Once We Were (11 page)

The next day, another poster had gone up in the exact same spot.

But I remembered the young man. And the defiance.

And I thought, maybe—maybe Anchoit wasn’t all bad. Perhaps some of the people might, with a little push—a little encouragement—understand our point of view. Right now, our main goal was to stop the Powatt institution from ever opening. But we couldn’t stop there, could we? One day, all the institutions needed to close. If change was going to happen in the Americas, it might begin somewhere like Anchoit. It might begin with a spark.

Cloistered up in the attic, we learned how to build homemade firecrackers. Although some Anchoit stores sold handheld sparklers and things like that, fireworks were banned. But it didn’t matter, because as it turned out, making firecrackers didn’t require more than Ping-Pong balls, black powder, duct tape, and some fuse. Sabine and Jackson gathered everything. No one asked how.

Katy chattered away as she showed us how to pack the powder in the Ping-Pong balls, then wrap them with duct tape. I’d quickly learned to recognize Katy by her magpielike distractibility. The difference between her and Cordelia was so obvious I couldn’t believe none of their customers ever noticed how unalike the two girls acted, how uniquely they inhabited their shared body. Cordelia hummed with energy; Katy floated through the store, their pale hair trailing behind like spun sugar.

“My brothers used to make firecrackers out of gunpowder and paper tubes,” she explained. “We lived on a farm in the middle of nowhere, and they liked to set them off when they got bored. Pissed off my parents like nothing else.”

“Didn’t one of your brothers almost blow his hand off one time?” Jackson said.

“I thought that was the end plan.” Katy pointed her foot at Christoph. “Wasn’t he going on about flying limbs and all?”

“I think Christoph, like the rest of us, would prefer to keep all his limbs intact,” Sabine said. But she smiled easily. Everyone did, even Hally, who had quickly warmed up to the group. How could she not? Hally, who had been so desperate for a friend, she’d risked everything just to reach out to Addie and me.

Up in that attic, lit by afternoon sun and fairy lights, we talked about time frames. About transportation. Who would be where and when, and what they’d be doing. We studied road maps of downtown, especially the area around Lankster Square. We talked through things that might go wrong: being stopped by security, a malfunctioning firecracker, a loss of contact with the others, being spotted. Sabine told us as much as she could about routine inside the Metro Council Hall.

But before and after and in the middle of all that, we heard stories about Jackson’s various day jobs. We learned bits and pieces of Christoph’s past. Cordelia and Katy impersonated their more ridiculous clients, making us giggle until we couldn’t breathe, until our stomach hurt and our eyes blurred and the attic walls reverberated with our laughter.

When Addie and I weren’t at the attic, we were learning more about our own abilities to go under. To remove ourselves temporarily from the world.

I disappeared for the second time in my life on a warm Sunday morning. I’d thought this would be easier for Addie. That my disappearing would be less frightening, surely, than her having to do it herself. But I felt her terror, so strong it was almost a physical thing tying me in place, so I knew it wasn’t true.

I whispered, as much to myself as to Addie.

She nodded. She turned toward the mirror as if she wanted to catch the instant I faded away. As if it might show up in our reflection.

Slowly, I shrank into myself, folding myself smaller and smaller in the nebulas of our mind. What would ten-year-old me think if she knew what I was doing? She’d clutched on so fiercely. She’d just wanted to live. To have a chance.

I couldn’t think about that now. I couldn’t think about anything. I focused on untying myself, on letting go, like a boat’s sail finally ripped free of its mast.

Addie hadn’t closed our eyes, so I couldn’t, either. But the girl in the mirror wasn’t me. I murmured this mantra to myself as I loosened the threads binding me to our limbs, our fingers, our toes.

The girl in the mirror wasn’t me.

Blond hair. Brown eyes. Freckles. The swoop of a collarbone, the curve of an arm.

The girl in the mirror wasn’t me.

The world reduced to our breathing, then our heartbeat. Then even that disappeared.

Addie reached for me, as if on instinct.
Come back!
I thought I heard her cry, the instant before it happened.

Her voice.

I plunged and was gone.

Nathaniel

At three

Five jam-sticky fingers

And a jam-sticky mouth

A grin. My name on his tongue

The apartment where I grew up

The fort beneath the table

Flashlights after dark

The park, where I climbed the tree

And fell

The lake

Where we went camping

Before Lyle and Nathaniel were born

When it was just Addie

And me

And Dad

And Mom

Soft breathing in the tent

The warmth between their bodies

The
swish
of our fingernail against the sleeping bag

The scrape of our fingernail against a coverlet.

I woke.

Before sight, before sound, before smell or speech or feeling—was Addie.

Then came the first thought, as the world inked itself back into existence around me:

We were still sitting on the bed, our knees drawn against our chest, our fingernails digging into the blue-and-white patterned coverlet.

Addie stared at the girl in the mirror, who stared back. I struggled to reorient myself. Everything felt at once too sharp, too real, and not real enough. I hurt with the memory of—of what?

I wasn’t sure. There had been so many memories, memories mixed in with dreams—truth swirled together with lies and hopes and fantasy.

Nathaniel. I’d dreamed about Nathaniel. For a second, his face floated back to me, how he and Lyle had looked as a baby. Addie and I had been four years old when he was born. We’d stood on tiptoe to stare down at him in his cradle, his hair so light and fine it looked like he didn’t have any hair at all.

Addie’s voice was steady, but I felt the force of will it took to keep it that way.

Twelve minutes. Twelve minutes of my life excised. In a way, it was no different from sleeping at night or taking a nap during the day. But I wondered if I could think the same once I started going under for hours at a time.