I think of Alex—the strange, stony figure of a boy I thought I once knew. Maybe he hasn’t changed that much. Maybe I never really knew him at all.
Raven sighs and rubs her face with both hands. “Look, I meant what I said back there. We’re all in this together, and we have to act like it.”
“I get it,” I say. I look back toward the camp. From a distance, the red blanket draped across Coral’s shoulders looks jarring, like a spot of blood on a polished wood floor.
“I don’t think you do,” Raven says. She steps in front of me, forcing me to meet her gaze. Her eyes are hard, nearly black. “This—what’s happening now—is the only thing that matters. It’s not a game. It’s not a joke. This is war. It’s bigger than you or me. It’s bigger than all of us combined. We don’t matter anymore.” Her voice softens. “Remember what I always told you? The past is dead.”
I know, then, that she’s talking about Alex. My throat begins to tighten, but I refuse to let Raven see me cry. I won’t cry over Alex ever again.
Raven starts walking again. “Go on,” she calls back over her shoulder. “You should help Julian pack up the tents.”
I look over my shoulder. Julian already has half the tents dismantled. As I watch, he collapses yet another one, and it shrinks into nothing, like a mushroom sprouting in reverse.
“He’s got it under control,” I say. “He doesn’t need me.” I move to follow her.
“Trust me”—Raven whirls around, her black hair fanning behind her—“he needs you.”
For a second we just stand there, looking at each other. Something flashes in Raven’s eyes, an expression I can’t quite decipher. A warning, maybe.
Then she quirks her lips into a smile. “I’m still in charge, you know,” she says. “You have to listen to me.”
So I turn around and go back down the hill, toward the camp, toward Julian, who needs me.
Hana
In the morning I wake up momentarily disoriented: The room is drowning in sunlight. I must have forgotten to close the blinds.
I sit up, pushing the covers to the foot of my bed. Seagulls are calling outside, and as I stand, I see that the sun has touched the grass a vivid green.
In my desk I find one of the few things I bothered to unpack: AfterCure, the thick manual I was given after my procedure, which, according to the introduction, “contains the answers to the most common—and uncommon!—questions about the procedure and its aftereffects.”
I flip quickly to the chapter on dreaming, scanning several pages that detail, in boring technical terms, the unintended side effect of the cure: dreamless sleep. Then I spot a sentence that makes me want to hug the book to my chest: “As we have repeatedly emphasized, people are different, and although the procedure minimizes variances in temperament and personality, it must of necessity work differently for everybody. About five percent of cureds still report having dreams.”
Five percent. Not a huge amount, but still, not a freakishly small percentage either.
I feel better than I have in days. I close the book, making a sudden resolution.
I will ride my bike to Lena’s house today.
I haven’t been anywhere near her house on Cumberland in months. This will be my way of paying tribute to our old friendship and of putting to rest the bad feeling that has bugged me since I saw Jenny. Lena may have succumbed to the disease, but it was, after all, partly my fault.
That must be why I still think of her. The cure doesn’t suppress every feeling, and the guilt is still pushing through.
I will bike by the old house and see that everyone is okay, and I will feel better. Guilt requires absolution, and I have not absolved myself for my part in her crime. Maybe, I think, I’ll even bring over some coffee. Her aunt Carol used to love the stuff.
Then I’ll return to my life.
I splash water on my face, pull on a pair of jeans and my favorite fleece, soft from years of going in the dryer, and twist my hair up in a messy bun. Lena used to make a face whenever I wore it this way. Unfair, she’d say. If I tried to do that, I’d look like a bird crapped a nest on my head.
“Hana? Is everything okay?” my mother calls to me from the hallway, her voice muffled, concerned. I open the door.
“Fine,” I say. “Why?”
She squints at me. “Were you—were you singing?”
I must have been humming unconsciously. I feel a hot shock of embarrassment.
“I was trying to think of the words to some song Fred played me,” I say quickly. “I can’t remember more than a few words.”
My mother’s face relaxes. “I’m sure you can find it on LAMM,” she says. She reaches out and cups my chin, scans my face critically for a minute. “Did you sleep well?”
“Perfectly,” I say. I detach myself from her grip and head toward the stairs.
Downstairs, Dad is pacing the kitchen, dressed for work except for a tie. I can tell just by looking at his hair that he has been watching the news for a while. Since last fall, when the government issued its first statement acknowledging the existence of the Invalids, he insists on keeping the news running almost constantly, even when we leave the house. As he watches, he twirls his hair between his fingers.
On the news, a woman with an orange-lipstick mouth is saying, “Outraged citizens stormed the police station on State Street this morning, demanding to know how the Invalids were able to move freely through the city streets to deliver their threats….”
Mr. Roth, our neighbor, is sitting at the kitchen table, spinning a mug of coffee between his palms. He is becoming a regular fixture in our house.
“Good morning, Hana,” he says without taking his eyes off the screen.
“Hi, Mr. Roth.”
Despite the fact that the Roths live across from us, and Mrs. Roth is always talking about the new clothes she has bought her older daughter, Victoria, I know that they are struggling. Neither of their children made a particularly good match, mostly because of a small scandal that attached itself to Victoria, who was rumored to have been forced into an early procedure after being caught in the streets after curfew. Mr. Roth’s career has stalled, and the signs of financial difficulty are there: They no longer use their car, although it still sits, gleaming, beyond the iron gate in the driveway. And the lights go off early; obviously, they are trying to conserve electricity. I suspect that Mr. Roth has been stopping by so much because he no longer has a working television.
“Hi, Dad,” I say as I scoot past the kitchen table.
He grunts at me in response, grabbing and twisting another bit of hair. The newscaster says, “The flyers were distributed in a dozen different areas, and were even slipped into playgrounds and elementary schools.”
The footage cuts to a crowd of protesters standing on the steps of city hall. Their signs read TAKE BACK OUR STREETS and DELIRIA-FREE AMERICA. The DFA has received an outpouring of support since its leader, Thomas Fineman, was assassinated last week. Already he is being treated as a martyr, and memorials to him have sprung up across the country.
“Why isn’t anyone doing anything to protect us?” a man is saying into a microphone. He has to shout over the noise of the other protesters. “The police are supposed to keep us safe from these lunatics. Instead they’re swarming the streets.”