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“Lyle.” Mom gave him a look. “Don’t be morbid.”
We’d gone all cold.
“What’s morbid mean?” Lyle said.
Mom looked like she was about to explain, but then she caught sight of our face. “Addie, are you all right?” She frowned. “What happened to your shirt?”
“I’m fine,” Addie said, fending off her touch. “I—I just realized I’ve got a lot of homework tonight.” She avoided the second question altogether. We’d been so worried about our shirt before. Now it hardly seemed to matter.
Hybrids? Hybrids were responsible for the destruction at the museum?
Mom raised an eyebrow. “On a Friday?”
“Yeah,” Addie said. She didn’t seem to realize what she was saying. We both looked at Mom, but I didn’t think Addie saw a thing. “I—I’m going to go upstairs now.”
“There are leftovers in the fridge,” Mom called after us. “Dad will be home around—”
Addie shut our door and fell into bed, kicking off our shoes and burying our head in our arms.
<Oh, God> she whispered, and it was almost a plea.
If hybrids were being blamed for the flood and fire at the history museum, and if said hybrids hadn’t been caught yet, then … I couldn’t even imagine the frenzy that would sweep the city. It would reach us here in the outskirts for sure. Everyone would be on alert, nerves raw, quick to accuse. That was the thing about hybrids. You couldn’t tell just by looking at them.
The Mullans would be the first to have fingers jabbed in their direction, with their foreign blood and strange ways. No one with a shred of sense would have anything to do with them now.
But still, but still.
I could see Hally’s brother standing in the hallway, could remember his eyes on us, remember every word that had come out of his mouth. He’d said I could move again. He’d said they could teach me.
What if he and his sister were taken away? I might spend every burning second of the rest of my life thinking back on this day, ruing the things I did not say, the action I did not take, the chance I failed to seize.
<We’re going back> I said quietly.
Addie didn’t even reply. We lay there, our face pressed into the crook of our elbow.
<We’re going back, Addie> I said.
Devon’s words were red-hot coals inside me, searing away three years of tenuous acceptance. The fire screamed to get out, to escape from the throat, the skin, the eyes that were mine as much as Addie’s. But it couldn’t.
<Can you even hear what you’re saying?> Addie demanded.
Normally, I wouldn’t have responded. I’d learned not to speak whenever I felt like this. To stay quiet and make myself pretend I didn’t care. It was the only way I could keep from going insane, to not die from the want—the need—to move my own limbs. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t scream. I could only be quiet and let myself go numb. Then, at least, I wouldn’t have to feel anymore, wouldn’t have to endlessly crave what I could never have.
But not today. I couldn’t stay quiet today.
<Yes> I said. <I hear it, and you hear it. But no one else does, do they?>
Addie shifted so we faced the wall. <Eva, can … Can you imagine what would happen to us if anyone found out?>
<I know> I said. <I know, but—>
<We’re safe> Addie said. <For the first time since we were six years old, we’re safe, and you want to throw that away?>
My voice had turned pleading, but I was too desperate to care. <This could be my only chance, Addie. I have to risk it—>
<It’s not just your risk> Addie said.
<You don’t understand, Addie> I said. <You can’t. You never will.>
Our eyes squeezed shut. <I can’t go back> Addie said. <I just can’t. I can’t.>
<But I have to!>
<Well, you don’t really have a choice, do you?> Addie said.
It was as if she’d sliced the tendons connecting us, leaving me raw and reeling. For a long, long moment, I couldn’t find any words.
<Fine> I finally spat. <Whatever you want. Obviously I don’t matter at all.>
Once, a few months after our thirteenth birthday, I disappeared.
Only for five or six hours, though it had seemed timeless to me. This was the year Lyle fell sick. The year we found out his kidneys were failing him, that our little brother might never grow up.
Suddenly, we were right back in those hospital hallways. Except this time, Addie and I weren’t the patient—Lyle was. And as terrible as the former had been, the latter managed to be ten times worse. The doctors were all different, the tests different, the way they treated him different. But our parents were just as wild with worry, and Lyle, sitting on the examination table, just as pale and silent as we’d been.
One night, he’d whispered a question in our ear as Addie sat at the edge of his bed, reaching to turn off his lamp.
If he died, did that mean he’d be with Nathaniel again?
Addie had to fight past the stopper in our throat before she could breathe, let alone answer. As was customary, no one had spoken of Nathaniel since he’d faded away three years prior. You’re not going to die, she’d said.
But if—Lyle had said before she cut him off.
You’re not going to die, Lyle. You’re going to be fine. You’re going to get better. You’re going to be fine.
She was short-tempered the rest of the night, and we’d argued over stupid things that had escalated until she shouted at me that our little brother was sick, couldn’t I be human and lay off her, and I’d screamed back that she’d gotten through the death of one little brother just fine, hadn’t she? Because I’d wanted to hurt her, as she’d hurt me.
And I was so scared, so scared.
So scared that just for a moment, I didn’t want to be there beside Addie. I didn’t want to know what tomorrow would bring, what Addie would say next, what would happen to our little brother, who’d asked us today if he’d ever see Nathaniel again.
I’d spent my whole life clutching on. To suddenly go the opposite direction—to curl up smaller and smaller, to sever my ties to our body and to Addie—it had been terrifying. But I’d been so angry, so hurt, and so scared—
And before I even fully realized what I was doing, it was done.
I spent those hours in a world of half-formed dreams while Addie panicked and screamed for me to come back. This she admitted to me more than a year later, but I’d felt her fear when I returned, cloudy-eyed and confused. I’d tasted her relief.
And I never disappeared again, no matter how hard we fought. No matter how scared I was.
But tonight, I got close. I flirted at the edge of it, too frightened to make the leap but angry enough to think I might.
I don’t know who suffers more when Addie and I don’t speak to each other. For me, staying silent all Friday night and Saturday made the time dreamlike. The world swam by like a movie, distant and intangible.
On the other hand, Addie had no one to remind her about the little things. She forgot to get a towel before getting in the shower. Our alarm clock blared us awake at seven o’clock on Saturday. She looked everywhere but the bookshelf for our hairbrush. I said nothing. Hadn’t I always known she couldn’t do without me?
I studied when she was too busy daydreaming or stressing to do anything but keep our eyes on the text and flip pages when I told her to. I put words on our tongue when she was too flustered to speak.
And so whenever we fell into sullen silences and refused to talk to each other, it was always Addie who broke down after a few hours—a day at most—and spoke first.
But Saturday melted into Sunday, and Addie stayed mute. I felt the emptiness beside me, the hard, blank nothingness that meant she was struggling to keep her emotions bound.
“Are you all right?” Mom asked when we came down for breakfast Sunday morning. I felt her eyes on us as Addie opened the cabinet and grabbed a cereal bowl. “You’ve been acting funny all weekend.”
Addie turned. Our cheeks tightened, stretching our lips into a smile. “Yeah, Mom. I’m fine. Kinda tired, I guess.”
“You’re not coming down with something, are you?” she asked, setting down her mug to feel our forehead. Addie pulled away.
“No, Mom. I’m fine. Really.”
Mom nodded but didn’t stop frowning. “Well, don’t share cups with Lyle or anything, just in case. He—”
“I know,” Addie said. “Mom, I live here, too. I know.”
Our cereal stuck in our throat. Addie dumped the rest in the trash.
When she went back upstairs to brush our teeth, I stirred enough to stare at our reflection in the bathroom mirror. Addie was looking, too. There were our brown eyes, our short nose, our small mouth. Our wavy, dishwater-blond hair that we always said we’d do something with but never quite dared to. Then Addie shut our eyes, and I couldn’t look any longer. She rinsed with our eyes still closed, felt for the washcloth, and pressed it against our face. Cool. Damp.
<You can’t. You can’t want to go back, Eva.>
Addie always gave in first. I waited for some kind of satisfaction, some kind of relish that once again I had won and she had lost. But all I felt was a great sigh of relief.
<Think about what could happen> she said. Our face stayed buried in the cloth. <We could be normal now. We could just be like this.>
<I don’t want to be like this> I said.
<Settling happens to everyone. It—>
<But we didn’t settle> I said. <Not completely. I’m still here, Addie.>
We stood there in the stillness of that Sunday morning, a barefooted girl in a T-shirt and faded red pajama pants, water dripping down her chin, a terrible secret in her head.
<What if someone finds out, Eva? What if they take us away and—>
<Addie> I said. <If it had been you—if it were you trapped inside. If you were the one who couldn’t move, I’d go back. I’d go back in a second.>
The washcloth was suddenly hot with tears.
(#ulink_a8a8a911-7d2b-5503-944f-3090f23028dc)
ll Monday morning, no one talked about anything but the Bessimir museum flood. Those of us in Ms. Stimp’s history class suddenly became the most sought-after students in school, even among the upperclassmen, who usually paid attention to the freshmen only when they wanted us to get out of the way.
Addie hid from everyone’s eager questions as best she could, but she couldn’t avoid them all. Again and again, she had to describe the scene at the museum, estimate the amount of water there’d been, how our guide had reacted, had anyone screamed? Had she suspected it was an attack? Did she see anyone suspicious? Daniela Lowes said she had. What about the fire? Had anyone seen the fire? Oh, you’re the one who fell, aren’t you?
They always seemed disappointed by Addie’s answers. Apparently, everyone else had gotten soaked up to their knees and seen shady men in the corners—or at least caught sight of a tower of flames.
Hybrids, ran the whisper in the corridors, the bathrooms, the classrooms, while everyone pretended to pay attention to the teachers. Hybrids. Hidden, free hybrids. Here.
“They could be next door and you’d never know it,” said the girl sitting in front of us in math, her voice full of wonder and excitement. Others weren’t so bold. We found an upperclassman crying in the bathroom after second period, convinced that her father, who worked at Bessimir’s city hall, was in terrible danger. Addie fled from her tears.
By third period, we were pale, almost shaking. Our hands gripped the sides of our seat to stay still, to keep ourself in our chair until lunch. We’d both forgotten our money that morning, but neither of us was in the mood to eat, so it didn’t matter.
Finally, the bell rang. Addie all but ran into the hall. Shouting filled the air, bouncing off posters, banging into dented metal lockers. Addie jumped aside to avoid a boy’s elbow as he yanked off his tie.
<Where’s Hally’s room?> I said. I almost didn’t dare to ask, considering everything that had happened that morning, considering how tightly our fists were clenched. But I had to.
Addie looked down the hall. <506> she said softly.
We pushed our way there, gathering speed as the crowds thinned. Addie walked stiffly, planting one foot in front of the other with the deliberate force of someone who had to keep going forward, never stopping, for fear of never starting again if she did. Soon we were jogging, then running, through the halls.
We crashed into room 506 with such a clatter and a bang that the teacher cried out and leaped to her feet. Addie threw out our arms, bracing against a desk to keep from falling.
“Sorry, sorry,” she said. She bent to right a chair we’d knocked over. “I’m—I’m looking for Hally Mullan. Was she here?”
“She just left,” the teacher said. Her hand was still pressed against her chest. “Really, is it such an emergency?”
Addie was already halfway out the door. “No, it’s not. Sorry.”
<Where now?> she said, and I felt a rush of gratitude. The school crawled with anti-hybrid sentiment. Our chest was so tight I felt each breath squeezing in and out of our lungs. Addie could have said, She isn’t there. I tried. Maybe tomorrow. Instead she just asked, Where now?
<I don’t know. The cafeteria, I guess. Then outside. Then maybe that café across the street.>
We scanned the faces in the lunchroom for Hally’s black-rimmed glasses, searched for a glimpse of her long, dark hair among the café’s coffee drinkers and newspaper readers. But she was nowhere to be found. By the time we left the café, lunch was more than half over.
<We’ll wait by her classroom> I said. <She has to go back there.>
<We’ll be late.>
<I don’t care.>
Hally’s teacher eyed us as we reentered her room. Addie slid into a seat by the door, crossing our arms on the desk. We waited. And waited.
<The bell’s going to ring, Eva.>
<Just a little longer> I said. <She’ll come. You’ll see.>
But she didn’t. The minutes passed, long and silent. Hally’s teacher cleared her throat. We ignored her. Finally, Addie stood.
<Addie, let’s just stay a few more—>
