Once We Were by Kat Zhang
The apartment was as still and silent as when we’d left hours before. I crossed the darkened living room, crept through the hall, and slipped into our bedroom. Kitty was a slumbering shadow tucked into her sheets. We exchanged our clothes for pajamas and slid into bed, our cheek pressed against the cold pillow.
Only then did the implications of what I’d agreed to hit me. Hard. I took a deep breath, and Addie must have sensed my sudden trepidation. She reached for me. Held me steady.
Did I choose right? I almost asked, but didn’t. In the end, I didn’t need to. Addie told me, without saying a word, that whatever I chose, we were in it together.
We fell asleep whispering about plans for the future. We hadn’t had any, before.
Addie and I slept in the next morning, waking only when a knock came at the front door. We went to answer it in our secondhand pajamas, our hair a sleep-tangled mess of half curls. She yawned and looked through the peephole, probably expecting Hally or Ryan, like I was.
I wasn’t a slob, but Addie had always been the one who liked our clothes pressed, our hair neat, who made sure our room was tidy. She could be forgetful, might misplace things from time to time, but Addie had always wanted things orderly.
She fumbled with the lock with one hand and tried to tame our hair with the other, then quickly lowered our hand as she opened the door.
“Hey,” she said.
Jackson studied us a moment. Stop it, I wanted to tell him. Can’t you see you’re making Addie more embarrassed? But he didn’t look away, just smiled. “Late morning?”
Addie waved him inside. I could feel her want to say something, but no words came to our lips. We flushed. Jackson glanced around the room. “Where are Kitty and Emalia?”
“Kitty’s in our room,” Addie said. “Emalia’s at Peter’s.”
“Ah,” Jackson said.
“Ah, what?”
He laughed and plunked down in one of the dining chairs. “Nothing. It’s good that she’s out. I came to see how you were. You know, after last night.”
Addie lowered us into a chair as well. “We didn’t change our minds, if that’s what you mean.”
“I don’t remember getting an answer from you, actually,” Jackson said. “Eva said she was ready to start doing something. But what about you?”
“I didn’t know we had to speak separately.”
Jackson’s pale blue eyes never left ours, even for a second. They lent everything he said—despite the artlessness in his movements and the jaunt in his grin—a certain intensity. “I like to hear what you have to say.”
Addie was quiet, picking at our pajama pants.
“I’m in,” she said.
Jackson leaned toward us, and Addie didn’t back away. I felt the tension in our muscles, the strain it took to keep our position. He was pushing on too close—too close for Addie to take. “Good. What about Devon’s sister? Hally? Do you think she’s going to be okay with this?”
Addie nodded.
“Did you guys know each other a long time before Nornand?” Jackson asked. “You, Devon, and Hally?”
“Not a very long time,” Addie said. She shrugged. “A month or so.”
I waited for her to explain how she wasn’t even there for most of it, or how Devon wasn’t exactly the easiest person to get to know under any circumstances, for any length of time. But she didn’t.
“Who’s the other boy sharing Christoph’s body?” she said instead. Jackson stiffened, but Addie pressed onward. “I’m trying to get to know everyone so I can tell who’s who and when, but I don’t even know his name, and—”
“It’s always Christoph,” Jackson said.
Addie paused. “Sorry?”
“It’s always Christoph,” Jackson repeated. His voice went toneless. “You don’t need to figure anything out.”
The words pierced our skin, injected ice water into our veins. We flashed cold, then hot. “You mean—but Jaime—”
But Jaime’s the only one who survived that sort of surgery.
Jackson’s eyes widened with realization. “No, that’s not what I meant. It’s not like that. His name is Mason. But none of us have ever spoken with him or seen him take control. Sabine says . . . Sabine says that by the time she got to know Christoph at their institution, Mason had already gone silent. Anyway—” He hesitated. “Look, we all react to hell differently. Mason—maybe he still speaks to Christoph, but he gave up communicating with anyone else.”
Addie swallowed. Nodded.
“Anyway.” Jackson seemed to be trying to smile. “You’re doing well.”
“What do you mean?”
“Post-Nornand.” His smile was genuine now. “I don’t know what you were like before going in, but back in the hospital, you seemed—well, I don’t know. Different. Different than now.”
Addie surprised me with a quiet laugh. She rarely laughed in front of people unless she was completely comfortable. “You know, I hated you, when I first saw you. I’d just arrived at Nornand. You had a package for Mr. Conivent or something, and you kept staring at me, and I—”
I remembered, too. I’d thought Jackson’s eyes looked like a doll’s, so light blue they were almost clear.
“I thought you figured I was some kind of circus freak,” Addie said. She laughed again, louder this time. “Turns out we’re the same kind of freak.”
Jackson grinned, raising an imaginary glass. “To freaks, then.”
TEN
Jackson stayed a little longer to chat, but he was supposed to meet with Christoph for lunch. He left with a smile and a You’re sure you don’t want to come? It was tempting. Leaving the apartment so many times these past two days hadn’t dampened our yearning for fresh air. If anything, it had made it worse. But Emalia was with Peter, not at work. She might return home any moment, and we couldn’t be found missing. So Jackson left alone.
Addie was quiet long after he’d gone, moving slowly as we showered and got dressed. The steam from the hot water made us sleepy again, cloudy-headed.
We’d just left the bathroom when Addie said
Shock rippled through me.
I tried to quash my excitement—or at least hide it from Addie. I didn’t dare ask what had finally changed her mind. Maybe meeting with Sabine and the others had affected her like it had affected me. Maybe she was finally ready to move on, to pursue a new kind of normal.
Addie pushed our pillow against the headboard and leaned against it. Our damp hair clung to our neck. A breath shuddered through our lungs.
When we were thirteen? I’d been so angry then—I hadn’t even known what I was doing. I’d just wanted to be anywhere but where I was. Lyle’s sickness had started that year. Addie and I had fought, and in that moment, everything had been too much to bear. I’d willed myself to feel nothing at all, to disconnect from the world and dissolve like morning mist in sunlight.
Addie let me take control of our body as I tried my best to explain. Our chest quivered with my attempt at steady breathing.
It probably won’t even happen, I thought, trying to calm myself.
Which was fine. Addie had agreed to try, and that was the important thing. We wouldn’t achieve anything this go-around, but Addie had agreed to try, so there would be other chances, and sooner or later, sh
There was a feeling like a balloon popping inside us.
Then Addie was gone.
I did not shout her name.
That was the reaction I’d come to expect, and the one I’d steeled myself against: the urge to cry out. Then the urge to reach for her, to clamber toward that abyss where Addie should have been and stare over its edge, scrabbling for her in the darkness.
I was propelled back to all those after-school sessions at the Mullans’ house, learning to move again as Addie floated in a Refcon-induced sleep. Refcon was a drug that suppressed the stronger soul. Hally had stolen some from her mother’s hospital, and Addie drank it to give me a chance to regain my strength.
But this was different. Addie was gone by her own volition, without the aid of drugs, of medication, of any kind.
The first blink was followed by the first breath. Then the second. The third.
Addie was gone, and I was still here, sitting on the bed.
Alone.
The word echoed through the empty chambers of my mind.
Nobody but I knew.
I curled our fingers into a fist, harder and harder until our nails bit a painful line across the center of our palm. Then I studied the stair-step pattern of red crescent moons etched into our skin.
The silence in the room—in our head—was enormous. It seemed at once a great, untouchable emptiness and some stifling, half-living thing that might, at any moment, break down the door hiding me from the rest of the world.
I stood. Our legs held. Of course they held. I’d been walking fine for weeks. But the steps I took now seemed no less momentous.
I took fourteen steps, just weaving around the room.
Emalia’s spare bedroom wasn’t large, and furniture ate up most of the floor space. In addition to the two beds, there were two matching nightstands—with two mismatching lamps—and a medium-sized dresser we shared with Kitty. Atop the dresser was the prettiest thing in the room, a large, rectangular mirror with an ornate wooden frame.
I stood before it. The shadowy girl in the glass stared back at me. The same girl who’d stared back at me my entire life. I reached up, touching my face.
Was it my face now, when Addie wasn’t here?
The girl in the mirror frowned.
I returned to the bed, suddenly finding it difficult to breathe. The world seemed too big, and yet too small.
This was what being alone felt like.
This was how Mom, Dad, Lyle—all the other girls at school, our teachers, the people on the street—this was how they spent every second of their lives. This was the silence and loneliness in their heads, the echo of their thoughts.
It had felt different when I was immobile. I’d still been partially trapped, then. But now . . . I could do anything. I could do anything, and no one but me would ever have to know.
A little more than five minutes later, Addie was back.
I held her, tight, as she reemerged to the waking world.
Addie stared blankly at the television screen. Kitty had called us out to watch a movie, and we’d joined her, but neither Addie nor I could concentrate.
Back in Lupside, Addie had asked Hally about other potential side effects. There hadn’t been anything very serious, which meant it beat the other drugs Addie and I had taken as a kid, all in attempts to get us to settle.
Still, Hally had whispered an apology one afternoon. For not telling you, she said. I just—I still wasn’t sure if you would do it. And I thought, if Eva just got one chance to know what it could be like to be free, she . . .
Addie had just looked away, and nodded. They hadn’t been friends then. They hadn’t had reason to be.
Funny, how things changed.
Addie absentmindedly touched Kitty’s hair. A key rattled in the lock, and our fingers stilled.
“Hey,” Sophie said cheerfully, throwing open the front door. “Have you girls eaten yet?”
“Not yet.” Kitty smiled and seemed to lose all interest in the movie. “Can you bring us something from that last place?”
“Which place is that?” Sophie hung up her purse and slid out of her heels, laying them neatly on the shoe rack. “There’s a meeting in a few minutes, so I can’t go too far.”
“There’s a meeting with Peter?” Addie jumped up and followed Sophie into the kitchen. It was Saturday, so Sophie couldn’t mean anything for work. “Why now?”
Sophie shrugged and pulled a box of crackers from the cabinet. “Rebecca had something to do later, and—”
“Dr. Lyanne’s coming?” Addie said. “Is she bringing Jaime?”
“I don’t think so.” Sophie’s eyes scrutinized us. Again that look like she was afraid we might break. Emalia wore it more often, but Sophie wasn’t immune to over-worrying about us. “I wouldn’t think she’d want to bring him into the city, now that—well, you know.”
“Is she at Peter’s apartment already?”
“Actually, we’re meeting at Henri’s.”
Addie didn’t bother hiding our relief. If the meeting had been at Peter’s, we’d have to fight Sophie about leaving the building, and I was almost positive she wouldn’t have yielded. “When’s it start?”
“In about ten minutes,” Sophie said, but rushed to add, “Addie, it’s not a general meeting. You’re—”
“I just want to talk to her.” We were already halfway to the hall.
“Wait and go up with me,” Sophie called after us. “She might not even be there yet.”
“She’ll be there,” Addie said. “She likes to be early.”
Sophie smiled weakly. For a moment, the worry faded from her face, replaced by some emotion I couldn’t name. “You talk like you know her well.”
I thought about Dr. Lyanne watching Jaime pass in the gurney. Her soothing him in the darkness. Telling us the code to the basement doors. Showing up in the Ward holding Kitty’s hand. Out with us on the fire escape at Peter’s apartment, watching the cars below.
“Well enough,” Addie said.
Addie was almost right. Dr. Lyanne wasn’t at Henri’s apartment yet, but we’d only gone up a flight of stairs when we heard the rapid click of heels echoing below us. It was ridiculous to say we recognized Dr. Lyanne by the sound of her footsteps, but instinct made us pause in the stairwell.
Little by little, she came into view. Her ash-brown hair was longer now than it had been at Nornand. It might have been the humidity in Anchoit, but her hair seemed a little less straight, as well. She wore it coiled over her shoulder, strands floating around her face.
She’d grown thinner. The delicate planes of her face were sharper, her limbs birdlike. We’d learned that she was a couple years younger than Peter, so she could have only been twenty-eight or twenty-nine at most, but she looked so much older as she came up those stairs.
Dr. Lyanne had played a hand in helping us escape from Nornand—had tried, in fact, to rescue all the kids there. For that, she’d given up nearly everything. Emalia managed to rustle up enough falsified documents to get her a job at a clinic, but I got the impression that it was basic work, something Dr. Lyanne was immensely overqualified for.
Maybe she enjoyed it, though.
Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she regretted everything.
“Hi,” Addie murmured.
Dr. Lyanne’s head whipped up. For a moment, she didn’t reply, just studied us as we’d studied her. Had we changed, too, in the past weeks? Or was she comparing us to an even earlier version of ourself? The girl who had arrived at Nornand in a shiny, black car, dressed in a school uniform and her parents’ last hugs and the tattered remnants of her naïvety?
“Hi,” Dr. Lyanne said. She closed the remaining distan
Dr. Lyanne was not a comfortable-looking woman. She was all angles. She hardly ever smiled. She and Emalia had never gotten along, though Dr. Lyanne had stayed with her for a little while before finding her own place. Still, there was something I found comfortable about her. Maybe it was what Addie had told Emalia—we knew Rebecca Lyanne. We’d seen her when she sat shattered apart at Nornand, when her world lay in pieces and she had to choose how to put it back together. We’d watched her make the decision that brought her here, liaised with a hybrid resistance led by her brother.
There’s a connection that’s made when someone sees you at your lowest. But connection or not, Dr. Lyanne had told us the government would bury Nornand, and Jenson had done anything but bury it in his speech.
Our voice was a whisper. “You were wrong. About Nornand.”
The warning in Dr. Lyanne’s eyes read loud and clear. She moved past us. “We’re not talking about this in the stairwell.”
“You said they were going to bury it,” Addie hissed, following on her heels. “You said they thought it was a complete failure!”
“I got it wrong. It happens.”
“It happens?”
Upstairs, someone slammed a door, and we both flinched. Shouting drifted down, angry voices lifted in some unknown argument. Dr. Lyanne gave us a pointed look.
“Is he safe?” Addie didn’t need to specify who. This, finally, stopped Dr. Lyanne’s ascent. For a moment, the stairwell was silent again.
She looked down at us over her shoulder. “As safe as I can make him.”
Did we trust her? She’d failed before. She’d let Jaime down. She might again.
It would be too cruel to point this out. But perhaps cruelty could be excused in a situation like this? Perhaps when something was so crucial, it was okay to be ruthless. The government would stop at nothing to get Jaime back. There had never been another person like him: a hybrid surgically stripped of his second soul. A thirteen-year-old boy who’d had doctors slice into his brain and rearrange it to their own liking.
But in the end, we weren’t that heartless.