The farmhouse and the old barn are positioned in a dip of land between two hills, a mini valley, like the buildings are sitting right in the middle of somebody’s pursed lips. Because of the way the land slopes I can’t see the farmhouse yet, but as I get closer to the top of the hill the music gets clearer, louder. It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard before. It’s definitely not like the authorized music you can download off LAMM, prim and harmonious and structured, the kind of music that gets played in the band shell in Deering Oaks Park during official summer concerts.
Someone is singing: a beautiful voice as thick and heavy as warm honey, spilling up and down a scale so quickly I feel dizzy just listening. The music that’s playing underneath the voice is strange and clashing and wild—but nothing like the wailing and scratching that I heard Hana playing on her computer earlier today, though I recognize certain similarities, certain patterns of melody and rhythm. That music was metallic and awful, fuzzy through the speakers. This music ebbs and flows, irregular, sad. It reminds me, weirdly, of watching the ocean during a bad storm, the lashing, crashing waves and the spray of sea foam against the docks; the way it takes your breath away, the power and the hugeness of it.
That’s exactly what happens as I listen to the music, as I come up over the final crest of hill, and the half-ruined barn and collapsing farmhouse fan out in front of me, just as the music swells, a wave about to break: The breath leaves my body all at once, and I’m struck dumb by the beauty of it. For a second it seems to me like I really am looking down at the ocean—a sea of people, writhing and dancing in the light spilling down from the barn like shadows twisting up around a flame.
The barn is completely gutted: split open and blackened
by the fire, exposed to the elements. Only half of it is left standing—fragments of three walls, a portion of the roof, part of an elevated platform that must once have been used to store hay. That’s where the band is playing. Thin, stalky trees have begun pushing up in the fields. Older trees, seared completely white from the fire and totally bald of branches and leaves, point like ghostly fingers to the sky.
Fifty feet beyond the barn, I see the low fringe of blackness where the unregulated land begins. The Wilds. I can’t make out the border fence from this distance, but I imagine I can feel it, can sense the electricity buzzing through the air. I’ve only been close to the border fence a few times. Once with my mother years ago, when she made me listen to the zipping of the electricity—a current so strong the air seems to hum with it; you can get a shock just from standing four feet away—and promise never, ever, ever to touch it. She told me that when the cure was first made mandatory, some people tried to escape over the border. They never put more than a hand on the fence before being fried like bacon—I remember that’s exactly what she said, like bacon. Since then I’ve run alongside it with Hana a few times, always careful to stay a good ten feet away.
In the barn, someone has set up speakers and amps and even two enormous, industrial-sized lamps, which make everyone close to the stage look starkly white and hyper-real, and everyone else dark and indistinct, blurry. A song ends and the crowd roars together, an ocean sound. I think, They must be mooching power from a grid on one of the other farms. I think, This is stupid, I’ll never find Hana, there are too many people—and then a new song starts, this one just as wild and beautiful, and it’s like the music reaches across all that black space and pulls at something at the very heart and root of me, plucking me like a string. I head down the hill toward the barn. The weird thing is I don’t choose to do it. My feet just go on their own, as though they’ve happened on some invisible track and it’s all just slide, slide, slide.
For a moment I forget that I’m supposed to be looking for Hana. I feel as though I’m in a dream, where strange things are happening but they don’t feel strange. Everything is cloudy—everything is wrapped in a fog—and I’m filled from head to toe with the single, burning desire to get closer to the music, to hear the music better, for the music to go on and on and on.
“Lena! Oh my God, Lena!”
Hearing my name snaps me out of my daze, and I’m suddenly aware that I’m standing in a huge crush of people.
No. Not just people. Boys. And girls. Uncureds, all of them, without a hint of a blemish on their necks—at least the ones standing close enough for me to scope out. Boys and girls talking. Boys and girls laughing. Boys and girls sharing sips from the same cup. All of a sudden, I think I might faint.
Hana is barreling toward me, elbowing people out of the way, and before I can even open my mouth she’s jumping on top of me like she did at graduation, squeezing me in a hug. I’m so startled I stumble backward, nearly falling over.
“You’re here.” She pulls away and stares at me, keeping her hands on my shoulders. “You’re actually here.”
Another song ends and the lead singer—a tiny girl with long black hair—calls out something about a break. As my brain slowly reboots, I have the dumbest thought: She’s even shorter than I am, and she’s singing in front of five hundred people.