My mouth opens and closes. Still no sound. For a second we stand there in awkward silence. Then he extends a cup to me, a sudden, jerky gesture.
“Whiskey?”
“Whiskey?” I squeak back. I’ve only had alcohol a few times. At Christmas, when Aunt Carol pours me a quarter glass of wine, and once at Hana’s house, when we stole some blackberry liqueur from her parents’ liquor cabinet and drank until the ceiling started spinning overhead. Hana was laughing and giggling, but I didn’t like it, didn’t like the sweet sick taste in my mouth or the way my thoughts seemed to break apart like a mist in the sun. Out of controlthat’s what it was, that’s what I hated.
Drew shrugs. “It’s all they had. Vodka always goes first at these things.” At these things—as in, these things happen, as in, more than once.
“No.” I try to shove the cup back at him. “Take it.”
He waves me away, obviously misunderstanding. “It’s cool. I’ll just get another.”
Drew smiles quickly at Hana before disappearing into the crowd. I like his smile, the way it rises crookedly toward his left ear—but as I realize I’m thinking about liking his smile, I feel the panic winging its way through me, beating through my blood, a lifetime of whispers and accusations.
Control. It’s all about control.
“I have to go,” I manage to say to Hana. Progress.
“Go?” She wrinkles her forehead. “You walk all the way out here—”
“I biked.”
“Whatever. You bike all the way out here and then you’re just going to go?”
Hana reaches for my hand, but I cross my arms quickly to avoid her. She looks momentarily hurt. I pretend to shiver so she doesn’t feel bad, wondering why it feels so awkward to talk to her. This is my best friend, the girl I’ve known since second grade, the girl who used to split her cookies with me at lunch, and once put her fist in Jillian Dawson’s face after Jillian said my family was diseased.
“I’m tired,” I say. “And I shouldn’t be here.” I want to say, You shouldn’t be here either, but I stop myself.
“Did you hear the band? They’re amazing, aren’t they?” Hana’s being way too nice, totally un-Hana, and I feel a deep, sharp pain under my ribs. She’s trying to be polite. She’s acting like we’re strangers. She feels the awkwardness too.
“I–I wasn’t listening.” For some reason I don’t want Hana to know that yes, I heard, and yes, I thought they were amazing, better than amazing. It’s too private—embarrassing even, something to be ashamed of, and despite the fact that I came all the way to Roaring Brook Farms and broke curfew and everything, just to see her and apologize, the feeling I had earlier today returns to me: I don’t know Hana anymore, and she doesn’t really know me.
I’m used to a feeling of doubleness, of thinking one thing and having to do another, a constant tug-of-war. But somehow Hana has fallen cleanly away into the double half, the other world, the world of unmentionable thoughts and things and people.
Is it possible that all this time I’ve been living my life, studying for tests, taking long runs with Hana—and this other world has just existed, running alongside and underneath mine, alive, ready to sneak out of the shadows and the alleyways as soon as the sun goes down? Illegal parties, unapproved music, people touching one another with no fear of the disease, with no fear for themselves.
A world without fear. Impossible.
And even though I’m standing in the middle of the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen in my life, I suddenly feel very alone.
“Stay,” Hana says quietly. Even though it’s a command, there’s a hesitation in her voice, like she’s asking a question. “You can catch the second set.”
I shake my head. I wish I hadn’t come. I wish I hadn’t seen this. I wish I didn’t know what I know now, could wake up tomorrow and ride over to Hana’s house, could lie out at Eastern Prom with her and complain about how boring summers are, like we always do. Could believe that nothing had changed. “I’m going to go,” I say, wishing my voice didn’t come out shaky. “It’s all right, though. You can stay.”
The second I say it, I realize she never offered to come back with me. She’s looking at me with the weirdest mixture of regret and pity.
“I can come back with you if you want,” she says, but I can tell she’s only offering now to make me feel better.
“No, no. I’ll be fine.” My cheeks are burning and I take a step back, desperate to get out of there. I bump against someone—a boy—who turns and smiles at me. I step quickly away from him.
“Lena, wait.” Hana goes to grab me again. Even though she already has a drink, I shove my cup in her free hand so she has to pause, momentarily frowning as she tries to juggle both drinks into the crook of an elbow, and in that second I dance backward out of her reach.
“I’ll be fine, I promise. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” Then I’m slipping through a narrow space between two people—that’s the only benefit of being five-two, you have a good vantage point on all the in-between spaces—and before I know it, Hana has dropped behind me, swallowed up by the crowd. I weave a path away from the barn, keeping my eyes down, hoping my cheeks cool off fast.
Images swirl by, a blur, making me feel like I’m dreaming again. Boy. Girl.
Boy. Girl. Laughing, shoving each other, touching each other’s hair. I’ve never, not once in my whole life, felt so different and out of place. There’s a high, mechanized shriek, and then the band starts playing again, but this time the music does nothing for me. I don’t even pause. I just keep walking, heading for the hill, imagining the cool silence of the starlit fields, the familiar dark streets of Portland, the regular rhythm of the patrols, marching quietly in sync, the feedback from the regulators’ walkie-talkies—regular, normal, familiar, mine.
Finally the crowd starts thinning. It was hot, pressed up against so many people, and the breeze stings my skin, cools my cheeks. I’ve started to calm down a little, and at the edge of the crowd I allow myself one look back at the stage.
The barn, open to the sky and the night and glowing white with light, reminds me of a palm cupping a small bit of fire.
“Lena!”
It’s strange how I instantly recognize the voice even though I’ve heard it only once before, for ten minutes, fifteen tops—it’s the laughter that runs underneath it, like someone leaning in to let you in on a really good secret in the middle of a really boring class. Everything freezes. The blood stops flowing in my veins. My breath stops coming. For a second even the music falls away and all I hear is something steady and quiet and pretty, like the distant beat of a drum, and I think, I’m hearing my heart, except I know that’s impossible, because my heart has stopped too. My vision does its camera-zoom focus again and all I see is Alex, shouldering his way out of the crowd toward me.
“Lena! Wait.”
A brief flash of terror zips through me—for a wild second I think he must be here as part of a patrol, as a raiding group or something—but then I see he’s dressed normally, in jeans and his scuffed-up sneakers with the ink-blue laces and a faded T-shirt.
“What are you doing here?” I stammer out as he catches up to me.
He grins. “Nice to see you too.”
He has left a few feet of distance between us, and I’m glad. In the half-light I can’t make out the color of his eyes and I don’t need to be distracted right now, don’t need to feel the way I did at the labs when he leaned in to whisper to methe total awareness of the bare inch that separated his mouth from my ear, terror and guilt and excitement all at once.
“I’m serious.” I do my best to scowl at him.
His smile falters, though it doesn’t disappear entirely. He blows air out of his lips. “I came to hear the music,” he says. “Like everybody else.”
“But you can’t—” I’m struggling to find words, not quite sure how to say what I want to say. “But this is—”
“Illegal?” He shrugs. One strand of hair curls down over his left e
ye, and when he turns to scan the party it catches the light from the stage and winks that crazy golden-brown color. “It’s okay,” he says, quieter, so that I have to lean forward to hear him over the music. “Nobody’s hurting anybody.”
You don’t know that, I start to say, but the way his words are just edged with sadness stops me. Alex runs a hand through his hair and I make out the small, dark, three-pronged scar behind his left ear, perfectly symmetrical. Maybe he’s only regretful for the things he lost after the cure. Music doesn’t move people the same way, for example, and while he should have been cured of feelings of regret, too, the procedure works differently for everybody, and it isn’t always perfect. That’s why my aunt and uncle sometimes still dream. That’s why my cousin Marcia used to find herself crying hysterically, with no warning or apparent cause.
“So what about you?” He turns back to me and the smile is on again, and the teasing, winking quality of his voice. “What’s your excuse?”
“I didn’t want to come,” I say quickly. “I had to—” I break off, realizing I’m not sure why I had to come. “I had to give something to someone,” I say finally.
He raises his eyebrows, clearly unimpressed. I rush on, “To Hana. My friend.
You met her the other day.”
“I remember,” he says. I’ve never seen anyone maintain a smile for so long.
It’s like his face is naturally molded that way. “You haven’t said you’re sorry yet, by the way.”
“For what?” The crowd has continued to press closer to the stage, so Alex and I are no longer surrounded by people. Occasionally someone walks by, swinging a bottle of something or singing along, slightly off-key, but for the most part we’re alone.
“For standing me up.” One corner of his mouth hitches higher, and again I have the feeling that he’s sharing some delicious secret with me, that he’s trying to tell me something. “You were a no-show at Back Cove that day.”
I feel a burst of triumph—he was waiting for me at Back Cove! He did want me to meet him! At the same time the anxiety blooms inside of me. He wants something from me. I’m not sure what it is, but I can sense it, and it makes me afraid.
“So?” He folds his arms and rocks back on his heels, still smiling. “Are you going to apologize, or what?”
His easiness and self-assurance aggravate me, just like they did at the labs.
It’s so unfair, so different from how I feel, like I’m about to have a heart attack, or melt into a puddle.
“I don’t apologize to liars,” I say, surprised by how steady my voice sounds.
He winces. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Come on.” I roll my eyes, feeling more and more confident by the second.
“You lied about seeing me at evaluations. You lied about recognizing me.” I’m ticking his lies off on my fingers. “You lied about even being inside the labs on Evaluation Day.”
“Okay, okay.” He holds up both hands. “I’m sorry, okay? Look, I’m the one who should apologize.” He stares at me for a second and then sighs. “I told you, security isn’t allowed in the labs during evaluations. To keep the process ‘pure’ or something, I don’t know. But I really needed a cup of coffee, and there’s this machine on the second floor of the C complex that has the good kind, with real milk and everything, so I used my code to get in. That’s it. End of story. And afterward I had to lie about it. I could lose my job. And I only work at the stupid labs to subsidize my school…” He trails off. For once he doesn’t look confident.
He looks worried, like he’s scared I might actually tell on him.
“So why were you on the observation deck?” I press on. “Why were you watching me?”
“I didn’t even make it to the second floor,” he says. He is staring at me closely, as though judging my reaction. “I came inside and—and I just heard this crazy noise. That rushing, roaring sound. And something else, too. Screaming or something.”
I close my eyes briefly, recalling the feeling of the burning white lights, my impression of hearing the ocean pounding outside the labs, of hearing my mother scream across the distance of a decade. When I open them again, Alex is still watching me.
“Anyway, I had no idea what was going on. I thought—I don’t know, it’s stupid—but I thought maybe the labs were under attack or something. And then as I’m standing there, all of a sudden there’s, like, a hundred cows charging me…” He shrugs. “There was a staircase to my left. I freaked out and booked it.
Figured cows don’t climb stairs.” A smile appears again, this time fleeting, tentative. “I ended up on the observation deck.”
A perfectly normal, reasonable explanation. I feel relieved, and less frightened of him now. At the same time there’s something working under my chest, a dull feeling, a disappointment. And some stubbornness, a part of me that still doubts him. I remember the way he looked on the observation deck, head tilted back, laughing; the way he winked at me. The way he looked—amused, confident, happy. Totally unafraid.
A world without fear…
“So you don’t know anything about how… how it happened?” I can’t believe I’m being so bold. I ball up my fists and squeeze, hoping he doesn’t notice the sudden strangled sound of my voice.
“The mix-up in the deliveries, you mean?” He says it smoothly, without a pause or a break in his voice, and the last of my doubts vanish. Just like any cured, he doesn’t question the official story. “I wasn’t in charge of signing for deliveries that day. The guy who was—Sal—was fired. You’re supposed to check the cargo. I guess he skipped that step.” He cocks his head to one side, spreads his hands. “Satisfied now?”
“Satisfied,” I say. But the pressure in my chest is still there. Even though earlier I was desperate to be out of the house, now I just wish I could blink and be home, sit up in bed, pushing the covers off of my legs, realizing that everythingthe party, seeing Alex—was a dream.
“So…?” He tilts his head back toward the barn. The band is playing something loud and fast paced. I don’t know why the music appealed to me before. It just seems like noise now—rushing noise. “Think we can get closer without getting trampled?”
I ignore the fact that he has just said “we,” a word that for some reason sounds amazingly appealing when pronounced with his lilting, laughing accent.
“Actually, I was just heading home.” I realize I’m angry at him without knowing why—for not being what I thought he was, I guess, even though I should be grateful that he’s normal, and cured, and safe.
“Heading home?” he repeats disbelievingly. “You can’t go home.”
I’ve always been careful not to let myself give in to feelings of anger or irritation. I can’t afford to at Carol’s house. I owe her too much—and besides, after the few tantrums I threw as a child, I hated the way she looked at me sideways for days, as though analyzing me, measuring me. I knew she was thinking, Just like her mother. But now I give in, let the anger surge. I’m sick of people acting like this world, this other world, is the normal one, while I’m the freak. It’s not fair: like all the rules have suddenly been changed and somebody forgot to tell me.
“I can, and I am.” I turn around and start heading up the hill, figuring he’ll leave me alone. To my surprise, he doesn’t.
“Wait!” He comes bounding up the hill after me.
“What are you doing?” I whirl around to face him—again, surprised by how confident I sound, considering that my heart is rushing, tumbling. Maybe this is the secret to talking to boys—maybe you just have to be angry all the time.
“What do you mean?” We’re both slightly out of breath from hoofing it up the hill, but he still manages a smile. “I just want to talk to you.”
“You’re following me.” I cross my arms, which helps me feel as though I’m closing off the space between us. “You’re following me again.”
There it is. He starts backward, and I get a momentary, sick twinge of pleasure that I’ve surprised
him. “Again?” he repeats. I’m glad that for once I’m not the one stuttering, or struggling to find words.
The words fly out: “I think it’s a little bit strange that I go pretty much my whole life without seeing you, and then all of a sudden I start seeing you everywhere.” I hadn’t planned on saying this—it actually hadn’t struck me as strange—but the second the words are out of my mouth I realize they’re true.
I think he’s going to be angry, but to my surprise he tips his head back and laughs, long and loud, moonlight turning the curve of his cheeks and chin and nose silver. I’m so surprised by his reaction I just stand there, staring at him.
Finally he looks at me. Even though I still can’t make out his eyes—the moon draws everything starkly, highlighting it in bright, crystalline silver or leaving it in blackness—I have the impression of heat, and light, the same impression I had that day at the labs.
“Maybe you just haven’t been paying attention,” he says quietly, rocking forward slightly on his heels.
I take an unconscious, half-shuffling step backward. I find myself frightened by his closeness; by the fact that even though our bodies are separated by several inches I feel as though we’re touching.
“What—what do you mean?”
“I mean that you’re wrong.” He pauses, watching me, and I struggle to keep my face composed, even though I can feel my left eye straining and fluttering.
Hopefully in the darkness he can’t tell. “We’ve seen each other plenty.”
“I would remember if we’d met before.”
“I didn’t say that we’d met.” He doesn’t try to close the new distance between us and I’m grateful, at least, for that. He chews on the corner of a lip—a gesture that makes him look younger. “Let me ask you a question,” he goes on.
“How come you don’t run past the Governor anymore?”
Without meaning to I gasp a little. “How do you know about the Governor?”
“I take classes at UP,” he says. University of Portland—I remember now, the afternoon we walked up to see the ocean from the back of the lab complex, hearing bits of his conversation floating back to me on the wind. He did say he was a student. “I worked at the Grind last semester, in Monument Square. I used to see you all the time.”
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