Once We Were (6 page)

Addie shut her sketchbook and slipped off the bed, pulling Nina after us. “Come on, have you eaten breakfast?”

“Nope. I was waiting for you. I’ll make you pancakes, if you want.”

“That would be great.” Addie smiled as Nina grabbed her camcorder and headed for the kitchen.

We glanced, one last time, at the map stuck to the ceiling.

The world maps we’d studied in school had always come with the disclaimer that they were old, made before or shortly after the Great Wars began.
World War I
and
World War II
, as Henri called them.

The Great Wars
had always smashed through our history classes like a giant’s fist, leaving the rest of the world fragmented, unworthy of mapping. We’d been told country lines were muddled, contested to the point of being barely existent. They shifted constantly, as some desperate people attacked another and were assaulted in turn.

Lies. So much of it lies.

World War I
and
World War II
seemed so neat in comparison.

Wars can destroy a country completely,
Henri told us
. But they can also shape it, push it forward. Some of the world was destroyed. Some was shaped. And some was pushed forward.

What do they have that we don’t?
I’d asked.
Flying cars?

Henri laughed.
No, no flying cars. But faster cars. And cell phones. Internet.

We’d never heard of them. He told us about tiny, cordless phones everyone carried around in their pockets, so widespread that pay phones were all but extinct. He tried to describe some sort of information network that connected computers, allowing one to instantaneously send data to another. He kept running into words he didn’t know how to translate, and the entire concept baffled Addie and me, who could count the number of times we’d even sat down in front of a computer.

He told us mankind had been to the moon.

I laughed.
You’re kidding.

But he wasn’t.

He said it had only happened once, a few decades ago, but after the end of the Second World War. It was a show of power by one of the countries that had emerged least scathed from the years of combat. The project had proven too financially costly to attempt again, though there were other countries still eager to try.

There were also satellites floating out there in the blackness, orbiting our planet. Henri showed us one of his devices, a
satphone
that seemed more miniature computer than phone. Using these satellites, the phone allowed him to both send information and make calls to his headquarters overseas.

There were satellites beaming information around in outer space. There had been men on the moon. I had never known the world beyond the Americas’ borders, but there were people out there who’d experienced life beyond our very
planet
.

How terribly insignificant we must all seem from the moon. Our battles. Our wars.

Addie sighed and pulled our blankets straight, tucking in the edges. The map was a comforting reminder of the rest of the world. One that included countries where hybrids like us weren’t vilified, weren’t feared or hated or locked away.

But sometimes, those bright, colorful countries seemed to mock us with their distance.

The phone shrilled, and Addie hurried into the living room to answer it. “Hello?”

“Hey,” a voice said. “This is Sabine. Did I wake you up?”

“I was awake,” Addie said. Nina watched us with obvious curiosity, arms cradling a mixing bowl.

“Good. I would’ve called later, but I’m about to leave for work. Do you want to meet up with me and a couple friends tonight?”

Addie frowned in confusion. “Sorry?”

“I wanted to introduce you to some people.” Sabine’s voice dropped a little. “You can sneak out, right? We can meet you right at the end of your block. There’s a fast-food place that’s open until two a.m. Can you be there at one thirty? There’ll be five of us; six if you get Ryan to come.”

Would Ryan go? He hadn’t been the warmest to Sabine and Jackson yesterday. But I thought about all the weeks of boredom crushing down on him, hour after hour, and I said

Six weeks of barely stepping foot outside the building, and now we were thinking about sneaking out twice in as many days, not to mention the Emalia-sanctioned trip last night.

I said.