“We gathered the others in the chapel that evening. Sarah sat at the organ and Carol tuned her ukulele and they played ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’ and ‘Let It Be’ and we lit up like sparks blowing from a bonfire. Their voices were so smoky and sweet. I have never been so drunk or so happy. I could feel myself letting go of my identity, the way you might put down a heavy suitcase you no longer need carry. It was, I imagine, how bees feel. Not like an individual at all, but like one humming note in a whole world of perfect, useful music.
“After we were all sung out, Tom spoke to us. That seemed natural. He told us things we knew but needed to hear. He told us we were lucky for every minute we had together, and I knew it was true. He told us it was a blessing, to be able to feel each other’s love and happiness so intensely, right on our skin, and I said amen, and so did all the rest of us. He told us that in the darkest moments of history, kindness was the only light you had to find your way to safety, and I know I cried to hear him say it. I feel a little like crying now, just remembering it. It’s easy to dismiss religion as bloody, cruel, and tribal. I’ve done it myself. But it isn’t religion that’s wired that way—it’s man himself. At bottom every faith is a form of instruction in common decency. Different textbooks in the same class. Don’t they all teach that to do for others feels better than to do for yourself? That someone else’s happiness need not mean less happiness for you?
“Only Sarah did not shine, because only Sarah did not have the Dragonscale. But she knew as well as the rest of us that we had solved something. That we had found a working cure. We didn’t need a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. The sugar was the medicine. Sarah sang with us, and watched us turn on, and kept her own counsel. I had been with her long enough by then that I should’ve seen what was coming. What she would do.
“But I didn’t see what was coming because I was drunk most of the time. Not drunk on booze, you understand. Drunk on that rush of light and pleasure that came over me when we all sang together. Allie began to go out at night in her Captain America mask, to spy on friends, kids she knew from school. If she saw they were sick with the ’scale, she’d recruit them and their families. Tell them there was a way to stay alive. That the infection didn’t have to be a death sentence. We had a dozen new people coming in every week.
“Sarah sent me along with Allie to make sure she got back to camp in one piece. I took to dressing as a fireman, because I discovered that in a world full of things burning up, no one looks at a fireman twice. I couldn’t even remember my own name for most of June, I was so drunk on the Bright. I was just . . . just the Fireman.” He coughed, weakly. A fragrant puff of smoke blew from his mouth, turned into the ghost of a toy-sized fire truck, and dissolved.
“Show-off,” Harper said. “What happened next?”
“Sarah died,” he said, and bent forward and surprised Harper by kissing her nose. “The end.”
BOOK SEVEN
NO STRAIGHT ARROW
MARCH
1
From the diary of Harold Cross:
AUGUST 28th:
MARTHA QUINN IS REAL.
HAS A WEBSITE, MARTHAQUINNINMAINE. THEY PROCESS YOU IN MACHIAS, CLEAN YOU UP, GIVE YOU FRESH CLOTHES AND A SQUARE MEAL, AND TAKE YOU OVER ON A LOBSTER BOAT. THEY’VE GOT WHAT’S LEFT OF THE CDC THERE WORKING ON A CURE.
I’M GOING. TOMORROW OR THE DAY AFTER. IF I STAY HERE, SOONER OR LATER, I’LL BURN TO DEATH. THE OTHERS ARE GETTING THE BENEFIT OF SOCIAL CONNECTION, BUT I’M NOT, AND WITHOUT REGULAR DOSES OF OXYTOCIN, MY BIOCHEMICAL FUSE IS STILL HISSING.
I WON’T BE ASKING ANYONE’S PERMISSION. I KNOW I WON’T GET IT. CAROL HAS ME UNDER PRETTY TIGHT WATCH. THE ONLY THING I’VE GOT GOING FOR ME IS JR. HE’S ARRANGED TO SLIP ME OUT OF HERE SO I CAN GET TO THE CABIN TONIGHT AND SEND MY LAST E-MAILS.
NOT SURE HOW I’LL MAKE IT SO FAR NORTH WHAT WITH ALL OF SOUTHERN MAINE ON FIRE BUT JR SAYS MAYBE A BOAT. I CAN’T WAIT TO SAY GOOD-BYE TO THIS SHITHOLE FOREVER.
2
Her first thought was: It can’t be that easy.
She turned the page, hoping for more, but that was it. After that, the notebook was blank.
Rain fell. It hammered on the tin roof in a continuous rattle and crash. The rain had been falling ten hours straight. Sometimes trees fell, too. Harper had woken to the sound of one going over somewhere close by, with a great creak and a floor-shaking smash. The wind struck the infirmary again and again, one battering rush after another. It was like the end of the world out there. But then every day was like the end of the world now, come rain or shine.
Harper had not imagined there was anything left in the diary to learn, let alone shock her. Martha Quinn was real. The island was a real place.
Nick was watching her carefully: no surprise there. Harper had long since quit trying to keep the notebook secret from him. It was, in the narrow confines of the ward, impossible anyway. She met his intense, unwavering, curious gaze. He did not ask if she had read something important. He knew.
It was a Lookout named Chuck Cargill in the waiting room that night. He had walked in on Harper two hours ago, when she had her sweater off and was rubbing lotion on the pink curve of her stupendous belly. She had a bra on, but Cargill was nevertheless so alarmed to find her in a state of undress he had dropped the breakfast tray he was carrying on the counter with a clatter, as if it had suddenly become too hot to handle. He reeled backward, stammering some sort of incoherent apology, and ducked back out through the curtain. Ever since, he had been careful to clear his throat, knock on the doorframe, and ask for permission to come in. Harper thought he might never be able to make eye contact with her again.
She also thought if she wanted to get the phone down out of the ceiling, he probably wouldn’t walk in on her while she was using it. No one else would, either. Even Ben Patchett wasn’t going to do spot inspections on a night like tonight.
Harper turned the straight-backed chair around and climbed unsteadily onto it. She reached into the ceiling, found the cell phone, and climbed back down. Nick stared at her—at it—with wide, fascinated, wondering eyes. She gestured with her head: Come over here.
They walked to the far end of the ward, putting as much distance as they could between themselves and the curtain into the waiting area. Harper and Nick sat down side by side on the edge of Father Storey’s cot, with their backs to the doorway into the next room. If Cargill did suddenly walk in, the phone would be concealed by their bodies and she might have time to shut it down and stick it under the mattress.
She squeezed the power button. The screen flashed gray, then a deep obsidian black. The battery life was a whopping 9 percent.
Harper pulled up the browser and loaded marthaquinninmaine.
3
Music played, tinny and flat through the little iPhone speakers, barely audible over the rain, but no less lovely for all of that. It was a song Harper used to perform herself when she was eight years old, using a wooden spoon as the microphone, sliding across the kitchen linoleum in her Miss Piggy slippers. Ric Ocasek sang that this one girl was just what he needed, over a melody that sproing-sproinged along like a Slinky walking down a staircase.
Photos loaded, but slowly.