What’s Left of Me
Hally’s room was ten times messier than her brother’s, but she didn’t seem the least bit embarrassed as she invited us inside and closed the door. She threw open her closet and waved a hand at the clothes hanging inside. “Pick whatever you want. I think we’re about the same size.”
Her closet was full of things Addie would never wear. Things that said Look at me—too-big tops that hung off one shoulder, bright colors and flashy patterns and jewelry that might have gone well with Hally’s black-framed glasses and dark curly hair but would have looked like dress-up clothes on us. Addie looked for something plain as Hally perched herself on the edge of her bed, but Hally didn’t seem to own such a thing.
“Can I just, I don’t know … wear your spare uniform blouse or something?” Addie said, turning.
That was when I noticed something was wrong.
Hally looked up at us from her bed, but there was something in her eyes, something dark and solemn in her stare that made me stop, made me say
And then slowly, so slowly it was like something deliberate, there was a shift in Hally’s face. That was the only way I could put it. Something minuscule, something no one would have caught if they weren’t staring straight at her as Addie and I were staring now, something no one would have noticed—would have even thought to notice—if they weren’t—
Addie took a step toward the door.
A shift. A change. Like how Robby changed to Will.
But that was impossible.
Hally stood. Her hair was neat and tidy under her blue headband. The tiny white rhinestones set into her glasses twinkled in the lamplight. She didn’t smile, didn’t tilt her head and say, What are you doing, Addie?
Instead, she said, “We just want to talk with you.” There was something sad in her eyes.
“You and Devon?” Addie said.
“No,” Hally said. “Me and Hally.”
A shudder passed through our body, so out of either Addie’s or my control it might have been a shared reaction. Another step away from the closet.
Our heart thrummed—not fast, just hard, so hard.
Beat.
Beat.
“What?”
The girl standing in front of us smiled, a twitch of the mouth that never reached her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Let’s start over. My name’s Lissa, and Hally and I want to talk to you.”
Addie ran for the door, so fast our shoulder slammed into the wood. Pain shot through our arm. She ignored it, grabbing at the doorknob with both hands.
It refused to turn. Just rattled and shook. There was a keyhole right above the knob but the key was gone.
Something indescribable was rising inside me, something huge and suffocating and I couldn’t think.
“Hally,” Addie said. “This isn’t funny.”
“I’m not Hally,” the girl said.
Only one of our hands grabbed the doorknob now. Addie pressed our back against the door, our shoulder blades aching against the wood. Words squeezed from our throat. “You are. You’re settled. You’re—”
“I’m Lissa.”
“No,” Addie said.
“Please.” The girl reached for our arm, but Addie jerked away. “Please, Addie. Listen to us.”
The room was growing hot and stuffy and way too small. This wasn’t possible. This was wrong. Someone should have reported her. This couldn’t be real. But it was. I’d seen it. I’d seen her change. I’d seen the shift. And oh, oh, but didn’t it make sense? Didn’t it make sense for Hally to be—
“You,” Addie insisted. “You, not us.”
“Us,” she said. “Me and Hally. Us.”
“No—” Addie twisted around again. The doorknob rattled so hard in our hands it seemed ready to jerk right off the door. Lissa started tugging at us, trying to make Addie face her.
“Addie,” Lissa said. “Please. Listen to me—”
But Addie wouldn’t. Wouldn’t stay still, wouldn’t take our hands from the doorknob. And I was just there, stunned, unable to believe, until Hally—Lissa—Hally finally gave up pulling at our hands and shouted, “Eva—Eva, make her listen!”
The world shattered at the sound of her voice, the name that leaped from her tongue.
Eva.
Mine. My name.
I hadn’t heard it aloud in three years.
Addie locked eyes with the girl staring at us. Everything was too clear, too sharp. The headband slipping from her hair. Her perfect, glossed nails catching the overhead light. The furrows between her eyebrows. The freckle by her nose.
“How … ?” Addie said.
“Devon found it,” Lissa said. Her voice was soft now. “He got into the school records. They keep track of everything if you haven’t settled by first grade. Your oldest files list both names.”
They did? Yes, they must have. Back in the first years of elementary school, when Addie and I were six, seven, eight, our report cards had come home with two names printed on the top: Addie, Eva Tamsyn. In later years, Eva had been left out.
I hadn’t realized my name had survived the four-hour drive, the transfer of schools.
“Addie?” Lissa said. And then, after a long, shuddery hesitation, “Eva?”
“Don’t.” The word exploded from our chest, burned up our throat, and hit the air with a crackle of lightning. “Don’t. Don’t say it.” A pain slashed at our heart. Whose pain? “My name’s Addie. Just Addie.”
“Your name,” Lissa said. “But it’s not just you. There’s—”
“Stop,” Addie cried. “You can’t do this. You can’t talk like this.”
Our breaths shortened, our vision blurring. Our hands squeezed into fists, so tight our nails bit crescent moons into our palms.
“This is the way it’s supposed to be,” Addie said. “It is just me. I’m Addie. I settled. It’s okay now. I’m normal now. I—”
But Lissa’s eyes were suddenly blazing, her cheeks flushed. “How can you say that, Addie? How can you say that when Eva’s still there?”
Addie started to cry. Tears ran into our mouth, salty, warm, metallic.
“What about Eva?” Lissa’s voice was shrill. “What about Eva?”
Misery. Misery and pain and guilt. None of them mine. Addie’s emotions sliced into me. No matter what happened, what we said or did to each other, Addie and I were still two parts of a whole. Closer than close. Tighter than tight. Her misery was mine.
But Addie kept crying and Lissa kept shouting and the room packed to the brim with tears and anger and guilt and fear.
Then the world gave out.
Someone must have opened the door, because all of a sudden we were falling—falling backward, and I was screaming for Addie to catch us before we slammed onto the ground, and she was flailing, and I was bracing for the both of us, bracing for the pain, because that was all I could do, until the falling stopped. The falling stopped, and we were staring up, up at the ceiling, and Addie was still crying in her—our—fear, and because she was crying, I was crying, and everything was secondary to our tears. But someone had caught us. His arms were around our body, holding us up.
“What the hell did you do?” he said.
We weren’t so much crying as just taking small, sharp breaths now. Addie wouldn’t—couldn’t—speak to me. But her presence pressed against mine, hot and limp with tears.
“I didn’t mean to,” someone was saying. “She wouldn’t listen to me. I didn’t know what to do. You wouldn’t have done any better, Ryan, don’t tell me you would’ve—you weren’t even home, and you said you were going to be—”
“I would’ve done better than this.”
I heard them speaking, but Addie had closed our eyes, and our pain overrode everything else in the world.
“Addie? Addie, please stop crying. I’m sorry. Really, I am.” It was Hally. Or was it Lissa? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was Addie. Addie, who finally took one long, shaky breath and rubbed away the last of her tears. “Are you okay?”
Addie said nothing, just stared at the ground, hiccupping. I felt the heat of her rising embarrassment, of her horror for having broken down like this in front of someone, for having reacted the way she had.
Finally, Addie looked at the girl crouched beside us, who smiled shakily.
“Hally?” Our voice was hoarse.
The girl’s forehead wrinkled. She hesitated, then shook her head once.
“No,” she said softly. “No, I’m Lissa.”
I said. But she didn’t need me to tell her that.
“And Hally?” Addie whispered.
“Here, too,” Lissa said. “Hally walked home with you. Hally stopped you after class.” She smiled a sad, crooked smile. “She’s better at those kinds of things. I wanted her to tell you, but she said I should do it. She was wrong, obviously.”
Our mouth kept opening and closing, but nothing came out. This was out of—of a dream. What kind of dream? A nightmare? Or …
“That can’t—” Addie shook our head. “That can’t happen.”
“It can,” said Hally’s brother. He stood a couple feet away, still dressed in his school slacks and shirt, tie not even undone. I barely remembered jerking away from his arms, barely remembered seeing him at all, just the screwdriver in his hand and the doorknob gleaming on the floor. He’d dismantled it. “We—” We, I thought wondrously. Did he mean him and Hally? Or him and Hally and Lissa? Or him and his sisters and some other boy also inside him, some other being, some other soul? Looking at him, seeing the way he watched us, I knew it was the last. “We know Eva’s still there,” he said. “And we can teach her how to move again.”
Addie stiffened. I trembled, a ghost quivering in her own skin. Our body didn’t move at all.
“Do you want to know how?” the boy said.
“Now you’re scaring her, Devon,” Lissa said. Devon. Right, her brother’s name was Devon. But I was sure she’d used a different name a few minutes before.
“That’s illegal,” Addie said. “You can’t. They’ll come; if they find out—”
“They won’t find out,” Devon said.
The public service announcements. The videos we watched every year on Independence Day, depicting the chaos that had swept across Europe and Asia. The president’s speeches. All those museum trips.
“I have to go,” Addie said. She stood so suddenly, Lissa remained crouching, only her eyes moving up with us.
“I have to go,” Addie repeated.
She shook our head. “I have to leave.”
“Wait.” Lissa jumped to her feet.
Our hands flew up, palms outward, warding her off. “Bye, Hally—Lissa—Hally. I’m sorry, but I’m going home now, okay? I have to go home.” She backed up, stumbling all the way t the end of the hall. Lissa started forward, but Devon grabbed her shoulder.
“Devon—” Lissa said.
He shook his head and turned to us. “Don’t tell anyone.” His eyebrows lowered. “Promise it. Swear it.”
Our throat was dry.
“Swear it,” Devon said.
But Addie just swallowed and nodded.
“I promise,” she whispered. She twisted around and darted down the stairs.
She ran the whole way home.
“Addie? Is that you?” Mom called when we opened the front door. Addie didn’t reply, and after a moment, Mom stuck her head out from the kitchen. “I thought you were eating at a friend’s house?”
Addie shrugged. She cleaned our shoes on the welcome mat, the rhythm of the action grinding the bristles flat.
“Is something wrong?” Mom said, wiping her hands on a dish towel as she walked over.
“No,” Addie said. “Nothing. Why aren’t you and Lyle at the hospital yet?”
Lyle wandered in from the kitchen, too, and we automatically looked him over, checking his skinny arms and legs for bruising. We were always terrified each bruise would develop into something worse. That was the way it always seemed to be with Lyle—food poisoning that had developed into kidney trouble, which had resulted in kidney failure. He was pale, as always, but otherwise seemed okay.
“It’s not even five yet, Addie,” he said, throwing himself on the floor and pulling on his shoes. “We were watching TV. Did you see the news?” He looked up, his face a mix of anxiety and excitement, eagerness and fear. “The museum caught on fire! And flooded, too! They said everybody could have gotten all electrocuted, like zzzzz—” He tensed and jerked back and forth, miming the throes of someone being zapped by electricity. Addie flinched. “They said hybrids did it. Only they haven’t caught them yet—”
“Lyle.” Mom gave him a look. “Don’t be morbid.”
We’d gone all cold.
“What’s morbid mean?” Lyle said.
Mom looked like she was about to explain, but then she caught sight of our face. “Addie, are you all right?” She frowned. “What happened to your shirt?”
“I’m fine,” Addie said, fending off her touch. “I—I just realized I’ve got a lot of homework tonight.” She avoided the second question altogether. We’d been so worried about our shirt before. Now it hardly seemed to matter.
Hybrids? Hybrids were responsible for the destruction at the museum?
Mom raised an eyebrow. “On a Friday?”
“Yeah,” Addie said. She didn’t seem to realize what she was saying. We both looked at Mom, but I didn’t think Addie saw a thing. “I—I’m going to go upstairs now.”
“There are leftovers in the fridge,” Mom called after us. “Dad will be home around—”
Addie shut our door and fell into bed, kicking off our shoes and burying our head in our arms.
If hybrids were being blamed for the flood and fire at the history museum, and if said hybrids hadn’t been caught yet, then … I couldn’t even imagine the frenzy that would sweep the city. It would reach us here in the outskirts for sure. Everyone would be on alert, nerves raw, quick to accuse. That was the thing about hybrids. You couldn’t tell just by looking at them.
The Mullans would be the first to have fingers jabbed in their direction, with their foreign blood and strange ways. No one with a shred of sense would have anything to do with them now.
But still, but still.
I could see Hally’s brother standing in the hallway, could remember his eyes on us, remember every word that had come out of his mouth. He’d said I could move again. He’d said they could teach me.
What if he and his sister were taken away? I might spend every burning second of the rest of my life thinking back on this day, ruing the things I did not say, the action I did not take, the chance I failed to seize.
Addie didn’t even reply. We lay there, our face pressed into the crook of our elbow.
Devon’s words were red-hot coals inside me, searing away three years of tenuous acceptance. The fire screamed to get out, to escape from the throat, the skin, the eyes that were mine as much as Addie’s. But it couldn’t.
Normally, I wouldn’t have responded. I’d learned not to speak whenever I felt like this. To stay quiet and make myself pretend I didn’t care. It was the only way I could keep from going insane, to not die from the want—the need—to move my own limbs. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t scream. I could only be quiet and let myself go numb. Then, at least, I wouldn’t have to feel anymore, wouldn’t have to endlessly crave what I could never have.
But not today. I couldn’t stay quiet today.
Addie shifted so we faced the wall.
I said.
My voice had turned pleading, but I was too desperate to care.
Our eyes squeezed shut. Addie said.
It was as if she’d sliced the tendons connecting us, leaving me raw and reeling. For a long, long moment, I couldn’t find any words.
Once, a few months after our thirteenth birthday, I disappeared.
Only for five or six hours, though it had seemed timeless to me. This was the year Lyle fell sick. The year we found out his kidneys were failing him, that our little brother might never grow up.
Suddenly, we were right back in those hospital hallways. Except this time, Addie and I weren’t the patient—Lyle was. And as terrible as the former had been, the latter managed to be ten times worse. The doctors were all different, the tests different, the way they treated him different. But our parents were just as wild with worry, and Lyle, sitting on the examination table, just as pale and silent as we’d been.
One night, he’d whispered a question in our ear as Addie sat at the edge of his bed, reaching to turn off his lamp.
If he died, did that mean he’d be with Nathaniel again?
Addie had to fight past the stopper in our throat before she could breathe, let alone answer. As was customary, no one had spoken of Nathaniel since he’d faded away three years prior. You’re not going to die, she’d said.
But if—Lyle had said before she cut him off.
You’re not going to die, Lyle. You’re going to be fine. You’re going to get better. You’re going to be fine.
She was short-tempered the rest of the night, and we’d argued over stupid things that had escalated until she shouted at me that our little brother was sick, couldn’t I be human and lay off her, and I’d screamed back that she’d gotten through the death of one little brother just fine, hadn’t she? Because I’d wanted to hurt her, as she’d hurt me.
And I was so scared, so scared.
So scared that just for a moment, I didn’t want to be there beside Addie. I didn’t want to know what tomorrow would bring, what Addie would say next, what would happen to our little brother, who’d asked us today if he’d ever see Nathaniel again.
I’d spent my whole life clutching on. To suddenly go the opposite direction—to curl up smaller and smaller, to sever my ties to our body and to Addie—it had been terrifying. But I’d been so angry, so hurt, and so scared—
And before I even fully realized what I was doing, it was done.
I spent those hours in a world of half-formed dreams while Addie panicked and screamed for me to come back. This she admitted to me more than a year later, but I’d felt her fear when I returned, cloudy-eyed and confused. I’d tasted her relief.
And I never disappeared again, no matter how hard we fought. No matter how scared I was.
But tonight, I got close. I flirted at the edge of it, too frightened to make the leap but angry enough to think I might.
I don’t know who suffers more when Addie and I don’t speak to each other. For me, staying silent all Friday night and Saturday made the time dreamlike. The world swam by like a movie, distant and intangible.
On the other hand, Addie had no one to remind her about the little things. She forgot to get a towel before getting in the shower. Our alarm clock blared us awake at seven o’clock on Saturday. She looked everywhere but the bookshelf for our hairbrush. I said nothing. Hadn’t I always known she couldn’t do without me?
I studied when she was too busy daydreaming or stressing to do anything but keep our eyes on the text and flip pages when I told her to. I put words on our tongue when she was too flustered to speak.
And so whenever we fell into sullen silences and refused to talk to each other, it was always Addie who broke down after a few hours—a day at most—and spoke first.
But Saturday melted into Sunday, and Addie stayed mute. I felt the emptiness beside me, the hard, blank nothingness that meant she was struggling to keep her emotions bound.
“Are you all right?” Mom asked when we came down for breakfast Sunday morning. I felt her eyes on us as Addie opened the cabinet and grabbed a cereal bowl. “You’ve been acting funny all weekend.”
Addie turned. Our cheeks tightened, stretching our lips into a smile. “Yeah, Mom. I’m fine. Kinda tired, I guess.”
“You’re not coming down with something, are you?” she asked, setting down her mug to feel our forehead. Addie pulled away.
“No, Mom. I’m fine. Really.”
Mom nodded but didn’t stop frowning. “Well, don’t share cups with Lyle or anything, just in case. He—”
“I know,” Addie said. “Mom, I live here, too. I know.”
Our cereal stuck in our throat. Addie dumped the rest in the trash.
When she went back upstairs to brush our teeth, I stirred enough to stare at our reflection in the bathroom mirror. Addie was looking, too. There were our brown eyes, our short nose, our small mouth. Our wavy, dishwater-blond hair that we always said we’d do something with but never quite dared to. Then Addie shut our eyes, and I couldn’t look any longer. She rinsed with our eyes still closed, felt for the washcloth, and pressed it against our face. Cool. Damp.
Addie always gave in first. I waited for some kind of satisfaction, some kind of relish that once again I had won and she had lost. But all I felt was a great sigh of relief.
I said.
We stood there in the stillness of that Sunday morning, a barefooted girl in a T-shirt and faded red pajama pants, water dripping down her chin, a terrible secret in her head.
The washcloth was suddenly hot with tears.
Addie hid from everyone’s eager questions as best she could, but she couldn’t avoid them all. Again and again, she had to describe the scene at the museum, estimate the amount of water there’d been, how our guide had reacted, had anyone screamed? Had she suspected it was an attack? Did she see anyone suspicious? Daniela Lowes said she had. What about the fire? Had anyone seen the fire? Oh, you’re the one who fell, aren’t you?