by Kat Zhang
He shrugged. That was all the excuse I needed to return to Bridget’s bedside. She sat cross-legged on the scratchy gray blanket, her tray balanced on her knees.
When she didn’t protest, I sat down next to her and whispered, “They don’t know your names here?”
She shook her head. “We don’t know theirs, either. It doesn’t matter. They only work here a couple weeks.” She wiped her fingers on the side of her mattress. “New system. The higher-ups stay the same, I think. We don’t really see them much anyway. But the caretakers come and go all the time.”
So they didn’t end up with another Dr. Lyanne on their hands.
The caretaker lingered by the doorway. But he wasn’t watching us, the way the nurses had at Nornand. He hardly seemed to care what we did.
The girls were subdued anyway. Glassy-eyed. A few spoke, but only in murmurs. The girl drifting around the perimeter of the room ignored her tray for too long, and another girl stole it. The man didn’t notice. The girl in the corner who kept coughing sat up long enough to sip at her cup of water, then sank back against her pillow. No one touched her tray, even when it became obvious she wasn’t going to eat it.
I turned back to Bridget. “What do you do all day?”
“Nothing.” She poked at her food, then let her fork drop. “You know, after I got here, I realized why they gave us all those board games and piles of schoolwork at Nornand. It’s a distraction. It keeps you focused, holds you together. Sitting here, day after day . . . it makes you go insane.” She grinned wryly. “Not that we had much hope otherwise.”
I thought of the pamphlets from our childhood, warning about a hybrid’s unstable mind, our propensity for insanity.
“Bridget,” I said, “hybrids don’t just go crazy. That’s a lie.”
She gave us a small, pitying smile. “Stick around here long enough, you’ll start wondering.”
ELEVEN
It was frightening, how quickly we fell into the rhythm of life at Hahns. It was easy, because the rhythm was so simple.
We did nothing.
The lights snapped on early, with a clank that worked as well as any alarm clock. Time dripped by until breakfast. Then lunch. Then dinner. Then lights out, with another clank.
Clank. Monotony. Clank.
There were no clocks, and only one tiny, high-up window in the bathroom. It made it almost impossible to tell the time. The days warped.
Addie and I recorded everything we could. The caretakers bringing in the trays of food. The girls eating. The way the bathrooms looked. The groups of children flocked together like spindly white birds, perched on their beds. The short-haired girl.
Her name was Viola, and she was actually fifteen, though she looked younger. Every day, she walked around the room. She never spoke to anyone except herself, her lips moving as if in prayer or just in conversation with some unseen ghost.
She was also the only one who ever went anywhere near Hannah, the sick girl. And then only because Hannah’s bed hugged the wall, and Viola couldn’t complete a pass around the room without drifting by Hannah’s huddled form.
“How long has she been sick?” Addie asked Bridget, who shrugged.
“She was already kind of sick during the last rotation. But it got worse quickly.”
Bridget had mentioned Hahns’s rotation system earlier, then explained when Addie feigned confusion. We were in Class 6—the girls were always in the even-numbered classes, the boys in the odd-numbered ones. Bridget figured there were about twenty total, though it depended on how many kids were here.
Every few weeks, caretakers came to each ward to randomly assign new class numbers. The endless surprise rotations kept everyone tilted. A new friend might disappear the next rotation, not to be seen again for months—if ever. Girls disappeared all the time. A few during rotation, siphoned off as the rest were sorted into new classes. Others in the weeks following, to illness or God knew what else.
We stared at Hannah, sick and suffering alone.
“Doesn’t anyone care?” Addie said. Hannah barely ate. Never spoke. Crawled out of bed to the bathroom, and crawled back. No one helped her.
“What good does caring do?” Bridget fiddled with her blanket. Many girls unraveled bits of the spare ones, so they could use the string to braid bracelets, or make something to hold back their hair. It kept the hands busy. Kept the mind focused on something other than tedium. “She’s just the first. When winter really comes, it gets even colder than it is now. Most of these girls have terrible immune systems. The caretakers—they carry germs in, and . . .” She trailed off. Shrugged matter-of-factly.
“How do you know?” Addie said. “You—”
You’ve only been here since last summer.
But Addie didn’t finish the sentence. We tried not to mention Nornand much. Talking about Nornand was admitting that we weren’t who we claimed we were, and part of the unspoken truce between us and Bridget included looking the other way about our supposed identity.
Perhaps she assumed we’d successfully broken out of Nornand and then been recaptured. Or maybe she preferred to think we hadn’t been successful—had been carted elsewhere like the other patients at Nornand, and found our way to Hahns through a transfer. Intense curiosity had never been something we associated with Bridget. Even at Nornand, she’d liked to believe what she wanted to believe, and never deviate.
Bridget’s eyes flickered to Viola, who was making her usual rounds about the perimeter of the room. “When I first got here, Viola and I were in Class 14 together. She spoke then. We got separated during the next rotation. Next time I saw her . . .” She hesitated. “Stay here long enough, you lose your mind. It’s just a matter of time.”
“And then?” Addie said. “What’ll happen to her?”
“Who knows?” Bridget said, and wouldn’t talk more about it. We caught her eyeing Viola often, though. All the girls did, and we filmed their expressions, trying to decipher them.
She was right. It was something like dread, and sorrow, and pity, all tangled together.
Hannah didn’t stop coughing for days and days. For hours, it would be the only sound in the entire ward. The other girls rarely spoke above a whisper, when they spoke at all.
I dreamed about Ryan. About talking with him, seeing him. About the feel of his skin, his mouth, his hands. One night, I woke up screaming—not from nightmares, but because I’d dreamed I was with him in the photography-store attic, surrounded by those fairy lights.
And it hadn’t been true.
The pain of missing him, the frustration of this room, this room, this sameness, seared through me so sharply I couldn’t stand it.
Sometimes, I found myself just lying in bed, silently repeating the digits of Henri’s satphone number like a mantra. A prayer. A rope of numerals that could one day pull us out of here.
Maybe Viola had the right idea. Walking circles around the room was better than doing nothing at all. We started unraveling bits of the extra blankets, the way the other girls did, pulling loose long strands of the rough fibers and braiding them into a rope. Some of the beds were decorated by loops of braided string, the rusted bars wrapped with different kinds of braids. A mark of territory. An attempt at owning something, someplace, however temporarily. In the ward, a girl’s bed was her castle.
We were passing Hannah’s bed one day during lunch when the girl shifted to grab her cup and knocked it off balance. Our hand shot out to right it—but too late. The water spilled, soaking into our shirtsleeve. Addie jerked away.
For the first time, we looked directly at Hannah’s face. She couldn’t have been any old
er than Bridget—thirteen or fourteen. Her skin was so pale she hardly looked alive when her eyes were closed. But they were open now—open and brown like coffee grounds.
“Sorry,” she said hoarsely.
We’d walked past this sick girl for days and said nothing, heard nothing but the sound of her coughing. The sudden connection was startling.
“D-do you want mine?” Addie stuttered. “My water, I mean.”
The caretakers only gave us water at meal times. The rest of the day, the girls drank from the sink if they got thirsty. There was no certainty that the water in the plastic cups was any cleaner, but at least it tasted better.
Hannah hesitated, then nodded. Addie darted back to our tray and retrieved our cup for her.
“Darcie, right?” The words escaped Hannah’s lips in little breathless pants. She must have heard Bridget say the name. What else did she hear, lying here nearly motionless every day?
Addie nodded. Hannah continued watching us. But there was no expectancy in her eyes. We could have easily said good-bye, or made some excuse about getting back to our lunch.
But instead, Addie said quietly, “Mind if I sit?”
Hannah’s surprise was obvious, but she shook her head. Addie sat, careful not to disturb Hannah’s tray, which the caretaker had left balanced on the mattress. The food—little circles of carrots mixed with cubed meat—sat untouched.
“Don’t you want any?” Addie asked.
Hannah shrugged. She seemed to rarely eat. Didn’t appear to care what effect that might have on her health. Addie shifted awkwardly. The bed creaked. We didn’t look away, but I had the feeling everyone else in the ward was sneaking glances in our direction. Were we going to be the ward’s new pariah?
Addie of a few months ago would have asked me what to say. Would have grown too flustered to figure out anything herself. I felt the ragged edges of her agitation, but she didn’t demand my help.
“Do you need anything?” she said instead to Hannah, who stared as if the idea that she might be allowed to need something, and then be given it, was a novelty. She shook her head. “Well,” Addie said hesitantly. “If you do, just call for me, all right?”
That night, after lights-out, Addie turned to Bridget in the bed next to ours. I thought at first that Bridget might shift farther away. She looked, for a moment, like she might. But she didn’t.
“We should say something to the caregiver,” Addie whispered. “Hannah’s burning up. And they must have medicine.”
Bridget burrowed under the covers, searching uselessly for warmth. “Maybe. But why would they bother giving it to her?”
“It wouldn’t hurt to ask.”
Bridget went still. “Maybe it would. Viola said they take the sick away, when they become too sick.”
“And?”
Even in the darkness, I didn’t miss Bridget’s Are You Stupid? look. “And that’s it,” she said. “They’re gone.”
TWELVE
Hannah got steadily worse. We tried to get her to eat, but she wasted ever thinner, like a pale, waning moon. Every hacking cough sounded like it threatened to snap her ribs.
We looked at Hannah and our own chest ached. I felt equal parts shame and disgust at how I recognized Marion could use footage of her. This sick, sick girl could strike pity into hearts that had never pitied hybrid children before.
When she was sleeping, we distracted ourselves by picking the lock on the bathroom window. Marion’s instructions on what to do if the ring ran out of memory, or broke, had been simple: get it outside the building, and wait for a replacement. Each ward only had one window—and there were only about twenty wards. Someone sent to look for the ring wouldn’t have too many places to search.
The window was about three feet wide and one foot tall, set into the wall perpendicular to the toilet stalls. It was also about six feet off the ground and tinted, so we couldn’t see true sunlight even here standing beneath it. But it could open. The lock, if nothing else, proved it.
Addie and I had spent the last few days sneaking pieces of plastic silverware whenever we could. We’d shatter them in the bathroom, hoping to get splinters thin enough to use as lockpicks. Devon had taught his sisters and us the skill during our safe-house stays.
But Devon had paper clips and screwdrivers. Addie and I had shards of plastic utensils. And before we could even attempt to pick the lock, we had to reach it.
We were waiting until the next rotation to signal for rescue, but it didn’t hurt to practice.
I glanced over our shoulder. There was no bathroom door, but no one was looking our way. I carefully moved to the edge of the sink, the porcelain cold through our thin pants. The window was still a good two or three feet away, but I caught the shadow of clouds, dark behind the tinted glass.
“What the hell are you doing?” Bridget said.
I almost toppled off the sink. Caught ourself at the last moment and threw her a dirty look. “Nothing.”
“That’s not even trying to lie.” Bridget came closer, but thankfully kept her voice low. Her hair was in its usual neat braids. “The window’s locked.”
“I know.”
“You’re not thinking of breaking it, the way you broke that window at Nornand?”
I didn’t want to remember that day. We’d been trying to escape with Hally and Lissa, and thinking of them made me think of Ryan, and Devon, and all the others we’d left behind. Made me miss them with a force that was almost blinding.
You could be with them right now, whispered the weakest part of my mind. They never wanted you to go. Ryan asked you to stay. He practically begged you to stay. But you were stubborn. And now look where you are.
“I’m not breaking the window,” I snapped. My irritation made Bridget’s mouth tighten.
When I spoke again, I made sure our voice was calmer. “They don’t have an alarm system on this window, do they?”
I knew they didn’t. Marion had told us. But it didn’t hurt to check with Bridget, and asking her was my way of apologizing.
She snorted. “Alarm system? Why? No one could fit out that window.”
I hesitated, then unclenched our hand to reveal the makeshift lockpicks we’d made. Bridget’s eyes flashed over them, then met ours again.
“It would be nice to get some fresh air,” I said quietly. “Don’t you think?”
Bridget sat on the cold bathroom floor, arms around her knees, and watched me try each sliver of plastic in the lock.
“They don’t actually watch us very closely here, do they?” I said.
She shrugged. “It’s an old building. I think they went through enough trouble just setting up the security feeds out there. And honestly, they don’t care what we do. We could probably start a fight, and they’d let us.”
I tapped at the lockpick the way Devon had taught us, trying to get the pins into place. I prayed the plastic picks wouldn’t snap when I tried to turn them.
“Will you teach me?” Bridget said suddenly. The request surprised me so much I stopped and looked down at her. Her jaw was set stubbornly, as if prepared for my incredulity and already defensive about it.
I admitted, but aloud, I just said, “Sure. It’s not like we have much else to do.”
The last pin slid into place with a barely audible click. I grinned at Bridget. And to my surprise, she grinned back.
“Ready?” I whispered.
She nodded, standing. I let ourself fall forward—thunk—against the glass with our full weight. It groaned open an inch, and only an inch.
I rested against the glass, panting. Waiting.
The window didn’t open any farther. No one shouted out. Even if they had, I wouldn’t have been able to turn. We were entirely off balance, our knees still on the sink, our weight against the windowpane.
The sunlight smelled crisp. Cold. I sucked in the fresh air. I hadn’t realized how stale the air in our ward was, how artificial the light. I pulled ourself higher so we could see out. The vertigo was dizzying, especially after so long of seeing nothing but the ward.
The grounds were deserted. White with snow. Only tufts of grass poked through around the edge of the building.
“Bridget,” I whispered. “You have to come see this.”
Bridget didn’t answer.
I turned to look at her.
And found the entire population of Hahns institution’s Class 6 staring back at us.
THIRTEEN
Bridget took charge.
“Go,” she said to the other girls, flinging out her arms, herding them like geese. “Back to your beds. Now.”
To my surprise, they obeyed. I jerked the window shut again. Bridget whirled to Addie and me. “They’ll have caught the girls gathering on the cameras. They’ll be in here in a second. You better come up with an excuse.”
I jumped off the sink, our shins jarring as our feet hit the tiled floor. The slippers offered no cushion at all. I winced, stumbling to regain balance.
“I fell,” I hissed at Bridget, spitting out the first excuse that came to mind. There wasn’t even time to collaborate with Addie. “Say I fell. That’s all. I fell, and there was a noise.”
Bridget shouted out the door, “She fell, all right? That’s what you say if anyone asks.” Her voice carried the same sharpness it had at Nornand, the same quality of Listen or Else. If any of the other girls protested, we didn’t hear it.
