The words pierced our skin, injected ice water into our veins. We flashed cold, then hot. “You mean—but Jaime—”
But Jaime’s the only one who survived that sort of surgery.
Jackson’s eyes widened with realization. “No, that’s not what I meant. It’s not like that. His name is Mason. But none of us have ever spoken with him or seen him take control. Sabine says . . . Sabine says that by the time she got to know Christoph at their institution, Mason had already gone silent. Anyway—” He hesitated. “Look, we all react to hell differently. Mason—maybe he still speaks to Christoph, but he gave up communicating with anyone else.”
Addie swallowed. Nodded.
“Anyway.” Jackson seemed to be trying to smile. “You’re doing well.”
“What do you mean?”
“Post-Nornand.” His smile was genuine now. “I don’t know what you were like before going in, but back in the hospital, you seemed—well, I don’t know. Different. Different than now.”
Addie surprised me with a quiet laugh. She rarely laughed in front of people unless she was completely comfortable. “You know, I hated you, when I first saw you. I’d just arrived at Nornand. You had a package for Mr. Conivent or something, and you kept staring at me, and I—”
I remembered, too. I’d thought Jackson’s eyes looked like a doll’s, so light blue they were almost clear.
“I thought you figured I was some kind of circus freak,” Addie said. She laughed again, louder this time. “Turns out we’re the same kind of freak.”
Jackson grinned, raising an imaginary glass. “To freaks, then.”
TEN
Jackson stayed a little longer to chat, but he was supposed to meet with Christoph for lunch. He left with a smile and a
Addie was quiet long after he’d gone, moving slowly as we showered and got dressed. The steam from the hot water made us sleepy again, cloudy-headed.
We’d just left the bathroom when Addie said
Shock rippled through me.
I tried to quash my excitement—or at least hide it from Addie. I didn’t dare ask what had finally changed her mind. Maybe meeting with Sabine and the others had affected her like it had affected me. Maybe she was finally ready to move on, to pursue a new kind of normal.
Addie pushed our pillow against the headboard and leaned against it. Our damp hair clung to our neck. A breath shuddered through our lungs.
When we were thirteen? I’d been so angry then—I hadn’t even known what I was doing. I’d just wanted to be anywhere but where I was. Lyle’s sickness had started that year. Addie and I had fought, and in that moment, everything had been too much to bear. I’d willed myself to feel nothing at all, to disconnect from the world and dissolve like morning mist in sunlight.
Addie let me take control of our body as I tried my best to explain. Our chest quivered with my attempt at steady breathing.
Which was fine. Addie had agreed to try, and that was the important thing. We wouldn’t achieve anything this go-around, but Addie had agreed to try, so there would be other chances, and sooner or later, she’d—
There was a feeling like a balloon popping inside us.
Then Addie was gone.
I did not shout her name.
That was the reaction I’d come to expect, and the one I’d steeled myself against: the urge to cry out. Then the urge to reach for her, to clamber toward that abyss where Addie should have been and stare over its edge, scrabbling for her in the darkness.
I was propelled back to all those after-school sessions at the Mullans’ house, learning to move again as Addie floated in a Refcon-induced sleep. Refcon was a drug that suppressed the stronger soul. Hally had stolen some from her mother’s hospital, and Addie drank it to give me a chance to regain my strength.
But this was different. Addie was gone by her own volition, without the aid of drugs, of
The first blink was followed by the first breath. Then the second. The third.
Addie was gone, and I was still here, sitting on the bed.
Alone.
The word echoed through the empty chambers of my mind.
Nobody but I knew.
I curled our fingers into a fist, harder and harder until our nails bit a painful line across the center of our palm. Then I studied the stair-step pattern of red crescent moons etched into our skin.
The silence in the room—in our head—was enormous. It seemed at once a great, untouchable emptiness and some stifling, half-living thing that might, at any moment, break down the door hiding me from the rest of the world.
I stood. Our legs held. Of course they held. I’d been walking fine for weeks. But the steps I took now seemed no less momentous.
I took fourteen steps, just weaving around the room.
Emalia’s spare bedroom wasn’t large, and furniture ate up most of the floor space. In addition to the two beds, there were two matching nightstands—with two mismatching lamps—and a medium-sized dresser we shared with Kitty. Atop the dresser was the prettiest thing in the room, a large, rectangular mirror with an ornate wooden frame.
I stood before it. The shadowy girl in the glass stared back at me. The same girl who’d stared back at me my entire life. I reached up, touching my face.
Was it my face now, when Addie wasn’t here?
The girl in the mirror frowned.
I returned to the bed, suddenly finding it difficult to breathe. The world seemed too big, and yet too small.
This was what being alone felt like.
This was how Mom, Dad, Lyle—all the other girls at school, our teachers, the people on the street—this was how they spent every second of their lives. This was the silence and loneliness in their heads, the echo of their thoughts.
It had felt different when I was immobile. I’d still been partially trapped, then. But now . . . I could do anything. I could do anything, and no one but me would ever have to know.
A little more than five minutes later, Addie was back.
I held her, tight, as she reemerged to the waking world.
