Kat Zhang - Once We Were

We share a heart, Addie and I. We own the same pair of hands. Inhabit the same limbs. That hot June day, freshly escaped from Nornand Clinic, we stood and saw the ocean for the first time through shared eyes. The wind batted our hair against our cheeks. The sand stuck to our salt-soaked skin, turning our pale legs tan.

We experienced that day as wed experienced the past fifteen years of our lives. As Addie and Eva, Eva and Addie. Two souls sharing one body. Hybrid.

But the thing is, sharing hands doesnt mean sharing goals. Sharing eyes doesnt mean sharing visions. And sharing a heart doesnt mean sharing the things we love.

Here are some of the things I loved.

The cold shock of the ocean when I stood waist-deep in the water, jumping at the crest of each oncoming wave. The sound of Kittys laughter when I tickled her. The breathless joy of Hallys dancing. The way Ryan smiled when I turned to look at him and he was already looking at me.

Addie liked these things, too. But she didnt cherish them the way I diddesperately. Because I never should have had them. Millions of recessive souls never reached age five, let alone fifteen. That was the way of the worldor so Addie and I had been taught. Two souls born to each body. One marked by genetics to disappear.

I was lucky in so many ways.

I told myself this every morning when we opened our eyes, every night before we went to sleep.

I am lucky. So lucky.

I was alive. I was, in some ways, free. In a country where hybrids were forbidden and locked away, Addie and I had escaped. And I

I could move and speak again. Me, who had known since childhood that I was the recessive soul, destined to fade away. That my parents would mourn quietly, quickly, then move on. That they would tell themselves this was the way of the world, the way things had always been, and who were they to question the workings of nature?

Children were supposed to shed recessive souls, leaving them behind like they would one day discard their baby teeth. Just another step on the journey to adulthood.

The alternative, never settlingretaining both soulsmeant staying trapped in the chaos of a perpetual childhood, never gaining the steady, rational mind of an adult who could be trusted to control her own body. How could a hybrid ever fit into society? How would she marry? Would she be able to work, with two souls pulling and yearning in two different directions? To be hybrid was to be forever unstable, forever torn.

I was twelve, two years past the government-mandated deadline, when I succumbed to the curse lettered in my genes. But I was lucky, even then. I lost control of my body, leaving Addie to command our limbs, but I never disappeared completely.

It was better than dying.

Are you all right, Addie? Mom asked, those first few weeks after I was declared gone. She spoke the words like they pinched her lips on the way out, like she didnt want to acknowledge the fact that Addie might not be okay, even then. Addie should have been normal.

Im fine, Addie said, even when I screamed and screamed in her head, even when she was holding me as she smiled for our parents, telling me she was sorry, begging me to be as okay as she supposedly was.

Hally and Ryan Mullan were the ones who released me from the prison of my own bones. Where would I be if Hally hadnt convinced Addie to go home with her that afternoon? Still paralyzed. Still alone. Not entirely, because I would always have Addie, butalone, in every other sense of the word.

Addie said once, when I whispered the question to her. The words floated between our linked minds, where no one else could hear us.

Here in Anchoit, this shining city by the western sea, smelling the salt the waves tossed into the air.

It had been my turn, then, to say Im sorry. Because Addie was right. If Hally hadntif I hadnt convinced Addie to go to the Mullans house, to take the medication, to take that first step away from normality, we would still be home. We wouldnt be out of dangeras hybrids, we could never truly relaxbut we would be a little safer. Wed be going to school and watching movies and laughing at our little brother when he clowned around the kitchen.

Shed hesitated, staring at the ceiling of this strange new apartment. Our new hideaway.

Not like the other children whod walked through those hospital halls. Like Jaime Cortae, whod lost his other soul to a scalpel.

Addie and I had been lucky.

Perhaps, if we stayed lucky, we would never again have to see Mr. Conivent with his pressed, white button-up shirts. We would never again feel Jensons cold grip on our wristnever come under the jurisdiction of his review board.

We would be allowed to live just as we were: Eva and Addie, Addie and Eva. Two girls inside of one.

It was stuffy in the phone booth, even with the door propped partway open. Our desire for privacy couldnt override the sickness that gripped us in the small, enclosed space. Squished cigarette butts littered the ground, their smoky smell lingering in the early-morning air.

I said.

We werent even supposed to be outside. Wed snuck out of the apartment before Emalia and Kitty woke up, and we had to make it back before then as well. No one knew we were here, not even Ryan or Hally.

Addie pressed the phone receiver against our ear. The dial tone mocked us.