Requiem (6 page)

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

I
n 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 answer 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 5 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.”

I remember how frantic I was to get rid of the flyer last night, as though doing so would mean that it had never existed. But of course the Invalids didn't target us specifically.

“It's outrageous!” my dad explodes. I've seen him raise his voice only two or three times in my life, and he's only ever totally lost it once: when they announced the names of the people who had been killed during the terrorist attacks, and Frank Hargrove—Fred's father—was among those listed as dead. We were all watching TV in the den, and suddenly my father turned and threw his glass against the wall. It was so shocking, my mother and I could only stare at him. I'll never forget what he said that night: Amor deliria nervosa
isn't a disease of love. It's a disease of selfishness.
“What's the
point
of the National Security Administration if—”

Mr. Roth cuts in. “Come on, Rich, have a seat. You're getting upset.”

“Of course I'm upset. These
cockroaches
 . . .”

In the pantry, boxes of cereal and bags of coffee are lined neatly in multiples. I tuck a bag of coffee under my arm and rearrange the others so the gap isn't noticeable. Then I grab a piece of bread and smear some peanut butter on it, even though the news has almost completely killed my hunger.

I pass back through the kitchen and am halfway down the hall before my dad turns and calls, “Where are you going?”

I angle my body away from him, so the bag of coffee isn't visible. “I thought I'd go on a bike ride,” I say brightly.

“A bike ride?” my dad repeats.

“The wedding dress has been getting a little tight.” I gesture expressively with the folded piece of bread. “Stress eating, I guess.” At least my ability to lie hasn't changed since my cure.

My dad frowns. “Just stay away from downtown, okay? There was an incident last night. . . .”

“Vandalism,” Mr. Roth says. “And nothing more.”

Now the television is showing footage of the terrorist incidents in January: the sudden collapse of the eastern side of the Crypts, captured by a grainy handheld camera; fire licking up from city hall; people pouring out of stalled buses and running, panicked and confused, through the streets; a woman crouched in the bay, dress billowing behind her on the swells, screaming that judgment has arrived; a mass of floating dust blowing through the city, turning everything chalk-white.

“This is just the beginning,” my father responds sharply. “They obviously meant the message to be a warning.”

“They won't be able to pull anything off. They're not organized.”

“That was what everyone said last year, too, and we ended up with a hole in the Crypts, a dead mayor, and a city full of psychopaths. Do you know how many prisoners escaped that day? Three hundred.”

“We've tightened security since then,” Mr. Roth insists.

“Security didn't stop the Invalids from treating Portland like a giant post office last night. Who knows what could happen?” He sighs and rubs his eyes. Then he turns to me. “I don't want my only daughter blown to bits.”

“I won't go downtown, Dad,” I say. “I'll stay off-peninsula, okay?”

He nods and turns back to the television.

Outside, I stand on the porch and eat my bread with one hand, keeping the bag of coffee tucked under my arm. I realize, too late, that I'm thirsty. But I don't want to go back inside.

I kneel down, transfer the coffee into my old backpack—still smelling, faintly, like the strawberry gum I used to chew—and shove the baseball hat over my ponytail again. I put on sunglasses, too. I'm wearing sweatpants and an old sweatshirt, the same outfit I put on last night. I'm not particularly afraid of being spotted by photographers, but I don't want to risk running into anyone I know.

I retrieve my bike from the garage and wheel it into the street. Everyone says that riding a bike is a skill that stays with you forever, but for a moment after I climb on the seat I wobble wildly, like a toddler just learning to ride. After a few teetering seconds, I manage to find my balance. I angle the bike downhill and begin coasting down Brighton Court, toward the gatehouse and the border of WoodCove Farms.

There's something reassuring about the
tic-tic-tic
of my wheels against the pavement, and the feel of the wind on my face, raw and fresh. I don't get the same feeling I used to have from running, but it does bring contentment, like settling into clean sheets at the end of a long day.

The day is perfect, bright, and surprisingly cold. On a day like today, it seems impossible to imagine that half the country is blighted by the rise of insurgents; that Invalids are running like sewage through Portland, spreading a message of passion and violence. It seems impossible to imagine that anything is wrong in the whole world. A bed of pansies nods at me, as though in agreement, as I zip by them, picking up speed, letting the slope carry me forward. I whiz through the iron gates and past the gatehouse without stopping, raising a hand in a gesture of quick salute, although I doubt Saul recognizes me.

Outside WoodCove Farms, the neighborhood quickly changes. Government-owned plots run up against seedy lots, and I pass three mobile home parks in a row, which are crowded with outdoor charcoal grills and fire pits and shrouded over by a film of smoke and ash, since the people who live here use electricity only sparingly.

Brighton Avenue carries me on-peninsula, and technically across the border and into downtown Portland. But city hall, and the cluster of municipal buildings and laboratories where people have gathered to protest, is still several miles away. The buildings this far from the Old Port are no more than a few stories high, and interspersed with corner delis, cheap Laundromats, run-down churches, and long-disused gas stations.

I try to remember the last time I went to Lena's house, instead of she to mine, but all I get is a mash-up of years and images, the smell of tinned ravioli and powdered milk. Lena was embarrassed by her cramped home, and by her family. She knew what people said. But I always liked going to her house. I'm not sure why. I think at the time it was the mess that appealed to me—the beds crammed closely together in the upstairs room, the appliances that never worked correctly, fuses that were always powering down, a washing machine that sat rusting, used only as a place for storing winter clothes.

Even though it has been eight months, I navigate the way to Lena's old house easily, even remembering to shortcut through the parking lot that backs up onto Cumberland.

By this point, I'm sweating, and I stop my bike a few doors down from the Tiddles' house, wrestling off my hat and running a hand through my hair so I at least look semi-presentable. A door bangs down the street, and a woman emerges onto her porch, which is cluttered with broken furniture and even, mysteriously, a rust-spotted toilet seat. She is carrying a broom, and she begins sweeping back and forth, back and forth, over the same six inches of porch, her eyes locked on me.

The neighborhood is worse, much worse, than it used to be. Half the buildings are boarded up. I feel like a diver on a new submarine, coasting past the wreck of a tanked ship. Curtains stir in the windows, and I have a sense of unseen eyes following my progress down the street—and anger, too, simmering inside all the sad, sagging homes.

I start to feel incredibly stupid for coming. What will I say? What
can
I say?

But now that I'm so close, I can't turn around until I've seen it: number 237, Lena's old house. As soon as I wheel my bike up to the gate, I can tell that the house has been abandoned for some time. Several shingles are missing from the roof, and the windows have been boarded up with fungus-colored wood. Someone has painted a large red
X
over the front door, a symbol that the house was harboring disease.

“What do you want?”

I spin around. The woman on the porch has stopped sweeping; she holds the broom in one hand and shields her eyes with the other.

“I was looking for the Tiddles,” I say. My voice rings out too loudly on the open street. The woman keeps staring at me. I force myself to move closer to her, wheeling my bike across the street and up to her front gate, even though something inside me is revolting, telling me to go. I do not belong here.