Once We Were by Kat Zhang
Josie motioned for me to stop walking when we were a dozen or so yards from the fence. She shoved a tiny flashlight into my hands. “Stand here. If anything happens, flash this in our direction, okay?”
I nodded, gripping the flashlight.
The fence around the oxygen tanks was tall, but Josie and Vince wedged their shoes in the chain-link and climbed it easily. The fence clinked under their weight. I held my breath as Josie swung over and let go, Vince only a second behind. He turned on a flashlight as they neared the rack of tanks, shielding the beam with his hand.
The back lot was deserted but for us. There weren’t even any parking spaces—just an expanse of bare, black pavement.
What would Addie think if she came back now?
No, I couldn’t think about Addie. I couldn’t afford to be distracted.
Josie grabbed one of the tanks and began sliding it free. Vince moved to help her. They’d managed to get the tank halfway out when Vince lost his grip on his flashlight. It cracked to the ground and rolled away, spilling yellow light.
Josie cursed and darted after the flashlight. Left Vince to bear the oxygen tank’s weight.
I took a step toward them. “Are you okay?”
They were too far away or too preoccupied to hear.
I was about to ask again when the hospital’s side door swung open.
A man stepped out.
Right between me and the others.
I froze. Mouth open. Words crashing into one another in my throat.
The man stood silhouetted in the doorway, his thin body encased by blue scrubs. His hands shook slightly as he tried to light a cigarette. I swiveled back toward Josie and Vince. The flashlight was still on the ground, its beam directed away from the oxygen tanks. A beacon in the darkness. If the man turned his head a few degrees to the right . . .
Come on, Josie. Come on, come on—
Why was she just squatting there? Hadn’t she noticed the man in the doorway? Didn’t she know—
Then I realized. The flashlight wasn’t in the enclosure at all. It had spun outside the fence, and she couldn’t reach it.
The doctor’s cigarette smoke wound up into the sky. If Josie climbed the chain-link fence, he would hear her. If she left the flashlight where it was, he would see it at any moment and go investigate.
I took a deep breath.
Then I slid my flashlight into my pocket as deep as it would go, ripped off my mask, and hurried toward the doctor.
“Excuse me? Hello?” I shouted, hoping Josie and Vince would take notice. I didn’t dare check if they did.
The doctor was in his early thirties, maybe. Light haired. Pale-eyed. He looked somewhat embarrassed as I approached. “Yes? Do you need something?”
I didn’t have time to come up with a proper story. The ski mask had left my hair wild with static electricity. It clung to my cheeks and forehead. Coupled with the flush I felt rising on my neck, it must have made me look half-feral—some freak girl spit out by the night. I stuttered.
Then the words came, almost unbidden: “I’m trying to see my brother.”
As soon as the words left my tongue, Addie was back.
It only took her a second to take everything in: the doctor’s tired, questioning eyes; the smell of his cigarette; the yellow light of the hospital hallway.
The man said something—something about general visiting hours being over—but I couldn’t concentrate with Addie’s sudden fury next to me.
She went silent, but her anger slashed at me, tattering my thoughts.
“Are you all right?” The doctor lowered his cigarette to his side, frowning. His voice was gentle. “Which ward is your brother in?”
“I—um,” I said.
His concern was melting into confusion, and confusion was a precursor for suspicion. I had to cut him off.
“He’s in PICU,” I said. “He’s only eight.”
PICU. The Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. A collection of letters I’d never wanted to learn.
“Are your parents here?” the doctor asked.
I shook our head. Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought I heard the clinking of a chain-link fence. Josie was climbing. I had to keep talking.
“How old are you?”
Please, please let Josie move quickly. I couldn’t drag this conversation on much longer. He might ask for a name next, or take me to the front desk, and then they’d know I was lying.
“Thirteen,” I murmured. Back home, siblings under fourteen didn’t have visitation rights unless they had a parent with them. Addie and I had been thirteen when Lyle’s kidneys first failed.
“Sorry?” the doctor said.
I swallowed and repeated, louder, “Thirteen.”
Addie and I weren’t particularly tall, but we could hardly be mistaken for thirteen, either. Hopefully, the darkness cloaked my lie.
The doctor didn’t sound suspicious as he said, “I’m afraid they’re probably not going to let you in unless you’ve got your mom or dad with you. I’m sorry about that. Do your parents know you’re here?”
I was already backing away, keeping our body angled so his eyes stayed away from the oxygen tanks. The clinking sounds had stopped.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, they do.”
He squinted after me. “Do you live nearby? Are you going to be okay getting home—”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “I’ll, um, come back tomorrow with my mom.”
I walked all the way across the street, past Josie’s car, and around the side of a building before I dared to look back toward the hospital. The doctor took a drag from his cigarette. Vince’s flashlight was no longer shining.
Addie muttered.
Had she? I remembered her saying something, but—but she hadn’t said much. Had she held back because she knew I wanted so badly to come?
Had I been too caught up in myself to notice?
Across the street, the doctor dropped his cigarette. It stayed lit, a fallen ember, until his foot ground it dark. He turned and headed back into the building.
A beat of stillness.
Then Josie—or some shadowed figure I guessed to be Josie—crept toward the fence. In a minute, she was back over and heading for the oxygen racks, helping Vince ease the tank all the way free and carry it to the fence. One of them climbed to the top first, then balanced there as the other passed the tank up.
The shadowy figures started toward us across the pavement, keeping to the darker spaces. But soon, they crossed the street. They took off their masks, and the lamplight caught them, illuminated them, made them Vince and Josie again.
They both grinned as they set the oxygen tank down. Before I knew what was happening, Vince picked us up and swung us around. Our stomach lurched. Addie was an impenetrable mess beside me. But Vince laughed. “You really pulled that off, didn’t you?” he said.
I made myself smile. “I guess I did.”
There was one brief, kicking moment of anger from Addie. A flicker of disappointment.
Then she was gone again, as if she couldn’t even stand to be around me any longer.
TWENTY-SIX
Josie and Vince talked exc
But we’d never left each other. We couldn’t.
No matter how bad the fight, we had to stay together. And sooner or later, one of us would give in. The wall would crumble, and we’d forgive each other.
Now when we fought, we had somewhere to run to. And Addie had run.
“Eva?” Josie said. I looked up. Both Josie and Vince had turned in their seats to stare at me. We’d parked.
“You okay?” Vince asked.
“I’m fine.” I moved to get out of the car, carefully shifting the oxygen tank so it lay flat on the floor. It was a little less than three feet long, maybe half a foot in diameter. Josie and Vince climbed out, too, our doors slamming shut in quick succession. It took me a moment to absorb our surroundings. Josie had practically driven me to my doorstep.
I didn’t want to go back into that apartment building, where no doubt Emalia was waiting for me. Maybe Dr. Lyanne and Henri and Peter, too.
And Ryan. What would Ryan think?
The anger powering me before had drained away, leaving me a husk of guilt.
But I had to face them all sometime. I’d run as long as I could.
“Hi, Eva,” Sophie said when I knocked. I wasn’t sure who felt more uncomfortable, her or me. Kitty and Nina were nowhere to be seen, so either they were hiding in our room, or they’d gone up to stay with Henri.
I’d expected Sophie to be angry, though I’d never seen her that way. She wasn’t smiling, but she didn’t seem mad, either. The coffee machine beeped.
“It’s decaf,” Sophie said, seeing the look on my face. “You want some?”
Always, she’d asked, and always, Addie and I had said no.
“Okay,” I said.
I didn’t really know what to do with myself as Sophie poured the coffee. She asked if I took milk and sugar, and I nodded. She set the mugs down on the dining table.
She sat. I sat. The coffee steamed between us, heady and sweet. My heart thudded so hard I could feel it knocking against my ribs. Harder, it seemed, than it had back at Benoll, talking to the doctor.
Sophie brought her mug toward her lips, but set it down again without actually taking a sip. “I didn’t know you were friends with Josie.”
How much did she know? Only three people could have told her anything—Kitty, Hally, and Ryan.
Ryan knew where I was tonight, but no matter how angry he was at being left behind, he wouldn’t reveal anything.
Hally and Lissa? I doubted it. Not after they’d promised. Which left Kitty and Nina. They’d promised silence, too, but they were only eleven, and probably frightened.
“I ran into her,” I said. It wasn’t all lie.
If Addie had been here, she and I could have spoken to each other, at least. Between the two of us, we’d have figured out how to act and what to say.
“Eva?” Sophie asked. I looked up. “Is Addie here right now?”
Dr. Lyanne must have told her about my outburst. Slowly, I shook my head.
She nodded. “I just wanted to say that Emalia and I do understand what it’s like to fight with someone inside your own head. And we know what it’s like, not always being in control of your own body. How discomforting it can be to wake up and not know where you are or what has been happening the last few hours. We should have made it more clear that if you ever need anyone to talk with, or want to ask anything, we’re here for that. Okay?”
She kept trying to meet my eyes, but I could only manage it for a few seconds before looking away. I’d rather her be angry than hear her blame herself—or feel guilty, or whatever this was. This sounded like something a mother might say in a television show, only Sophie was far too young, too unfamiliar, too different to be my mother. Of course, my mother could never say what Sophie had just said, because my mother didn’t know any of those things. She never would.
“Yeah, okay,” I said.
Neither of us touched our drinks. She doesn’t know about the plan, I thought. Sophie thought this was just a one-time thing, that Addie and I had fought and I ran off, and that was the end of the story.
But why would she think differently? How could she even imagine what we were planning, let alone that I was a part of it?
“I need to talk with Ryan,” I said, “and it’s getting late.”
Immediately after saying it, I wished I hadn’t. Even to my own ears, it sounded rude. I could never say what I wanted to say just the way I wanted to say it. And that was the problem, wasn’t it? For so many years, I’d never had to wonder what I should and shouldn’t say aloud. I’d fed words to Addie sometimes, and felt superior about knowing what to say when she was too flustered to speak.
But it was different actually being in control. I’d spent so long watching Addie live. What if watching hadn’t been enough? What if I was doomed to be behind forever, stuck in some childhood I’d never actually gotten the chance to live? What else was I screwing up?
Maybe it was a deeper problem. Maybe I really had been meant to fade away. Maybe the universe simply hadn’t been meant to contain one Eva Tamsyn. Not for so many years.
If Sophie was angered or hurt by my words, she hid it. “Okay.”
I felt like I should say something more. Thank her, maybe, for what she’d said. For being kind, because she had been kind. Because she hadn’t had to take us into her home, but she’d done it. She’d hidden us when even my own parents hadn’t.
That wasn’t fair to think. Everything felt so awkward, my tongue lying useless in my mouth.
“Sorry,” I said instead.
I left it up to her what I was sorry for, and fled.
I’d spent my conversation with Sophie wishing for Addie’s company. But now, as I stood outside Henri’s door, I was infinitely glad she wasn’t here. Some conversations were better undertaken alone.
I took a deep breath and knocked. One, two, three, four, five, six seconds passed.
“Hi,” I said quietly when Ryan opened the door. He didn’t smile, like he usually did when he saw me. He didn’t invite me inside. He came out instead, and shut the door behind him.
“Did you get it?” His voice was quiet.
I nodded. I tried to read his expression. But he must have learned well after sharing a lifetime with Devon. He betrayed nothing.
He was studying my face, too. Was I a more open book? “Everyone’s okay?”
“Yeah, everyone’s fine.” My fingernails dug into my palm. “It happened really fast, Ryan. I came back and ran into Dr. Lyanne, and it—it got hectic.”
“What were you doing outside?” His voice was controlled, but I could tell it was a question he’d been waiting to ask.
It was also one I wasn’t entirely prepared to answer. It wasn’t something I could think about without feeling phantom hands on my body, and the foreign warmth of another boy’s skin. I’d felt his teeth graze my lip before I pulled away.
“I don’t know.” I took a deep breath. “I wasn’t the one who left. Addie was. And now she’s gone, and she won’t talk to me, so—”
Ryan frowned. We’d both kept our voices to a whisper—we had to—but his raised a little now. “She let you wake up somewhere by yourself and then abandoned you? Where did you wake up?”
I took his arm, reminded him with a look that we couldn’t be overheard. I thought, No, I woke up kissing Jackson, and then she abandoned me. But maybe I was the one who abandoned her first, because I was too selfish to think about what she wanted while I ran after my own goals.
No matter what I tried to tell myself, I was lonely without Addie. We’d taken our first breath in unison
“It’s just something between Addie and me, okay?” I said quietly. Ryan hesitated, his eyes sweeping over me, before moving back to my face. But he nodded. He accepted it, because he was hybrid, too, and he understood. “Vince arrived, and with Dr. Lyanne and Henri upstairs, I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t come get you. And with Dr. Lyanne coming down behind me, we couldn’t wait.” I let out a frustrated sigh. “I was worried about you—what would happen if we got caught, and how much I didn’t want you to be there if we did. And I don’t know if how I reacted was normal or not, but that’s how I felt. I don’t know what normal is in a situation like this, Ryan.”
All I know is that I care about you, and I want to protect you, and I never want to see you hurt.
Ryan wasn’t looking at me anymore. Why couldn’t he just be angry or upset or something? I had no idea what he wanted or needed to hear. Was this something I was supposed to know? Was this yet another bit of life I’d missed out on learning?
I just wanted to do the right thing. I just wished I knew what that was.
I died and died again in the silence that followed my words.
Then Ryan laughed. Quietly, but he laughed. “A couple months ago, a man in a suit came to take us away from our homes. We spent a week in a mental hospital, and now we’re on the run from the government. I think we’ve officially left normal behind.”
He had to whisper, because of course all this was completely secret, but somehow the whispering made everything seem that much more ridiculous. How had all this happened? How had Addie and I traded honors biology for Sabine’s notes on bomb making? How had we gone from high-school freshman to fugitive of the law?
“Eva,” Ryan said. “I get that you didn’t want me with you in case you got caught. But trust me, if you’d gotten caught, the only place I’d want to be is next to you. Okay?”
“Yeah,” I said softly. “It goes both ways.”
He nodded. Smiled, just a little. “You threw everything into an uproar when you left. Dr. Lyanne kept demanding we tell her where you were, and we kept saying we had no idea.”