I’m used to a feeling of doubleness, of thinking one thing and having to do another, a constant tug-of-war. But somehow Hana has fallen cleanly away into the double half, the other world, the world of unmentionable thoughts and things and people.
Is it possible that all this time I’ve been living my life, studying for tests, taking long runs with Hana—and this other world has just existed, running alongside and underneath mine, alive, ready to sneak out of the shadows and the alleyways as soon as the sun goes down? Illegal parties, unapproved music, people touching one another with no fear of the disease, with no fear for themselves.
A world without fear. Impossible.
And even though I’m standing in the middle of the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen in my life, I suddenly feel very alone.
“Stay,” Hana says quietly. Even though it’s a command, there’s a hesitation in her voice, like she’s asking a question. “You can catch the second set.”
I shake my head. I wish I hadn’t come. I wish I hadn’t seen this. I wish I didn’t know what I know now, could wake up tomorrow and ride over to Hana’s house, could lie out at Eastern Prom with her and complain about how boring summers are, like we always do. Could believe that nothing had changed. “I’m going to go,” I say, wishing my voice didn’t come out shaky. “It’s all right, though. You can stay.”
The second I say it, I realize she never offered to come back with me. She’s looking at me with the weirdest mixture of regret and pity.
“I can come back with you if you want,” she says, but I can tell she’s only offering now to make me feel better.
“No, no. I’ll be fine.” My cheeks are burning and I take
a step back, desperate to get out of there. I bump against someone—a boy—who turns and smiles at me. I step quickly away from him.
“Lena, wait.” Hana goes to grab me again. Even though she already has a drink, I shove my cup in her free hand so she has to pause, momentarily frowning as she tries to juggle both drinks into the crook of an elbow, and in that second I dance backward out of her reach.
“I’ll be fine, I promise. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” Then I’m slipping through a narrow space between two people—that’s the only benefit of being five-two, you have a good vantage point on all the in-between spaces—and before I know it, Hana has dropped behind me, swallowed up by the crowd. I weave a path away from the barn, keeping my eyes down, hoping my cheeks cool off fast.
Images swirl by, a blur, making me feel like I’m dreaming again. Boy. Girl. Boy. Girl. Laughing, shoving each other, touching each other’s hair. I’ve never, not once in my whole life, felt so different and out of place. There’s a high, mechanized shriek, and then the band starts playing again, but this time the music does nothing for me. I don’t even pause. I just keep walking, heading for the hill, imagining the cool silence of the starlit fields, the familiar dark streets of Portland, the regular rhythm of the patrols, marching quietly in sync, the feedback from the regulators’ walkie-talkies—regular, normal, familiar, mine.
Finally the crowd starts thinning. It was hot, pressed up against so many people, and the breeze stings my skin, cools my cheeks. I’ve started to calm down a little, and at the edge of the crowd I allow myself one look back at the stage. The barn, open to the sky and the night and glowing white with light, reminds me of a palm cupping a small bit of fire.
“Lena!”
It’s strange how I instantly recognize the voice even though I’ve heard it only once before, for ten minutes, fifteen tops—it’s the laughter that runs underneath it, like someone leaning in to let you in on a really good secret in the middle of a really boring class. Everything freezes. The blood stops flowing in my veins. My breath stops coming. For a second even the music falls away and all I hear is something steady and quiet and pretty, like the distant beat of a drum, and I think, I’m hearing my heart, except I know that’s impossible, because my heart has stopped too. My vision does its camera-zoom focus again and all I see is Alex, shouldering his way out of the crowd toward me.
“Lena! Wait.”
A brief flash of terror zips through me—for a wild second I think he must be here as part of a patrol, as a raiding group or something—but then I see he’s dressed normally, in jeans and his scuffed-up sneakers with the ink-blue laces and a faded T-shirt.
“What are you doing here?” I stammer out as he catches up to me.
He grins. “Nice to see you too.”
He has left a few feet of distance between us, and I’m glad. In the half-light I can’t make out the color of his eyes and I don’t need to be distracted right now, don’t need to feel the way I did at the labs when he leaned in to whisper to me—the total awareness of the bare inch that separated his mouth from my ear, terror and guilt and excitement all at once.
“I’m serious.” I do my best to scowl at him.