Once We Were. Kat Zhang

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      <It’ll be fine.> 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 milk-shake 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.

      Addie told the others about the flood and fire damage that had ruined portions of the museum during our last visit. She hesitated, then explained how everything had been blamed on a hybrid man. Described the mob that had gathered around his arrest, crushing and trampling and screaming like spectators at a blood fight.

      “I’ve always wanted to visit the East Coast,” Cordelia said. “See the water there, you know?”

      Sabine rolled her eyes, but indulgently. “I’m sure the ocean looks the same.”

      “No, I don’t think so,” Cordelia said. “Does it, Addie?”

      “I don’t know,” Addie admitted. “Lupside isn’t on the coast, and I never went.”

      “Someday, I’ll go. Once I’ve got enough money to fly.” She looked to Jackson. “Maybe I’ll get Peter to send me. He flew you over to Nornand, after all.”

      “He flew me to Nornand to work,” Jackson said.

      Cordelia shrugged languorously. “Yes, well, I’m sure there are institutions on the East Coast. One day, however I get there, I’ll go.”

      “Don’t you want to see the … I don’t know, the Indian Ocean instead?” Jackson asked. “Or the Adriatic?” He smiled at Cordelia’s raised eyebrow. “Adriatic Sea. I saw it on one of Henri’s maps. It’s in Europe. I liked the name.”

      Cordelia shrugged. “As if I’ll СКАЧАТЬ