Echoes of Us (7 page)

“I’m going to come back,” I told Nina, and she nodded like she believed me. Or maybe just wanted to.

Then Marion and I and Addie left, and that was that.

It was a bit shocking, how quickly it happened.

I said as we zipped along the highway. Wendy had stayed behind at the motel.

“To be completely honest,” Marion said after we’d sat in silence for too many miles, “I’m a little surprised you managed to convince Rebecca to let you go.” She pulled a conspiring smile. “She’s a bit frightening, don’t you think?”

“That’s why I like her,” I said.

Marion gave a small, breathless laugh and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. It was a nervous habit Addie and I had picked up on. “I can’t believe you’re fifteen.”

A few weeks ago, I might have been irritated. Now the words hardly touched me. “What do you mean?”

Marion shrugged. “You seem older. That’s all.”

I turned away, staring out the window. “I always thought it was the opposite. I’ve always felt too young.”

“Well,” Marion said. “Maybe you’ve changed.”

Marion filled the hours on the road explaining everything Addie and I needed to know. She slipped a ring onto our finger, a tiny camera and microphone hidden inside the plastic gemstone. Pressing the gemstone set it deeper into the band and started the camera recording. Pressing it again shut everything off. When the light on the underside of the band glowed red, it meant the memory was full.

Once, we would have laughed at the idea that this kind of technology existed. But Henri had shown us otherwise, and it didn’t seem impossible that Marion, with her government connections, might be able to get her hands on something like this.

“The children are organized into wards,” Marion said. “They call them
classes
. And every few weeks, they rotate them around.” She hesitated. “It’s to keep the girls from getting too close to one another, I think. But for you, it’ll be a good way to mark the time. One rotation should be enough for you to gather sufficient footage.”

One rotation. A few weeks. That was all the time we needed to remain within Hahns’s walls.

Marion told us how we could signal for rescue. She gave us Hahns’s blueprint, which Addie and I spread over the car’s dashboard and memorized. She taught us, too, about Darcie herself, this girl we were supposed to become. She was an only child. She’d been born with a heart defect—one that had never been successfully fixed, but had nonetheless failed to prevent her from starting soccer at a young age. I wondered if she would still play after this. Wherever they were sending her.

We’d have to lighten our hair to match hers. Darcie tended to wear her hair shorter, too—above her shoulders. Darker, longer hair could be explained away by less time outdoors and fewer visits to the hairdresser. But if bleaching and cutting our hair made it easier to swallow the lie that Addie and I were Darcie, then it would be done.

“Probably, the officials won’t even be suspicious,” Marion assured us. “They won’t be expecting something like this at all.”

I said. We were hiding under the ridiculousness of it all—one hybrid girl taking the place of another. And not just any hybrid. Addie and me. A girl the government coveted right now more than any other.

We’d hide right under their noses, with another girl’s name. The last place they’d look.

We never actually met Darcie Grey. She was gone by the time we arrived, whisked away under the cover of darkness. Addie and I slipped into the empty space she left behind, like the understudy in some horrific play.

I wondered now, as we stood before Darcie’s mother and father, how much they knew about Marion’s plans. How much they cared. Their daughter was escaping institutionalization.

Perhaps everything else was inconsequential.

“Are you sure they won’t be able to tell?” Mr. Grey stood by his kitchen counter, a thin man with thinner salt-and-pepper hair. He seemed too old to be the father of a girl our age. He hadn’t said a word directly to us since we’d arrived, speaking only to Marion or his wife.

“They won’t be able to tell,” Marion promised. She glanced around the kitchen. “You’ve gotten rid of all the recent pictures, though, like I asked?” There was a photograph stuck to the refrigerator, but the girl in it was only six or seven. She could have been us. Perhaps.

“We have,” Mrs. Grey hurried to assure her. Her eyes wandered over to us. When they found us already looking at her, they darted away again. “And I can bleach and cut her hair.”

“Good,” Marion said. She asked for a moment alone with Addie and me. Darcie’s parents obliged all too willingly, hurrying from the kitchen like they couldn’t wait to have us out of their sight.

Marion’s smile was fabulously fake, but she tried. I found my thoughts wandering back to Ryan and the others. Marion had paid for several more nights at the motel. What were they doing now? Were they thinking of us, too?

Marion reached out and awkwardly patted us on the shoulder. “You’re going to be fine.”

Addie took pity on her and didn’t move away. I hoped Marion wouldn’t try any more platitudes. She looked like she was considering it.

“You remember everything I told you?” she asked instead. Addie nodded. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The kitchen clock
tick-tick-tick
ed above the refrigerator. “Well—”

“Keep your promises.” Our voice was low. Grim. Addie pinned Marion under the force of our eyes. “You’re in this now. You can’t back out.”

After Marion left, Mrs. Grey and a sharp pair of scissors quickly took about six inches off our hair. She swept the wisps of curls off the laminate floor as Addie fingered the cut’s newly blunt ends.

The bleaching took longer, Addie and I sitting at the edge of the bathtub, trying not to flinch under Mrs. Grey’s touch. Finally, it was done.

“It looks nice,” Mrs. Grey said faintly once she’d stripped off her gloves and put everything away.

The real question, of course, was
Do we look like her?
But Addie didn’t ask it.

Mr. Grey had disappeared upstairs. I was relieved to avoid his stone-faced discomfort.

“Do you want to . . . watch a movie or something?” Mrs. Grey said.

To my surprise, I discovered that part of me did. Part of me wanted to sit down with this woman, who I didn’t know at all, and playact a family.

But it would only be pantomiming a reality long lost. And Mrs. Grey didn’t really want to sit with us. The smile on her face was a sad, kind lie, but a lie nonetheless. Probably, she wanted nothing more than to join her husband wherever he’d hidden himself, and mourn. She’d just lost a daughter. Two daughters, if she’d known about Darcie’s hybridity for long.

“No, that’s all right.” Addie pretended not to see the relief her words brought to the woman’s face. “Can I—can I see Darcie’s room?”

“Your room.” The words were firm. Mrs. Grey was committed to this charade, no matter how much pain it caused her. Her daughter’s life was on the line.

“My room,” Addie echoed.

We followed Mrs. Grey up the stairs and down the hall. Darcie’s favorite color, judging by her room, was blue. Her bedspread was dyed the shade of summer sky. Her pillows rested like twin clouds against the headboard. Her curtains were a gauzy aquamarine, so long they trailed against the carpet.

Mrs. Grey lingered at the threshold, but didn’t step inside. Addie had to maneuver past her. We studied the posters on the walls. A few of soccer players. One of a band we’d never heard of. The rest were old movie posters, mostly comedies.

There was a small vanity table in the corner, the surface cleared but for a plastic jewelry box. We heard a sharp intake of breath as Addie reached out to touch it. Mrs. Grey looked away when Addie glanced over and we slowly retracted our hand. It wasn’t ours. None of it was ours.

Awkwardly, Addie went to sit on the bed. The mattress sank heavily under our weight.

“It’s a nice room,” Addie said.

“We were planning on painting the walls soon.” Mrs. Grey’s voice was a whispery, papery thing. “Cream instead of white. You—you wanted them cream.”

“Darcie wanted them cream,” Addie said. Mrs. Grey made to speak, but Addie interrupted her gently. “I’m not Darcie. I don’t have to be Darcie until tomorrow. Tonight, I—we’re still Addie and Eva.”

The woman hesitated, framed by the door of her daughter’s bedroom. Then, slowly, she came and joined us on the bed. Her fingers were cold but soft on our temple, against our cheek. She tucked a strand of hair behind our ear, and suddenly, we were fighting a battle against our tears. We won. Just barely, but we won.

“Lovely names,” she said and kissed us on the forehead as if we were hers.

A woman came the next day. She had dark red hair, and deep brown eyes, and a soothing voice. She had documents explaining why the government thought it best that Darcie Grey be taken away from her family and institutionalized. Her black car rumbled beneath us as it carried us away. Addie and I watched Darcie’s house, Darcie’s parents, get smaller and smaller in the rear window. They didn’t wave.

We were driven, then flown, then driven again. It all took less than a day. Addie and I spoke little, which seemed to suit the woman fine.

All too soon, we were emerging from a car in front of the Hahns institution. The mountain air was bitterly cold. When we’d arrived at Nornand, we’d clutched a red duffel bag and the chip Ryan had slipped into our pocket. Two things to remind us of the outside world. Now we stood in front of Hahns, staring and shivering, with nothing but Marion’s ring.

The first thing that struck me about the institution was how
old
it seemed. Nornand—even Powatt—had looked like a hospital. Cold and stark, yes, but beautiful in their own ways: Nornand with its enormous windows and bright steel; Powatt with its clean, white lines.

Hahns was like a crumbling stone prison. If I’d dared speak, I would have asked how long ago the institution had been built. Fifty years? Sixty? Longer? The earliest institutions had been constructed during the years after the start of the Great Wars, only a couple decades after the turn of the twentieth century. The invasions on American soil had been more than enough to incite hybrid hatred to new heights. Thousands had died or disappeared, either officially accused of treason, or simply vanishing at the hands of angry, fearful neighbors. Sometimes, angry, fearful family.

After the initial fervor, the institutions had gone up as safety boxes for hybrids. A means of protecting everybody. A shield.

Hahns did not seem like it could shield anything. I understood now why children died here in the cold. The wind whipped tears into our eyes, blinded us with our hair. I took as deep a breath as our rigid lungs would allow. Then adjusted the ring on our finger so the camera captured the institution’s facade.

“Come along,” the woman said, and led us inside.

The air stank of musk and the coppery, metallic scent of rust. A man slouched at the front desk, his face soft with weight. His eyes roamed over us without particular interest. “Name?”

“Darcie Grey,” the woman said, and as she said it—as both man and woman turned to look at us—I felt a sudden earthquake of fear. Of terror so deep it threatened to split us open, leave our insides naked in the pale light.

For as long as we stayed at Hahns, Addie and I were Darcie Grey. We were fourteen years old. We played soccer, and loved blue, and had once wanted to paint our bedroom walls cream instead of white.

The man jabbed a button on his phone. Said in a voice that was more bored than anything else, “Could I get someone down here to take care of a new child?”

The woman didn’t even wait to hand us off. Just peeled away from the front desk and disappeared down the hall. A few minutes later, another man appeared. A
caretaker
, judging by his tan uniform.

“Darcie, right?” he said as he led us to the elevator. He reminded us of a teacher we used to have, his voice a low grumble, his jaw darkly scruffed.

I nodded.

Addie’s words rode on a silent, disbelieving laugh.

Hahns was known for being brutal.

I said.

Addie laughed again. It sounded off, the pitch twisted.

I said quietly

T
he ancient elevator took us up one floor.

Once upon a time, someone had painted the hallway two-toned: white on top, a thick swath of yellow on the bottom. Perhaps it had looked all right when it was first done. Now, the white had faded mostly to gray. The yellow had reduced to a sickly, muddy color. And everywhere, great flakes and gashes of paint had chipped off, revealing the bleakness underneath.

We passed several doors, each evenly spaced, before the caretaker stopped. The other wards, judging from the blueprint in our memory. The lock on the door was old-fashioned. No keypad, like the ones in Nornand’s basement. The caretaker only carried a single key. I tried to notice everything. There was no knowing what might become useful later.

Then the door opened, and we got our first look at our new prison.

At Nornand, we’d shared a bedroom with Kitty and Nina. It hadn’t been anything fancy—two beds, two nightstands, a few extra square feet of floor space. There had been a modicum of privacy.

There was no such thing as privacy here. The caretaker led Addie and me into a long, cold room. Dozens of cast-iron beds stood in almost-straight rows. The girls in, and near, and around the beds all looked up as we entered. They wore uniforms, as we’d worn uniforms. But theirs were eggshell colored, and they had no shoes—not real shoes. Instead, they wore strange, soft slippers, almost like ballet flats.