Once We Were. Kat Zhang
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barely stepping foot outside the building, and now we were thinking about sneaking out twice in as many days, not to mention the Emalia-sanctioned trip last night.
<Yes> I said.
<What if we get caught?>
<We won’t get caught. It’s not like Emalia checks on us in the middle of the night.>
<I don’t mean by Emalia. Jenson said security was going to go up> Addie reminded me.
<It’s summer break. A group of us, out at night—why should that be suspicious?>
Still, Addie hesitated.
<Addie, we have to go. Do you want to tell her we can’t go because we’re afraid we might be caught?>
<It’s a legitimate concern.>
But when Sabine asked, “You still there? Can you guys come?” Addie sighed and said, “Yeah. We can.”
<What about Hally and Lissa?> I said.
“Great,” Sabine said before Addie could bring them up. “I’ll see you and Ryan at one thirty, then. I’ve got to run.”
“Who was that?” Nina asked as soon as Addie hung up. She stood barefoot in the kitchen, on the other side of the counter.
“Just Sabine.” Addie swung around to the kitchen doorway. “It was nothing. Come on, weren’t you going to make pancakes?”
Nina frowned. For a moment, I thought she might press harder. But then her expression cleared, though her eyes didn’t leave ours. “Yeah. I can’t find the baking soda.”
“Did you check in the top cabinet?” Addie walked past her to look.
I tried not to think about the deliberate way Nina’s frown had disappeared. As if she’d forced it away, along with her curiosity. As if, even at eleven, Nina had learned that her life would always be full of other people’s secrets, and some were dangerous, and sometimes it was better not to know.
Maybe that was good, since there wasn’t anything that could be done, anyway. Should Addie and I have lied about Sallie and Val? Or at least told Kitty we didn’t know?
I was so terrified of doing something wrong. I wanted, so badly, for Kitty and Nina to have a life where they didn’t need to worry about these sorts of things at all.
Ryan and Hally came downstairs a little after noon, just in time to help Kitty and me polish off that morning’s leftover pancake batter. Hally fooled around with Kitty in the living room, laughing and striking poses while Kitty filmed her on the old camcorder. I kept them both in the corner of our vision as I told Ryan about Sabine’s phone call.
“You said you’d go?” Ryan kept his voice to a murmur. “What about Hally and Lissa?”
“She didn’t mention them.” The pancake batter glopped onto the oiled pan. I prodded at it with our spoon, spreading it out. “They could come, I’m sure. Maybe she just forgot to invite them.”
Addie’s skepticism was tangible. <She didn’t forget.>
“She said she wanted to show us around town?”
“Yeah. And have us meet her other friends.”
Ryan’s gaze stayed on our face, but I felt his focus stray. Whatever conversation he and Devon were having, it distracted him.
I’d learned a lot about Ryan since our escape from Nornand—that he was a morning person, that he didn’t have much of a sweet tooth. That he and his sisters used to play at being soldiers when they were little and lived in the country, fighting wars that sometimes his sisters won because he and Devon let them and sometimes because the girls were really very vicious when things got down to it.
But I hadn’t learned what he was like around other people—people who weren’t me or Kitty or his sister or adults. There hadn’t been much room to make friends at Nornand, and we’d never hung out at school. Was he curious about Sabine and her friends the way I was?
“You wouldn’t have that much trouble sneaking out,” I said. Ryan and Devon slept in the living room, where Henri had a foldout couch. Hally and Lissa had appropriated the spare bedroom. “I don’t think—”
“I’m going, Eva.”
I looked up at him. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You’re going, so I’m going. I never said I wasn’t.”
“Okay.” I smiled. I slipped my hand over his, and he leaned toward me like it was the most natural thing in the world.
He was going to kiss me. I could sense it. I could almost feel it already—his mouth against mine. But I couldn’t let it happen. Not with Addie squirming beside me.
I caught the moment Ryan hesitated. Saw him hold himself back, rein himself in.
“Eva,” he said.
“Hm?” My voice was barely more than a breath.
He grinned and looked away. “Your pancake’s burning.” The heat suddenly shooting through our body had nothing to do with the stove. I rushed to scrape the pancake from the pan. “You know, I thought you were lying when you said Kitty was a better cook than you are, but—”
I shoved at him, laughing. “Shut up! You were distracting me. We were having a very distracting conversation.”
The pancake was blackened, but salvageable. I kept a hawk’s eye on it, but couldn’t help the ridiculous smile that spread over our face. It would be all right. Being with Ryan like this—being with him but unable to really be with him—was crazily awkward, borderline insane. But it was what it was. It was my life, and I understood it. He understood it. We could laugh about it. We could still be happy, and that was what mattered, wasn’t it?
“What are you two doing in there?” Hally called from the living room.
“Slaving away to feed you,” Ryan shot back. He gave her a dark look that quickly melted when he couldn’t bite back a laugh.
“Well, somebody’s got to do it, brother dearest.” Hally and Kitty were bent over the camcorder, fiddling with its controls. “Emalia’s not actually going to develop this film, is she?”
Kitty pulled the video recorder from her hands and pressed the record button before turning the lens in our direction. “She promised she would.”
“Dear God,” Hally said. She winked at me. “Well, there go my plans for political office.”
I burst out laughing again. Addie unwound a bit, then even more as my happiness infected her. Guilt suddenly pressed cold hands against our heart. Sabine hadn’t asked for Hally or Lissa to show up tonight.
<She’ll come with us next time> I said. <We’ll mention her, and they’ll invite her along.>
<How do you know there’s going to be a next time?>
I didn’t, of course. But as I turned back to the stove, I realized I already hoped there would be.
Anchoit’s streets were not completely empty, even at nearly two a.m. Still, they were quiet as Ryan and Addie slipped from our apartment building into the warm summer night.
There would be more people downtown, where places stayed open late. I imagined music flowing out from low-lit bars, people laughing and stumbling from party to party. Emalia’s neighborhood was more known for pickpockets and the occasional gang fight than dance clubs.
“Is that it?” Ryan said as we approached a fast-food