Kat Zhang - What’s Left of Me

“So are you really Devon right now, or should I be thinking of you as Ryan?”

The question burst from our lips, and no matter how fast Addie shoved our fist against our mouth, she couldn’t take it back. I was too shocked to speak.

Devon blinked. Or was he Ryan? No, he couldn’t be; he’d just referred to Ryan. The boy frowned, looking more nonplussed than truly annoyed. “No, I’m Devon. But if you’d prefer Ryan, we can—”

“No,” Addie said, leaning back. “No, that’s quite all right, thanks.”

Her coldness wiped the quiet puzzlement from his face, made his expression blank again. Devon nodded and turned back to his tinkering. Silence reigned, broken only by the click of his screwdriver when his hand slipped.

I said.

Heat rushed to our face.

I fell silent. A wall slammed down between Addie and me, sealing her emotions to her half of our mind. But she didn’t do it quickly enough. I’d sensed the tendril of guilt.

The kettle started to shriek.

“Coming!” Hally called, thumping down the stairs. She skidded to a stop by the kitchen counter and reached over to switch off the stove. The kettle’s screech puttered into a low whistle, then silence. There were a few moments of quiet, interrupted only by the clinking of mugs and what was probably a spoon.

Addie tore our eyes from Devon’s hands. “What kind of tea is it?”

“Oh, um, something my dad gets. I forget the name,” Hally said. She bent over one of the mugs, sliding the spoon out against its rim so it didn’t drip, then brought the steaming mugs to the table. “I put a little cold milk in it, so it’s not that hot. Try it. It’s good.”

She watched as Addie took a sip. We’d hardly ever had hot tea before. This tasted sweeter than I expected, milky and spiced.

“Lissa’s obsessed with tea at the moment,” Devon said. “A month ago it was those ornate pocketknives.”

Lissa. Was she Lissa now? Addie threw a sideways look at the girl sitting next to us, but of course she looked exactly the same. Same dark hair, same dimples, same brown eyes. I didn’t know her and Hally well enough to discern between them.

“I’m not obsessed,” Lissa said, taking a long drink from her own mug. “And I’d still collect the pocketknives if Mom would let me.”

“The tea does taste good,” Addie said quietly.

Lissa smiled at us. A bright, overeager smile. “It does, doesn’t it?”

A moment crawled by. Addie fingered the handle of our mug. Even through the wall in our mind, I could feel her tension mounting. It leaked through the cracks like steam.

“Why me?” she said.

Both Lissa and Devon looked up, the former from her tea, the latter from his tools. The strength of their stares, identical in so many ways, made Addie falter, but she soldiered on.

“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.”