by Kat Zhang
I didn’t bring up Addie, and neither did he. Maybe we both knew there was nothing more we could say about it.
It was enough that we both knew. And both understood.
He pushed aside his blankets. “Grental Plains is at least a six- or seven-hour drive. I don’t think I have enough money to get us there on our own. Let’s see if anyone’s headed in that direction soon. There’s that couple two doors down, and I think I heard them say—”
I took a deep breath, and he looked up, halting midramble. He grinned. It was shakier than it had been, before Powatt. Before everything. But that was understandable.
I loved it a little more, for the shakiness. For the crack in it that mirrored the cracks I could feel in every part of me. We were both holding ourselves together.
“We’ll get her back,” he said, and I nodded.
I didn’t ask him which her he was talking about.
The couple Jackson had mentioned, Frank and Elizabeth, were in fact headed toward Grental Plains. They planned to leave the next day, which left me an entire twenty-four hours to worry and stress. I knew an extra day wouldn’t make much of a difference, considering it had already been weeks since Ben left Grental Plains. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that we couldn’t afford to waste another minute, let alone another day.
I tried to keep myself busy. After the desolation of Hahns, the small bed-and-breakfast was a circus. Mrs. Shay was thankful for someone to help out. I wasn’t much of a cook, but I liked to be with her in the kitchen. Liked to have her smile at me and tell me I made life a little easier.
It wasn’t until noon, when I went into the pantry to get a can of beans and saw the calendar hanging on a hook, that I realized.
Vince was the one who found me standing there, frozen.
“What?” He peered over my shoulder. “Found a goblin hiding in here?” He grinned at me, but I didn’t smile back.
“I’m sixteen,” I said.
His eyes shifted to mine. “What?”
“It was my birthday,” I said numbly. “Two days ago. December fourteenth. I didn’t realize.”
His grin widened. “Happy belated birthday.”
But it wasn’t.
My sixteenth birthday was the first one in my entire life I hadn’t celebrated with Addie.
We left right after lunch the next day, when most of the house’s occupants were still gathered in the kitchen, helping clean up. I waited in the foyer while Frank and Elizabeth packed their meager luggage into the trunk. Mrs. Shay wanted to send us off with extra food, and Vince had gone to help her with it.
The other tenants of the safe house had surprised me with a new set of clothes, culled from their own suitcases. Mrs. Shay gave me a proper pair of shoes—worn, but exactly the right size, and much better protection against the elements and the cold ground. Elizabeth handed me two shirts that were slightly too big, and a pair of pants I cinched with one of Ben’s belts.
Ben found me standing alone. “Find the girl,” he said.
“I will,” I promised, and added, “Good luck. With finding William, I mean.”
He nodded. Mrs. Shay and Vince returned with plastic bags full of leftovers, and what snacks she could spare. She pressed one bag into my hands, then kissed me on the cheek so gently tears sprung into my eyes.
I’d blinked them away by the time I climbed into the backseat next to Vince. Then I had to do it all over again when I shuffled through the bag of individually wrapped sandwiches and found a small white envelope containing a wrinkled ten-dollar bill.
Grental Plains reminded me of Lupside. The suburb we pulled into, after hours on the road, could have fit easily next to my old neighborhood, but for the style of the houses. They were all one-story and spread out, with wide roofs and boxy exteriors.
It was already dark. We navigated by streetlights and a yellow moon.
“Here?” My voice was hushed. “Are you sure? Where is everyone?”
The house we’d pulled up to was barely bigger than mine had been. The driveway was clear of cars.
“They’re probably directing parking elsewhere,” Elizabeth said over her shoulder. “It would be suspicious to have a mess of cars by their house all the time.”
Vince slipped from the van to go ring the doorbell and ask. I watched as he spoke briefly with a man at the door, then came back to the car and told us to park at a shopping center down the road.
Elizabeth insisted I get out here, too, to save me the walk back. From the way she glanced at me, I guessed I still seemed sickly.
The man who owned the house was named Lucas, and he barely looked old enough to be out of college. He rented the house from his uncle, who he assured us lived across the state and would never show up unexpectedly to check on him. I could tell the setup still made Vince nervous. He kept glancing toward the door as Lucas explained that there weren’t any more beds or couches, but plenty of floor space, and pillows, if we had sleeping bags.
“Actually,” I said hesitantly as he offered to show us around, “we’re looking for someone. A girl named Kitty? She’s eleven. Short. She’s got really long, dark hair—”
Lucas’s face brightened. “Kitty. Yes—but she left about a week ago, headed for Brindt. She was looking for her brother, Ty. Guitar player. She heard from someone that he’d moved there a few months ago, was playing downtown at some of the bars . . .” His voice drifted off at my obvious disappointment; he added, quickly, “There’s a bus that goes from here to Brindt. Won’t take more than a few hours. But I don’t think there’ll be one running this late. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”
We’d missed Kitty by a week. So in the end, the extra day we’d stayed at the bed-and-breakfast hadn’t made any difference—we’d have missed her no matter what.
But every second we delayed meant something. This time, we’d missed Kitty by a week, but next time? Next time, it might be an hour, or thirty minutes, or less.
It only took a minute for someone to get into a car. Ten minutes for her to be miles and miles away.
TWENTY-EIGHT
That night, I woke up, not because of my nightmares, but because of Jackson’s. As soon as he climbed to his feet, my eyes fluttered open, too. The living room was completely dark. I had no idea what time it was. But I sat up and whispered, “Jackson?”
I could hear the rasp of his breathing, as if he’d been running and couldn’t catch his breath.
“I just want to go outside a bit,” he murmured.
“Can I come with you?” I asked, and he hesitated, then nodded.
We crept from the house, opening and closing the front door as quietly as we could, grabbing our jackets on the way out. The night was frigidly cold. It woke me up with a shudder of icy air.
Jackson shivered, too, but didn’t say anything about going back in. If anything, he seemed to relish the alertness the chill brought with it. We moved away from the house, wandering through the neighborhood. I looked at all the darkened windows, imagining the families sleeping behind them, marveling at their peace.
Jackson glanced at me. The cold gave everything an urgency and clarity. The nearest streetlight was half a block away, but it seemed like it was the brightest thing I’d ever known.
Back at the B and B, I’d caught Jackson looking at me like this, sometimes. As if he was searching for some trace of Addie in the way I walked, or sliced an apple, or mopped a spill.
I’d watched him, too. I’d tried to see him the way Addie had seen him. I tried to see the world the way Addie would have seen it. To become her, for a little while. Just a moment. As if that would bring her back.
I understood, a little more, how Addie could have fallen in love with this boy. More than that, I understood him. When he stared off at nothing, I understood. When he startled at a touch on his shoulder, I understood. When he buried everything underneath a smile, I understood.
“What would you do if all this ended tomorrow?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” I wasn�
�t sure if it was the cold, the fact that I’d been so abruptly woken, or a combination of both and other, unnameable things, but I felt at once like I was in a dream, and like I was the most awake I’d ever been.
“If tomorrow, there was suddenly nothing wrong with being hybrid. And everyone accepted it, and you could just be like everyone else, what would you do?” He spoke in a whisper. We didn’t want to disturb anyone. But there was also no knowing who might be listening. Who might hear these words, so innocently spoken, and hunt us for them.
“I’d be like everyone else,” I said.
His lips twitched. “Would that be enough?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never done it. But it would be a start, and then I could go on from there.” I looked away, back to surveying the darkness. “To be honest, I can barely think about it. It seems so distant. There’s so much to do.”
“But what’s the point of doing it, if you aren’t dreaming about the outcome?” He sounded so earnest.
“What if all the dreaming gets in the way of actually doing things? What if there isn’t time for dreaming?”
“There’s always time for dreaming,” Jackson said. “If it makes you happy, then there’s time.”
“I guess.” I smiled, just a little. “You’re always full of little bits of wisdom, aren’t you?”
“Except Powatt,” he said, and I nodded.
“Except Powatt,” I said solemnly. “Because God, that was stupid.”
There was a beat of silence. Then Jackson started to laugh. He laughed until I was laughing, too, both of us half-hunched over, cracking up like madmen, gasping for air. Slowly, my laughter quieted to giggles, then a gasping sort of smile.
We looked at each other. The moonlight and the streetlight mixed and cast darting highlights in his hair, odd shadows on his face.
I wanted to kiss him.
I wanted to kiss him, and the wanting felt normal. Felt right. I was reaching up, on tiptoe, my lips a hairsbreadth from his before I even knew what was going on.
He froze.
I froze, too.
He wasn’t breathing. If he’d been breathing, I would have felt him against my skin—I was that close.
I backed away. Pressed my fingers to my temples, trying to drive my thoughts into straight lines, press my emotions back into familiar territory. Iron them straight.
Addie, I thought. These were Addie’s feelings—they had to be Addie’s feelings. But when I cried out for her—shouted for her in the quiet of my mind—there was nothing but silence and echoes.
“Sorry,” I said, and my voice wavered at the end. “I—I don’t—”
I didn’t look at him. He didn’t say anything.
“We could pretend that didn’t happen,” I whispered, and forced my eyes to search for his. After a moment, I caught them.
He stared at me. At me. Through me.
His voice was hoarse. “Is she really gone, Eva?”
My throat tightened. “Why—why would I say she was, if she wasn’t?”
He broke eye contact. Shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess I just—when you—”
“It was a mistake,” I said shakily. My heart tried to convince me it was more than that. That it had been a sign. Proof that Addie still existed somewhere inside this body, sleeping but living. But try as I might, I didn’t feel the slightest hint of her.
Was it only my imagination?
I didn’t want to believe Addie was gone.
My heart would do anything it could to convince me she wasn’t.
A car zoomed by, music thudding. The bass shuddered all the way through my bones.
“Just a mistake,” Jackson echoed.
I was so shaken that I didn’t immediately notice the second car when it turned into the neighborhood. Didn’t realize how it was cruising toward us without any lights on.
Then I did, and I yanked Jackson deeper into the shadows. “Police.”
My first instinct was to head back to the house—Jackson’s was to run the other way. Our hands were still linked. We pulled each other to a stop.
“We have to warn them,” I whispered.
He tried to tug me away. “Too late—by the time we wake them up, the police will have the place surrounded.”
He was stronger than I was, but I kept resisting, and finally, he stopped pulling at me. I looked over my shoulder. A second police car had arrived, as quietly as the first. Who had tipped them off? A suspicious neighbor? Lucas’s uncle?
It hardly mattered now. Not to the people sleeping obliviously inside that house—who’d wake to someone breaking down the door.
Jackson was right. We were too far away, and we’d have to go back in by the front door—right in the view of the police cars. Most likely, we’d only succeed in waking up half the house before we were all arrested.
But that was only most likely. So much of me rebelled at the idea of running away when there was even the slightest chance of saving them. I was no stranger to small possibilities—my existence, my entire life, had been a series of small possibilities, of risks taken.
“Eva,” Jackson whispered. “We can’t.”
The police car doors opened.
I could save them. I could maybe save them. Risk everything—the chance to find Kitty again, Ryan again—help Emalia and Jaime and Bridget.
“You’re right,” I whispered. I swallowed. Turned away from the house and tried to ignore the pain carving holes in my heart. “Let’s go.”
We focused on stealth at first, keeping to the shadows, trying to stay silent. Then the shouting started—the screaming and the banging—and we abandoned stealth and put everything into speed.
We ran as fast as we could. Out of the neighborhood. Along the silent, deserted suburban roads. We ran until we couldn’t run anymore, and then we walked. Anything to get as far away from that no-longer-safe house, and the police, and my own guilt. First Peter and Jaime, then the other girls at Hahns, and now this. Somehow, I kept running away. I kept leaving people behind.
“There wasn’t anything we could do,” Jackson said, once the silence between us became stifling.
“I know,” I said.
But was it a lie? A platitude I told myself, because I hadn’t been brave enough to stay?
The sun came up slowly, a line of yellow on the horizon that seeped upward into the passing clouds. By daybreak, neither Jackson nor I had any idea where we were. We risked ducking into a gas station to grab a map of the area and find the bus station. Turned out, it was on the other side of town.
“I don’t like this,” Jackson muttered as we huddled in our jackets and hurried through the streets. “We stand out too much.”
We did. It had been better in the darkness. Now, with the sun up, there were more cars on the road, but almost no one else out walking. Thank God neither of us owned pajamas, and had slept in our regular clothes. Mrs. Shay’s ten-dollar bill was tucked safely into my pants pocket.
By the time we finally made it to the bus station, I was a bundle of frozen nerves. The sight of the old station, bearing the vestiges of blue-and-white paint, was like waking up from a bad dream. We hurried inside, where the blast of warmth made me shudder, made me rush to take a lungful of air that wouldn’t stab its way through my lungs.
The woman working the counter barely looked up. She was too busy flipping through stations on her television, a squat little thing that kept fuzzing into static every other channel.
“I’ll get the tickets,” I said to Jackson. “I look less like myself than you do.”
He looked like he was going to protest, but I was already headed for the counter. When I glanced at him over my shoulder, he was looking at me worriedly, but stayed where he was.
I had a sudden memory of the press of his mouth. His fingers tangled in my hair. It had been dark when I woke up that day in his room, back in Anchoit. But I remembered the blue of his eyes when the lights came on. That day, I’d found out about him and Addie, and I’d been fur
ious about it then. I’d flinched away.
But last night—
I whispered to Addie. It was the first time I’d spoken to her since admitting to Jackson that she was gone.
There was, as there had been since Hahns, no reply.
“Where to?” the woman at the counter asked. She’d let the TV settle on the national news channel, one of the few that reached almost everywhere with good clarity. I tried not to look at it, terrified it might broadcast a report about me. Three days had passed since my escape from Hahns. Had Jenson been notified?
“Brindt,” I said. “Two tickets, please. When’s the earliest bus?”
She was just about to answer when the television plunged into static again. She sighed and slapped her palm against the side of it. The second slap snapped the picture back.
But it wasn’t the news station anymore. Both the ticket woman and I stared at—
At Henri.
TWENTY-NINE
Henri was alive.
Henri was alive—and overseas. He’d made it back. He said as much. He stared out from the fuzzy television screen in this dingy bus station and explained how he’d come to the Americas in secret to see the inside of a country so long hidden from the rest of the world. How he’d discovered the lies that the people learned here—in schools, in newspapers, in stories.
“The world beyond your shores,” he said in that now-familiar, lilting accent of his, “is not what you believe it is. Not what your government tells you it is.”
He said he’d show us the truth.
But my eyes had been drawn to something else. In the very corner of the screen, nearly hidden from view under one of Henri’s papers, was a quarter-sized chip. It flashed faintly red.
It looked like my chip. Or Ryan’s. Not exactly, and it couldn’t be, since ours were not with Henri. But someone had gone through some trouble to make a replica. To catch my attention.