Steve sits next to me. I’m uncomfortably aware of every part of our skin that is touching: knees, elbows, forearms. My heart starts beating hard, and once again I am having trouble breathing.
“You’re beautiful,” he says. Before I can react, he finds my chin with his hand and tilts me toward him, and then we’re kissing again. This time, I remember to kiss back, to move my mouth against his, and I am not so surprised when his tongue finds the inside of my mouth, although the feeling is still foreign and not totally pleasant. He is breathing hard, twisting his fingers through my hair, so I think he must be enjoying himself—I must be doing it correctly.
His fingers graze my thigh, and then, slowly, he lowers his hand, begins massaging my thigh, working up toward my hips. All my feeling, all my concentration, flows down to that spot and to the way my skin feels, as though it is burning in response to his touch. This has to be deliria. Doesn’t it? This must be what love feels like, what everyone has warned me about. My mind is spinning uselessly, and I’m trying to remember the symptoms of deliria listed in The Book of Shhh, as Steve’s hand moves higher and his breathing gets even more desperate. His tongue is so deep in my mouth, I’m worried I might choke.
Suddenly all I can think about is a line from the Book of Lamentations: What glitters may not be gold; and even wolves may smile; and fools will be led by promises to their deaths.
“Wait,” I say, pushing away from him.
“What’s wrong?” Steve traces his finger from my cheekbone to my chin. His eyes are on my mouth.
Preoccupation—difficulty concentrating. A symptom comes back to me finally. “Do you think about me?” I blurt. “I mean, have you thought about me?”
“All the time.” His answer comes quickly, easily. This should make me happy but I feel more confused than ever. Somehow I always imagined that I would know if the disease was taking root—that I would feel it instinctively, a shift deep in my blood. But this is simply tension, and shredding anxiety, and the occasional burst of good feeling.
“Relax, Hana,” he says. He kisses my neck, moves his mouth to my ear, and I try to do as he says and let go of the warmth traveling from my chest to my stomach. But I can’t stop the questions; they surge, pressing closely in the dark.
“What’s going to happen to us?” I say.
He pulls away, sighing, and rubs his eyes. “I don’t know what you—” he begins, and then breaks off with a small exclamation. “Holy shit! Look, Hana. Fireflies.”
I turn in the direction he is looking. For a moment, I see nothing. Then all at once, several flares of white light burst in midair, one after another. As I watch, more and more of them float out of the blackness—brief sparks circling dizzyingly around one another, then sinking once again into the dark, a hypnotic pattern of illumination and extinguishment.
Out of nowhere, I feel a strong surge of hope, and I find myself laughing. I reach for his hand and tighten my fingers around his. “Maybe it’s a sign,” I say.
“Maybe,” he says, and leans in to kiss me again, and so my question—What’s going to happen to us?—goes unanswered.
Chapter Three
I wake to blinding sunshine and a searing pain in my head; I forgot to draw the shades last night. There’s a sour taste in my mouth. I move clumsily to the bathroom, brush my teeth, and splash water on my face. As I straighten up, I see it: a blue-purple blemish on my neck just below my right ear, a tiny constellation of bruised and broken capillaries.
I don’t believe it. He gave me a Devil’s Kiss.
We always got checked for kisses at school; we had to stand in a line with our hair pulled back while Mrs. Brinn examined our chests, necks, collarbones, shoulders. Devil’s Kisses are a sign of illegal activity—and a symptom, too, of the disease taking root, spreading through your bloodstream. Last year, when Willow Marks was caught in Deering Oaks Park with an uncured boy, the story was that she’d been under surveillance for weeks, after her mom had noticed a Devil’s Kiss on her shoulder. Willow was taken out of school to get cured a full eight months before her scheduled procedure, and I haven’t seen her since.