Echoes of Us (8 page)

I took a deep breath. Fiddled with our ring.

Addie said.

I let our hands drop to our sides.

“There are plenty of empty beds, Darcie.” As the caretaker spoke, several of the girls moved surreptitiously closer to a bed, claiming it as their own. But the man was right. There were perhaps thirty or forty beds, but only about twenty-five girls. Almost all of them looked under thirteen.

After months of being the youngest running with Sabine’s group, it was strange to suddenly be the oldest. Our eyes went from girl to girl, watching them watch us.

Addie said suddenly—high and choked. A warning.

I saw her, too.

Recognized her, too.

And from the look on her face, she recognized us.

Bridget Conrade, from Nornand.

Bridget, who had ruined our rescue plans. Prevented us from saving the other patients as we’d intended.

Bridget, who knew we were not Darcie Grey.

Addie said. Her fear choked us.

Bridget had never liked us. Had no reason to keep our secret. What were the chances that we’d come all this way, after all this time, and find her waiting beyond Hahns’s doors?

Bridget’s eyes locked on to ours. Her hair, which had always been braided back at Nornand, was pale gold around her shoulders. Had she lost her ribbons?

“I’ll find some clothes for you,” the caretaker said, and then he was gone. Left us in this room with these girls who didn’t know us, and the one girl who did.

As long as Addie and I didn’t try to take their bed, most of the girls seemed more than happy to pretend we didn’t exist. Even Bridget had turned away.

I said.

Addie battled her terror and forced it to retreat, but she trembled with the effort of it. I was too busy wrangling with my own fear to help with hers.

I made our way through the rows of beds. Some were scooted into little clusters, others lonely by themselves. It made a strange sort of chaos. The girls in their wrinkled uniforms added to the entropy.

A group of them sat in the corner, their heads bent together in hushed conversation. Most were by themselves. Some picked at the walls, stripping wallpaper and paint. Little piles of both littered the ground. No one had bothered to sweep the floor in weeks, at least. Someone lay buried in blankets in the far corner, coughing.

A single girl, hair clipped short to the nape of her neck, drifted around the perimeter of the room, her fingers brushing against the wall, her lips moving like she was speaking, or perhaps singing, to herself. Her eyes met ours at random, then skittered away again. Other than us and Bridget, she was probably the eldest in the room. There was something missing in her eyes.

Bridget knew we were approaching her. I could tell by the way she started to angle away from us, then caught herself and stubbornly, awkwardly, stayed exactly where she was. She stood by the foot of one of the beds, her hand planted on the metal railing.

Back in Anchoit, Addie and I had thought endlessly about the other kids at Nornand. The ones we’d meant to save. Would have saved. Should have saved. Addie and I had gone down to the basement because we insisted on freeing Hally and Jaime. Dr. Lyanne had been the one responsible for getting the other children out.

Whose fault was it that they’d never made it?

Ours, for breaking away from the group?

Dr. Lyanne’s, for not making it to the door, and Peter’s waiting vans?

Or Bridget’s?

Bridget, who told the nurse that something suspicious was going on, blowing Dr. Lyanne’s cover as she led the remaining children through the hall.

Bridget, who’d wanted so badly to be saved. Just not by Peter.

I drew up beside her. She was a little shorter than we were, her hair straighter, and even blonder than our newly bleached color. During our time at Nornand, I’d never seen her bite her nails, but they were ragged now, destroyed almost to the quick.

She fisted her hands when she caught me looking. “Darcie, huh?”

She looked around. Some of the other girls were watching us now. Curious, in a dull sort of way.

“Well, Darcie.” Bridget put the slightest bit of overemphasis on our fake name. “Like the man said. There are plenty of beds. Don’t feel obliged to choose one, you know, around here.”

There was something ridiculous about the way she spoke. Like she was drawing reference from half-forgotten movies or books on how to be haughty. She was a caricature of disdain, and suddenly, I couldn’t understand how Addie and I had ever seen her as more than just a thirteen-, fourteen-year-old girl utterly lost in a world that wanted her dead.

It didn’t alter what she had done. But it softened my anger, and my fear.

“I’ve done nothing to you,” I said.

She gave a bitter, huffing laugh. “You change things. You come, you mess around and—and things change for the worse. So please—” Her voice caught. She wrestled with it. Won. “Please pick a bed far over there and try not to ever talk with me again.”

Addie said dryly, and I almost left it at that. I almost nodded and walked away. But there was the flicker of something in Bridget’s expression. Or maybe it was the way her hand still gripped the rusted iron bed railing. I couldn’t put it in words. But it made me stop.

“Do they listen?” I whispered.

Bridget frowned and looked around at the other girls. Then realization dawned over her face. Her gaze darted up to the ceiling. A security camera perched up there, its tiny light blinking red.

“No,” she said. “They watch, but they don’t listen.”

I nodded. “Thanks.”

Her arms crossed over her body. “For what? I answered a question, that’s all.”

I shrugged and offered her a small smile. Turned to go.

I hadn’t taken two steps when she said, “They’re going to take everything. They’re very strict on security here, especially after what happened in July.”

The breakout attempt that had ended in death and disaster.

Addie said quietly. I understood her sudden guilt. Bridget had been here, while Addie and I were safely tucked away in Anchoit.

Slowly, I turned.

Bridget pulled something from her pocket. Two little lengths of white string, I realized. They looked like they could have been unraveled from someone’s shirt. “Anyway, like I said. They take everything away here. So if you want to keep that ring, you better find some way to hide it.”

I fisted our hand, the way she had when she caught us looking at her nails.

“Did that boy give it to you?” she said. “That foreign-looking boy. Ryan, or—”

“Shh
,
”
I hissed before I could help it. Bridget’s head whipped up, her eyes narrowed, her shoulders tensing.

Addie said. A low warning and a comfort at the same time.

“Please don’t talk about him.” I couldn’t help the note of panic in our voice. Bridget’s words were hardly dangerous, and she wasn’t speaking loudly enough for anyone to pay attention. But this went beyond needing to keep our cover. I didn’t want Ryan’s name spoken in this place. As if saying it aloud would cast some sort of spell to bring him. I couldn’t have him here, in this prison of the desolate.

I thought, for a moment, that Bridget would talk about him anyway. Her eyes bored into ours, gray as frosted slate. Then, so quick I nearly missed it, she gave a short nod.

“It’s pretty,” she said. She looked about to turn away, but at the last moment, reached out and touched it. Her fingertips brushed against the band and against our knuckle, before darting back to her side.

The caretaker who brought lunch also handed Addie and me a uniform and directed us to the bathroom at the ward’s far end. Standing in a stall, I suddenly couldn’t force myself to unlace our shoes. They’d been part of our school uniform, scuffed brown oxfords that were the only things we retained of home.

Addie and I stood there for a long time, braced against the stall door, taking deep, ragged breaths and trying to calm down. The tiny size of the stalls didn’t help. Addie and I usually used the handicap stalls of public bathrooms, when we could. There was none here, just little stalls designed for children younger than we were.

I took off our shoes. Set them side by side on the toilet seat. Stepped into the white slippers the other girls wore, the elastic snapping into place around our ankles. We could feel the ground through the thin sole.

After a moment, I dropped the ring inside the slipper. Hopefully, no one would think to check.

The rest of the uniform was similarly thin. As the cloth whispered against our skin, I heard in it the echo of Jackson’s words about hybrid institutions.

Holding tanks. They hold us until we die, and they do everything short of putting a bullet through our heads to speed up the process.

I shivered. Said, as much for my benefit as Addie’s,

When Addie and I returned to the main room, the caretaker had already distributed the lunch trays. Some kind of sandwich. A cup of water. Limp beans in a puddle of oil. The girls ate silently. Many were too thin to be healthy, but most picked at the food like it barely interested them. Someone coughed a deep, wet cough that made our own chest hurt.

“Here, I’ll take that.” The caretaker reached for our clothes, and I pressed the bundle against our chest. The man’s smile flattened.

“I want to keep the jacket,” I said. “It’s cold.”

He grabbed hold and tugged—so suddenly and harshly I didn’t have the chance to fight back. “The cold’s just temporary. A little glitch in the heating. It’ll warm up soon. It’s against policy for you to have anything but the standard uniform.”

His smile returned. He handed us a lunch tray, and caught us looking in Bridget’s direction.

“Do you know her?” he asked. I shook our head. Darcie Grey didn’t know Bridget. “You look a bit alike, don’t you?”

“I guess,” I said. And then, to keep up the charade: “What’s her name?”

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.”

I said.

Addie replied softly.

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.”