by Лорен Оливер
“Been here before?” Jan wheezes. I shake my head, and she shoots me a sidelong glance. “Thought not. We don’t get many visitors around here. What’s the point, I say.”
“I just found out that my aunt—”
She cuts me off. “Gonna have to leave your bag outside the ward.” Pant, pant, pant. “Even a nail file will do it in a pinch. And we’ll have to give you some clogs. Can’t have you wearin’ those laces in the ward. Last year one of our guys strung himself up to a pipe, quick as a flash, when he got hold of some laces. Dead as a doornail by the time we found him. Who’re you here for?”
She says all this so quickly, I can barely follow the thread of her conversation. An image flashes: someone swinging from the ceiling, laces knotted around the throat. In my mind, the person swings, revolving toward me. Weirdly, it’s Fred’s face I picture, huge and bulging and red.
“I’m here to see Melanea.” I watch the nurse’s face, see the name means nothing to her. “Number 2225,” I add.
Apparently, people go solely by their numbers in the Crypts, because the nurse lets out a noise of recognition. “She won’t give you no trouble,” she says conspiratorially, as though she’s sharing a great secret. “She’s quiet as a church mouse. Well, not always. I remember the first few months, she was shouting and shouting. ‘I don’t belong here! I’m not crazy!’” The nurse laughs. “’Course, that’s what they all say. And then you start listening, and they’ll run your ear off talking little green men and spiders.”
“She’s—she’s crazy then?” I say.
“Wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t, would she?” Jan says. She obviously doesn’t expect an answer. We’ve arrived at another set of double doors, this one marked with a sign that reads WARD B: PSYCHOSIS, NEUROSIS, HYSTERIA.
“Go on and grab yourself a pair of slippers,” she resumes cheerfully, pointing.
Outside the doors are a bench and a small wooden bookcase, on which several plastic-sheathed hospital slippers have been placed. The furniture is obviously old, and looks strange in the middle of all the gleaming whiteness. “Leave your shoes and your bag right here. Don’t worry; no one will take ’em. The criminals are in the old wards.” She laughs again.
I sit on the bench and fumble with my shoelaces, wishing I’d thought to wear boots or flats instead. My fingers feel clumsy.
“So she screamed?” I prompt. “When she first came, I mean.”
The nurse rolls her eyes. “Thought her husband was tryin’ to do her in. Shouted conspiracy to anyone who’d listen.”
My whole body goes cold. I swallow. “‘Do her in’? What do you mean?”
“Don’t worry.” Jan waves a hand. “She went quiet pretty soon. Most of ’em do. Takes her medicine regular-like, doesn’t give nobody no trouble.” She pats my shoulder. “Ready?”
I can only nod, although ready is the last thing I feel. My body is filled with a need to turn, to run. But instead I stand up and follow Jan through the double doors into another hallway, as spotlessly white as the one we have just passed through, lined on both sides with white, windowless doors. Each step seems to be harder than the last. I can feel the chilly bite of the floor through the slippers, which are tissue-thin, and every time I put a heel down, a shiver runs all the way up my spine.
Too soon, we reach a door marked 2225. Jan raps twice on the door, hard, but doesn’t seem to expect a response. She removes her key card from around her neck, holds it up to the scanner to the left of the door—“We got all new systems after the Incidents; neat, huh?”—and, when the lock slides open with a click, pushes the door open firmly.
“Got a visitor,” she calls cheerfully as she passes into the room. This last step is the hardest. For a second I think I won’t be able to do it. I have to practically throw myself forward, over the threshold, into the cell. As I do, the air leaves my chest.
She is sitting in the corner, in a plastic chair with rounded corners, staring out of a small window fitted with heavy iron bars. She doesn’t turn when we enter, although I can make out her profile, which is just touched with the light filtering in from outside: the small, ski-jump nose, the exquisite little mouth, the long fringe of lashes, her seashell-pink ear and the neat procedural scar just beneath it. Her hair is long and blond, and hangs loose, nearly to her waist. I estimate that she’s about thirty.
She is beautiful.
She looks like me.
My stomach lurches.
“Morning,” Jan says loudly, as if Cassandra won’t hear us otherwise, even though the room is tiny. It’s too small to contain all of us comfortably, and even though the space is bare except for a cot, a chair, a sink, and a toilet, it feels overcrowded. “Brought somebody to see you. Nice surprise, isn’t it?”
Cassandra doesn’t speak. She doesn’t even acknowledge us.
Jan rolls her eyes expressively, mouths I’m sorry to me. Out loud, she says, “Come on, now. Don’t be rude. Turn around and say hello like a good girl.”
Cassie does turn then, although her eyes pass over me completely and go directly to Jan. “May I have a tray, please? I missed breakfast this morning.”
Jan puts her hands on her hips and says, in an exaggerated tone of reproach—as though she is speaking to a child—“Now that was silly of you, wasn’t it?”
“I wasn’t hungry,” Cassie says simply.
Jan sighs. “You’re lucky I’m feeling nice today,” she says with a wink. “You okay here for a minute?” This question is directed to me.
“I—”
“Don’t worry,” Jan says. “She’s harmless.” She raises her voice and assumes the forced-cheerful tone. “Be right back. You be a good girl. Don’t make no trouble for your guest.” She turns once again to me. “Any problems, just hit the emergency button next to the door.”
Before I can respond, she bustles into the hallway again, closing the door behind her. I hear the lock slide into place. Fear stabs, sharp and clear, through the muffling effects of the cure.
For a moment there is silence as I try to remember what I came here to say. The fact that I have found her—the mysterious woman—is overwhelming, and I suddenly can’t think of what to ask her.
Her eyes click to mine. They are hazel, and very clear. Smart.
Not crazy.
“Who are you?” Now that Jan has left the room, her voice takes on an accusatory edge. “What are you doing here?”
“My name is Hana Tate,” I say. I suck in a deep breath. “I’m marrying Fred Hargrove next Saturday.”
Silence stretches between us. I feel her eyes sweeping over me and force myself to stand still. “His taste hasn’t changed,” she says neutrally. Then she turns back to the window.
“Please.” My voice cracks a little. I wish I had some water. “I’d like to know what happened.”
Her hands are still in her lap. She must have perfected this art over the years: sitting motionless. “I’m crazy,” she says tonelessly. “Didn’t they tell you?”
“I don’t believe it,” I say, and it’s true, I don’t. Now that I’m speaking to her, I know for a fact that she is sane. “I want the truth.”
“Why?” She turns back to me. “Why do you care?”
So it won’t happen to me; so I can stop it. That’s the true and selfish reason. But I can’t say that. She has no reason to help me. We are not made to care for strangers any longer.
Before I can think of anything to say, she laughs: a dry sound, as though her throat has been long in disuse. “You want to know what I did, don’t you? You want to be sure you don’t make the same mistake.”
“No,” I say, although of course she’s right. “That’s not what I—”
“Don’t worry,” she says. “I understand.” A smile passes briefly across her face. She looks down at her hands. “I was paired with Fred when I was eighteen,” she says. “I didn’t go to university. He was older. They’d had trouble finding a match for him. He was picky—he was allowed to be picky, because of who his father
was. Everyone said I was lucky.” She shrugs. “We were married for five years.”
That makes her younger than I thought. “What went wrong?” I ask.
“He got tired of me.” She states this firmly. Her eyes flick to mine momentarily. “And I was a liability. I knew too much.”
“What do you mean?” I want to sit down on the cot; my head feels strangely light, and my legs feel impossibly far away. But I’m afraid to move. I’m afraid even to breathe. At any second, she can order me out. She owes me nothing.
She doesn’t answer me directly. “Do you know what he liked to do when he was a little kid? He used to lure the neighborhood cats into his yard—feed them milk, give them tuna fish, earn their trust. And then he would poison them. He liked to watch them die.”
The room feels smaller than ever: stifling and airless.
She turns her gaze to me again. Her calm, steady stare disconcerts me. I will myself not to look away.
“He poisoned me, too,” she says. “I was sick for months and months. He told me, finally. Ricin in my coffee. Just enough to keep me sick, in bed, dependent. He told me so I would know what he was capable of.” She pauses. “He killed his own father, you know.”
For the first time I wonder if maybe, after all, she is crazy. Maybe the nurse was right—maybe she does belong here. The idea is a deliverance. “Fred’s father died during the Incidents,” I say. “He was killed by Invalids.”
She looks at me pityingly. “I know that.” As though she is reading my mind, she adds, “I have eyes and ears. The nurses talk. And of course I was in the old wing, when the bombs exploded.” She looks down at her hands. “Three hundred prisoners escaped. Another dozen were killed. I wasn’t lucky enough to be in either group.”
“But what has that got to do with Fred?” I ask. A whine has crept into my voice.
“Everything,” she says. Her tone turns sharp. “Fred wanted the Incidents to happen. He wanted the bombs to go off. He worked with the Invalids—he helped plan it.”
It can’t be true; I can’t believe her. I won’t. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It makes perfect sense. Fred must have planned it for years. He worked with the DFA; they had the same idea. Fred wanted his father proven wrong about the Invalids—and he wanted his father dead. That way, Fred would be right, and Fred would be mayor.”
A shock runs up my spine when she mentions the DFA. In March, at an enormous rally of Deliria-Free America in New York City, Invalids attacked, killing thirty citizens and injuring countless more. Everyone compared it to the Incidents, and for weeks, security everywhere was tightened: IDs scanned, vehicles searched, homes raided, and patrols on the streets doubled.
But there were other whispers too—some people said that Thomas Fineman, the DFA’s president, had known in advance what would happen, and had even allowed it. Then, two weeks later, Thomas Fineman was assasinated.
I don’t know what to believe. My chest is aching with a feeling I can’t remember how to name.
“I liked Mr. Hargrove,” Cassandra says. “He felt sorry for me. He knew what his son was. He used to visit every so often, after Fred had me locked up. Fred got people to testify that I was a lunatic. Friends. Doctors. They committed me to life in this place.” She gestures toward the small white room, her burial place. “But Mr. Hargrove knew I wasn’t crazy. He told me stories about the world outside. He found my mother and father a place to live in Deering Highlands. Fred wanted them silenced too. He must have thought I’d told them . . . he must have thought they knew what I knew.” She shakes her head. “But I hadn’t. They didn’t.”
So Cassie’s parents were forced into the Highlands, like Lena’s family.
“I’m sorry,” I say. It’s the only thing I can think of, even though I know how flimsy it sounds.
Cassie doesn’t seem to hear me. “That day—when the bombs went off—Mr. Hargrove was visiting. He brought me chocolate.” She turns to the window. I wonder what she is thinking; she is perfectly still again, her profile just traced with dull sunlight. “I heard he died trying to restore order. Then I felt sorry for him. Funny, isn’t it? But I guess Fred got us both in the end.”
“Here I am! Better late than never!”
Jan’s voice makes me jump. I spin around; she is pushing through the door, carrying a plastic tray with a plastic cup of water and a small plastic bowl of lumpy oatmeal. I step out of the way as she plunks the tray down on the cot. I notice that the silverware is plastic, too. Of course, there would be no metal. No knives, either.
I think of the man swinging by his shoelaces, close my eyes, and think of the bay instead. The image breaks away on the waves. I open my eyes again.
“So what do you think?” Jan says brightly. “You want to tuck in now?”
“Actually, I think I’ll wait,” Cass says softly. Her gaze is still directed out the window. “I’m not hungry anymore.”
Jan looks at me and rolls her eyes as though to say, Crazies.
Lena
We waste no time in leaving the safe house, now that it’s been decided: We go to Portland as a group, to join with the resistance there and add our strength to the agitators. Something large is in the works, but Cap and Max refuse to say a word about it, and my mother claims they all know only the sketchiest details, anyway. Now that the wall has come down between us, I’m no longer so resistant to returning to Portland. In fact, a small part of me even looks forward to it.
My mother and I talk around the campfire while we eat; we talk late into the night until Julian pokes his head out of the tent, sleepy and disoriented, and tells me I should really get some sleep; or until Raven yells at us to shut the hell up.
We talk in the morning. We talk as we walk.
We talk about what my life in the Wilds, and hers, have been like. She tells me that she was involved in the resistance even when she was in the Crypts—there was a mole, a resister, a cured who still had sympathies for the cause and worked as a guard in Ward Six, where my mother was imprisoned. He was blamed for my mother’s escape and became a prisoner himself.
I remember him: I saw him curled, fetus-like, in the corner of a tiny stone cell. I haven’t told my mother this, though. I haven’t told her that Alex and I gained admittance to the Crypts, because it would mean talking about him. And I can’t bring myself to speak about him—not with her, not with anyone.
“Poor Thomas.” My mother shakes her head. “He fought hard to get placed in Ward Six. He sought me out deliberately.” She looks at me sideways. “He knew Rachel, you know—long ago. I think he always resented that he had to give her up. He stayed angry, even after his cure.”
I squeeze my eyes shut against the sun. Long-buried images begin flashing: Rachel locked in her room, refusing to come out and eat; Thomas’s pale, freckled face floating at the window, gesturing for me to let him in; crouching in the corner on the day they dragged Rachel to the labs, watching her kick and scream and bare her teeth, like an animal. I must have been eight—it was only a year after my mom died, or after I was told she had died.
“Thomas Dale,” I blurt out. The name has stuck with me all these years.
My mom passes her hand absentmindedly through a field of waving grasses. In the sun, her age, and the lines on her face, are starkly obvious. “I barely remembered him. And of course, he had changed a great deal by the time I saw him again. It had been three, four years. I remember I caught him hanging around the house once when I came home early from work. He was terrified. He thought I would tell.” She barks a laugh. “That was just before I was . . . taken.”
“And he helped you,” I say. I try to force his face into clarity in my mind, to make the details resurface, but all I see is the filthy figure curled on the floor in a grimy cell.
My mom nods. “He couldn’t quite forget what he had lost. It stayed with him. It does, you know, for some people. I always thought it did for your father.”
“So Dad was cured?” I don’t know why I feel so disa
ppointed. I didn’t even remember him; he died of cancer when I was one.
“He was.” A muscle twitches in my mom’s jaw. “But there were times I felt . . . There were times it seemed as though he could still feel it, just for a second. Maybe I only imagined it. It doesn’t matter. I loved him anyway. He was very good to me.” She brings her hand unconsciously to her neck, as though feeling for the necklace she wore—my grandfather’s military pendant, given to her by my dad. She used it to tunnel her way from the Crypts.
“Your necklace,” I say. “You still aren’t used to being without it.”
She turns to me, squinting. She manages a small smile. “There are some losses we never get over.”
I tell my mother about my life too, especially what has happened since crossing from Portland, and how I came to be involved with Raven, Tack, and the resistance. Occasionally we bring up memories from the time Before, too—the lost time before she went away, before my sister was cured, before I was placed in Aunt Carol’s house. But not too much.
As my mother said, there are some losses we never get over.
Certain subjects remain completely off-limits. She doesn’t ask what compelled me to cross in the first place, and I don’t volunteer to tell her. I keep Alex’s note in a little leather pouch around my neck—a gift from my mom, procured from a trader earlier in the year—but it is a memento from a past life, like carrying the picture of someone who is dead.
My mother knows, of course, that I have found my way into loving. Occasionally, I catch her watching me with Julian. The look on her face—pride, grief, envy, and love commingled—reminds me that she is not just my mother, but a woman who has fought her whole life for something she has never truly experienced.
My dad was cured. And you can’t love, not fully, unless you are loved in return.
It makes me ache for her, a feeling I hate and am somehow ashamed of.
Julian and I have found our rhythm again. It’s as though we have skated over the past few weeks, skated over Alex’s long shadow, and landed neatly on the other side. We can’t get enough of each other. I’m amazed by every part of him again: his hands, his low, gentle way of speaking, all his different laughs.
