Once We Were

milkshakes.”

“It’s all right,” Addie protested. “I don’t—”

The man behind the counter straightened as we approached, setting aside his book.

“No arguing, okay?” Sabine smiled. “I’m sorry I never properly welcomed you guys to Anchoit when you first arrived. Two milkshakes, please,” she said to the cashier. Then to Addie, “What flavors? Do you know what your boyfriend likes?”

Addie went cold next to me. “He’s not my boyfriend.” Our voice was barely above a whisper, but the cashier heard, anyway. He tried to look as if he hadn’t.

Sabine wore embarrassment like an ill-fitting coat. “Sorry,” she said with forced lightness, and I could feel Addie trying to look blase about it, too. We couldn’t attract attention.

“Chocolate,” Addie said. “Both of us. Please.”

The cashier nodded and called the order to whoever was in the kitchen.

“Sorry about that,” Sabine murmured again while the man was out of earshot. “I shouldn’t have assumed.”

“It’s all right,” Addie said. It wasn’t. Not really. I could tell.

Neither of them spoke again until after the cashier came back with the milkshakes. Sabine paid, brushing aside Addie’s thanks.

“Just let me know if you ever need anything, okay?” she said as we headed for the exit. The others had already gone outside, laughing in the darkness. Devon stood a little apart from the rest.

The milkshake was rich and sweet and cold. Addie shivered as we stepped outdoors, but smiled. “I will.”

Devon accepted his drink without comment, though he nodded at Sabine in what passed for his version of thanks. Jackson slipped between the two of us as we headed down the street. “Did you guys have any trouble getting here?”

“No.” It was the first thing Devon had said all night. “Do you all live in the area?”

<My God> Addie said. <Is Devon making small talk? >

I laughed. I didn’t tell her this wasn’t Devon making small talk at all. This was Devon investigating, questioning, studying. There was a light in his eyes that I recognized; Ryan had worn that same look when he took apart Emalia’s camcorder to figure out what was broken.

I never knew what to make of my feelings toward Devon, or what sort of feelings he might have toward me. Sometimes, his presence grated. His wall-like silences and unreadable eyes seemed like such wastes when I could be having Ryan’s smiles, his surprised laughter, his quiet jokes.

But other times, I was overcome by a fierce sort of affection for Devon. It wasn’t at all what I felt for Ryan. But it wasn’t like anything I’d ever felt for anyone else, either.

“Sabine and Cordelia share an apartment about fifteen minutes away,” Jackson said. “Christoph and I live a little farther.”

Christoph looked over at the sound of his name. Sabine and Cordelia had left the rest of us behind a little, and they turned now to wait for us to catch up. I saw the moment Sabine’s face changed, her easy smile pulling tight, her eyes focusing on something—someone—over our shoulder. A beam of light struck us from behind.

“Hey! You lot—wait a minute.”

Addie jerked around. A police officer in full uniform directed a flashlight at us.

Our heart rate rocketed. Heat flared through our body, setting our blood alight like it was gasoline.

Devon, I thought.

Devon, who stood beside us, as immobile as we were. Devon, who, even more than us, should not be seen by anyone. He was doing nothing wrong, breaking no laws, causing no trouble. It was not actually illegal to be foreign, much less look foreign, and a police officer ought to know that better than the average person. But still.

Someone took hold of our shoulder. Jackson.

“Something wrong?” he asked the officer. His voice was light. He took a few steps toward the man, pushing us along though everything in me screamed that we should be going in the opposite direction.

The officer lowered the flashlight beam so it wasn’t blinding us. The stars in our vision didn’t fade.

He frowned at Addie and me. “Bit late for you to be running around, isn’t it?”

Our lips couldn’t form a reply. Jackson’s hand tightened on our shoulder, but he laughed. “She’s fine; she’s with us.”

“You know about the curfew?”

“That doesn’t start until Monday,” Cordelia said. Without my noticing, she and Sabine had joined us. She grinned. “We’re running wild while we still can.”

The officer ran his eyes over her short, platinum hair, her red lips. “Well, don’t run too wild. It’s two in the morning. Be careful.”

“We were headed back anyway.” Sabine tilted her head at the milkshake in our hands. “Just came out for some food.”

<Smile> I hissed, and Addie obeyed.

We snuck a look at Devon, who wore a look of magnificent boredom. Our smile softened into something a bit more natural.

“It’s my birthday,” Addie said. Our voice came out quiet, almost shy. We sounded more like Kitty than ourself, which only made us more flustered. Heat crept up our neck, bloomed on our cheeks.

To their credit, no one looked surprised.

“All right,” the officer said finally. “Have a good night, then.”

We all stood quietly until the man was out of sight. Then Cordelia broke down into giggles. Jackson tried to shush her, but her laughter was making him laugh, too. Only Christoph looked as serious as Devon did. Sabine hustled everyone forward.

EIGHT

“That was a brilliant play by all involved,” Cordelia said as we hurried through the streets.

“That was a close call,” Jackson corrected, but there wasn’t any real warning in his tone, only an amused sort of exhilaration.

“Not really.” Cordelia skipped ahead of us, then turned to face Addie and me, walking backward. She grinned. “He was just worried we were corrupting your sweet fifteen-year-old mind. Gang initiation, maybe.”

“It’s not really your birthday, is it?” Sabine asked. Addie shook our head. “Good going, then. Nearly fooled me.”

“It’s my birthday,” Cordelia said in a surprisingly good imitation of our voice—only higher and breathier. Addie blushed, and Cordelia laughed. “You sounded like an angel, my darling. Nobody in a thousand years would ever suspect you of anything.”

The photography shop was marked by nothing more than a plain door and a wooden sign declaring Still Life in elegant, black script. A long display window stretched along the wall, but I only got a glimpse of picture frames and black-and-white photos before Cordelia moved to unlock the door.

A bell jingled as we entered. Photographs crowded the small shop’s limited wall space. Inside one silver frame, a little boy pressed his face against a set of slender, white stair railings. An enormous, broad-shouldered man with an equally enormous pumpkin-colored cat sat within the frame beside it.

Cordelia led us to a storage room at the back of the store, everyone crowding inside among the array of empty frames and dusty cardboard boxes. The ceiling here was surprisingly high. Even Jackson, tall as he was, needed a stool to get a good grip on the string hanging from a hatch door.

“The string used to be longer,” he explained. “It snapped about half a year back, so we have to use the