Authors: Kat Zhang
Echoes of Us (22 page)
The look on our face was enough to keep her from arguing. She gave us the address.
“There’s one more thing,” I said, just before we left. I pinned Marion with our gaze. “Use these contacts you claim to have everywhere. Find out what’s going on at Hahns. How things are there. If anyone’s been hurt.”
Because of me. Because of aiding my escape.
But I didn’t say that.
Marion nodded.
Back in Anchoit, I’d dreamed about roaming the streets after dark, going to see the bustling downtown, where the lights of the bars and storefronts flashed all night long.
Addie and I had never liked crowds. The idea of dancing in the darkness, crushed by the weight and energy and unbound inhibition of hundreds of other people, sounded terrifying. And yet. There was something about the music. About the exuberance of it all.
Now we and Ryan were headed downtown in a city almost as large, but for reasons that had nothing to do with dancing or sightseeing. According to the map Marion had given us, we weren’t far now.
Marion’s address led us to the quieter part of the bar strip, where the crowds thinned to a few giggling packs of girls and some couples looking for a bit of privacy.
“Merry Christmas!”
someone shouted at us drunkenly, though it wouldn’t be Christmas for another few days.
The bouncer standing at the door gave me a skeptical look. Neither Ryan nor I had any kind of identification, let alone something saying we were twenty-one.
“I’m just looking for someone.” I tried to peek past him into the darkened bar. It was small, and not very full. A bartender cleared glasses at the counter, and a low, slow song played through the speakers. A waitress used the phone on the counter to gossip. A man sitting near the door met our eyes and frowned. I averted our eyes.
“Does he work here?” the bouncer said.
I hesitated. “I don’t know. His name’s Ty. Tyler?”
“There’s nobody here named Tyler.” The bouncer planted himself a little more firmly in the doorway. “And I’m sorry, but you can’t come in unless you have ID.”
The man who’d caught our attention before was still staring in our direction. He was stout, with a high color in his cheeks and thick, dark hair. There was the flicker of something like recognition in his eyes.
I smiled thinly at the bouncer and pulled Ryan away from the door.
“Marion didn’t tell me it was a bar,” I muttered once we were out of earshot. We’d gone around the corner, ending up in a narrow alleyway between the bar and the store next to it. “I figured it would be an apartment.”
I bit our lip. The music coming through the speakers paused, and in the change between songs, I heard it. Another song, but fainter. The strumming of a guitar, and a man’s quiet voice.
At first, I couldn’t tell where it came from. Then our eyes fell on a door in the side of the building, a little farther down the alley. In the darkness, we hadn’t noticed it before.
“T
y?” I called his name as loudly as I dared. Ryan hurried after me as I approached the door. “Ty, please—I know your sister.”
The music stopped.
We waited, our heart pounding.
The door to the back room opened just wide enough for a young, dark-haired man to step outside. He held his guitar in one hand, half protectively, half like a potential weapon.
“You know Willa?” His voice was lower than I’d expected from someone so sparingly built.
I hesitated. “No, not Willa. You’re Tyler Holynd, right?” Judging from the way his eyes moved over us, he’d guessed who we were, too. “I’m Eva. Eva Tamsyn.”
I was ready to tell him everything—how Kitty and I had been roommates at Nornand. How we’d escaped together. How she’d run away and I
needed
to know she was safe.
Then, from inside the room, a girl’s voice cried,
“Eva!”
and all my words became irrelevant.
She shoved through the doorway, squeezing past her brother as she flew toward us. Her arms wrapped around me—she was stronger than I’d expected—or maybe I was just having trouble breathing anyway.
“You’re back!” She was babbling, her voice high and breathless, her face flushed, her long, dark hair flying everywhere. She let us go and threw her arms around Ryan, too. Finally, she turned to Ty. Gave him the biggest grin we’d ever seen on her face.
“I told you they’d find us,” she said.
The back room had been set up as a makeshift bedroom. There were two sleeping bags. A radio. A couple bottles of spray paint thrown in the corner. A foldout chair. And Ty’s guitar case, where he carefully laid the instrument before turning to face us again.
Kitty wanted me to tell her everything, and I would have, if Ty hadn’t been there. As it was, I tried to appease her without saying anything too incriminating. But soon, it became apparent that there wasn’t much Kitty hadn’t already told her brother.
“Who’re these people letting you stay here?” Ryan asked. “Who’re tagging the walls and putting up messages?”
Ty glanced at the pile of spray-paint bottles in the corner. They’d stained the floor, a constellation of drips. “I met them a few months ago, after I first got into town. I didn’t know where Kitty was. If she was all right. By then, it had been a year and a half since they took her.”
Kitty had stopped smiling. She wore the slightly blank look I’d come to fear and hate—the one that meant she was struggling not to think about anything. To push away the things that hurt her, and spare herself the pain.
Ty must have noticed it, too, because he glossed over the subject. “None of them are actually hybrid—at least, I don’t think so. They’re just angry, mostly. Angry at the government. At a lot of things. I’ve been thinking of leaving ever since Kitty arrived. I’m just not sure where we’d go.”
“You can’t stay here,” Ryan said. “Not with the police honing in. Come back with us, tonight.”
A knock came at the door. It was a blond man around Ty’s age, with a scruff around his narrow jaw. His eyes moved suspiciously to Addie and me. “I thought I heard a commotion back here. You guys all right?”
“It’s my friends,” Kitty said, suddenly grinning again. “I said they’d find us, Michael, didn’t I?”
Michael’s smile was more hesitant. “You did.”
“We just need a moment,” Ty told him. “Then I’ll explain to everyone.”
But Michael just nodded and closed the door again.
“We could go get Willa and the others,” Kitty said, sidling up to her brother. “I want to see them.” Her lips twitched. “Even Jem.”
The realization hit me hard. It wasn’t disappointment, exactly. Not sadness, either. Something not nameable—like the greatest sense of loss.
Addie’s voice was gentle.
Ty was family, in the end, and we were not. We’d only known Kitty and Nina for less than a year, when it came down to it. Even if it felt like we’d known them for so much longer.
“We’ll see,” Ty said, laughing faintly.
“Are you coming with us?” Ryan started to say—
The door burst open. This time, it wasn’t Michael. It was the stout man who’d been eyeing Addie and me through the bar door. His face was flushed, his eyes bright.
“You all need to leave,” he hissed. “Right now.”
Ty jerked Kitty behind him. “Who are you?”
“Logan Newsome.” The man thrust his hand in our direction. At first, I thought he wanted us to shake it.
Then I realized he was holding something. A white envelope.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he said to us. “I have something from your mother and father.”
Addie faltered.
I grabbed the envelope and pried it open.
The card inside was plain white, a golden rose embossed at the center. I felt the sudden surge of Addie’s emotions, the flurry of our heartbeat. Hope swelled so large in our throat we couldn’t breathe.
We recognized this card. Addie had bought the set months before we left home, giving them to Mom for her birthday. Mom had always said they were too pretty to use.
Tucked inside the card was a photograph. It had been cut to fit, the edges trimmed. But I recognized it all the same. It had sat on the mantelpiece for years. In the picture, a little girl with wispy blond hair squatted by a dark green tent. The sun was in her eyes. She squinted. She wasn’t looking at the camera. All her attention was for the single blade of grass tucked between her thumbs.
We’d been trying to whistle through it, the way our parents could.
On the back were two lines of script in our mother’s handwriting.
One was faded:
Addie & Eva, 5 years old.
The other, tucked along the bottom edge of the photograph, was new, the ink bold and black.
Happy sweet sixteen,
it said.
“The police are on their way here right now,” Logan said. Only words like those could have pulled my attention away from the card in our hands. He looked to Ty. “You have a mole in your group. And he’s just called for backup.”
“That’s not possible,” Ty said. “I know all those—”
“You never thought it was strange it took the police this long to find you?” Logan demanded. “You really think you’re that well hidden? They found you ages ago. They’ve been waiting.”
He looked at Addie and me.
And I understood.
Now we had.
“My car’s parked just outside,” Logan said.
I whispered.
I don’t know if this is real. I don’t know if we can trust this man. I don’t know. I don’t know.
There were stories in Logan’s eyes that I couldn’t begin to understand. Did we go with this stranger who came bearing my mother’s handwriting?
The decision, it seemed, lay with Addie and me.
I reached for the back door and wrenched it open. We rushed out into the cold air. We hadn’t even made it to Logan’s car when we heard the faint wail of sirens.
“Ty drives,” I said, a snap decision. We had to trust Logan—but not completely. And neither Ryan nor Addie and I knew this city as well as Ty.
Logan hesitated, then tossed Ty the keys.
We never saw the police cars pull up. By then, we’d melted into the rest of Brindt’s late-night traffic.
A
ddie and I sat in the backseat as Ty drove, memorizing everything about our parents’ message. The weight of the card stock in our hands. The glossy raise of the golden flower. The exact tint of the inks our mother had used. Both black, but the new pen must have had a wider nib: the letters were thicker, the loops of the
e
s in
sweet
and
sixteen
almost shut.
Logan told us that our family wasn’t captured, like Jenson claimed. Our family wasn’t
cooperating
.
Our family was looking for us.
Our mom had sent out twelve cards with twelve different people, in hopes one might reach us. Logan had come to Brindt initially because of Ty’s group. He’d been keeping an eye on them for nearly a week now, but hadn’t made his presence known.
“It’s no secret that you’re involved in a resistance,” he said to Addie and me. “And if I suspected the group here might be connected with you, the police probably suspected the same.” He glanced at Ty. “It struck me as odd that I’d found your place without too much trouble, yet the police hadn’t.”
Ty was quiet, his hands tight on the steering wheel. It was Michael, the young man who’d come to check on us, who Logan had seen calling the police. He’d used the phone at the counter, not thinking anyone was paying attention.
I knew what it was like, to feel utterly betrayed by people you thought were friends.
When our eyes met Ryan’s, he shifted his hand to squeeze ours. He knew what this card meant to Addie and me. This proof that our parents still loved us.
Both of us.
But there was warning in his eyes, too. In the stiffness of his shoulders. And I understood that, too.
Logan directed us to a quiet street several blocks from the bar, parking the car on the side of the road. He turned to face Addie and me—solemn at first. Then he smiled a little. Like he knew us—like he was some uncle who’d met us in our childhood and had heard all the stories about us growing up. It was disconcerting.
“You look so much like your brother,” he said.
We swallowed hard. It was something he would say to make us want to trust him. And it worked.
“Will you come back with me?” Logan said quietly. “Back to your family?”
I squeezed Ryan’s hand.
“I want to make a call,” I said. “Before I decide on anything.”
Dr. Lyanne answered the phone after the fourth ring. I imagined she’d woken after the first, then stared at the phone for the next three, trying to decide whether or not to pick it up.
Thankfully, she did. She kept quiet and let me explain everything, whispering in the phone booth on that dark city street. When I finished, I waited for her to say
God, Eva, you’re always so rash
or
I told you it would be dangerous to stay here
.