Kat Zhang - What’s Left of Me

“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.

I said.

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.

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.

Addie kicked our feet as she walked.

I said.

Addie hesitated.

Not where people might see.

Addie’s irritation mounted inside us. She let a car rattle by, then darted across the street. 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.

I said, fusing a smile to my voice.

Addie said.

she said.

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.