Requiem

Page 18

I swallow back the sick taste in my mouth. “Well, I’m not your responsibility either, remember? You can’t tell me what to do.” I’ve found the thread of anger again. Now I’m following it, pulling myself forward on it, hand over hand. “Why do you even care, anyway? You hate me.”
Alex stares at me. “You really don’t get it, do you?” His voice is hard.
I cross my arms and squeeze tight, trying to squeeze back the pain, to push it deep under the anger. “Don’t get what?”
“Forget it.” Alex shoves a hand through his hair. “Forget I said anything at all.”
“Lena!”
I turn. Tack and Julian have just emerged from the woods on the other side of the stream, and Julian runs toward me, splashing through the water without seeming to register it. He charges straight past Alex and sweeps me up in his arms, lifting me off the ground. I let out a single, muffled sob into his shirt.
“You’re okay,” he whispers. He’s squeezing me so tightly, I can hardly breathe. But I don’t mind. I don’t want him to let go, ever.
“I was so worried about you,” I say. Now that my anger at Alex has drained away, the need to cry is resurging, pushing at my throat.
I’m not sure Julian understands me. My voice is muffled by his shirt. But he gives me another hard squeeze before setting me down. He brushes the hair back from my face.
“When you and Tack didn’t come back . . . I thought maybe something had happened. . . .”
“We decided to camp for the night.” Julian looks guilty, as though his absence was somehow the cause of the attack. “Tack’s flashlight went bust and we couldn’t see a damn thing when the sun went down. We were worried about getting lost. We were probably only a mile from here.” He shakes his head. “When we heard the shots, we came as fast as we could.” He touches his forehead to mine and adds, a little softer, “I was so scared.”
“I’m fine,” I say. I keep my arms wrapped around his waist. He is so steady, so solid. “There were regulators—seven or eight of them, maybe more. But we chased them off.”
Julian finds my hand and laces his fingers in mine.
“I should have stayed with you,” he says, his voice breaking a little.
I bring his hand to my lips. This simple thing—the fact that I can kiss him like this, freely—suddenly seems like a miracle. They have tried to squeeze us out, to stamp us into the past. But we are still here.
And there are more of us every day.
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s make sure the others are okay.”
Alex must have crossed the stream and rejoined the group already. At the edge of the water, Julian doubles down and sweeps an arm behind my knees, so I stumble backward and into his arms. He picks me up, and I put my arms around his neck and rest my head against his chest: His heart is a steady rhythm, reassuring. He wades across the stream and deposits me on the other side.
“Nice of you to join us,” Raven is saying to Tack,as Julian and I push our way into the circle. But I can hear the relief in her voice. Despite the fact that Raven and Tack are often fighting, it’s impossible to imagine one without the other. They are like two plants that have grown around each other—they strangle and squeeze and support at the same time.
“What are we supposed to do?” Lu asks. She is an indistinct shape in the darkness. Most of the faces in the circle are ovals of dark, individual features fragmented by the small patches of moonlight. A nose is visible here; a mouth there; the barrel of a gun.
“We go to Waterbury, like we planned,” Raven says firmly.
“With what?” Dani says. “We have nothing. No food. No blankets. Nothing.”
“It could have been worse,” Raven says. “We got out, didn’t we? And we can’t be too far.”
“We aren’t.” Tack speaks up. “Julian and I found the highway. It’s a half day from here. We’re too far north, just like Pike said.”
“I guess we can forgive you, then,” Raven says, “for almost getting us killed.”
Pike, for the first time in his life, has nothing to say.
Raven sighs dramatically. “Okay. I admit it. I was wrong. Is that what you want to hear?”
Again: no response.
“Pike?” Dani ventures, into the silence.
“Shit,” Tack mutters. Then he says again, “Shit.”
Another pause. I shiver. Julian puts his arm around me, and I lean into him.
Raven says quietly, “We can light a small fire. If he’s lost, it will help him find his way to us.”
This is her gift to us. She knows—just like we all know in that instant, deep down—that Pike is dead.
Hana
God forgive me, for I have sinned. Cleanse me of these passions, for the diseased will wallow in the dirt with the dogs, and only the pure will ascend into heaven.
People aren’t supposed to change. That’s the beauty of pairing—people can be plotted together, their interests made to intersect, their differences minimized.
That’s what the cure promises.
But it’s a lie.
Fred isn’t Fred—at least, he’s not the Fred I thought he was. And I’m not the Hana I was supposed to be; I’m not the Hana everyone told me I would be after my cure.
The realization brings with it a physical disappointment—and a feeling, too, of relief.
The morning after Fred’s inauguration, I get up and take a shower, feeling alert and very refreshed. I’m overly conscious of the brightness of the lights, the beeping of the coffee machine from downstairs, and the thump-thump-thump of the clothes in the dryer. Power, power, power all around us: We pulse with it.
Mr. Roth has once again come over to watch the news. If he behaves, maybe the minister of energy will give him his juice back, and then I won’t have to see him every morning. I could speak to Fred about it.
The idea makes me want to laugh.
“Morning, Hana,” he says, keeping his eyes locked on the TV.
“Good morning, Mr. Roth,” I say cheerfully, and pass into the pantry. I scan the well-stocked shelves, run my fingers over the boxes of cereal and rice, the identical jars of peanut butter, a half-dozen jams.
I’ll have to be careful, of course, to steal only a little at a time.
I make my way directly to Wynnewood Road, where I saw Grace playing with the doll. I again abandon my bike early and go most of the way on foot, careful to stick closely to the trees. I listen for voices. The last thing I want is to be taken by surprise by Willow Marks again.
My backpack digs painfully into my shoulders, and underneath the straps, my skin is slippery with sweat. It’s heavy. I can hear liquid sloshing around when I move, and I just pray that the lid of the old glass milk jug—which I’ve filled with as much gasoline from the garage as I could get away with stealing—is screwed on tightly.
Once again, the air is scented faintly with wood smoke. I wonder how many of the houses are occupied, and which other families have been forced to live way out here, scraping out a living. I don’t know how they make it through the winters. No wonder Jenny, Willow, and Grace look so pale and drawn—it’s a miracle that they’re still alive.
I think of what Fred said: They must learn that freedom will not keep them warm.
So disobedience will kill them slowly.
If I can find the Tiddles’ house, I can leave them the food I’ve stolen, and the bottle of gasoline. It’s a small thing, but it’s something.
As soon as I turn onto Wynnewood—only two streets away from Brooks—I once again see Grace in the street, this time squatting on the sidewalk directly in front of a weathered gray house, chucking stones in the grass as though she is trying to skip them over water.
I take a deep breath and step out of the trees. Grace tenses up instantly.
“Please don’t run,” I say softly, because she looks like she’s about to bolt. I take a tentative step toward her and she scrambles to her feet, so I stop walking. Keeping my eyes on Grace’s, I unsling the backpack from my shoulder. “You might not remember me,” I say. “I was a friend of Lena’s.” I choke a little on her name and have to clear my throat. “I’m not going to hurt you, okay?”
The backpack clinks against the sidewalk when I set it down, and her eyes flit to it briefly. I take this as an encouraging sign and move into a crouch, still keeping my eyes on her, willing her not to run. Slowly, I unzip the backpack.
Now her eyes are darting between the bag and me. She relaxes her shoulders a little.
“I brought you a couple of things,” I say, slowly reaching into the bag and withdrawing what I’ve stolen: a bag of oatmeal; Cream of Wheat and two boxes of macaroni and cheese; cans of soup; vegetables and tuna fish; a package of cookies. I lay them all out on the sidewalk, one by one. Grace takes a quick step forward and then stops herself.
Last, I remove the old milk jug full of gasoline. “This is for you too,” I say. “For your family.” I see movement in an upstairs window and feel a quick jolt of alarm. But it’s only a dirty towel, strung up like a curtain, fluttering in the wind.
Suddenly she darts forward and snatches the bottle from my hands.
“Be careful,” I say. “It’s gasoline. It’s very dangerous. I thought you could use it for burning things,” I finish lamely.
Grace doesn’t say anything. She’s trying to stuff her arms with all the food I’ve brought. When I crouch down and try and help her, she grabs the pack of cookies and presses it protectively to her chest.
“Easy,” I say. “I’m just trying to help.”
She sniffs, but allows me to help her stack and gather up the cans of vegetables and soup. We’re just a few inches apart, so close I can smell her breath, sour and hungry. There is dirt under her fingernails, streaks of grass on her knees. I’ve never been this close to Grace before, and I find myself searching her face for a resemblance to Lena. Grace’s nose is sharper, like Jenny’s, but she has Lena’s big brown eyes and dark hair.
I feel a quick pulse of something: a squeeze deep in my stomach, an echo from another time, feelings that should have been quieted forever by now.
No one can know, or even suspect.
“I have more to give you,” I tell Grace quickly as she stands up, holding a teetering pile of packages and bags in her arms, along with the plastic bottle. “I’ll come back. I can only bring a little bit at a time.”
She just stands there, staring at me with Lena’s eyes.
“If you’re not here, I’ll leave the food for you somewhere safe. Somewhere it won’t get—damaged.” I stop myself at the last second from saying stolen. “Do you know a good hiding place?”
She turns abruptly and darts around the side of the gray house, through a patch of overgrown grass and high weeds. I’m not sure whether she intends for me to follow her, but I do. The paint is peeling; one of the shutters hangs crookedly from a window on the second floor, tapping lightly in the wind.
At the back of the house, Grace waits for me by a large wooden door set in the ground, which must lead to a cellar. She sets down the pile of food carefully in the grass, then grabs the rusted metal handle of the trapdoor and heaves. Underneath the door is a gaping mouth of darkness, and a set of wooden stairs descending into a small, packed-dirt space. The room is empty except for several crooked wooden shelves, which contain a flashlight, two bottles of water, and some batteries.