“Stay,” Hana says quietly. Even though it’s a command, there’s a hesitation in her voice, like she’s asking a question. “You can catch the second set.”
I shake my head. I wish I hadn’t come. I wish I hadn’t seen this. I wish I didn’t know what I know now, could wake up tomorrow and ride over to Hana’s house, could lie out at Eastern Prom with her and complain about how boring summers are, like we always do. Could believe that nothing had changed. “I’m going to go,” I say, wishing my voice didn’t come out shaky. “It’s all right, though. You can stay.”
The second I say it, I realize she never offered to come back with me. She’s looking at me with the weirdest mixture of regret and pity.
“I can come back with you if you want,” she says, but I can tell she’s only offering now to make me feel better.
“No, no. I’ll be fine.” My cheeks are burning and I take a step back, desperate to get out of there. I bump against someone—a boy—who turns and smiles at me. I step quickly away from him.
“Lena, wait.” Hana goes to grab me again. Even though she already has a drink, I shove my cup in her free hand so she has to pause, momentarily frowning as she tries to juggle both drinks into the crook of an elbow, and in that second I dance backward out of her reach.
“I’ll be fine, I promise. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” Then I’m slipping through a narrow space between two people—that’s the only benefit of being five-two, you have a good vantage point on all the in-between spaces—and before I know it, Hana has dropped behind me, swallowed up by the crowd. I weave a path away from the barn, keeping my eyes down, hoping my cheeks cool off fast.
Images swirl by, a blur, making me feel like I’m dreaming again. Boy. Girl. Boy. Girl. Laughing, shoving each other, touching each other’s hair. I’ve never, not once in my whole life, felt so different and out of place. There’s a high, mechanized shriek, and then the band starts playing again, but this time the music does nothing for me. I don’t even pause. I just keep walking, heading for the hill, imagining the cool silence of the starlit fields, the familiar dark streets of Portland, the regular rhythm of the patrols, marching quietly in sync, the feedback from the regulators’ walkie-talkies—regular, normal, familiar, mine.
Finally the crowd starts thinning. It was hot, pressed up against so many people, and the breeze stings my skin, cools my cheeks. I’ve started to calm down a little, and at the edge of the crowd I allow myself one look back at the stage. The barn, open to the sky and the night and glowing white with light, reminds me of a palm cupping a small bit of fire.
“Lena!”
It’s strange how I instantly recognize the voice even though I’ve heard it only once before, for ten minutes, fifteen tops—it’s the laughter that runs underneath it, like someone leaning in to let you in on a really good secret in the middle of a really boring class. Everything freezes. The blood stops flowing in my veins. My breath stops coming. For a second even the music falls away and all I hear is something steady and quiet and pretty, like the distant beat of a drum, and I think, I’m hearing my heart, except I know that’s impossible, because my heart has stopped too. My vision does its camera-zoom focus again and all I see is Alex, shouldering his way out of the crowd toward me.
“Lena! Wait.”
A brief flash of terror zips through me—for a wild second I think he must be here as part of a patrol, as a raiding group or something—but then I see he’s dressed normally, in jeans and his scuffed-up sneakers with the ink-blue laces and a faded T-shirt.
“What are you doing here?” I stammer out as he catches up to me.
He grins. “Nice to see you too.”
He has left a few feet of distance between us, and I’m glad. In the half-light I can’t make out the color of his eyes and I don’t need to be distracted right now, don’t need to feel the way I did at the labs when he leaned in to whisper to me—the total awareness of the bare inch that separated his mouth from my ear, terror and guilt and excitement all at once.
“I’m serious.” I do my best to scowl at him.
His smile falters, though it doesn’t disappear entirely. He blows air out of his lips. “I came to hear the music,” he says. “Like everybody else.”
“But you can’t—” I’m struggling to find words, not quite sure how to say what I want to say. “But this is—”
“Illegal?” He shrugs. One strand of hair curls down over his left eye, and when he turns to scan the party it catches the light from the stage and winks that crazy golden-brown color. “It’s okay,” he says, quieter, so that I have to lean forward to hear him over the music. “Nobody’s hurting anybody.”
You don’t know that, I start to say, but the way his words are just edged with sadness stops me. Alex runs a hand through his hair and I make out the small, dark, three-pronged scar behind his left ear, perfectly symmetrical. Maybe he’s only regretful for the things he lost after the cure. Music doesn’t move people the same way, for example, and while he should have been cured of feelings of regret, too, the procedure works differently for everybody, and it isn’t always perfect. That’s why my aunt and uncle sometimes still dream. That’s why my cousin Marcia used to find herself crying hysterically, with no warning or apparent cause.
“So what about you?” He turns back to me and the smile is on again, and the teasing, winking quality of his voice. “What’s your excuse?”
“I didn’t want to come,” I say quickly. “I had to—” I break off, realizing I’m not sure why I had to come. “I had to give something to someone,” I say finally.
He raises his eyebrows, clearly unimpressed. I rush on, “To Hana. My friend. You met her the other day.”
“I remember,” he says. I’ve never seen anyone maintain a smile for so long. It’s like his face is naturally molded that way. “You haven’t said you’re sorry yet, by the way.”
“For what?” The crowd has continued to press closer to the stage, so Alex and I are no longer surrounded by people. Occasionally someone walks by, swinging a bottle of something or singing along, slightly off-key, but for the most part we’re alone.
“For standing me up.” One corner of his mouth hitches higher, and again I have the feeling that he’s sharing some delicious secret with me, that he’s trying to tell me something. “You were a no-show at Back Cove that day.”
I feel a burst of triumph—he was waiting for me at Back Cove! He did want me to meet him! At the same time the anxiety blooms inside of me. He wants something from me. I’m not sure what it is, but I can sense it, and it makes me afraid.
“So?” He folds his arms and rocks back on his heels, still smiling. “Are you going to apologize, or what?”
His easiness and self-assurance aggravate me, just like they did at the labs. It’s so unfair, so different from how I feel, like I’m about to have a heart attack, or melt into a puddle.
“I don’t apologize to liars,” I say, surprised by how steady my voice sounds.
He winces. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Come on.” I roll my eyes, feeling more and more confident by the second. “You lied about seeing me at evaluations. You lied about recognizing me.” I’m ticking his lies off on my fingers. “You lied about even being inside the labs on Evaluation Day.”
“Okay, okay.” He holds up both hands. “I’m sorry, okay? Look, I’m the one who should apologize.” He stares at me for a second and then sighs. “I told you, security isn’t allowed in the labs during evaluations. To keep the process ‘pure’ or something, I don’t know. But I really needed a cup of coffee, and there’s this machine on the second floor of the C complex that has the good kind, with real milk and everything, so I used my code to get in. That’s it. End of story. And afterward I had to lie about it. I could lose my job. And I only work at the stupid labs to subsidize my school . . .” He trails off. For once he doesn’t look confident. He looks worried, like he’s scared I might actually tell on him.