But I am going to keep going. I am going to soar, and soar, and break away—up, up, up into the thundering noise and the wind, like a bird being sucked into the sky.
We pause at the beginning of her block, where I stood just the other day, watching her move happily and unself-consciously down the sidewalk with Grace. The flyers still paper the street, although today there is no wind. They hang perfectly, corners aligned, the emblazoned governmental seal running like a typographical error hundreds of times along the two sides of the street. Lena’s other cousin, Jenny, is playing soccer with some kids at the end of the block.
I hang back. I don’t want to be spotted. Jenny knows me, and she’s smart. She’ll ask me why I don’t come around anymore, she’ll stare at me with her hard, laughing eyes, and she’ll know—she’ll sense—that Lena and I are no longer friends, that Hana Trent is evaporating, like water in the noon sun.
“You know where to find me,” Lena is saying, gesturing casually down the street. You know where to find me. Like that, I am dismissed. And suddenly I no longer feel as though I am dreaming, or floating. A dead weight fills me, dragging me back into reality, back into the sun and the smell of garbage and the shrill cries of the kids playing soccer in the street, and Lena’s face, composed, neutral, as though she has already been cured, as though we have never meant a thing to each other in our lives.
The weight is rising through my chest, and I know that at any second, I’m going to begin crying.
“Okay, then. See you around,” I say quickly, concealing the break in my voice with a cough and a wave. I turn around and start walking quickly, as the world begins to spiral together into a wash of color, like liquid being spun down a drain. I jam my sunglasses down onto my nose.
“Okay. See you,” Lena says.
The tide is pushing from my chest to my throat now, carrying with it the urge to turn around and call out to her, to tell her I miss her. My mouth is full of the sour taste that rises up with those old, deep words, and I can feel the muscles in my throat flexing, trying to press them back and down. But the urge becomes unbearable, and without intending to, I find that I am spinning around, calling her name.
She has already made it back to her house. She pauses with her hand on the gate. She doesn’t say a word; she just stares at me blankly, as though in the time it has taken her to walk the twenty feet, she has already forgotten who I am.
“Never mind,” I call out, and this time when I turn around, I do not hesitate or look back.
The note from Steve arrived earlier this morning inside a rolled-up advertisement for Underground Pizza—Grand Opening TONIGHT!, which had been wedged into one of the narrow iron scrolls on our front gate. The note was only three words—Please be there—and included only his initials, presumably so in case it had been discovered by my parents or a regulator instead, neither of us would be implicated. On the back of the advertisement was a crudely drawn map showing only a single street name: Tanglewild Lane, also in Deering Highlands.
This time, there is no need to sneak out. My parents have gone to a fund-raiser tonight; the Portland Conservation Society is having their annual dinner-dance. Angelica’s parents are attending too. This makes things far easier. Rather than sneak through the streets after curfew, Angelica and I meet in the Highlands early. She has brought a half bottle of wine and some bread and cheese, and she is red-faced and excited. We sit on the porch of a now-shuttered mansion and eat our dinner while the sun breaks into waves of red and pink beyond the tree line, and finally ebbs away altogether.
Then, at half past nine, we make our way toward Tanglewild.
Neither of us has the exact address, but it doesn’t take us long to locate the house. Tanglewild is only a two-block street, mostly wooded, with a few peaked roofs rising up—just barely visible, silhouetted against the deepening purple sky—indicating houses set back behind the trees. The night is remarkably still, and it is easy to pick out the drumbeat thrumming underneath the noise of the crickets. We turn down a long, narrow drive, its pavement full of fissures, which the moss and the grass have begun to colonize. Angelica takes her hair down, then places it in a ponytail, then once again shakes it loose. I feel a deep flash of pity for her, followed by a squeeze of fear.
Angelica’s cure is scheduled for next week.