“You could. People have been arrested for less.” She knows this too. She knows, and doesn’t care.
“Yeah, well, I’m sick of it.” Hana’s voice trembles a little, which throws me. I’ve never heard her sound less than certain.
“We shouldn’t even be talking about this. Someone could be—”
“Someone could be listening?” She cuts me off, finishes my sentence for me. “God, Lena. I’m sick of that, too. Aren’t you? Sick of always checking your back, looking behind you, watching what you say, think, do. I can’t—I can’t breathe, I can’t sleep, I can’t move. I feel like there are walls everywhere. Everywhere I go—bam! There’s a wall. Everything I want—bam! Another wall.”
She rakes a hand through her hair. For once, she doesn’t look pretty and in control. She looks pale and unhappy, and her expression reminds me of something, but I can’t place it right away.
“It’s for our own protection,” I say, wishing I sounded more confident. I’ve never been good in a fight. “Everything will get better once we’re—”
Again, she jumps in. “Once we’re cured?” She laughs, a short barking sound with no humor in it, but at least she doesn’t contradict me directly. “Right. That’s what everybody says.”
All of a sudden it hits me: She reminds me of the animals we saw once on a class trip to the slaughterhouse. All the cows were lined up, packed in their stalls, staring at us mutely as we walked by, with that same look in their eyes, fear and resignation and something else. Desperation. I’m really scared, then, truly terrified for her.
But when she speaks again, she sounds a little bit calmer. “Maybe it will. Get better, I mean, once we’re cured. But until then . . . This is our last chance, Lena. Our last chance to do anything. Our last chance to choose.”
There’s the word from Evaluation Day again—choose—but I nod because I don’t want to set her off again. “So what are you going to do?”
She looks away, biting her lip, and I can tell she’s debating whether or not to trust me. “There’s this party tonight . . .”
“What?” Zoom. The fear floods back in.
She rushes on. “It’s something I found on one of the floaters—it’s a music thing, a few bands playing out by the border in Stroudwater, on one of the farms.”
“You can’t be serious. You’re not—you’re not actually going, right? You’re not even thinking about it.”
“It’s safe, okay? I promise. These websites . . . it’s really amazing, Lena, I swear you’d be into it if you looked. They’re hidden. Links, usually, embedded on normal pages, approved government stuff, but I don’t know, somehow you can tell they don’t feel right, you know? They don’t belong.”
I grasp at a single word. “Safe? How can it be safe? That guy you met—the censor—his whole job is to track down people who are stupid enough to post these things—”
“They’re not stupid, they’re incredibly smart, actually—”
“Not to mention the regulators and patrols and the youth guard and curfew and segregation and just about everything else that makes this one of the worst ideas—”
“Fine.” Hana raises her arms and brings them slapping down against her thighs. The noise is so loud it makes me jump. “Fine. So it’s a bad idea. So it’s risky. You know what? I don’t care.”
For a second there’s silence. We’re glaring at each other, and the air between us feels charged and dangerous, a thin electrical coil, ready to explode.
“What about me?” I say finally, struggling to keep my voice from shaking.
“You’re welcome to come. Ten thirty, Roaring Brook Farms, Stroudwater. Music. Dancing. You know—fun. The stuff we’re supposed to be having, before they cut out half of our brain.”
I ignore the last part of her comment. “I don’t think so, Hana. In case you’ve forgotten, we have other plans for tonight. Have had plans for tonight for, oh, the past fifteen years.”
“Yeah, well, things change.” She turns her back to me, but I feel like she’s reached out and punched me in the stomach.
“Fine.” My throat is squeezing up. This time I know it’s the real deal, and I’m on the verge of crying. I go over to her bed and start gathering up my stuff. Of course my bag has spilled over on its side, and now her comforter is covered with little scraps of paper and gum wrappers and coins and pens. I start stuffing these back into my bag, fighting back the tears. “Go ahead. Do whatever you want tonight. I don’t care.”
Maybe Hana feels bad, because her voice softens a little bit. “Seriously, Lena. You should think about coming. We won’t get in any trouble, I promise.”
“You can’t promise that.” I take a deep breath, wishing my voice would stop quivering. “You don’t know that. You can’t be positive. “