Читать книгу: «What’s Left of Me»

For my mother and father, in thanks for everything they have taught me about life

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

PROLOGUE

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY - ONE

TWENTY - TWO

TWENTY - THREE

TWENTY - FOUR

TWENTY - FIVE

TWENTY - SIX

TWENTY - SEVEN

TWENTY - EIGHT

TWENTY - NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY - ONE

THIRTY - TWO

THIRTY - THREE

THIRTY - FOUR

THIRTY - FIVE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

COPYRIGHT

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

ddie and I were born into the same body, our souls’ ghostly fingers entwined before we gasped our very first breath. Our earliest years together were also our happiest. Then came the worries—the tightness around our parents’ mouths, the frowns lining our kindergarten teacher’s forehead, the question everyone whispered when they thought we couldn’t hear.

Why aren’t they settling?

Settling.

We tried to form the word in our five-year-old mouth, tasting it on our tongue.

Set—Tull—Ling.

We knew what it meant. Kind of. It meant one of us was supposed to take control. It meant the other was supposed to fade away. I know now that it means much, much more than that. But at five, Addie and I were still naive, still oblivious.

The varnish of innocence began wearing away by first grade. Our gray-haired guidance counselor made the first scratch.

“You know, dearies, settling isn’t scary,” she’d say as we watched her thin, lipstick-reddened mouth. “It might seem like it now, but it happens to everyone. The recessive soul, whichever one of you it is, will simply … go to sleep.”

She never mentioned who she thought would survive, but she didn’t need to. By first grade, everyone believed Addie had been born the dominant soul. She could move us left when I wanted to go right, refuse to open her mouth when I wanted to eat, cry No when I wanted so desperately to say Yes. She could do it all with so little effort, and as time passed, I grew ever weaker while her control increased.

But I could still force my way through at times—and I did. When Mom asked about our day, I pulled together all my strength to tell her my version of things. When we played hide-and-seek, I made us duck behind the hedges instead of run for home base. At eight, I jerked us while bringing Dad his coffee. The burns left scars on our hands.

The more my strength waned, the fiercer I scrabbled to hold on, lashing out in any way I could, trying to convince myself I wasn’t going to disappear. Addie hated me for it. I couldn’t help myself. I remembered the freedom I used to have—never complete, of course, but I remembered when I could ask our mother for a drink of water, for a kiss when we fell, for a hug.

<Let it go, Eva> Addie shouted whenever we fought. <Just let it go. Just go away.>

And for a long time, I believed that someday, I would.

We saw our first specialist at six. Specialists who were a lot pushier than the guidance counselor. Specialists who did their little tests, asked their little questions, and charged their not-so-little fees. By the time our younger brothers reached settling age, Addie and I had been through two therapists and four types of medication, all trying to do what nature should have already done: Get rid of the recessive soul.

Get rid of me.

Our parents were so relieved when my outbursts began disappearing, when the doctors came back with positive reports in their hands. They tried to keep it concealed, but we heard the sighed Finallys outside our door hours after they’d kissed us good night. For years, we’d been the thorn of the neighborhood, the dirty little secret that wasn’t so secret. The girls who just wouldn’t settle.

Nobody knew how in the middle of the night, Addie let me come out and walk around our bedroom with the last of my strength, touching the cold windowpanes and crying my own tears.

<I’m sorry> she’d whispered then. And I knew she really was, despite everything she’d said before. But that didn’t change anything.

I was terrified. I was eleven years old, and though I’d been told my entire short life that it was only natural for the recessive soul to fade away, I didn’t want to go. I wanted twenty thousand more sunrises, three thousand more hot summer days at the pool. I wanted to know what it was like to have a first kiss. The other recessives were lucky to have disappeared at four or five. They knew less.

Maybe that’s why things turned out the way they did. I wanted life too badly. I refused to let go. I didn’t completely fade away.

My motor controls vanished, yes, but I remained, trapped in our head. Watching, listening, but paralyzed.

Nobody but Addie and I knew, and Addie wasn’t about to tell. By this time, we knew what awaited kids who never settled, who became hybrids. Our head was filled with images of the institutions where they were squirreled away—never to return.

Eventually, the doctors gave us a clean bill of health. The guidance counselor bid us good-bye with a pleased little smile. Our parents were ecstatic. They packed everything up and moved us four hours away to a new state, a new neighborhood. One where no one knew who we were. Where we could be more than That Family With The Strange Little Girl.

I remember seeing our new home for the first time, looking over our little brother’s head and through his car window at the tiny, off-white house with the dark-shingled roof. Lyle cried at the sight of it, so old and shabby, the garden rampant with weeds. In the frenzy of our parents calming him down and unloading the moving truck and lugging in suitcases, Addie and I had been left alone for a moment—given a minute to just stand in the winter cold and breathe in the sharp air.

After so many years, things were finally the way they were supposed to be. Our parents could look other people in the eye again. Lyle could be around Addie in public again. We joined a seventh-grade class that didn’t know about all the years we’d spent huddled at our desk, wishing we could disappear.

They could be a normal family, with normal worries. They could be happy.

They.

They didn’t realize it wasn’t they at all. It was still us.

I was still there.

“Addie and Eva, Eva and Addie,” Mom used to sing when we were little, picking us up and swinging us through the air. “My little girls.”

Now when we helped make dinner, Dad only asked, “Addie, what would you like tonight?”

No one used my name anymore. It wasn’t Addie and Eva, Eva and Addie. It was just Addie, Addie, Addie.

One little girl, not two.

he end-of-school bell blasted everyone from their seats. People loosened their ties, slapped shut books, shoved folders and pencils into backpacks. A buzz of conversation nearly drowned out the teacher as she yelled reminders about tomorrow’s field trip. Addie was almost out the door when I said <Wait, we’ve got to ask Ms. Stimp about our make-up test, remember?>

<I’ll do it tomorrow> Addie said, pushing her way through the hall. Our history teacher always gave us looks like she knew the secret in our head, pinching her lips and frowning at us when she thought we weren’t watching. Maybe I was just being paranoid. But maybe not. Still, doing poorly in her class would only bring more trouble.

<What if she doesn’t let us?>

The school rang with noise—lockers slamming, people laughing—but I heard Addie’s voice perfectly in the quiet space linking our minds. There, it was peaceful for now, though I could feel the start of Addie’s irritation like a dark splash in the corner. <She will, Eva. She always does. Don’t be a nag.>

<I’m not. I just—>

“Addie!” someone shouted, and Addie half-turned. “Addie—wait up!”

We’d been so lost in our argument we hadn’t even noticed the girl chasing after us. It was Hally Mullan, one hand pushing up her glasses, the other trying to wrap a hair tie around her dark curls. She shoved past a tight-knit group of students before making it to our side with an exaggerated sigh of relief. Addie groaned, but silently, so that only I could hear.

“You’re a really fast walker,” Hally said and smiled as if she and Addie were friends.

Addie shrugged. “I didn’t know you were following me.”

Hally’s smile didn’t dim. But then, she was the kind of person who laughed in the face of a hurricane. In another body, another life, she wouldn’t have been stuck chasing after someone like us in the hallway. She was too pretty for that, with those long eyelashes and olive skin, and too quick to laugh. But there was a difference written into her face, into the set of her cheekbones and the slant of her nose. This only added to the strangeness about her, an aura that broadcasted Not Quite Right. Addie had always stayed away. We had enough problems pretending to be normal.

There was no easy way to avoid Hally now, though. She fell into step beside us, her book bag slung over one shoulder. “So, excited about the field trip?”

“Not really,” Addie said.

“Me neither,” Hally said cheerfully. “Are you busy today?”

“Kind of,” Addie said. She managed to keep our voice bland despite Hally’s dogged high spirits, but our fingers tugged at the bottom of our blouse. It had fit at the beginning of the year, when we’d bought all new uniforms for high school, but we’d grown taller since then. Our parents hadn’t noticed, not with—well, not with everything that was happening with Lyle—and we hadn’t said anything.

“Want to come over?” Hally said.

Addie’s smile was strained. As far as we knew, Hally had never asked anyone over. Most likely, no one would go. <Can’t she take a hint?> Aloud, Addie said, “Can’t. I’ve got to babysit.”

“For the Woodards?” Hally asked. “Rob and Lucy?”

“Robby and Will and Lucy,” Addie said. “But yeah, the Woodards.”

Hally’s dimples deepened. “I love those kids. They use the pool in my neighborhood all the time. Can I come?”

Addie hesitated. “I don’t know if their parents would like that.”

“Are they still there when you arrive?” Hally said, and when Addie nodded, added, “We can ask, then, right?”

<Doesn’t she realize how rude she’s being?> Addie said, and I knew I ought to agree. But Hally kept smiling and smiling, even when I knew the expression on our face was getting less and less friendly.

<Maybe we don’t realize how lonely she is> I said instead.

Addie had her friends, and I, at very least, had Addie. Hally seemed to have no one at all.

“I don’t expect to get paid or anything, of course,” Hally was saying now. “I’ll just come keep you company, you know?”

<Addie> I said. <Let her. At least let her come ask.>

“Well …” Addie said.

“Great!” Hally grabbed our hand and didn’t seem to notice Addie flinch in surprise. “I have so much to talk to you about.”

The TV was blaring when Addie opened the Woodards’ front door, Hally following close behind. Mr. Woodard grabbed his briefcase and keys when he saw us. “Kids are in the living room, Addie.” He hurried out the door, saying over his shoulder as he went, “Call if you need anything.”

“This is Hally Mul—” Addie tried to say, but he was already gone, leaving us alone with Hally in the foyer.

“He didn’t even notice me,” Hally said.

Addie rolled her eyes. “I guess I’m not surprised. He’s always like that.”

We’d been babysitting Will, Robby, and Lucy for a while now—even before Mom had reduced her hours at work to care for Lyle—but Mr. Woodard still had moments when he forgot Addie’s name. Our parents weren’t the only ones in town with too much work and too little time.

The living room TV was tuned to a cartoon featuring a pink rabbit and two rather enormous mice. Lyle used to watch the same thing when he was younger, but at ten, he claimed to have outgrown it.

Apparently seven-year-olds were still allowed to watch cartoons, though, because Lucy lay on the carpet, her legs waving back and forth. Her little brother sat beside her, equally engrossed.

“He’s Will right now,” Lucy said without turning around. The cartoon ended, replaced by a public service announcement, and Addie looked away. We’d seen enough PSAs. At the old hospital we’d gone to, they’d played them on a loop—endless rounds of good-looking men and women with friendly voices and nice smiles reminding us to always be on the lookout for hybrids hiding somewhere, pretending to be normal. People who’d escaped hospitalization. People like Addie and me.

Just call the number on the screen, they always said, displaying perfect white teeth. Just one call, for the safety of your children, your family, your country.

They never said exactly what would happen after that call, but I guess they didn’t need to. Everyone already knew. Hybrids were too unstable to just leave alone, so calls usually led to investigations, which sometimes led to raids. We’d only ever seen one on the news or in the videos they showed us in Government class, but it was more than enough.

Will jumped up and headed for us, casting a confused and rather suspicious glance at Hally. She smiled at him.

“Hi, Will.” She dropped into a squat despite her skirt. We’d gone straight to the Woodards’ from school, not even stopping to change out of our uniforms. “I’m Hally. Do you remember me?”

Lucy finally looked away from the television screen. She frowned. “I remember you. My mom says—”

Will jerked on the bottom of our skirt and cut Lucy off before she could finish. “We’re hungry.”

“They’re not really,” Lucy said. “I just gave them a cookie. They want another one.” She climbed to her feet, revealing the box of cookies she’d been hiding from view. “Are you going to play with us?” she asked Hally.

Hally smiled at her. “I’m here to help babysit.”

“Who? Will and Robby?” Lucy said. “They don’t need two people.” She stared at us, daring someone to say that she, at seven, still needed a babysitter.

“Hally’s here to keep me company,” Addie said quickly. She picked Will up, and he wrapped his arms around our neck, setting his tiny chin on our shoulder. His baby-fine hair tickled our cheek.

Hally grinned and wiggled her fingers at him. “How old are you now, Will?”

Will hid his face.

“Three and a half,” Addie said. “They should be settling in a year or so.” She readjusted Will in our arms and forced a smile onto our face. “Isn’t that right, Will? Are you going to settle soon?”

“He’s Robby now,” Lucy said. She’d grabbed her box of cookies again and munched on one as she spoke.

Everyone looked at the little boy. He reached toward his sister, oblivious to our scrutiny.

<She’s right> I said. <He just changed.> I’d always been better at differentiating between Robby and Will, even if Addie denied it. Maybe it was because I didn’t have to focus on moving our body or speaking to other people. I could simply watch and listen and notice all the tiny little ticks that marked one soul from the other.

“Robby?” Addie said.

The toddler wriggled again, and Addie set him down. He ran over to his sister. Lucy dangled what remained of her cookie in front of his face.

“No!” he said. “We don’t want that one. We want a new one.”

Lucy stuck her tongue out at him. “Will would’ve taken it.”

“Would not!” he cried.

“Would too. Right, Will?”

Robby’s face screwed up. “No.”

“I didn’t ask you,” Lucy said.

<Better hurry> I said. <Before Robby pitches a fit.>

To my surprise, Hally got there before we did, plucking a cookie from the box and dropping it into Robby’s outstretched hands.

“There.” She crouched down again, wrapping her arms around her knees. “Is that better?”

Robby blinked. His eyes shifted between Hally and his new prize. Then he grinned shyly and bit into the cookie, crumbs cascading down his shirt.

“Say thank you,” Lucy told him.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“No problem,” Hally said. She smiled. “Do you like chocolate chip? I do. They’re my favorite.”

A small nod. Even Robby was a little subdued around strangers. He took another bite of his cookie.

“And what about Will?” Hally said. “What kind of cookies does he like?”

Robby gave a sort of half shrug, then said softly, “Same kind as me.”

Hally’s voice was even quieter when she spoke again. “Would you miss him, Robby? If Will went away?”

“How about we go into the kitchen?” Addie jerked the box of cookies from Lucy’s hand, inciting a cry of outrage. “Come on, Lucy—don’t let Robby eat that in the living room. Your mom will kill me if you get crumbs on the rug.”

Addie grabbed Robby’s hand, pulling him away from Hally. But she didn’t do it fast enough. Robby had time to turn. He had time to look at Hally, still crouching there on the ground, and whisper, “Yes.”

t was getting dark by the time Mr. and Mrs. Woodard came home, the sky a layered wash of gold, peach, and blue. Addie insisted on splitting the babysitting money with Hally. When I commented on it, she shrugged. <Well, she was more helpful than I expected.>

I had to agree. Robby and Will—they switched twice more during the course of the afternoon—both adored her. Even Lucy had followed us to the door, asking if Hally was coming back next time. Whatever her mother had said about Hally—and, judging from the way the woman looked at her when she came home, it hadn’t been anything good—seemed to have slipped from Lucy’s mind.

Turned out we lived in the same direction, so Hally said she’d walk with us. We set out into the evening sun, the air dripping with humidity and mosquitoes. It was only April, but a recent heat wave had driven the temperature to record highs. The collar of our uniform flopped damply against our neck.

They walked slowly, silently. The dying sunlight lifted traces of red from Hally’s black hair and made her tan skin seem even darker. We’d seen people with her coloring before—not often, but often enough to not make it overly strange. But we’d never seen anyone with quite her shape of face, her features. Not outside of pictures, anyway, and hardly even then. We’d never seen anyone act like she’d acted toward Will and Robby, either.

She was half-blood. Half-foreign, even if she herself had been born in the Americas. Was that the reason for her strangeness? Foreigners weren’t allowed into the country anymore—hadn’t been for ages—and all the war refugees who’d come long ago were now dead. Most foreign blood still existing in the country was diluted. But there were groups, people said. There were immigrants who’d refused to integrate, preserving their bloodlines, their otherness, when they should have embraced the safety the Americas offered from the destruction wreaked by the hybrids overseas.

Had one of Hally’s parents come from a community like that?

“I wonder,” Hally said, then fell quiet.

Addie didn’t press. She was too wrapped up in her own thoughts. But I was listening, and I waited for Hally to continue.

“I wonder,” she said again after a moment. “I wonder who’s going to be dominant when they settle, Robby or Will.”

“Hmm?” Addie said. “Oh, Robby, I think. He’s starting to control things more.”

“It’s not always who you think it is,” Hally said, lifting her eyes from the ground. The little white gems studding her glasses frames caught the yellow light and winked. “It’s all science, isn’t it? Brain connections and neuron strength and stuff set up before you’re even born. You can’t tell those things just by watching people.”

Addie shrugged and looked away. “Yeah, I guess so.”

She changed the subject, and they chatted about school and the latest movie until we reached Hally’s neighborhood. There was a big black wrought-iron gate leading into it, and a skinny boy about our age stood beyond the bars.

He glanced up as we neared, but didn’t say anything, and Hally rolled her eyes when she noticed him. They looked alike; he had her tan skin and dark curls and brown eyes. We’d heard about Hally’s older brother, but we’d never seen him before. Addie stopped walking a good dozen yards from the gate, so we didn’t really get a close look at him today, either.

“Bye,” Hally said over her shoulder and smiled. Behind her, the boy finished inputting something into a keypad and the gate yawned open. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Addie waved. “Yeah, tomorrow.”

We waited until Hally and her brother were almost out of sight before turning and heading homeward, this time alone. But not really alone. Addie and I are never alone.

<What was that all about?> Addie kicked our feet as she walked. <Inviting herself babysitting with us? We hardly know her.>

<I told you. Maybe she’s lonely> I said. <Maybe she wants to be friends.>

<All of a sudden? After three years?>

<Why not?>

Addie hesitated. <Well, we can’t be. You know that, Eva. I can’t be friends with her. Not at school.>

Not where people might see.

<And what was that with Robby and Will?> Addie’s irritation mounted inside us. She let a car rattle by, then darted across the street. <Asking Robby about Will? Where was she going with that? They’re about to settle. Confuse them, and they might get delayed. They might—> She didn’t complete her sentence, but she didn’t need to.

They might turn out like us.

For years, our parents had struggled to discover why their daughters weren’t settling like normal. They blamed everyone from our preschool teacher (too unstructured) to our doctors (why was nothing working?) to our friends (had they settled late? Were they encouraging this strange behavior?). In the darkest hours of the night, they fired blame at each other and themselves.

But worse than the blame was the fear—the fear that if we didn’t settle, there would come the day when we weren’t allowed home from the hospital. We’d grown up with the threat of it ringing in our ears, dreading the deadline of our tenth birthday.

Our parents had begged. We’d heard them through hospital doors, pleading for more time, just a little more time: It will happen. It’s already working. It’ll happen soon—please!

I don’t know what else happened behind those doors. I don’t know what convinced those doctors and officials in the end, but our mother and father emerged from that room exhausted and white.

And they told us we had a little more time.

Two years later, I was declared gone.

Our shadow was long now, our legs heavy. Strands of our hair gleamed golden in the wan light, and Addie gathered them all into a loose ponytail, holding it off our neck in the unrelenting heat.

<Let’s watch a movie tonight> I said, fusing a smile to my voice. <We don’t have much homework.>

<Yeah, okay> Addie said.

<Don’t worry about Will and Robby. They’ll be fine. Lyle was fine, wasn’t he?>

<Yeah> she said. <Yeah, I know.>

Neither of us mentioned all the ways in which Lyle wasn’t fine. The days when he didn’t want to do anything but lie half-awake in bed. The hours each week he spent hooked up to the dialysis machine, his blood cycling out of his body before being injected back in.

Lyle was sick, but he wasn’t hybrid sick, and that made all the difference.

We walked in silence, inner and outer. I felt the dark, brooding mists of Addie’s thoughts drifting against my own. Sometimes, if I concentrated hard enough, I fancied I could almost grasp what she was thinking about. But not today.

In a way, I was glad. It meant she couldn’t grasp what I was thinking about, either.

She couldn’t know I was dreading, dreading, dreading the day Will and Robby did settle. The day we’d go to babysit and find just one little boy smiling up at us.

Lupside, where we’d lived for the last three years, was known for absolutely nothing. Whenever anyone wanted to do anything that couldn’t be taken care of at the strip mall or the smattering of grocery stores, they went to the nearby city of Bessimir.

Bessimir was known for exactly one thing, and that was the history museum.

Addie laughed quietly with the girl next to us as our class stood sweating outside the museum doors. Summer hadn’t even started its true battle against spring, but boys were already complaining about their mandatory long pants while girls’ skirt hems climbed along with the thermostat.

“Listen up,” Ms. Stimp shouted, which got about half the class to actually shut up and pay attention. For anyone who’d grown up around this area, visiting Bessimir’s history museum was as much a part of life as going to the pool in the summer or to the theater for the monthly movie release. The building, officially named the Brian Doulanger History of the Americas Museum after some rich old man who’d first donated money for its construction, was almost universally referred to as “the museum,” as if there were no others in the world. In two years, Addie and I had gone twice with two different history classes, and each visit had left us sick to our stomach.

Already, I could feel a stiffness in our muscles, a strain in Addie’s smile as the teacher handed out our student passes. Because no matter what it was called, Bessimir’s history museum was interested in only one thing, and that was the tale of the Americas’ century-and-a-half-long battle against the hybrids.

The blast of air-conditioning as we entered the building made Addie shiver and raised goose bumps on our skin but didn’t ease the knot in our gut. Three stories tall, the museum erupted into a grand, open foyer just beyond the ticket counter, the two upper floors visible if one tilted one’s head back and stared upward. Addie had tried it the first time we’d entered. We’d been thirteen years old, and the sight of it had crushed us with the weight of all that history, all the battles and wars and hatred.

No one looked up now. The others because they were bored. Addie because we never again wanted to see.

Addie’s friend had abandoned her for someone who could still laugh. Addie should have gone after her, should have forced a smile and a joke and complained along with everyone else about having to come to the museum yet again, but she didn’t. She just drifted to the back of the group so we didn’t have to hear the guide begin our tour.

I said nothing, as if by being silent I could pretend I didn’t exist. As if Addie could pretend, for an hour, that I wasn’t there, that the hybrid enemies the guide kept talking about as we entered the Hall of Revolutionaries weren’t the same as us.

A hand closed around our shoulder. Addie whirled to fling it off, then flinched as she realized what she’d done.

“Sorry, sorry—” Hally put her hands up in the air, fingers spread, in peace. “Didn’t mean to scare you.” She gave us a tentative smile. We only had this one class with her, so it hadn’t been difficult for Addie to avoid her since last night.

“You surprised me,” Addie said, shoving our hair away from our face. “That’s all.”

The rest of the class was leaving us behind, but when Addie moved to catch up, Hally touched our shoulder again. She snatched her hand back when Addie spun around, but asked quickly, “Are you all right?”

A flush of heat shot through us. “Yes, of course,” Addie said.

We stood silently in that hall a moment longer, flanked by portraits of all the greatest heroes of the Revolution, the founders of our country. These men had been dead for nearly 150 years, but they still stared out at Addie and me with that fire in their eyes, that accusation, that hatred that had burned in every non-hybrid soul all through those first terrible warring years, when the edict of the day was the extermination of all those who had once been in power—all the hybrid men, women, and children.

They said that zest had died over the decades, as the country grew lax and trusting, forgetting the past. Hybrid children were permitted to grow old. Immigrants were allowed to step foot on American soil again, to move into our land and call it their own.

The attempted foreign invasion at the beginning of the twentieth century, during the start of the Great Wars, had put a stop to that. Suddenly, the old flame burned brighter than ever, along with the new vow to never forget—never, ever forget again.

Hally must have seen our gaze flicker toward the oil paintings. She grinned, her dimples showing, and said, “Can you imagine if guys still went around wearing those stupid hats? God, I’d never get done making fun of my brother.”

Addie managed a thin-lipped smile. In seventh grade, when we’d had to write an essay on the men framed in these paintings, she’d tried to convince the teacher to let her write about the depictions from an artistic viewpoint instead. It hadn’t worked. “We should get back to the group.”

No one noticed as Addie and Hally slipped into place at the edge of our class. They’d already made it to the room I hated most of all, and Addie kept our eyes on our hands, our shoes—anywhere but on the pictures hanging around us. But I could still remember them from last year, when our class had studied early American history and we’d spent the entire trip in this section of the museum instead of just passing through, as we were now.