by Kat Zhang
I gathered branches from the trees, as dry as I could find, then cleared a bit of the ground, digging until I hit dry dirt. I relied half on memories of Dad’s hands on our camping trips, and half on more recent recollections of Lyle’s novels, on his overeager explanations of fire building while Addie and I tried to do our homework.
Joy was seeing the first sparks fly off the end of the spindle. Feeding the fire until it crackled and flickered, until I could tug the damp slippers from our feet and lay them out to dry. Joy was slowly regaining feeling in our toes, seeing the color bleed back into them, and to our fingers. I thawed in the glow of the flames.
TWENTY-THREE
I found the main road in the morning, mostly through luck. That, and the almost unearthly silence that muffled the woods. It was so quiet that when the cars did start passing by, I heard them long before I saw them.
I needed to stay by the road. It was my best shot at finding civilization before night fell again. But staying close to the road meant a higher chance of being spotted.
I trekked on. Soon, our face was completely numb again, our legs itching with the cold. Our slippers, made for smooth institution floors, started to wear through. I walked with a limp, trying to avoid the growing hole near the heel of the left slipper. Our right ankle, the one we’d injured at Powatt, ached deep in the bone.
Each time I heard a car coming, I melted deeper into the woods until the vehicle passed. Most seemed to be headed downhill, but a few were going up, toward the institution. Had the woman finally alerted Jenson?
For the first time in a long time, I was hungry. Compared to the cold and the exhaustion, it was the least of my worries. But as the hours wore on, the hunger manifested itself as a sharp pain right under our breastbone, as a weakness in our legs, a cloudiness in our head.
I walked until I heard the most beautiful sound in the world.
Traffic.
I recognized the town. We’d passed through it when we first drove to Hahns. Addie and I had wondered if this was the same place those four kids had shown up after the July breakout, bloody and wild-eyed.
I wasn’t bloody, but I was freezing. And I had no money, no way to make so much as a phone call. I couldn’t walk into a store and ask to borrow their phone. People here undoubtedly remembered what had happened in the summer. They might recognize Hahns’s uniform.
The sun was low again, dyeing the snow a rich yellow as it sank over the rooftops. I lingered at the edge of the trees. Hesitant, despite everything, to leave the woods behind.
I muttered. Then laughed.
The laughter disappeared as swiftly as it had come. I’d be even more a criminal by the time this was all over. I needed clothes, and food. That was just to start.
Luckily, it was too cold for most people to just be hanging around. I waited until there weren’t any cars passing, then darted out from the trees and ducked behind a building. A restaurant. I breathed in the heady smell of food like it could actually fill our stomach.
The restaurant’s back door creaked open.
I dove behind the trash bins. A steady stream of noise came from inside the restaurant: the low roar of voices, the clink of glasses. A television blared some kind of sports game.
Slowly, I peeked around the side of the bins. The girl in the doorway buttoned up her coat over her waitressing uniform and shivered, setting out across the parking lot.
I let our blanket fall to the ground. Caught the door just before it closed.
If I was going to steal food without being noticed, a darkened, noisy restaurant might be the best place to do it.
The place was large enough for no one to notice as I snuck in the back door. A large bar took up the front, and a crowd had gathered there to watch a football game. The dining area was emptier, with a few tables, and fewer booths. Despite the setting sun, it was still a little early for the dinner crowd.
A table near the back was deserted, but hadn’t been cleared yet. A good quarter of a sandwich remained, oozing half-solidified cheese. I wrapped it up in the red-and-white checkered wax paper and held it by our side before swiping the quarters that had been left as a tip.
One of the teams scored a goal. The group gathered around the bar exploded in cheers. Emboldened by their lack of attention, I snuck a little farther from the back of the restaurant.
Someone had left their coat hanging on their chair. I looked around. Everyone who wasn’t deep in conversation seemed fixated on the football game, or on their meal. I grabbed the coat, retreating quickly to the shadows.
It was far too large, but better than nothing. I’d rather look like a girl who’d borrowed her boyfriend’s jacket than one escaped from a mental institution.
There was more leftover food on the tables, but I didn’t want to risk it. The coat’s owner might come back at any moment. I hurried for the back door, slipped through, and didn’t stop moving until I’d left the restaurant far behind.
It didn’t take long to find a pay phone, even in such a tiny town. It was near a main square, though, and I hesitated before approaching.
A man near the pay phone complained about snow getting into his boots. Two women chattered excitedly about a trail they’d skied earlier today. A little boy begged his mother for spending money. Christmas trimmings had already gone up, the storefronts festooned with loops of evergreen and bright red bows.
Sitting in the institution, I’d forgotten about things like Christmas decorations.
I wrapped the coat tighter around our shoulders and hurried into the phone booth. My stolen quarters clinked into the slot.
The digits to Henri’s satphone had run through my mind so many times, it felt almost dreamlike to actually input them. We’re coming, Ryan had carved on the new ring. But he would think me still at Hahns. I couldn’t stay anywhere near the institution—not when police could canvass this entire town in a matter of hours.
I had to contact him. But the phone blared an error noise that slashed apart all my hopes. The satphone wasn’t connected, or wasn’t working. Ryan still hadn’t fixed it.
Doubt crept cold fingers up my insides. Maybe I’d gotten the number wrong. It had been so long, and it wasn’t impossible that some night at Hahns, I’d switched a number around in my mind.
If Addie were here, I could ask her. Could double-check.
But she wasn’t.
I started to hang up.
Heard the crunch of shoes against snow.
And whirled around, fingers tight around the phone, to face whoever had snuck up behind us.
TWENTY-FOUR
His pale eyes widened.
We stared at each other. I gripped the phone like a weapon.
I was dreaming. I was still freezing up in the woods, or back in the cell at Hahns, dreaming about the impossibility of this moment.
Then he grinned. A match strike in the snow. It lit me from the inside out. I dropped the phone and threw our arms around him.
Because I wasn’t dreaming. And it was Jackson.
“Eva,” he said quietly. It wasn’t a question but an acknowledgment. He pulled back, held me at arm’s length so he could study me. “Where’s Marion? Did she get you out? I—”
I shook our head, filled to bursting with questions of my own. “The other girls at the institution helped me. It’s a long story. But we can’t stay here. The woman who runs Hahns—she’s going to come looking for me.” I glanced at the evening crowd outside the phone booth. “I have to leave town.”
“Lucky you, then,” Jackson said with a grin, “running into me.”
I lingered near the phone booth while Jackson called someone named Ben. Their conversation was brief: “Yes, I found her—no, you need to come right now—we’ll be by the ball field.”
He hung up and turned back to me. H
is hair was even longer now. Almost to his shoulders, and darker than I remembered it. His skin, on the other hand, looked paler. There was a fatigue that hung about him, even when he was smiling.
“Who’s Ben?” I asked.
“Also a long story. Come on. Let’s go someplace more secluded.”
I followed him to a chained-up baseball field at the edge of town. Someone—Jackson himself?—had smashed the padlock on the abandoned bathroom door.
Jackson hesitated as I walked in after him. “It’s gross, I know.”
I looked around. A ratty blanket covered most of the space between the stalls and the sink. A sleeping bag lay on top. “Actually, as far as public bathrooms go, this is pretty good.”
“Yeah, the real five-star establishment of the toilet world.” He grinned. “There’s no heating, of course. But the walls and roof are nice.”
The initial overwhelming relief at seeing Jackson had faded enough to allow other emotions to bleed through. For me to remember how our lives had been the last time we’d seen each other.
During those early days in Anchoit, Jackson had been one of our few connections with the outside world. But that was all before. Now I couldn’t disentangle Jackson from Addie’s feelings for him, and Sabine’s betrayal, and Powatt.
“Eva?”
Our head snapped up. I’d forgotten the intensity of his stare. The way he’d used to study us. Or Addie, I suppose. I fought not to look away.
“Who brought you here?” I asked.
“No one,” he said. “Vince and I shook off Marion’s friends about a week ago. They wouldn’t come here. They said they were bringing me to her, and they wouldn’t consider anything else.”
“You knew I was at Hahns.”
“Only because I overheard Marion’s friends talking about it.” Jackson made sure I was looking at him before continuing. His eyes were solemn. “When she told me she wanted to help me, she didn’t say anything about a deal. I had no idea about her sending you into Hahns—about the whole deal with the footage—until I got out.”
I fidgeted with the ring around our finger. Felt the scratch of the engraving underneath the band. In dealing with the aftermath, I hadn’t had time to properly think about Marion’s betrayal. Because that was what it was, wasn’t it? She had to have realized what she was doing when she released that footage.
And Ryan? The others?
My silence must have made Jackson uncomfortable. As always, when he was uncomfortable, he started talking. “I haven’t been here long. They didn’t even get me out until ten days ago—then I had to get here, and—”
I made myself smile. “What was your plan? Come barging into the institution by yourself and save me?”
When he smiled, too, I realized why my own had felt so familiar—it was the kind of smile Jackson and Vince wore so often. The unflinching smile that didn’t care for propriety, or circumstance. The kind that said, Given the choice to sink or swim, we chose to swim.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “are you making fun of my plans? You, the one who ran into a building you knew was going to blow up?”
God, it felt good to laugh. It felt strange to laugh. I almost pointed it out to Addie, and then I remembered, and my laughter turned rancid in our throat.
“There was no real plan,” he admitted. “All I knew was I had to come find you and Addie.” It was the first time he’d spoken her name. The syllables seemed to crackle in the cold air. He cleared his throat. “But it seems like you did fine all by yourself.”
“Hardly,” I said quietly. I told him about Bridget and the other girls. What they’d done, and what I’d done in leaving them behind. I told him about the Plum-blouse Lady who came to our room day after day to demand information. About the experiments she was running, and the threats she made.
I didn’t tell him about the effects of our drug-induced delirium. Addie’s absence.
I couldn’t.
Jackson filled me in on the world outside Hahns’s walls. He hadn’t been free yet when Marion’s first two broadcasts hit the waves, but he’d seen and heard enough since then to know the impact they’d made.
“The broadcast of my arrest . . .” he said with a wry smile. “Not how I expected to have my fifteen minutes of fame, you know?”
“Kitty filmed it by accident,” I said. “And Marion was never supposed to get her hands on it—”
He nodded. “Well, broadcasting it served her purpose. And I guess it served ours.”
Hybrids were already the topic of the day before—but now, no one talked about anything else.
“Things were just starting to calm down when the Hahns footage released,” Jackson said. “Those girls? The sick one—”
“Hannah and Millie,” I said softly, and his eyes dulled a bit. He nodded.
“Jenson’s probably going mad trying to figure out who’s responsible for it all.”
I shrugged. How long until the Plum-blouse Lady caved and told Jenson the truth? Until Addie and I were once again centered in his crosshairs?
“It isn’t all just talk, either,” Jackson said. He told me how some people who’d lost kids to the institutionalization system had started looking for them—even ones they’d given up years ago. The government wasn’t any help, so they banded together.
Sometimes, they had to travel great distances. Not everyone could afford places to stay, and people began opening their homes to these travelers—secretly, of course, but news traveled among hybrid sympathizers, until a network of sorts was set up.
“It’s like a safe-house system,” Jackson said. “That’s how I got by after getting away from Marion’s friends.”
Safe house made me think of Peter.
Jackson didn’t know about Peter.
I tried not to let our face betray my sudden pain.
“Sabine said it would happen,” I said quietly. “She always believed hybrids just needed to know they weren’t alone. You haven’t . . . you don’t know where she is, do you? Or Christoph and Cordelia?”
Jackson shook his head. “Not captured, as far as I know.” He looked like he might say something more, but swallowed it.
“What?” I said.
He hesitated, then blurted out the words like he needed to speak them before he lost the nerve. “Your whole family—apparently they’ve disappeared. No one knows where they are. That’s what I’ve heard, anyway.”
My family was missing. Had been missing.
“For how long?” I demanded.
“I don’t know,” he said. “At least—at least a month or two.”
“A month or two?”
He rushed to explain: “I can’t be sure—I’ve heard it all secondhand, and honestly, I think it’s more like fifth- or sixth- or seventhhand. Everything’s a tangle of rumors and hearsay right now—”
The Plum-blouse Lady must have known. Had she been lying when she said she could get my mother?
Or had she been telling the truth?
Could she get my mother, because they already had her locked up? A prisoner, along with my father. And Lyle. Lyle needed medical care—dialysis if he hadn’t gotten the transplant, medication if he had, to keep his body from rejecting the new kidney. I knew all the facts—had long memorized our little brother’s needs.
Suddenly all I could think about was Lyle—Lyle pounding up and down the stairs; Lyle tapping Morse code to us through the walls; Lyle reading; Lyle sick and Lyle healthy.
My guilt was old and familiar. It knew just where to press to hurt the most. How to cripple me without killing me. How to draw out the pain.
“I—I need some fresh air.” I stood. Jackson stood, too, but I warded him away, our head and heart pounding. “I’ll just—I’ll just go walk around the baseball field. I’ll be fine.”
He hesitated. “Eva, can I speak with Addie?”
Addie’s gone, I could have said.
I don
’t know what’s happened to her, I could have said.
I don’t know when she’s coming back.
I don’t know if—
“She gone under right now,” I said. “I—later, when she’s back.”
After a long moment, he nodded.
I turned and fled outside.
TWENTY-FIVE
I walked five slow circles around the edge of the baseball field. It was already fully dark, though it couldn’t have been later than six. The sky was cloudy, the moon half-obscured. I trailed our fingers along the bleacher seats, the way Viola had along the walls of the ward room.
What had happened to the girls I’d left behind? Maybe the caretakers had drugged them all into a stupor. Maybe they’d decided it was too dangerous to keep any of them anymore, now that they’d had a taste of rebellion. Maybe they were all gone. Shipped off to be used as test subjects. Nobody would care. Anything could happen, because nobody was watching.
I should have come up with some way to save everyone. If I’d only given it more thought, or tried harder, or—
Now I was free again, and they were not.
But thinking about the girls we’d abandoned at Hahns paled compared to thinking about Mom, Dad, and Lyle. I could hardly go near the thought of their disappearance—could only circle around it. Try to shield myself from it.
By the time Jackson came to find me, I was standing by the chain-link fence, fingers digging into the rusted metal, fighting the urge to shake it until the whole thing came crashing down.
He didn’t ask if I was all right. Ryan would have. Addie hated that. She thought it was a sign of his lack of confidence in us—a sign of our perceived weakness.
I liked knowing someone cared enough to ask.
I missed him so badly I couldn’t think straight. Not just Ryan, but Devon. I missed his steadiness. The assured way he approached everything. The dry humor he pulled out from time to time. I missed the way Hally was always ready with a smile. Lissa’s unwavering loyalty. Nina’s chatter about nonessential things and the way Kitty sometimes hummed the songs her brother used to play on the guitar.