What's Left of Me (6 page)

“Why did you choose me? How did . . . how did you know I was different?”

Lissa spoke slowly, as if weighing each word. “Remember last September, when you dropped your lunch tray?”

Of course we did. We’d been arguing about something or other, screaming at each other in our mind until the outside world faded away. The lunchroom had fallen silent as our tray slipped from our hands and smashed to the ground, mashed potatoes and milk flying through the air.

“Sometimes it seemed like you were talking to someone else, you know? Like someone else was there, fighting.” Lissa paused. “I don’t know. Maybe it was just a feeling.” She flashed a tentative grin at us. “A kinship?”

Addie didn’t smile back.

“Anyway,” Lissa said quickly. “We got Devon to check your files, and they said you hadn’t settled until you were twelve. That was a big clue that something was up.”

Addie hunched over our tea. The soft, sweet steam soothed our frayed nerves. “So you could tell. Just like that.”

“What do you mean?” Lissa said.

“It was so obvious I was different?”

“Well, it’s not like anyone could have hacked into your school files, so—”

“Is there really something so wrong with that?” Devon said. His voice was low. He’d finally set down his screwdriver, his attention completely focused on us. “With being different from the others?”

“You sound like a bad after-school TV special,” Addie said, laughing even as our fingers tightened around our mug. She twisted our voice into a mockery of a chirpy happiness.
“It’s okay to be different.”

“Isn’t it?” he said.

“Not like this, it isn’t.”

“But you still came,” he said.

Addie was quiet. Then haltingly, she said, “Eva wanted to.”

Devon’s expression didn’t change, but Lissa smiled.

“I—” Addie frowned. Our head felt strange. Stuffy. Cottony. A little dizzy. She pushed away the mug of tea, but it wasn’t steaming
that
much, so that couldn’t be it. “I, um . . . I think—”

We swayed.

Addie cried. One solitary, frightened word.

And then she was gone.

Darkness. We slumped forward, knocking our temple,
hard
, against the table.

I screamed.

Nothing.

It wasn’t just the silence. It was the emptiness, the lack of—of
anything
where Addie should have been. Even when we ignored each other, even when Addie tried her absolute hardest to hide her emotions, I could feel the wall she put up. There was no wall now. There was a chasm.

Nausea slapped against me.

“Move the mug. Thank God she didn’t knock into it.”

“She pushed it away herself. It was like she knew—”

“Well, you were being so obvious about it. I’m surprised she drank anything at all.”

The voices faded into murmurs. I delved as deep as I dared into the darkness and searched frantically for signs of Addie. The warmth of her presence, her thoughts, were gone. There wasn’t a scrap to show she’d ever existed.

Our body felt incredibly empty. Hollow. Too big. Of course it was too big. Our body had always held two. Now there was only one.

“Eva?”

I shouted.

“Can you hear us, Eva?” Lissa said.

But of course they heard nothing at all.

“Let’s lay her down first,” Devon said. “I’ll bring her over.”

Hands grabbed our arms and tilted us back in our seat. Someone pulled our chair away from the table. Then more hands, around our waist now. Finally, there was a heave and we were in the air, being carried slowly toward some unknown destination. And I, trapped inside this body that was and wasn’t mine, couldn’t even say a word aloud.

Where were they taking us? Had this all been a trick? A trap? Was this how the government rooted out hybrids who’d escaped institutionalization? By pretending they had friends, had people who understood? By letting them feel like they weren’t alone and then snapping them up while they were vulnerable? We’d walked right into it. Or I had, and I’d dragged Addie down with me.

I’d been so stupid. So trusting. So desperate to believe I might move again.

“Could you get that pillow, Lissa? That one . . . and just put it here . . .”

I felt something soft and solid below us. The hands let go. They weren’t taking us out of the house, then. Maybe they weren’t planning on kidnapping us. I didn’t even feel anything akin to relief—just a little less sick.

I said.

“Eva?” It was Devon. “Eva, listen.”

I was listening. I was listening, but they couldn’t know because Addie wasn’t here to tell them.

“Eva, if you’re freaking out, you have to stop. You have to listen to us. Addie’s fine. She’s just . . . asleep right now because of the medicine. We didn’t think she’d take it if she knew—”

They’d drugged us. They’d really drugged us. A flash of anger seared through me, singeing away just a little of the fear.

“Eva, can you move?”

Of course I couldn’t move!

“The medicine will help, Eva,” Lissa said. “Try and wriggle your fingers.”

I tried. I tried like I’d been trying for years—if only so I could get the hell away from here. Nothing happened. I was trapped in a dead prison of skin and bones, shackled to limbs I couldn’t control. What sort of plan was this? Were they trying to help us? Like
this
?

I said.

A hand enveloped mine, and I couldn’t jerk away.

“Eva,” someone said. “Eva, this is Ryan.”

Ryan. Devon’s voice, but Ryan’s, just as Addie’s voice was also mine. Had been mine.

“We haven’t really met yet, but we will. Right now we just want you to try and move your fingers. Move the fingers of the hand I’m holding right now.”

The gentle pressure on our right palm helped orient me. I mentally traced up to the tips of our fingers. Then I tried again to curl them. I tried. I really did.

“It’s been years, I know,” Ryan said. “It’s been a long time, but not too long. You can still do it, Eva.”

I said.

Not alone in the dark like this.

“Eva? Are you still trying?”

I said, almost crying.

“I know it’s hard,” he said.

My voice reverberated shrilly in the chasm that had stolen Addie.

He didn’t hear, so he couldn’t respond. Instead, a new voice broke through the darkness. Lissa? Hally?

“Eva, trust us.”

Trust them!

“The medicine will wear off in a little bit,” she said. “So please, please try.”

I tried. I lay there in the dark, listening to them talk at me, and tried for what seemed like hours. Finally, exhausted and ready to scream, I stopped.

“That’s right,” Lissa said. “That’s good. Keep going.”

“You’ve almost got it,” Ryan said. He’d said it at least ten times.

I raged.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough, wasn’t good enough, wasn’t tough enough. It had been too long. And Addie—Addie was gone. I couldn’t do it without her. I had never done anything without Addie.

I’d dreamed so long of being able to move again, every fantasy tasting equally of longing and terror. But I’d never dreamed I would be alone like this. That it would happen like this.

“Come on, Eva.”

No. No—

“You can do it.”

Shut up
. Shut up shut up
shut up
. I can’t do it. I ca—

“Eva—”

“I can’t!”

Silence.

“Eva?” Lissa breathed. “Eva, was that you?”

Me?

Oh.

Oh.

“
Ryan
—did you hear that? Did you hear her?”

My head spun.

“Can you do it again?” Ryan said.

I’d spoken. I’d formed words and moved our lips and tongue and
spoken.

They’d heard my voice.

I said.

From far within the abyss, a pulse.

Again the pulse. Then came a feeling like the drawing of a breath. A tendril of something as light and insubstantial as dawn haze floated from the chasm.

it whispered, warm and frightened.

Then she was back, bleary-eyed and weak and confused, but back, back, back, filling that terrible hole inside us. Making us whole again. Making us how we were meant to be.

she said.

I said. I was laughing, almost crying in relief.

She believed me. She kept our eyes closed, and she relaxed little by little.

she murmured.

Seven

A
ddie was still woozy five minutes after she awoke, swaying when she tried to sit up. She moved as though through syrup, each limb thick and unwieldy.

she said. We could see Lissa and Ryan now, and they were crouched by the sofa. They kept talking, their words washing over us but barely sinking in. Addie wasn’t listening at all. I heard enough to know the drug would take a little longer to wear off completely.

I said.

she said.

I didn’t tell her anything she didn’t ask about. I didn’t tell her what had happened while she slept. I didn’t tell her I had spoken.

I didn’t think she was ready to know.

Addie strengthened, her presence growing less tenuous beside mine. She kept blinking, like someone trying to clear away a dream.

“Addie?” Lissa said. She reached toward us, then pulled her hand away again at the last moment. “Are you okay now?”

Addie started, as if noticing her for the first time. “You—you drugged me.” Her words were slurred.

The siblings looked at each other.

“We had to,” Lissa said. “It’s so much easier with the drug—”

“What’s easier?” Addie said.

Another glance between Ryan and Lissa. The sofa was solid against our back. Our fingers dug into the rigid fabric.

“Didn’t Eva tell you?” Ryan said.

Addie’s frown deepened. “How would Eva know?”

“Well . . .” Lissa tugged on a curl of her hair, wrapping it around her finger. “Eva was awake, right?”

“Of course not,” Addie said. “That’s not pos—”

I said.

The rest of Addie’s sentence lodged in our throat. It hurt to breathe around.

I hesitated. Lissa and Ryan watched us, studying our face. But I knew Addie wasn’t paying them any attention.

I said.

Addie faltered.

Stunned silence. Her astonishment swirled bright and wild around me.

she said

I said, unable to stand it any longer. The very knowledge pushed at our bones.

she said. Then again, softer.

“Addie?” Lissa said. Her fingers hovered above our arm.

Addie looked up. Our lips parted. Then the sound came, hoarse and crackly. “Eva talked?”

Lissa smiled. “She did.”

Addie stared. She didn’t speak, not even to me. I matched her silence. I didn’t know what to say. And then, suddenly, she tried to stand. Our legs felt too frail to support our weight. “I’m . . . I’m going to go home.”

Lissa grabbed our arm as we wobbled. “No, Addie, stay. Please stay.”

“Wait a little longer. I’ll walk you back,” Ryan said. Addie looked at him. She didn’t even know he was Ryan, I realized. She thought he was still Devon.

“I’m okay,” she said. She tugged out of Lissa’s grasp and sleepwalked toward the kitchen. They hurried after us, their feet slapping against the hardwood floor.

“I’m coming with you,” Lissa called. “Just wait a second, Addie. I’m—”

Addie seemed not to hear.

I said quietly as we stumbled and had to grab the counter. Addie didn’t respond. I didn’t mention it again.

She slipped into our shoes without tying the laces. But when she reached for our book bag, Ryan was already holding it. He nodded for us to go through the door first.

“I’ll go, Ryan,” Lissa said. “I can go—”

I didn’t know how the argument ended. I couldn’t hear because Addie had already stepped over the threshold, our shoelaces clacking as we walked. I heard the door close behind us. Then a voice by our ear: “You should tie your shoes or you’ll trip on them.”

Addie bent down and did the knots. Our fingers fumbled with the laces. When we stood again, Ryan was watching us.

“Well, come on,” he said, not unkindly. “I don’t know where you live, so you’re going to have to lead the way.”

They walked the first two blocks in silence, the mosquitoes out in full force. The humidity made it feel like we were slogging through sheets of suspended rain. The sky was straight out of a picture book, so perfect summer-spring blue it hurt to look at.

I couldn’t tell what Addie was thinking. Her mind was blank, her emotions boxed. The few cars on the road rushed by us as if we didn’t exist. They didn’t know who we were. What we’d done.

What I’d done. Spoken.

I’d
spoken.

“What did she say?”

“Sorry?” Ryan said, turning to face us.

It took Addie a moment to repeat herself. “What did she say?”

“Who, Eva?” he asked.

She nodded.

Ryan frowned. “What do you mean?”

It didn’t make sense to him why Addie would ask him instead of me. I didn’t know, either. I didn’t think Addie knew.

“I want to know what Eva said while I was asleep,” Addie said. Our voice was low, almost raspy.

He was quiet for a second before answering. “She said: ‘I can’t.’” He inflected the last two words to show they were mine.

“Can’t what?”

“Why don’t you ask her?” he said.

Addie didn’t reply. Ryan looked away again, but he said, “Does that make you happy? That she spoke?”

“
Happy
?” said Addie.

Ryan stopped walking. Our eyes dropped to the ground.

“Happy,” Addie said again, softer. The lukewarm, waterlogged air swallowed our voice.

“It’s okay,” Ryan said. “It’s okay if you aren’t.”

Slowly, Addie looked up and met his gaze.

“I think she understands if you aren’t,” he said.

They started walking again, taking their time in the heat even though the mosquitoes attacked with a vengeance. It wasn’t a day built for things like walking quickly.

Little by little, our house came into view. Squat, off-white, with a black-shingled roof and a row of straggly rosebushes, it had been one of the few we could afford when our parents decided to move. Our room was smaller than the one we’d had before, and Mom didn’t like the kitchen layout, but complaints had been kept to a minimum as we’d walked the halls for the first time. We might have been young, but not nearly so young we didn’t understand that doctors were expensive and government stipends only helped so much.

Soon, we stood in our front yard. The soft kitchen lights shone through the strawberry-patterned curtains.

“Here you go,” Ryan said, holding out our book bag. Addie looked at it as if she’d forgotten it was ours, then nodded and took it before turning and heading toward the house. “I’ll see you later, then, Addie,” he said.

He’d stopped at the edge of our yard, letting Addie walk the short distance to the door alone. There might have been a question buried in his words. Or it might just have been a reflex, a meaningless good-bye people passed around. I wasn’t sure.

Addie nodded. She didn’t look at him. “Yeah. Later.”

She was wiping our shoes on the welcome mat when he added, “Bye, Eva.”

Addie stilled. The air smelled of dying roses.

I whispered.

Our hand froze on the doorknob. Slowly, Addie turned around.

“She says bye,” she said.

Ryan smiled before walking slowly away.

After that day, Addie and Hally walked together to her house every afternoon after school. Addie no longer drank the tea; it was too hot for that. Instead, Hally dissolved the fine white powder into sugar water, which masked the bitter taste.

Addie and I didn’t talk about these sessions. I told myself I didn’t bring it up because I didn’t want to push my luck. Addie was risking everything by agreeing to go. What more could I ask for? But to be honest, I was scared. Scared of hearing what she might have to say, what she really felt.

Hally and Addie didn’t speak much, either, though it wasn’t for lack of trying on Hally’s part. Addie fielded all her attempts at conversation with an averted gaze and one-word replies. But as long as we didn’t have a babysitting job that afternoon, Addie never missed a day, either. Her friends invited her out shopping or to the theater, but she suggested skipping our trip to the Mullan house only once.

“I’ve got to go to someone’s house today,” Hally had said as she stuffed things into her bag that particular afternoon. “We’ve got a project due—”

Addie hesitated. “Tomorrow, then.”

“No, wait,” Hally said. She smiled. “I won’t be long. Half an hour at most, okay?”

I said nothing. Addie didn’t look Hally in the eye. She stared at the half-erased chalk marks on the blackboard, the graffiti on the tops of the worn desks, the bent plastic chairs.

“Devon will walk you—” Hally started to say, but Addie cut her off.

“I remember how to get to your house.”

“Oh,” Hally said and laughed, which should have eased the tension but only made the silence that followed more pronounced. She slung her book bag over her shoulder, her smile unfaltering but her eyes blinking a little more rapidly than usual. “Half an hour at most,” she repeated. “Devon knows where the medicine is. And he’ll make sure nothing happens to Eva while you’re asleep.”

Addie ended up walking home with Devon anyway, since we ran into him by the school doors. It was possibly the most uncomfortable ten minutes I could have imagined. He didn’t speak to Addie. Addie didn’t look at him. The heat made them both sweat, made an uneasy situation worse, and it was an even bigger relief than usual to reach the cool, airy Mullan house, to swallow the drugged water and lie down and wait for Addie to fall asleep.

It still made me sick to feel her ripped away from me, but I was getting better at keeping calm. She would come back. It was easier knowing that she would come back, that the drug’s effects lasted only an hour at most, and sometimes only twenty minutes or so.

Devon had been sitting at the table when Addie went to lie down, but about ten minutes after she disappeared, my name came floating through the blackness.

“Eva?”

He said my name like a secret. Like a password, a code whispered through locked doors.

I said, though he couldn’t hear. Everything was darkness and the soft couch beneath Addie and me. I could feel the ridges of the fabric beneath our fingertips, the textured grain against the heel of our hand.

I felt the warmth of his palm as he laid it softly on the back of our hand, the pressure of his fingers, the brush of his thumb against our pulse.

“It’s Ryan,” he said. “I figured you—that you’d like to know there was someone here.”

I tried to speak. I focused on our lips, on our tongue, on our throat. I tried to form
thank you
with a mouth that belonged to me yet didn’t want to obey. But it seemed I wasn’t going to be able to speak this particular day.

So instead, I focused on Ryan’s hand, which was easier. He’d slid his palm down over our knuckles, his fingers tucked beneath our hand. I curled our fingers around his and squeezed as hard as I could, which was barely anything at all.

I figured that was as articulate as I was going to get.

But the thought of one day being able to respond to him, to sit and laugh and talk with him as anyone else might have done, was added to my ever-growing list of reasons to keep on coming to the Mullan house. To keep fighting, no matter the cost.