Once We Were - Kat Zhang

 Once We Were

The Hybrid Chronicles - 2

by

Kat Zhang

PROLOGUE

We share a heart, Addie and I. We own the same pair of hands. Inhabit the same limbs. That hot June day, freshly escaped from Nornand Clinic, we stood and saw the ocean for the first time through shared eyes. The wind batted our hair against our cheeks. The sand stuck to our salt-soaked skin, turning our pale legs tan.

We experienced that day as wed experienced the past fifteen years of our lives. As Addie and Eva, Eva and Addie. Two souls sharing one body. Hybrid.

But the thing is, sharing hands doesnt mean sharing goals. Sharing eyes doesnt mean sharing visions. And sharing a heart doesnt mean sharing the things we love.

Here are some of the things I loved.

The cold shock of the ocean when I stood waist-deep in the water, jumping at the crest of each oncoming wave. The sound of Kittys laughter when I tickled her. The breathless joy of Hallys dancing. The way Ryan smiled when I turned to look at him and he was already looking at me.

Addie liked these things, too. But she didnt cherish them the way I diddesperately. Because I never should have had them. Millions of recessive souls never reached age five, let alone fifteen. That was the way of the worldor so Addie and I had been taught. Two souls born to each body. One marked by genetics to disappear.

I was lucky in so many ways.

I told myself this every morning when we opened our eyes, every night before we went to sleep.

I am lucky. So lucky.

I was alive. I was, in some ways, free. In a country where hybrids were forbidden and locked away, Addie and I had escaped. And I

I could move and speak again. Me, who had known since childhood that I was the recessive soul, destined to fade away. That my parents would mourn quietly, quickly, then move on. That they would tell themselves this was the way of the world, the way things had always been, and who were they to question the workings of nature?

Children were supposed to shed recessive souls, leaving them behind like they would one day discard their baby teeth. Just another step on the journey to adulthood.

The alternative, never settlingretaining both soulsmeant staying trapped in the chaos of a perpetual childhood, never gaining the steady, rational mind of an adult who could be trusted to control her own body. How could a hybrid ever fit into society? How would she marry? Would she be able to work, with two souls pulling and yearning in two different directions? To be hybrid was to be forever unstable, forever torn.

I was twelve, two years past the government-mandated deadline, when I succumbed to the curse lettered in my genes. But I was lucky, even then. I lost control of my body, leaving Addie to command our limbs, but I never disappeared completely.

It was better than dying.

Are you all right, Addie? Mom asked, those first few weeks after I was declared gone. She spoke the words like they pinched her lips on the way out, like she didnt want to acknowledge the fact that Addie might not be okay, even then. Addie should have been normal.

Im fine, Addie said, even when I screamed and screamed in her head, even when she was holding me as she smiled for our parents, telling me she was sorry, begging me to be as okay as she supposedly was.

Hally and Ryan Mullan were the ones who released me from the prison of my own bones. Where would I be if Hally hadnt convinced Addie to go home with her that afternoon? Still paralyzed. Still alone. Not entirely, because I would always have Addie, butalone, in every other sense of the word.

<Wed be home> Addie said once, when I whispered the question to her. The words floated between our linked minds, where no one else could hear us. <Mr. Conivent wouldnt have taken us to Nornand. We wouldnt be here.>

Here in Anchoit, this shining city by the western sea, smelling the salt the waves tossed into the air.

It had been my turn, then, to say Im sorry. Because Addie was right. If Hally hadntif I hadnt convinced Addie to go to the Mullans house, to take the medication, to take that first step away from normality, we would still be home. We wouldnt be out of dangeras hybrids, we could never truly relaxbut we would be a little safer. Wed be going to school and watching movies and laughing at our little brother when he clowned around the kitchen.

<Dont apologize, Eva. Thats not what I meant. I> Shed hesitated, staring at the ceiling of this strange new apartment. Our new hideaway. <I never could have done it. Let you live like that. Not when I knew there was another way. And were out of Nornand. Were going to be okay.>

Not like the other children whod walked through those hospital halls. Like Jaime Cortae, whod lost his other soul to a scalpel.

Addie and I had been lucky.

Perhaps, if we stayed lucky, we would never again have to see Mr. Conivent with his pressed, white button-up shirts. We would never again feel Jensons cold grip on our wristnever come under the jurisdiction of his review board.

We would be allowed to live just as we were: Eva and Addie, Addie and Eva. Two girls inside of one.

ONE

It was stuffy in the phone booth, even with the door propped partway open. Our desire for privacy couldnt override the sickness that gripped us in the small, enclosed space. Squished cigarette butts littered the ground, their smoky smell lingering in the early-morning air.

<We shouldnt do this> I said.

We werent even supposed to be outside. Wed snuck out of the apartment before Emalia and Kitty woke up, and we had to make it back before then as well. No one knew we were here, not even Ryan or Hally.

Addie pressed the phone receiver against our ear. The dial tone mocked us.

<The government will be expecting something like this> I said. <Peter said theyd bug our house. Theyll trace the call. And were not far enough away from the apartment. We cant put the others in danger.>

Our free hand slipped into our pocket and closed around our chip. Ryan had given it to us right before we arrived at Nornand, and it had connected us to him during our time at the clinic. Habit made us rub it between our fingers like a good-luck charm.

Addies voice was soft. <Hes eleven today.>

Lyle was eleven. Our little brother.

The night Mr. Conivent confiscated Addie and me, Lyle had been at the hospital, doing one of his thrice-weekly rounds of dialysis. Unlike our parents, hed had no say in letting us go. We never got to tell him good-bye.

It would only be one call. A few coins in the slot. Ten numbers. So quick. So simple.

Hi, Lyle, I imagined saying. I pictured his flop of yellow hair, his skinny arms and legs, his crooked-toothed grin.

Hi, Lyle

Then what? Happy birthday. Happy eleventh birthday.

The last time Id wished Lyle happy birthdayactually spoken those words aloudhed been turning seven. After that, Id lost the strength to do more than watch as Addie spoke for me. Id hovered in a body I couldnt control, a ghost in a family that didnt know I still existed.

What did one say after four years like that?

Thinking about what Id tell Mom was even worse.

Hi. Its Eva. I was there the whole time. I was there all those years, and you never knew.

Hi. Its Eva. Im okayI think Im safe. Are you okay? Are you safe?

Hi. Its Eva. I wish I were home.

Hi. Its Eva. I love you.

I could see Mom so clearly it hurt: the panes of her face, her laugh lines, and the deeper lines on her brow not etched by laughter. I could see her in her waitressing uniform: black slacks and a white blouse, stark against her corn-silk hair. Addie and I had always wanted hair like hers, so smooth and straight it glided through our fingers. Instead, we had Dads curls, lazy and halfhearted. Princess hair, hed called it when Addie and I were small enough to sit in his lap, breathing in the smell of his aftershave, begging for stories that ended in Happily Ever After.

I wanted, so badly, to know how our family was. So much could have happened in the nearly two months since Addie and I had last slept in our own bed, last woken up staring at our own ceiling.

Had Lyle gotten the kidney transplant wed been promised, or was he still chained to his dialysis appointments? Did our parents even know what had happened to Addie and me? What if they thought we were still at the clinic, being cured of our hybridity?

Was that better or worse than them knowing the truth? A month and a half ago, Addie and I had broken out of Nornand Clinic of Psychiatric Health. We should have brought all the other patients with us. But wed failed. In the end, wed left with just Ryan and Devon, Hally and Lissa, Kitty and Nina. And Jaime, of course. Jaime Cortae.

Now we were hiding outside the system entirely, sheltered by Peter and his underground network of hybrids. We were the fugitives wed heard about in government class. The criminals whose arrestand they were always arrested in the endblared across the news.

Would Mom and Dad want to know that?

What would they do if they did? Come charging across the continent to take us home? Protect us, like they hadnt protected us before? Tell us they were sorry, theyd made a terrible mistake in ever letting us go?

Maybe they would just turn us in again.

No.

I couldnt bear to think they might.

Theyre going to help you get well, Addie, Dad had said when he called us at Nornand. Mom and I only want the best for you.

Peter had warned us how the government might bug our phone lines. Maybe Dad had known someone might listen in on our call at Nornand, and hed had to say whatever they wanted to hear. Maybe he hadnt meant those words.

Because that wasnt what hed whispered as Addie and I climbed into Mr. Conivents car.

If youre there, Eva, hed said. If youre really there . . . I love you, too. Always.

Always.

<Addie> I said.

The knife of her longing cut us both. <Just a few words.>

<We cant> I said. <Addie, we cant.>

No matter how much we ached to.

When Addie didnt release the phone, I slipped into control and did it for us. Addie didnt 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.