Requiem

Page 44

As soon as I sit, Hana whirls around and disappears into the back of the kitchen, where a dark gap beyond the refrigerator indicates a pantry. Before I can think of escape, she reemerges, carrying a loaf of bread wrapped in a tea towel. She stands at the counter and slices off thick hunks, slathering them in butter and piling them high onto a plate. Then she moves to the sink and wets the tea towel.
Watching her turn on the faucet, watching the steaming water that appears instantly, I am filled with envy. It has been forever since I’ve had a proper shower, or gotten to clean myself except in frigid rivers.
“Here.” She passes me the hot towel. “You’re a mess.”
“I didn’t have time to do my makeup,” I reply sarcastically. But I take the towel anyway, and touch it gingerly to my ear. I’ve stopped bleeding, at least, although the towel comes back flecked with dried blood. I keep my eyes on her as I wipe off my face and hands. I wonder what she is thinking.
She slides the plate of bread in front of me when I’ve finished with the towel, and fills a glass with water, along with real ice cubes, five of them rattling joyfully together.
“Eat,” she says. “Drink.”
“I’m not hungry,” I lie.
She rolls her eyes, and once again I see the old Hana float up into this new impostor. “Don’t be stupid. Of course you’re hungry. You’re starving. You’re probably dying of thirst, too.”
“Why are you doing this?” I ask her.
Hana opens her mouth and then closes it again. “We were friends,” she says.
“Were,” I say firmly. “Now we’re enemies.”
“Are we?” Hana looks startled, as though the idea has never occurred to her. Once again, I feel a flicker of unease, a squirming feeling of guilt. Something isn’t right. I force the feelings down.
“Of course,” I say.
Hana watches me for a second more. Then, abruptly, she gets up from the table and moves over to the windows. Once her back is to me, I quickly take a piece of bread and stuff it in my mouth, eating as quickly as I can without choking. I wash it down with a long slug of water, so cold it brings a blazing, delicious pain to my head.
For a long time, Hana doesn’t say anything. I eat another piece of bread. She can no doubt hear me chewing, but she doesn’t comment on it or turn around. She allows me to keep up the pretense that I am not eating, and I experience a brief burst of gratitude.
“I’m sorry about Alex,” she says at last, still without turning.
My stomach gives an uncomfortable twist. Too much; too quickly.
“He didn’t die.” My voice sounds overloud. I don’t know why I feel the urge to tell her. But I need her to know that her side, her people, didn’t win, at least not in this case. Even though of course, in some ways, they did.
She turns around. “What?”
“He didn’t die,” I repeat. “He was thrown into the Crypts.”
Hana flinches, as though I’ve reached out and slapped her. She sucks her lower lip into her mouth again and starts chewing. “I—” She stops herself, frowning a little.
“What?” I know that face; I recognize it. She knows something. “What is it?”
“Nothing, I . . .” She shakes her head, as though to dislodge an idea there. “I thought I saw him.”
My stomach surges into my throat. “Where?”
“Here.” She looks at me with another one of her inscrutable expressions. The new Hana is much harder to read than the old one. “Last night. But if he’s in the Crypts . . .”
“He’s not. He escaped.” Hana, the light, the kitchen—even the bomb ticking quietly underneath us, moving us slowly toward oblivion—suddenly seem far away. As soon as Hana suggests it, I see that it makes sense. Alex was all alone. He would have gone back to familiar territory.
Alex could be here—somewhere in Portland. Close. Maybe there’s hope after all.
If I can only get out of here.
“So?” I push up from the chair. “Are you going to call the regulators, or what?”
Even as I’m talking, I’m planning. I could probably take her down, if it comes to it, but the idea of attacking her makes me uneasy. And she’ll no doubt put up a fight. By the time I get the better of her, the guards will be on top of us.
But if I can get her out of the kitchen for even a few seconds—I’ll put the chair through the window, cut through the garden, try to lose the guards in the trees. The garden probably backs up onto another street; if not, I’ll have to loop around to Essex. It’s a long shot, but it’s a chance.
Hana watches me steadily. The clock above the stove seems to be moving at record speed, and I imagine the timer on the bomb ticking forward as well.
“I want to apologize to you,” she says calmly.
“Oh yeah? For what?” I don’t have time for this. We don’t have time for this. I push away thoughts of what will happen to Hana even if I manage to escape. She’ll be here, in the house . . .
My stomach is clenching and unclenching. I’m worried the bread will come straight back up. I have to stay focused. What happens to Hana isn’t my concern, and it isn’t my fault, either.
“For telling the regulators about 37 Brooks,” she says. “For telling them about you and Alex.”
Just like that, my brain powers down. “What?”
“I told them.” She lets out a tiny exhalation, as though saying the words has given her relief. “I’m sorry. I was jealous.”
I can’t speak. I’m swimming through a fog. “Jealous?” I manage to spit out.
“I—I wanted what you had with Alex. I was confused. I didn’t understand what I was doing.” She shakes her head again.
I have a swinging, seasick feeling. It doesn’t make any sense. Hana—golden girl Hana, my best friend, fearless and reckless. I trusted her. I loved her. “You were my best friend.”
“I know.” Again she looks troubled, as though trying to recall the meaning of the words.
“You had everything.” I can’t stop my voice from rising. The anger is vibrating, ripping through me like a live current. “Perfect life. Perfect grades. Everything.” I gesture to the spotless kitchen, to the sunshine pouring over the marble counters like drizzled butter. “I had nothing. He was my one thing. My only—” The sickness surges up and I take a step forward, clenching my fists, blind with rage. “Why couldn’t you let me have it? Why did you have to take it? Why did you always take everything?”
“I told you I was sorry,” Hana says again mechanically. I could shriek with laughter. I could cry, or tear her eyes out.
Instead I reach out and slap her. The current flows down into my hand, into my arm, before I know what I am doing. The noise is unexpectedly loud, and for a moment I’m sure the guards will burst through the door. But no one comes.
Instantly, Hana’s face begins to redden. But she doesn’t cry out. She doesn’t make a sound.
In the silence, I can hear my own breathing—ragged and desperate. I feel tears pushing at the back of my eyes. I’m ashamed and angry and sick all at once.
Hana turns slowly back to face me. She almost looks sad. “I deserved that,” she says.
Suddenly I am overcome with exhaustion. I am tired of fighting, of hitting and being hit. This is the strange way of the world, that people who simply want to love are instead forced to become warriors. It’s the upside-down nature of life. It’s all I can do not to collapse into a chair again.
“I felt terrible afterward,” Hana says in a voice hardly above a whisper. “You should know that. That’s why I helped you escape. I felt”—Hana searches for the right word—“remorse.”
“What about now?” I ask her.
Hana lifts a shoulder. “Now I’m cured,” she says. “It’s different.”
“Different how?” For a split second, I wish—more than anything, more than breathing—that I had stayed here, with her, that I had let the knife fall.
“I feel freer,” she says. Whatever I was expecting her to say, it isn’t this. She must sense that I’m surprised, because she goes on. “Everything’s kind of . . . muffled. Like hearing sounds underwater. I don’t have to feel things for other people so much.” One side of her mouth quirks into a smile. “Maybe, like you said, I never did.”
My head has started to ache. Over. It’s all over. I just want to curl up in a ball and go to sleep. “I didn’t mean that. You did. Feel things, I mean, for other people. You used to.”
I’m not sure she hears me. She says, almost as an afterthought, “I don’t have to listen to anybody anymore.” Something in her tone is off—triumphant, almost. When I look at her, she smiles. I wonder whether she’s thinking of anyone in particular.
There is the sound of a door opening and closing and the bark of a man’s voice. Hana’s whole face changes. She gets serious again in an instant. “Fred,” she says. She crosses quickly to the swinging doors behind me and pokes her head into the hall tentatively. Then she whirls around to face me, suddenly breathless.
“Come on,” she says. “Quick, while he’s in the study.”
“Come on where?” I say.
Hana looks momentarily irritated. “The back door leads onto the porch. From there you can cut through the garden and onto Dennett. That will take you back to Brighton. Quickly,” she adds. “If he sees you, he’ll kill you.”
I’m so shocked that for a moment I just stand there, gaping at her. “Why?” I say. “Why are you helping me?”
Hana smiles again, but her eyes stay cloudy and unreadable. “You said it yourself. I was your best friend.”
All at once, my energy returns. She’s going to let me go. Before she can change her mind, I move toward her. She presses her back against one of the swinging doors, keeping it open for me, poking her head into the hall every few seconds to make sure the coast is clear. Just as I’m about to scoot past her, I stop.
Jasmine and vanilla. She still wears it after all. She does smell the same.
“Hana,” I say. I’m standing so close to her, I can see the gold threaded through the blue of her eyes. I lick my lips. “There’s a bomb.”
She jerks back a fraction of an inch. “What?”
I don’t have time to regret what I’m saying. “Here. Somewhere in the house. Get out of here, okay? Get yourself out.” She’ll take Fred, too, and the explosion will be a failure, but I don’t care. I loved Hana once, and she is helping me now. I owe this to her.
Once again, her expression is unreadable. “How much time?” she asks abruptly.
I shake my head. “Ten, fifteen minutes tops.”
She nods to show that she has understood. I move past her, into the darkness of the hallway. She stays where she is, pressed against the swinging doors, rigid as a statue. She lifts her chin toward the back door.