by Лорен Оливер
Alex looks at me finally, and for a second I see a look of surprise cross his face—as though he hadn’t realized I was there, or as though he is only just seeing me. It’s followed quickly by an expression of regret, and just like that the tension ebbs away and I can breathe.
“Not tonight,” Alex says shortly. Then he turns around and goes to push back into the woods.
In an instant, before I can react or cry out, Julian charges and tackles him from behind. He brings Alex tumbling to the concrete, and all of a sudden they are spitting and grunting, rolling over each other, wrestling each other into the ground. Then I do scream—both their names, and stop, and please.
Julian is on top of Alex. He draws his fist up; I hear the heavy thud as he swings it down against Alex’s cheek. Alex spits at him, gets a hand on Julian’s jaw, forcing his head back, pushing Julian up and off. Distantly, I think I hear shouting, but I can’t focus on it, can’t do anything but scream until my throat is sore. There are lights, too, flashing in my peripheral vision, as though I’m the one getting hit, as though my vision is exploding with bursts of color.
Alex manages to gain the advantage and presses Julian back against the ground. He swings twice, hard, and I hear a horrible crack. Blood is flowing freely across Julian’s face now.
“Alex, please!” I’m crying now. I want to pull him off Julian, but fear has frozen me in place, rooted me to the ground.
But either Alex doesn’t hear me or he chooses to ignore me. I’ve never seen him look like this: his face lit up with anger, transfigured in the moonlight to something raw and harsh and terrifying. I can’t even scream anymore, can’t do anything but cry convulsively, feel nausea build in my throat. Everything is surreal, slow-motion.
Then Tack and Raven burst through the trees on a blaze of sudden light—sweating, out of breath, carrying lanterns—and Raven is shouting and gripping me by the shoulders, and Tack pulls Alex off Julian—“What the fuck are you doing?”—and everything begins moving at normal speed again. Julian coughs once and lies back against the ground. I break away from Raven and run toward him, dropping to my knees. I know immediately that his nose is broken. His face is dark with blood, and his eyes are two bare slits as he struggles to sit up.
“Hey.” I put a hand on his chest, swallowing back the spasms in my throat. “Hey, take it easy.”
Julian relaxes again. I feel his heart beating up into my palm.
“What happened?” Tack is shouting.
Alex is standing a little ways away from where Julian is lying. All his anger is gone; instead he looks shocked, his hands limp at his sides. He’s staring at Julian, looking puzzled, as though he doesn’t know how Julian got there.
I stand up and move toward him, feeling the anger crawl into my fingers. I wish I could wrap them around his neck, choke him.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” My voice is low. I have to push the words out past the hard lump of anger in my throat.
“I—I’m sorry,” Alex whispers. He shakes his head. “I didn’t mean . . . I don’t know what happened. I’m sorry, Lena.”
If he keeps looking at me like that—pleading, willing me to understand—I know I’ll start to forgive him.
“Lena.” He takes a step toward me, and I take a step back. For a moment we stand there; I can feel the pressure of his eyes on me, and the pressure, too, of his guilt. But I won’t look at him. I can’t.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats again, too low for Raven and Tack to hear. “I’m sorry for everything.”
Then he turns and pushes back into the woods, and he’s gone.
Hana
Out of the shifting liquid of my sleep, the dream rises and takes shape:
Lena’s face.
Lena’s face, floating out of the shadow. No. Not shadow. She is pushing up from the ash, from a deep drift of cinders and char. Her mouth is open. Her eyes are closed.
She is screaming.
Hana. She is screaming for me. The ash is tumbling like sand into her open mouth, and I know she will soon be buried again, forced into silence, back into the dark. And I know, too, that I have no chance of reaching her—no hope of saving her at all.
Hana, she screams, while I stand motionless.
Forgive me, I say.
Hana, help.
Forgive me, Lena.
“Hana!”
My mother is standing in the doorway. I sit up, bewildered and terrified, Lena’s voice echoing in my mind. I dreamed. I am not supposed to dream.
“What’s wrong?” She’s silhouetted in the doorway; behind her, I can just make out the small night-light outside my bathroom. “Are you sick?”
“I’m fine.” I pass a hand across my forehead. It comes away wet. I’m sweating.
“Are you sure?” She moves as though to come into the room, but at the last second remains in the doorway. “You cried out.”
“I’m sure,” I say. And then, because she seems to be expecting more: “Nerves, I guess, about the wedding.”
“There’s nothing at all to be nervous about,” she says, sounding annoyed. “Everything’s under control. It will all work beautifully.”
I know she is talking about more than the ceremony itself. She means the marriage in general: It has been tabulated and coordinated—made to work beautifully, engineered for efficiency and perfection.
My mother sighs. “Try and get some sleep,” she says. “We’re going to a church at the labs with the Hargroves at nine thirty. The final dress fitting’s at eleven. And there’s the interview for House and Home.”
“Good night, Mom,” I say, and she withdraws without closing the door. Privacy means less to us than it once did: another unanticipated benefit, or side effect, of the cure. Fewer secrets.
At least, fewer secrets in most cases.
I go to the bathroom and splash water on my face. Although the fan is on, I still feel overheated. For a second, when I look into the mirror, I can almost see Lena’s face staring at me from behind my eyes—a memory, a vision of a buried past.
Blink.
She’s gone.
Lena
Alex is not back when Raven, Tack, Julian, and I return to the safe house. Julian has revived and has insisted he is fine to walk, but Tack keeps an arm around his shoulders anyway. Julian is unsteady on his feet and still bleeding freely. As soon as we reach the safe house, Bram and Hunter babble excitedly about what happened until I give them the dirtiest look I can. Coral comes to the doorway, blinking sleepily, one arm around her stomach.
Alex is not back by the time we’ve cleaned Julian off—“Broken,” he says with a wince, in a thick voice, when Raven skates a finger over the bridge of his nose—and he is not back by the time we all, finally, lie down in our cots with our thin blankets, and even Julian manages to sleep, breathing noisily through his mouth.
By the time we wake up, Alex has already come and gone. His belongings are missing, as well as a jug of water and one of the knives.
He has left nothing except for a note, which I find neatly folded under one of my sneakers.
The Story of Solomon is the only way I know how to explain.
And then, in smaller letters:
Forgive me.
Hana
Thirteen days until the wedding. The presents have already begun to trickle in: soup bowls and salad tongs, crystal vases, mountains of white linen, monogrammed towels, and things I’ve had no name for before now: ramekins; zesters; pestles. This is the language of married, adult life, and it is completely foreign to me.
Twelve days.
I sit and write thank-you cards in front of the television. My father leaves at least one TV on practically all the time now. I wonder if this is partly because he wants to prove that we can afford to waste electricity.
For what seems like the tenth time today, Fred steps onto the screen. His face is tinged orange with foundation. The sound is muted, but I know what he is saying. The news has been broadcasting and rebroadcasting the announcem
ent about the Department of Energy and Power, and Fred’s plans for Black Night.
On the night of our wedding, one-third of the families in Portland—anyone suspected of sympathizing or resisting—will be plunged into darkness.
The lights burn bright for those who obey; the others will live in shadow all the days of their lives (The Book of Shhh, Psalm 17). Fred used that quote in his speech.
Thank you for the lace-edged linen napkins. They are exactly what I would have chosen for myself.
Thank you for the crystal sugar bowl. It will look perfect on the dining room table.
The doorbell rings. I hear my mother head to the door, and the murmur of muffled voices. A moment later, she comes into the room, red-faced, agitated.
“Fred,” she says as he steps into the room behind her.
“Thank you, Evelyn,” he says in a clipped voice, and she takes it as a cue to leave us. She closes the door behind her.
“Hi.” I climb to my feet, wishing I were wearing something other than an old T-shirt and ratty shorts. Fred is dressed in dark jeans and a white button-down, sleeves rolled to the elbows. I feel his eyes sweep over me, absorbing my messy hair, the rip in the hem of my shorts, the fact that I am wearing no makeup. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
He doesn’t say anything. There are two Freds looking at me now, screen-Fred and the real thing. Screen-Fred is smiling, leaning forward, easy and relaxed. The real Fred stands stiffly, glaring at me.
“Is—is something wrong?” I say after the silence has extended several seconds. I cross the room to the TV and turn it off, partly so I don’t have to watch Fred watching me, and partly because I can’t stand the double vision.
When I turn around again, I suck in a quick breath. Fred has moved closer, silently, and he is now standing a mere six inches away, face white and furious. I have never seen him look this way before.
“What—?” I start to say, but he cuts me off.
“What the hell is this?” He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a folded manila envelope, throws it down on the glass coffee table. The motion sends several photographs fanning out of the envelope and onto the table.
There I am, frozen, preserved in a camera lens: Click. Walking, head down, next to a dilapidated house—the Tiddles’ house in Deering Highlands—empty backpack looped over one shoulder. Click. From behind: pushing through a blur of green growth, reaching up to swat away a low-hanging branch. Click. Turning, surprised, scanning the woods behind me, looking for a source of the sound, the soft rustle of movement, the click.
“Do you want to explain to me,” Fred says coldly, “what you were doing in Deering Highlands on Saturday?”
A flash of anger goes through me, and also fear. He knows. “You’re having me followed?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Hana,” he says in the same flat tone. “Ben Bradley’s a friend of mine. He works for the Daily. He was on assignment, and he saw you going into the Highlands. Naturally, he was curious.” His eyes have darkened. They’re the color of wet concrete. “What were you doing?”
“Nothing,” I say quickly. “I was exploring.”
“Exploring.” Fred practically spits the word. “Do you understand, Hana, that the Highlands is a condemned neighborhood? Do you have any idea what kind of people live there? Criminals. Infected people. Sympathizers and rebels. They nest in those buildings like cockroaches.”
“I wasn’t doing anything,” I insist. I wish he wouldn’t stand so close. I’m suddenly paranoid he’ll be able to smell the fear, the lies, the way dogs can.
“You were there,” Fred says. “That’s bad enough.” Although we’re separated by only a few inches, he moves forward. I unconsciously step backward, bumping into the television console behind me. “I’ve just gone on record saying we won’t tolerate any more civil disobedience. Do you know how bad it would look if people found out my pair was sneaking around in Deering Highlands?” Once again, he inches forward. Now I have nowhere to go, and force myself to stay very still. He narrows his eyes. “But maybe that was the whole point. You’re trying to embarrass me. Mess with my plans. Make me seem like an idiot.”
The edge of the TV console is digging into the back of my thighs. “I hate to break it to you, Fred,” I say, “but not everything I do is about you. In fact, most things I do are about me.”
“Cute,” he says.
For a second we stand there, staring at each other. The stupidest thought comes to me: When Fred and I were getting paired, where was this, this hard, cold center, listed among his Characteristics and Qualities?
Fred draws away a few inches, and I allow myself to exhale.
“Things will be very bad for you if you go back there,” he says.
I force myself to meet his gaze. “Is that a warning or a threat?”
“It’s a promise.” His mouth quirks into a small smile. “If you’re not with me, you’re against me. And tolerance is not one of my virtues. Cassie would tell you that, but I’m afraid she doesn’t get much of an audience these days.” He barks a laugh.
“What—what do you mean?” I wish I could keep the tremor from my voice.
He narrows his eyes. I hold my breath. For a second I think he’ll admit it—what he did to her, where she is.
But he simply says, “I won’t have you ruin what I’ve worked so hard to achieve. You will listen to me.”
“I’m your pair,” I say. “Not your dog.”
It happens lightning-quick. He closes the distance between us, and his hand is around my throat, and the breath is crushed out of me. Panic, heavy and black, sits in my chest. Saliva builds in my throat. Can’t breathe.
Fred’s eyes, stony and impenetrable, swim in my vision. “You’re right,” he says. He is totally calm now as he tightens his fingers around my throat. My vision shrinks to a single point: those eyes. For a second, everything goes dark—blink—and then he is there again, staring at me, speaking in that lullaby-voice. “You aren’t my dog. But you will still learn to sit when I tell you. You will still learn to obey.”
“Hello? Anyone here?”
The voice echoes from the foyer. Instantly Fred releases me. I suck in a breath, then start to cough. My eyes are stinging. My lungs stutter in my chest, trying to suck in air.
“Hello?”
The door swings open and Debbie Sayer, my mother’s hairdresser, bursts into the room. “Oh!” she says, and stops. Her face reddens when she sees Fred and me. “Mayor Hargrove,” she says. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. . . .”
“You didn’t interrupt,” Fred says. “I was on my way out.”
“We had an appointment,” Debbie adds uncertainly. She looks at me. I swipe a hand across my eyes; it comes away damp. “We were going to talk styles for the wedding. . . . I didn’t get the time wrong, did I?”
The wedding: It seems absurd now, a bad joke. This is my promised path: with this monster, who can smile in one moment and squeeze my throat in the next. I feel tears pushing at my eyes again and press my palms against my eyelids, willing them back.
“No.” My throat is raw. “You’re right.”
“Are you all right?” Debbie asks me.
“Hana suffers from allergies,” Fred answers smoothly, before I’ve had a chance to respond. “I’ve told her a hundred times to get a prescription. . . .” He reaches out and takes my hand, squeezes my fingers—too hard, but not so much that Debbie will notice. “She’s very stubborn.”
He withdraws his hand. I bring my aching fingers behind my back, flexing them, still fighting the urge to cry. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Fred says, directing a smile toward me. “You haven’t forgotten about the cocktail party, have you?”
“I haven’t forgotten,” I say, refusing to look at him.
“Good.” He crosses the room. In the hall, I hear him begin to whistle.
Debbie begins chattering the moment he is out of earshot. “You’re so lucky. Henry—that’s my pair, you know—looks as though he’s had his face squashed
by a rock.” She laughs. “He’s a good match for me, though. We’re big supporters of your husband—or soon-to-be, I guess we should say. Big supporters.”
She places a blow dryer, two brushes, and a translucent bag of pins side by side on top of the thank-you cards and the photographs, which she has not noticed. “You know, Henry met your husband just recently at a fund-raiser. Where is my hair spray?”
I close my eyes. Maybe this is all a dream—Debbie, the wedding, Fred. Maybe I’ll wake up, and it will be last summer, or two summers ago, or five: before any of this was real.
“I knew he would make a great mayor. Didn’t mind Hargrove Senior, and I’m sure he did his best, but if you want my opinion, he was just a little soft. He actually wanted the Crypts torn apart. . . .” She shakes her head. “I say, bury them there and let them rot.”
I snap suddenly to attention. “What?”
She descends on me with her hairbrush, tugging and pulling. “Don’t get me wrong—I liked Hargrove Senior. But I think he had the wrong idea about certain kinds of people.”
“No, no.” I swallow. “What did you say after that?”
She tilts my chin forcefully up toward the light and examines me. “Well, I think they should be left to rot in the Crypts—criminals, I mean, and sick people.” She begins looping hair, experimenting with the way it falls.
Stupid. I’ve been so stupid.
“And then you think of the way he died.” Debbie has returned to the subject of Fred’s father; he died January 12, the day of the Incidents, after the bombs went off in the Crypts. The whole eastern facade was blown clean away; prisoners suddenly found themselves in cells with no walls, and yards with no fences. There was a mass insurrection; Fred’s father arrived with the police, and died trying to restore order.
My ideas come hard and fast, like a thick snow, building a white wall I can’t get above or around.
