Once We Were (7 page)

“It’s all right.” Sabine smiled. “We know who you are.”

They might know our names, but how could they know if Addie was in control right now or me? How could they know if the boy next to us was Devon or Ryan?

“Jackson said you guys have gone down to the beach already?” Cordelia asked as she let go of Jackson. He rolled his eyes at her and ran his hand through his shaggy hair, trying to get it to lie down flat again.

Addie shrugged. “Only once.”

“But not at night?”

“No.”

Cordelia threw out her arms, as if trying to capture and express the sight of the ocean after dark. “It’s beautiful. We should go right now.”

“It’s a little far to walk,” Sabine said. She caught Cordelia’s drink as it almost tipped off the table. “And a little late to take a bus.”

Cordelia laughed. “Okay, okay. The voice of reason reigns. We’ll go straight to the shop, then.”

“The shop?” Addie asked.

“Sabine and I recently opened a photography shop a few streets down,” Cordelia said. “We hang out there sometimes.”

Addie said.

I wouldn’t have guessed either Cordelia or Sabine was over twenty, if that. But such was the magic of a forged identity. Perhaps they’d convinced Emalia to fudge a date or two, give them years they’d never actually lived.

“Did you guys want to order something before we left?” Sabine asked as the others picked up their things, clearing the table. “They’ve got—” I caught the moment she realized neither Devon nor I had any money. How could we? “Here.” She took Addie gently by the arm and led us toward the counter. “You’ve got to try their 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 blasé 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?”

Addie said.

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.”

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.

“T
hat
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 stool.”

“Tie another string,” Devon said.

Jackson smiled as he pulled the trapdoor creakily open. “But the stool is more interesting. A longer string would also make the door more noticeable.” He stepped off the stool, still pulling on the door. A series of steps unfolded, groaning and creaking. “And this,” he said, yanking the steps so they clicked into place, “is a secret.”

Automatically, Addie took a step backward.

Once, when Addie and I were little and still lived in the city, our family was invited to a party thrown by one of Mom’s old friends. They’d moved to the suburbs, had a big house and a pool and a barbecue. It had been summer. Hot. The adults milled about outside, our parents busy as they mingled and looked after Lyle and Nathaniel, who’d been only two.

I don’t remember how many people were present. To seven-year-old me, it had seemed like a hundred or more. There were at least ten kids. That much I remember. We played hide-and-seek. A girl in a yellow dress was
It.

I’d told Addie to follow the others into the house. Two boys had headed for the attic, one pausing halfway up the stairs to beckon us up with them. Addie had hesitated, but I’d said
Go.

Because he’d beckoned. Because he’d picked us to go with him, and I’d been hopeful.

It had been sweltering inside the attic. A dead sort of heat, the kind that sucks all the air from a room. There had been an ornate, old-fashioned trunk. There had been more than one, probably. And I vaguely remembered boxes, too. But more than anything, I remembered the biggest trunk, because that boy, he’d said,
No one will look in there
.

So Addie and I crawled inside, curled up to fit in the darkness.

He’d lowered the heavy lid, his friend watching behind him.

He locked it so quietly we didn’t hear.

“Go on,” Jackson said, gesturing up the stairs. “You guys first. Guest courtesies and all.”

Having a panic attack here, in front of everyone, would be devastating.

I’d said as much back at Nornand, when we’d been forced to climb into a torturously small machine for testing. I’d been lying then. But an attic we could handle, especially if it had windows and wasn’t too cramped. We just had to relax.

Addie pressed our lips together and moved forward. The stairs—more ladder than stairs, really—shuddered and creaked with each step.

We emerged in that familiar attic warmth. The ceiling here was a dark, bare wood, sloped until it almost touched the equally bare wooden floors. Someone had pounded a series of heavy-duty nails all around the room, then tangled a string of fairy lights around them. The end of their cord lay near the top of the stairs, and Addie bent to plug it in.

The entire attic lit up with a soft glow. Two lumpy, faded couches slumped at angles to each other. The dark green one leaked yellow stuffing. At first I wondered how on earth anyone had managed to get them up here. Then I noticed the screws where the couch frames could be taken apart. A tall lamp stood in the corner, opposite a small window that looked out onto the street. We couldn’t see clearly through the curtain.

One by one, everyone climbed up to join us. Cordelia turned on the lamp, which brightened the attic further. It wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. There was only one room, but it was large enough to fit many more than our six bodies. The heat-heavy air was cloying, but bearable.

“So,” Sabine said once we’d all settled down. She sat cross-legged on the green couch, looking more dancerlike than ever in a pair of dark gray leggings and a faded T-shirt. Her gaze fell on Devon, then Addie and me. “One of you, go first. Tell us about yourself.”

Of course, Devon said nothing. Addie cradled our milkshake in our hands. “We’re both from Lupside. I—”

“Lupside?” Cordelia was half sitting, half curled against Sabine, her smile lazy but her eyes sharp. “Didn’t you live there for a while, Christoph?”

Christoph nodded. “For two years, back in elementary school.”

Before Addie and I moved there, then. We’d have still been living in our old apartment, just starting to realize how utterly strange it was—how truly awful—that we hadn’t settled.

“Did you ever go to the history museum?” Addie asked.

Christoph had a sweet face when he wasn’t scowling. He looked younger, with his slight frame and pale freckles. He had stopped twitching around so much, like a bomb that might go off any minute.

“Every year. Do they still have that god-awful poster? That supposedly authentic one from nineteen-whatever with the twisted-looking hybrids on them?” He screwed up his face and raised his hands like claws, making Cordelia laugh.

I remembered that poster. Christoph’s impression of it wasn’t terribly exaggerated. The entire museum was dedicated to the struggle between the hybrids and the non-hybrids. It covered everything from the servitude forced upon the single-souled when they were first shipped to the Americas, to the great Revolution that had followed, and the years of fighting on American soil at the start of the Great Wars.