Once We Were

TWENTY-ONE

Emalia and Nina were huddled on the couch when I finally ventured from our bedroom, Emalia’s arm around Nina’s shoulders, both of them laughing at a television show. I’d just poured a cup of juice when Addie said <I’m going under, Eva> and was gone, just like that.

Left me in the middle of the kitchen, a glass of orange juice halfway to my lips, my feet cold against the tiles.

Nina called, “Can you pour me some?”

I gave her mine, since I didn’t want it anymore. Somehow, it hadn’t fully struck me until now how Addie could leave me when I didn’t want her to go.

“Join us?” Emalia said. I shook my head.

The knock at the door came long after the show had ended. Nina was in the shower. I was milling about our room and only came out when I heard Emalia say, “Oh, hi, Lissa. How’re you?”

“I’m fine.” Lissa’s voice was barely above a whisper, and she didn’t speak again until she saw me in the hallway. She cradled a roll of clothes and a towel in her arms, a small denim bag slung over her shoulder. “I was wondering . . .” Her dark eyes shifted between Emalia and me. “Could I spend the night here?”

I didn’t speak. I’d barely seen Lissa or Hally since the day they refused to go back to the attic. They’d stayed secreted away in Henri’s apartment, burying themselves in books, I guessed. Or maybe just staring out the window, the way they used to.

“Of course, Lissa,” Emalia said finally. “You can sleep over whenever you want.”

Emalia didn’t own a sleeping bag, and the twin beds were too narrow to share, so Lissa and I laid out blankets in the living room. Of course, Nina wanted to join us. She grabbed her blanket and declared ownership of the couch while Lissa and I were still carrying the coffee table out of the way.

We moved awkwardly, not meeting eyes.

Emalia, who had work the next day, went to bed. The rest of us watched late-night television with the volume barely loud enough to hear. Eventually, Nina drifted asleep. Lissa and I watched for a little longer after that, but soon most of the channels showed nothing but infomercials, and I switched off the television. The living room dipped into darkness and silence. Addie still hadn’t returned. The warmth where she should have been was dark and silent.

Lissa lay curled away from me, so still I thought she’d fallen asleep, too. But then I heard a quiet “Eva?”

“Yeah?” I whispered.

She turned to face me. She’d removed her glasses, and her face looked different without them—more vulnerable. I braced myself for any number of questions: What are you and the others up to now? Why are you doing this? Why haven’t you talked with me? Why have you left me alone?

The question she asked wasn’t any I’d expected.

“You ever wonder why we’re like this? Why people are hybrid? Why some of us are and some of us aren’t?”

Lissa’s eyes searched mine, and I nodded. Of course I had. How could I not?

And what do you think?

That was the natural next question, but she didn’t ask it, and neither did I. It felt too private to ask. All hybrids must wonder why they were born to this fate. I’d wondered as a child alone on the playground. Lissa had been kept cloistered at home until second grade, seeing no one beyond her parents and her brother. Did that mean she’d started wondering later, or earlier?

“It’s always been this way,” Lissa murmured. “Since human beings first came to be. And I . . . I guess it doesn’t matter, does it?” She shifted onto her back, her long hair tangled beneath her. “My father used to tell Hally and me stories, when we were really little. I don’t think he knows we remember, but we do.”

“What kind of stories?”

“Legends,” Lissa said. “Of how the world began. Of how the hybrids began. His grandma taught them to him, before she died. He had to translate them, since she didn’t speak English. There were ones about Purusha, and ones about Brahma. And others, too. He used to tell us so many. We’d beg for them.” She twisted a curl of hair around her fingers. “This was before we started pretending we’d settled. He never told us any more after that.”

I’d never heard those stories, but I’d been taught others. At school, we’d learned what the ancient world believed—that their gods had created all people to be hybrid, so they’d never have to suffer the agony of loneliness. Then one man had committed some unpardonable sin and, as punishment, the gods tore out his second soul. He was cast from society and left all alone.

Finally the people took pity on him and brought him back into the fold, where he was allowed to stay as a second-class citizen, doing menial labor. Only menial labor, because who could trust higher-level jobs to a man with only one soul? One mind?

The first time Addie and I heard the legend, we were in third grade. The only unsettled child in our entire class.

What a cruel story, the teacher had said, invented to justify the hybrids’ even crueler treatment of our ancestors. Do you know what ancestor means?

We’d lingered at the door at the end of the day, waiting for the teacher’s attention to fall on us. We’d been comfortable with her. Eight years old and unsettled, we were unusual but not obscene, and she’d been kinder than our peers.

Who did he marry? I asked.

She gave us a confused smile. I’m sorry?

The man who wasn’t hybrid. He must have married someone. So they had kids. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be more single-souled people.

Addie, she said. Everyone called us Addie then, because it was mostly Addie in control. I didn’t bother correcting her. It’s only a story. He didn’t marry anyone. He didn’t even exist. The hybrids just made it up so they could feel better about treating the non-hybrids so horribly. Do you understand?

Yes, I’d said, though I didn’t. How could the hybrids have felt better about themselves if their story didn’t even make sense?

“How can you think Sabine’s plan is a good idea, Eva?” Lissa’s question pulled me back to the present. Her moods tended to be less extreme than Hally’s, so maybe I ought to be grateful for that. But the quiet disappointment in her voice made my stomach squeeze, made a wrecking ball of my guilt. I needed Addie here for this. I didn’t want to face Lissa’s question alone.

“It’s just a building,” I said. “Think about how it’ll strike a blow against the government.”

“Strike a blow against the government?” She propped herself up on her elbows and stared right at me. “Come on, Eva. You didn’t come up with that. You don’t talk like that.”

It was something Vince had said, actually, but I kept quiet.

“Have you talked to Ryan about this?” I said.

She sighed, flopping back down on the ground. “Yes, but he’s Ryan. Give him a project, make him feel like he’s needed, and he’s set. He won’t listen to us. We thought you would.”

“The explosives—”

“The bomb, Eva,” Lissa said. Her eyes narrowed. “It’s a bomb.”

“The bomb.” The word felt heavy, bitter on our tongue. Like how settling had felt once, when Addie and I were small and confused and linked it to something we were doing wrong, something that was wrong with us.

I forgot what the rest of my sentence had been. Bomb filled my mind, pushing everything else away.