The room feels smaller than ever: stifling and airless.
She turns her gaze to me again. Her calm, steady stare disconcerts me. I will myself not to look away.
“He poisoned me, too,” she says. “I was sick for months and months. He told me, finally. Ricin in my coffee. Just enough to keep me sick, in bed, dependent. He told me so I would know what he was capable of.” She pauses. “He killed his own father, you know.”
For the first time I wonder if maybe, after all, she is crazy. Maybe the nurse was right—maybe she does belong here. The idea is a deliverance. “Fred’s father died during the Incidents,” I say. “He was killed by Invalids.”
She looks at me pityingly. “I know that.” As though she is reading my mind, she adds, “I have eyes and ears. The nurses talk. And of course I was in the old wing, when the bombs exploded.” She looks down at her hands. “Three hundred prisoners escaped. Another dozen were killed. I wasn’t lucky enough to be in either group.”
“But what has that got to do with Fred?” I ask. A whine has crept into my voice.
“Everything,” she says. Her tone turns sharp. “Fred wanted the Incidents to happen. He wanted the bombs to go off. He worked with the Invalids—he helped plan it.”
It can’t be true; I can’t believe her. I won’t. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It makes perfect sense. Fred must have planned it for years. He worked with the DFA; they had the same idea. Fred wanted his father proven wrong about the Invalids—and he wanted his father dead. That way, Fred would be right, and Fred would be mayor.”
A shock runs up my spine when she mentions the DFA. In March, at an enormous rally of Deliria-Free America in New York City, Invalids attacked, killing thirty citizens and injuring countless more. Everyone compared it to the Incidents, and for weeks, security everywhere was tightened: IDs scanned, vehicles searched, homes raided, and patrols on the streets doubled.
But there were other whispers too—some people said that Thomas Fineman, the DFA’s president, had known in advance what would happen, and had even allowed it. Then, two weeks later, Thomas Fineman was assasinated.
I don’t know what to believe. My chest is aching with a feeling I can’t remember how to name.
“I liked Mr. Hargrove,” Cassandra says. “He felt sorry for me. He knew what his son was. He used to visit every so often, after Fred had me locked up. Fred got people to testify that I was a lunatic. Friends. Doctors. They committed me to life in this place.” She gestures toward the small white room, her burial place. “But Mr. Hargrove knew I wasn’t crazy. He told me stories about the world outside. He found my mother and father a place to live in Deering Highlands. Fred wanted them silenced too. He must have thought I’d told them…he must have thought they knew what I knew.” She shakes her head. “But I hadn’t. They didn’t.”
So Cassie’s parents were forced into the Highlands, like Lena’s family.
“I’m sorry,” I say. It’s the only thing I can think of, even though I know how flimsy it sounds.
Cassie doesn’t seem to hear me. “That day—when the bombs went off—Mr. Hargrove was visiting. He brought me chocolate.” She turns to the window. I wonder what she is thinking; she is perfectly still again, her profile just traced with dull sunlight. “I heard he died trying to restore order. Then I felt sorry for him. Funny, isn’t it? But I guess Fred got us both in the end.”
“Here I am! Better late than never!”
Jan’s voice makes me jump. I spin around; she is pushing through the door, carrying a plastic tray with a plastic cup of water and a small plastic bowl of lumpy oatmeal. I step out of the way as she plunks the tray down on the cot. I notice that the silverware is plastic, too. Of course, there would be no metal. No knives, either.
I think of the man swinging by his shoelaces, close my eyes, and think of the bay instead. The image breaks away on the waves. I open my eyes again.
“So what do you think?” Jan says brightly. “You want to tuck in now?”
“Actually, I think I’ll wait,” Cass says softly. Her gaze is still directed out the window. “I’m not hungry anymore.”
Jan looks at me and rolls her eyes as though to say, Crazies.
Lena
We waste no time in leaving the safe house, now that it’s been decided: We go to Portland as a group, to join with the resistance there and add our strength to the agitators. Something large is in the works, but Cap and Max refuse to say a word about it, and my mother claims they all know only the sketchiest details, anyway. Now that the wall has come down between us, I’m no longer so resistant to returning to Portland. In fact, a small part of me even looks forward to it.