Once We Were (2 page)

No matter how much we ached to.

When Addie didn’t release the phone, I slipped into control and did it for us. Addie didn’t protest. I stepped out onto the sidewalk, the city greeting us with a slap of wind. A passing car coughed dark exhaust into the air.

Addie hesitated.

What else could I say?

I waited at a crosswalk with a small crowd of early-morning commuters, each sunk in their own thoughts. No one paid Addie and me any attention. Anchoit was the biggest, busiest city we’d ever seen, let alone lived in. The buildings loomed over the streets, contraptions of metal and concrete. Every once in a while, one was softened by a facade of worn red brick.

Peter had chosen Anchoit for its size. For the anonymity of its quiet alleyways and busy thoroughfares. Cars, people, thoughts—everything moved quickly here. It was a far cry from old, languid Bessimir City, or the all-but-stagnant Lupside, where Addie and I had lived before.

It seemed like more happened in a night in Anchoit than in a year in Lupside. Not that Addie or I would know. Since Peter had brought us here from Nornand, I could count on one hand the number of times we’d been allowed out in the city. Peter and Emalia weren’t taking any chances.

In Anchoit, it might have been easier to hide what Addie and I were—hybrids, fugitives, less-than-normal. But it didn’t change the facts. I dreamed of roaming the neon streets after dark. Of playing games and buying junk at the boardwalk. Of splashing through the waves again.

Addie said quietly.

Our legs froze. It took three thundering heartbeats before I calmed down enough to move again. I crossed the street so we didn’t have to pass the policeman directly.

Chances were, his presence had absolutely nothing to do with us.

But Addie and I were hybrid.

Whatever the chance, however small, we couldn’t take it.

E
malia’s apartment building was silent but for the buzzing of overhead lights, which flickered on and off like struggling fireflies. A trash bag slouched, stinking, in the corner.

Peter had housed us Nornand refugees together in his apartment as long as he could. But he spent as much time traveling as he did living in Anchoit, and eventually, we’d been separated. Kitty and Nina lived with us at Emalia’s. The Mullan siblings were only a few floors up, with Henri, but it wasn’t the same.

Even worse, Dr. Lyanne had taken Jaime away to a little house on the fringes of the city. None of us had seen him in three weeks.

The apartment was still dim when I slipped back inside, the living room half-lit by hazy morning sunlight. Emalia and her twin soul, Sophie, kept their home achingly neat, softly decorated. In a weird way, Peter’s apartment—since Peter was so frequently absent—had seemed like
our
place,
our
home. Here, Addie and I felt like intruders in a sanctuary of muted sweaters and woven placemats.

Addie said. We sank onto the couch and stared at Emalia’s potted plant. Every leaf looked meticulously arranged. Even her plants were orderly.

I let our eyes slide half-closed. We’d hardly slept last night, wanting to make sure we were up in time to sneak out. With our adrenaline gone, the lack of sleep dragged at our limbs.

Addie sighed.

Kitty and Nina spent most of their time curled up in front of the TV, watching whatever was on: Saturday-morning cartoons, daytime soap operas, afternoon news reports, even late-night talk shows when they couldn’t sleep. Hally and Lissa stared out the windows, listening to the music thumping from car radios.

Ryan filled his days with making stuff. Trinkets, mostly, pieced together using tools he borrowed from Henri or Emalia. Emalia was no longer surprised to come home to a salt-and-pepper shaker that rotated between the two at a press of a button, or some other vaguely useful invention.

And Addie—Addie had started drawing again. She sketched Kitty on the sofa, capturing the soft snub of her nose, the wide, brown eyes. She caught the glint of light on Hally’s glasses, spent an hour perfecting the way Hally’s curls fell, some in lazy almost-ringlets, others barely more than a dark wave.

It was nice to have Addie drawing again. But after so many days, we were all going stir-crazy.

“Oh!” came a voice behind us. It was Emalia, draped in a pink cardigan and a cream-colored blouse. She looked as soft and pastel as the dawn. Her smile was flustered. “I didn’t know you’d gotten up . . .”

She didn’t ask, but the question hung between us:
Addie? Or Eva?

“Addie,” Addie said when I took too long to answer. By then, of course, it was. She climbed to our feet and surreptitiously stepped on the back of our heels, kicking our shoes under the couch. Addie had a thoughtless ease with our body I still didn’t.

“You’re up early,” Emalia said. “Something wrong?”

“No.” Addie shrugged. “I just woke up and couldn’t fall asleep again.”

Emalia crossed to the kitchen, which was separated from the living room by only a stretch of counter. “It’s these city noises. They take a while to get used to. When I first moved here, I couldn’t get a good night’s sleep for weeks.” She gestured questioningly toward the coffee machine, but Addie shook our head.

Emalia had a bit of a caffeine addiction, but maybe that was to be expected with everything she had to do: hold down her regular job, take care of us, and complete her work for the Underground. She was the one who had forged our new documents, printing birth certificates for people who’d never been born, casting our faces onto lives we’d never lived.

I associated her now with the heavy, bittersweet smell of coffee. Even the first time we’d seen Emalia, her hair had reminded us of steam—cappuccino-colored steam curling against her pale cheeks, reaching just under her chin.

“You’re up early, too,” Addie said.

“I’m headed to the airport today. Peter’s flight arrives in a few hours.”

“No one told us Peter was back.” The words came out sharper than I’d expected. Sharper, perhaps, than Addie had intended.

Emalia’s hands stilled. “Well, it—it was a bit unanticipated. Something’s come up, so he caught an earlier flight. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you’d want to know.”

“I do,” Addie said, too quickly. “But it’s okay. I mean—”

“Okay, in the future I’ll—” Emalia said.

The two of them looked at each other awkwardly.

“Kitty showed me your new drawing yesterday.” The thin, golden bracelets on Emalia’s wrists clinked as she reached for the cereal box. “It was lovely. You’re such a fantastic artist, Addie.”

Addie pinned a smile to our lips. “Thanks.”

Emalia was always complimenting us like this.
Your hair looks so pretty in a bun,
she’d say, or
You’ve got such lovely eyes.
Each of Addie’s sketches, even the doodles she drew for Kitty’s amusement, got a verbal round of applause.

In return, we tried to compliment Emalia, too. It wasn’t hard or anything. She wore delicate, pale-gold sandals and faded pink blouses. She always found the most interesting places to order food from, coming home with white Styrofoam boxes from all over the city. But our conversations with Emalia never got beyond that. We spoke in a language of comments on the weather, polite greetings, and slight smiles, all underlaid with a sense of Not Quite Knowing What to Do.

Emalia had only fostered one other escaped hybrid before, a twelve-year-old girl who stayed three weeks before Peter found her a more permanent family down south. Emalia herself was in her midtwenties. She and Sophie had managed to remain hidden all these years, escaping institutionalization. They and Peter had connected mostly by chance.

Maybe that was why Emalia acted as if she didn’t know how to handle us. As if, poked too hard, we might break.

Addie leaned against the counter. “When’s the meeting going to be?”

“With Peter? Tomorrow night. Why?”

“I want to go.”

Emalia tipped some cereal into a bowl, her smile hesitant. “It’s going to be at Peter’s apartment, Addie. Like usual.”

“That’s barely a five-minute walk.”

“You aren’t supposed to be—”

“It’ll be nighttime. No one would see us.” Addie fixed the woman with our stare. “Emalia, I need to talk with him. I want to know what’s going on.”

Nornand’s hybrid wing had shut down, but its patients had been shipped elsewhere instead of being set free. Peter had promised we’d work to rescue them. But if anything had been done, Addie and I hadn’t been told.

“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” Emalia said, “and I’m sure Peter will drop by here at some point.”

“It’s a five-minute walk,” Addie repeated. “A five-minute walk in the
dark
.”

The coffee machine beeped. Emalia hurried toward it. “I’ll ask Peter when I see him. How about that? I’ll tell him you want very badly to go, and we’ll see what he says.”

I said, and I knew Addie agreed.

Aloud, though, she just murmured, “Okay.”

“Okay.” Emalia smiled and nodded at the pot of coffee. The smell, usually heady and comforting, now made us feel slightly sick. “You sure you don’t want just a little bit? It’s nice to have something hot when the morning’s chilly.”

Addie shook her head and turned away.

It was chilly outside. We weren’t going to be outside.

A
ddie and I were back in bed, curled against a pillow, when Emalia left for the airport. We hovered between wakefulness and dreams, the corners of the world worn soft.

The knock at the front door split us from sleep. Addie startled upright, automatically checking on Kitty and Nina. They were still asleep, huddled beneath their blanket so far we could just barely see their eyes.

The knock came again. I caught the glint of red light on the nightstand, where Addie had tossed our chip before collapsing into bed. It glowed steadily now, an indication its twin was near.

I whispered.

We had to be calm. We couldn’t keep jumping like this, fearing every knock at the door was someone coming to snatch us away.

I didn’t have to ask Addie to ease control to me. I took charge of our limbs as she let them go, hurrying into the living room and opening the front door.

The morning sunlight caught Ryan’s skin, giving it a glow like burnished gold. His dark curls stuck up in ways that laughed at gravity. He reached toward us, like he might touch our arm, brush his fingers against our skin. He didn’t. His hand dropped back to his side. “I wasn’t sure if you would be awake this early.”

“We couldn’t sleep,” I said.

“It’s summer break.” A wryness twisted Ryan’s smile. “We should be sleeping in.”

I drew him to the sofa. He’d brought a small paper bag with him—probably containing yet another invention—and he set it on the floor beside his feet.

“Well, we did skip all our finals,” I said.

Addie’s amusement colored the space between us. It relaxed me a little. Being with Ryan—talking with Ryan—I always kept one finger on the pulse of Addie’s mood.

Ryan laughed. “That’s what keeps you up at night?”

“You’re the one who should be worried,” I said, mock solemn. “You’re going to be a senior next semester. You should be applying to colleges soon.”

His smile slipped, and I winced. Ryan and Devon
ought
to be applying to colleges soon. But it would be enough of a miracle just to get us into a classroom in the fall. Even if Peter and the others decided that it was safe to let us out of the building by then, there were more things to be faked: immunization records, transcripts . . .

Besides, where would they go? There was a college downtown, but that was about it. It would be too dangerous, surely, to send him away by himself.

“Guess I’ll just have to repeat eleventh grade, then.” Ryan’s shrug was as lazy and exaggerated as his smile. He glanced at me sideways. “Be the same age as everyone else in the class for once.”

Our shoulders relaxed. I laughed, leaning toward him. “Oh, the horror.”

For a moment, it was just Ryan and me, looking at each other. A stillness. Twelve inches between us. Twelve inches of morning sunlight and Addie’s growing unease and the sound of traffic from four floors down. It would have taken him a second to break that distance. It would have taken me less. But the twelve inches remained. A foot of distance, filled with all the reasons why we couldn’t.

There came another knock.

“Hally?” I asked Ryan, frowning. Unlike their brothers, Hally and Lissa weren’t morning people. It was nearing eight now, which meant they’d usually be asleep for another two or three hours at least.

Ryan stood, but motioned for me to stay seated. Before he could take a step toward the door, someone called out, “It’s me, guys. Let me in?”

It wasn’t Hally’s voice, but it was familiar nonetheless. Ryan threw me a look that was half relief, half exasperation, then crossed to open the door. “Hey, what’s up?”

Jackson strolled inside. Over time, I’d learned to differentiate between Jackson and Vincent—Vince. I discovered the subtle traits that separated the two souls despite their ownership of the same lanky frame, the identical shaggy, brown hair and pale blue eyes. Vince was the one who made me blush. Who seemed to always be making fun of me—of everyone. Who was never out of jokes. Maybe that was why he and Jackson were forever smiling.

But this was Jackson. I was sure. It was the way he looked at Addie and me that made it clear—like he wasn’t just
looking
, but studying. As if there would be a test later on Addie and Eva Tamsyn, and he was making sure he’d do well.