, but they don’t listen.”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
Her arms crossed over her body. “For what? I answered a question, that’s all.”
I shrugged and offered her a small smile. Turned to go.
I hadn’t taken two steps when she said, “They’re going to take everything. They’re very strict on security here, especially after what happened in July.”
The breakout attempt that had ended in death and disaster.
Slowly, I turned.
Bridget pulled something from her pocket. Two little lengths of white string, I realized. They looked like they could have been unraveled from someone’s shirt. “Anyway, like I said. They take everything away here. So if you want to keep that ring, you better find some way to hide it.”
I fisted our hand, the way she had when she caught us looking at her nails.
“Did that boy give it to you?” she said. “That foreign-looking boy. Ryan, or—”
“Shh,” I hissed before I could help it. Bridget’s head whipped up, her eyes narrowed, her shoulders tensing.
“Please don’t talk about him.” I couldn’t help the note of panic in our voice. Bridget’s words were hardly dangerous, and she wasn’t speaking loudly enough for anyone to pay attention. But this went beyond needing to keep our cover. I didn’t want Ryan’s name spoken in this place. As if saying it aloud would cast some sort of spell to bring him. I couldn’t have him here, in this prison of the desolate.
I thought, for a moment, that Bridget would talk about him anyway. Her eyes bored into ours, gray as frosted slate. Then, so quick I nearly missed it, she gave a short nod.
“It’s pretty,” she said. She looked about to turn away, but at the last moment, reached out and touched it. Her fingertips brushed against the band and against our knuckle, before darting back to her side.
The caretaker who brought lunch also handed Addie and me a uniform and directed us to the bathroom at the ward’s far end. Standing in a stall, I suddenly couldn’t force myself to unlace our shoes. They’d been part of our school uniform, scuffed brown oxfords that were the only things we retained of home.
&n
bsp; Addie and I stood there for a long time, braced against the stall door, taking deep, ragged breaths and trying to calm down. The tiny size of the stalls didn’t help. Addie and I usually used the handicap stalls of public bathrooms, when we could. There was none here, just little stalls designed for children younger than we were.
I took off our shoes. Set them side by side on the toilet seat. Stepped into the white slippers the other girls wore, the elastic snapping into place around our ankles. We could feel the ground through the thin sole.
After a moment, I dropped the ring inside the slipper. Hopefully, no one would think to check.
The rest of the uniform was similarly thin. As the cloth whispered against our skin, I heard in it the echo of Jackson’s words about hybrid institutions.
Holding tanks. They hold us until we die, and they do everything short of putting a bullet through our heads to speed up the process.
I shivered. Said, as much for my benefit as Addie’s,
When Addie and I returned to the main room, the caretaker had already distributed the lunch trays. Some kind of sandwich. A cup of water. Limp beans in a puddle of oil. The girls ate silently. Many were too thin to be healthy, but most picked at the food like it barely interested them. Someone coughed a deep, wet cough that made our own chest hurt.
“Here, I’ll take that.” The caretaker reached for our clothes, and I pressed the bundle against our chest. The man’s smile flattened.
“I want to keep the jacket,” I said. “It’s cold.”
He grabbed hold and tugged—so suddenly and harshly I didn’t have the chance to fight back. “The cold’s just temporary. A little glitch in the heating. It’ll warm up soon. It’s against policy for you to have anything but the standard uniform.”
His smile returned. He handed us a lunch tray, and caught us looking in Bridget’s direction.
“Do you know her?” he asked. I shook our head. Darcie Grey didn’t know Bridget. “You look a bit alike, don’t you?”
“I guess,” I said. And then, to keep up the charade: “What’s her name?”