Kat Zhang - What’s Left of Me

“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, water-logged 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.