Once We Were

by Kat Zhang

  “She believed you?” I said.

  “Yeah. She did. Why not, right?”

  “Why not,” I echoed. I hesitated. “Ryan, do you think we should stop? With the plan?”

  He frowned. “What?”

  “Never mind. It was just . . . I just—never mind.” I took a step toward him. I’d never felt uncomfortable around Ryan before. Especially not when Addie wasn’t here. But now all I could think about was how she might react if she suddenly returned. “I should go back down. Sophie’s probably waiting for me.”

  He knew there was something off. I could tell. But all he said was, “Okay.”

  There was a pause. Then he leaned down and kissed me, and it was right for a moment—it was eager and familiar and comforting. Until I remembered Jackson’s kiss, and Addie, and without meaning to, I jerked away.

  Ryan went very still. The hand that had rested on our shoulder hung in midair.

  “Sorry,” I said quickly, quietly. I looked over my shoulder. “I thought I heard something. I’m just still jumpy from tonight. You know.”

  After a second, he nodded and dropped his hand.

  He tried to smile before giving up and going inside.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I sat in bed long after Sophie and Kitty had gone to sleep, my knees tight against my chest, thinking about what I should say when Addie came back.

  It was right for us to have our privacy. Wasn’t that the point of going under? To give each of us a taste of what it was like to be alone, to act and feel and be without thinking of the other.

  But at the end of the day, my hands were still Addie’s hands. Addie’s mouth was my mouth. As children, back before I lost control, Addie had always been more capable in our body than I was. Almost always, she’d been able to overpower me when our wills clashed. But we were older now. Old enough, surely, to figure out how to share this body without hurting either of us.

  Our nightstand drawer sat halfway open, Addie’s sketchbook peeking out. I hesitated, then pulled it onto my lap. Between the moonlight and the streetlamps, I could just see the pages. I paused at the drawings of Hally. At the half-finished sketch of Kitty watching television, her face tilted away from us and almost complete, but the rest of her body still flat—dissolving into nothing but lines and the suggestion of form.

  The sketch after that was one I’d never seen. A drawing of Jackson, the lean lines of his shoulders and back, the way his hair was just a little too long and fell into his eyes. He was looking at me. At her. I stared back, trying—knowing it was futile—to remember those moments Addie had spent capturing his image in graphite.

  My hands had drawn this. My fingers had gripped the pencil, held the eraser. My eyes had traced over his body, studied the creases in his shirt and the lines of his hands. But I would never remember it. Addie hadn’t sketched a background, only a faint outline of the chair Jackson sat in, so I didn’t even know where the two of them had been when this happened. I didn’t know what they’d talked about.

  I replaced the sketchbook just as Addie eased into existence.

  I reached for her the way I had when we were children. My carefully planned sentences tangled together, my words tying themselves into knots.

  It was a long moment before Addie replied.

  She spoke carefully, her voice soft.

  I winced.

 

  I said.

  She sighed. I almost interrupted. But Addie’s words tumbled out, and I held mine back to make room for hers. She was quiet a moment.

  I said.

  We closed our eyes, closed ourself off from the world. We shut away everything but each other. Addie and Eva, Eva and Addie.

  Addie said quietly.

  But that was impossible.

  she said.

  I said. The words felt too small to encompass my meaning. But they were all I had. So I gave them to her, along with my forgiveness, because I’d always forgiven Addie, and Addie had always forgiven me. For everything.

 

  I said.

 

 

  Addie said.

  I said, but I couldn’t completely erase my unease, and Addie couldn’t completely hide hers.

  I hadn’t needed anyone to teach me that jealousy was a strange emotion for hybrids, especially when it came to people you cared about. We shared bodies. We weren’t always in control of our own limbs. Some things were muddled and confusing to begin with.

  But still . . . It would have been different, perhaps, if we’d grown up somewhere else. Somewhere overseas, where we’d have known other hybrids all our lives, where we’d have learned another set of rules for what was normal and what wasn’t.

  I laughed wryly.

 

  I said. I spoke with more conviction than I felt.

  Funny, how I used to always be the one who comforted Addie, not the other way around. But it didn’t matter. Addie was back, and speaking with me. Addie thought we would figure everything out, that everything would be all right.

  If she believed it, then so did I.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The day for the test run arrived.

  Ryan and I snuck downstairs just as the sun came up, hurrying to meet the others at the restaurant parking lot. I laughed at Cordelia’s jokes, waved hello to Sabine, smiled when Christoph offered a gruff good morning. The unease lingering within me burned away as Sabine and the others reenveloped me in their energy.

  Addie said when our eyes caught on Jackson.

 

  she said.

  I laughed and looked away. Ryan smiled, raising his eyebrows questioningly as we ducked into Sabine’s car. My amusement faded. I still hadn’t told him about Addie and Jackson. The two of us hadn’t had a moment alone since the night of the LOX heist.

  But that was an excuse, and I knew it. I didn’t know how to tell Ryan. I was afraid of how he’d react. Afraid to think what would happen to us if he reacted badly.

  Ryan’s hands were warmer than ours. I entwined our fingers with his, and he shifted so he could lean his head on our shoulder. I smiled. Pushed thoughts of Addie and Jackson out of my mind for the moment. “Aren’t you a morning person?”

  Ryan yawned. His hair tickled our cheek. “Couldn’t sleep last night.”

  Jackson squeezed between us
and the window, then slammed the door shut. With Cordelia sitting on Ryan’s other side, the four of us barely fit in the backseat. The two-hour drive to Frandmill would be tough to handle for anyone, let alone Addie and me. I swore silently that I wouldn’t say a word.

  Ryan stared at the cardboard box at our feet. Inside, the miniature bomb lay carefully packed. Every line of his body spoke fatigue, but his eyes were still intent, calculating. I could almost see the gears turning in his brain, running over every part and connection again and again, making sure there hadn’t been any mistakes.

  “Stop it,” I whispered, and pulled him closer against us. His eyes lifted to meet ours, at first questioningly, then crinkling in a smile. He nodded and rested his head against our shoulder again.

  “Everybody good to go?” Sabine said, pulling on her seat belt and starting the engine. There were various mumbled noises of assent. “You want the window down, Eva?”

  I looked at her, startled and warmed that she’d remembered my aversion to cramped spaces. I nodded.

  We pulled out of the parking lot in silence, and in a mist of rain.

  By the time we reached the testing field, the rain had reduced to low, gray clouds and a faraway rumbling. The air was cool, but so thick with moisture it seemed to weigh down on our skin. When we left the road behind, our shoes sank a little into the mud beneath the sparse grass. Sabine had taken us far from the main road. I shivered. Addie’s presence next to mine was as still and heavy as the storm clouds.

  “If we’re lucky,” Christoph said, staring at the sky, “anyone who does hear the explosion will think it’s just thunder.”

  “Nobody will hear,” Sabine said. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

  Ryan and Jackson lugged the cardboard box between them, walking carefully even though Ryan had assured us the explosives wouldn’t detonate from a little jostling.

  The land dipped here, forming an embankment that overlooked a valley. Ryan, Jackson, and Sabine headed for the lowest point. I automatically started to follow them, but Cordelia, as if on a sudden impulse, linked her arm in ours as she turned in the opposite direction, up the hill.

  I looked at her in surprise. She gave a breathy little laugh and a shrug, but didn’t release our arm. Maybe with Sabine and Jackson busy, she needed someone to hold on to. I understood the feeling. We walked, together, up the embankment. Christoph went ahead of us, the pale sunlight making a red halo of his hair.

  Eventually, I realized he didn’t know how far we were supposed to go. He turned and looked to me, as if Addie or I might have an answer. I glanced down the hill. From this distance, Ryan and the others looked like toys. It had to be more than far enough. Ryan had given us an estimate of how large the explosion would be, and surely, he was right.

  Surely.

  I stopped. Cordelia, arm still linked through ours, stopped too. We watched as the miniature figures of Ryan and Jackson and Sabine huddled around the box. Watched as they finally straightened and headed toward us—not running, but moving with the stiff urgency of people wishing they could run but held back by fear.

  Or in this case, I supposed, pride.

  How strange a thing pride seemed compared to a bomb.

  Hurry, I thought, a sickness in our stomach. Forget pride and hurry.

  They didn’t run, but they reached us while the air was silent. Ryan took our free hand. I squeezed his. Addie felt taut as a violin string. We stood—frozen and silent and waiting—staring at the bowels of the hill.

  Then the explosion came.

  The noise and flame and fire came. It swelled up. Set us vibrating with its power.

  It was over so quickly. A tongue of red and yellow. A boom that echoed through our bodies.

  Then again, silence.

  “It worked,” Christoph said in a voice that was not quite joy and not quite fear.

  Our ears rang. I turned, searching Ryan’s face, and found it wasn’t Ryan at all.

  Devon. Devon with cold, black eyes staring down at the smoke.

  He said nothing. He looked back toward me, his expression a mask I couldn’t break.

  TWENTY-NINE

  The drive back to Anchoit was at once more relaxed and more tense. The others chatted, even laughed from time to time. Devon—it was still Devon in control—was silent. I kept our hands in our lap, our arms tight against our body.

  We reached the city limits, then the same parking lot we’d left from that morning. No one seemed to want to leave the car. To be alone with the immensity of what we’d done. Finally, Cordelia suggested we all have lunch in the attic.

  Food didn’t make me feel any better. Sabine was unusually quiet, focused on the turnings of her own mind. Jackson and Cordelia supplied most of the conversation, but eventually, even their well of words ran dry. The attic fell into a lull of silence that wasn’t entirely comfortable. Takeout boxes sat littered about the attic, some still full of fried fish and sweet rolls, others with nothing left but a slick of grease.

  Devon spoke first. “When are we going to do it for real?” When no one replied, he looked around the room and repeated himself. “When are we going to blow up the institution?”

  “We know what you mean,” Jackson said, but he was smiling, and there was no real heat to the words. Still, he didn’t give an answer.

  Sabine hadn’t looked up at the sound of Devon’s voice, and she didn’t look up now. She studied the fairy lights strung around the room like there were answers hidden in their knots.

  “Next week,” she said. “Next Friday night.”

  Exactly seven days from today.

  “Why Friday?” Devon said.

  Finally, Sabine met his eyes. “According to the schedules we got from Nalles, they haven’t set up the surgical machinery yet. They’ll be moving them in all next week. They’ll be done by Friday.”

  “You’re sure?” Devon said.

  Sabine nodded. “Like I said, it’s in the schedules.”

  “Next Friday night . . .” Cordelia moved over to sit beside Sabine, putting an arm around her. “Are you sure, Sabine? It’s so soon.”

  Sabine nodded. Her gaze had drifted again, to the floor this time. “Why not? We know it works. We’ve got the bomb. Why wait longer than necessary?”

  “I’m ready,” Christoph said.

  “And Friday’s a good day of the week to do it,” Sabine said. “If anything does go wrong—if the government responds in some dangerous, unexpected way—Jackson and Christoph don’t need to be in at work, and it’s not suspicious if they don’t turn up. Everything’s less regulated on the weekends.”

  Cordelia nodded, her pale head resting against Sabine’s shoulder.

  “Not everyone needs to actually go to Powatt, anyway,” Christoph said.

  “Really, only one person needs to go,” Sabine said. “I could go alone. It would be safer.”

  “It wouldn’t be safer for you,” Jackson said.

  Some of Sabine’s usual strength came back to her voice. “Not having you there to mess things up would make it a lot safer for me.”

  They smiled, the smile of old friends who didn’t need words to understand each other.

  “Still, you shouldn’t go alone.” There was steel underlying Jackson’s words, a stiffness coming from something I couldn’t pin down. Fear? Not quite fear. His eyes flashed toward ours, then away again.

  “He’s right,” Devon said. His voice was low. He looked at us, then Jackson, like he’d caught his glance. “I’d like to be there. See the thing come down.”

  I asked Addie. It seemed like forever ago. Like we’d been different people then.

  Addie said

  Neither of us had gone under since the day of our fight, and her request made something twinge inside me. But I said

  I meant it. Of course Addie would still want time to herself, just like I did. She hadn’t even spoken with Jackson
since I fled his apartment, and she wouldn’t want me around when she did.

  I needed time, too, to digest what had just happened. I wanted, maybe, just a little time to be asleep and not have to feel anything. Dreams were preferable to this. When I woke, I could sort things out.

  Addie said.

  I took one last look at the attic around me, the dark wooden boards, the fairy lights gleaming on the walls.

  Then I disappeared.

  Fireworks

  The first time I saw them

  Independence Day

  I feel the bloom

  The crack

  Of their noise

  As if they too are trying

  To shake me loose

  Shake me from my limbs

  Make me fade away

  Like they do

  Here

  A burst of color

  Then gone

  I woke in the middle of dinner, fork tines against our tongue, our elbows on the dining table. Even after weeks of practice, it was still disorienting to be thrust into the real world after living in timeless, liquid dreams.

  Addie’s first words were simple. A caution:

  My dreams snapped away. Our eyes focused on the other people seated around the table: Emalia, Nina, Peter. At the moment, no one was saying anything, busy with their food.

  Addie swallowed. She lowered our fork, setting it carefully on the woven placemat, beside our plate.

  I cried.

  But Addie shushed me as she said, aloud, “Did you always know he was coming, Peter?”

  Peter sat to our left, lost in his thoughts and the mechanical motions of eating. His eyes lifted at the sound of our voice. He nodded. “He leads the government review board, after all. But apparently, he’s been in the city for a couple weeks already. No public announcement. Nothing. No one’s supposed to know.”