Once We Were (19 page)

“Henri, then? Emalia?” There was something pleading in her expression. “
I
could tell them, Eva.”

She wasn’t really asking for permission. She could tell anyone—I couldn’t stop her. But she wanted acceptance. My support, when everything came apart. Vince would be furious. They’d all be. God knew what Christoph might do.

“Ryan would probably hate me,” Lissa said. And maybe I should have said,
No, he wouldn’t. Of course not
, but I didn’t. Because the unasked question growing between us was:
Would you?

I didn’t answer it. I said, instead, “Don’t, okay?”

She didn’t sigh. Hardly reacted at all. But I caught the dimming in her eyes.

“Please.” I sat up, drawing my blanket against me, feeling it bunch beneath my fingers. “Tell Emalia or Henri, and they’ll immediately go to Peter.” I reached out hesitantly, and touched Lissa’s arm. “Don’t tell anyone. Just . . . just trust me, okay?”

“I
do
trust you. It’s just—”

“It’s going to be okay,” I said. My mouth was so dry I could barely get the words out. “I’m going to make everything okay.”

“How?” Lissa demanded.

“I don’t know. Just—just give me some time, all right? I promise. I’ll figure it out.”

An eternity passed before Lissa replied. A hundred thousand years separating our bodies in the dark.

“Okay,” she said, and I hated the unease on her face. The knowledge that I’d put it there. But I didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t tell anyone. She just couldn’t.

Lissa sighed and lay back down. I watched her stare at the ceiling fan until her eyes slid shut and her breathing grew shallow. I sat there for what seemed like hours more, my thoughts stumbling around in the darkness.

Entombed in the silence of my own mind, I waited for Addie to come back.

I fell asleep before she did.

T
he next couple weeks passed quickly. Sabine decided we should have a test run before the real thing, so Ryan had to make two containers, one much smaller than the other. The two of them calculated how much kerosene and liquid oxygen they’d need, and what dimensions the containers should be.

Ryan spent hours and hours in the attic, looking through his books, fiddling with his designs. Cordelia or Sabine came up occasionally during the day, but they had customers to deal with. The others visited during the afternoon. Most of the time, it was just Ryan and me. Really
just
Ryan and me.

Addie had developed a new fervor for practicing just how long and accurately we could go under. The two of us spent more and more time alone in our body.

she’d say, and I’d hold that time in my mind as tightly as I could while letting myself fall asleep. It wasn’t easy. You could only go under by utterly letting yourself go. Latching on to the idea of
come back in two hours
was like holding on to a buoy and trying to dive.

But little by little, we managed it. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. An hour. Three hours. I’d go under just after breakfast and wake up hungry for lunch. I’d disappear in our bedroom while still in our pajamas and wake up in open air, dressed in clothes I had no memory of putting on.

At first, Addie and I filled each other in on everything we’d done while the other was asleep. But soon, we stopped. Most of it wasn’t important anyway, especially since the others could tell between Addie and me now and didn’t expect one of us to know what the other had been up to.

For the first time in our lives, we had some modicum of privacy. I could be with Ryan alone. Without Addie’s emotions fogging up the back of my mind. Without the taste of her disapproval in my throat.

I asked her one day. I didn’t want to. But I had to.

She took a long time to answer. But finally, she said

Trust was all we had to get us through this. Nothing in our lives had ever prepared us for it. No one had ever taught us how to handle it.

Months ago, during that first night in Anchoit, Ryan and I kissed, floundering, in the hallway of Peter’s apartment. There was something to be said, certainly, about first kisses. But there was more to be said about the ones that came afterward. We kissed urgently at first—driven by a sense of secrecy, of stolen time. Then languidly, softly, knowing there wasn’t any rush. We lived in the circle of fairy lights, hidden in an attic that seemed like its own world.

I told Ryan about our old apartment in the city. About the fire escape that had felt like our sanctuary. About the teachers at school only calling Addie’s name, even when mine had also been on the roster, because otherwise the class was simply too hard to quiet down again.

One morning, Addie asked

She didn’t preface the question with a name or any sort of explanation at all, and it took me a moment to realize who she was referring to.

I said.

We were eating breakfast, and she was quiet a long moment.

And I did keep that in mind, from then on.

Two weeks passed. Then three. October approached. Back home in Lupside, the leaves would be changing colors, drifting like embers from their branches. There were no trees on the walk between our apartment building and the photography shop, but the odd holiday decorations started popping up on the store windows: miniature pumpkins, black witch hats, frightened-looking cats.

Insulated by the attic’s sloping walls, there didn’t seem to be any need to think about time.

At first, Ryan’s ideas only existed on paper: words and diagrams. One day, I found him staring at his notes and laughing quietly to himself.

“What?” I shifted closer and tried to read his handwriting.

He lifted his head. I reached over and smoothed down his hair as he spoke. “I’m going to need tools. And supplies. Possibly a welder. Where am I going to get a welder, Eva?”

My hand stilled. I stared at him until the absurdity of it got the better of me and I had to laugh. I laughed more now than I’d ever laughed in my life. I laughed as often as I could, savoring it.

“Ask Jackson,” I said through the giggles. “He probably knows someone who knows someone with power tools who owes him a favor.”

Turned out Jackson did. Addie was hesitant about sneaking out late at night. We didn’t need to go. But if Ryan was going to chance being caught, then I was going to risk it with him, and Addie eventually came around.

We broke curfew to spend late nights secreted in a garage downtown, surrounded by power tools Jackson admitted we didn’t
technically
have permission to use, so hurry up and get it done. I woke once in the semidarkness of the garage, hearing Ryan working in the background. Jackson was laughing. I—Addie—was laughing, too. She quieted a little once she felt my presence, but didn’t lose her smile.

Twice, we were almost caught leaving the garage. But both times, we got away, safe and triumphant and filled with a breathless sort of glee.

Then came the morning I walked up the attic stairs, still yawning, and Ryan turned to me.

He said, before I could speak: “I think it’s finished.”

It had been a while since the atmosphere in the attic was like this. Tense. Stretched. Vince lounged on the green couch, Sabine next to him. Christoph and Cordelia took up the other sofa. Ryan stood; he’d just finished explaining the workings of the contraption sitting in the middle of the rug. Addie and I leaned against the wall.

“It’ll do the job,” Ryan said into the silence.

“Not doubting it,” Vince said. The two shared a tense but genuine smile.

“We’ll test it next week,” Sabine said. “We’ll drive way out to Frandmill. There’s a lot of deserted land around there. We’ll get the liquid oxygen tomorrow night, after dark but before curfew. Not all of us.”

“I’ll go with you,” Vince said, and she nodded.

“I’ll go, too.” I wasn’t sure whether to be gratified or insulted by the startled silence that followed my words.

Addie said quietly.