He shrugs, winks, holds out his hand. “Music is overrated,” he says.
I let him draw me toward him so we’re standing chest to chest. He’s so much taller than I am, my head barely reaches his shoulder, and I can feel his heart drumming through his chest, and it gives us all the rhythm we need.
The best part of 37 Brooks is the garden in the back. An enormous overgrown lawn winds between ancient trees, so thick and gnarled and knotted their arms twist overhead and form a canopy. The sunlight filters through the trees and spots the grass a pale white. The whole garden feels as cool and quiet as the library at school. Alex brings a blanket and leaves it inside the house. Whenever we come we take it and shake it out on the grass, and all three of us lie there, sometimes for hours, talking and laughing about nothing in particular. Sometimes Hana or Alex buys some food for a picnic, and one time I manage to swipe three cans of soda and a whole carton of candy bars from my uncle’s store, and we get totally crazy on a sugar high and play games like we did when we were little—hide-and-seek and tag and leapfrog.
Some of the tree trunks are as wide as four garbage pails mashed together, and I take a picture of Hana, laughing, trying to fit her arms around one of them. Alex says the trees must have been here for hundreds of years, which makes Hana and me go silent. That means they were here before—before the borders were shut down, before the walls were put up, before the disease was driven into the Wilds. When he says it, something aches in my throat. I wish I could know what it was like then.
Most of the time, though, Alex and I spend time alone and Hana covers for us. After weeks and weeks of not seeing her at all, suddenly I’m going to Hana’s every single day—and sometimes twice in one day (when I see Alex; and then when I actually see Hana). Fortunately, my aunt doesn’t pry. I think she assumes we had a fight and are making up for lost time now, which is kind of true anyway and suits me fine. I’m happier than I can ever remember being. I’m happier than I can ever remember even dreaming of being, and when I tell Hana I can never in a million years repay her for covering for me, she just crooks her mouth into a smile and says, “You’ve already repaid me.” I’m not sure what she means by that, but I’m just glad to have her back on my side.
When Alex and I are alone we don’t do much—just sit and talk—but still time seems to shrivel away, fast as paper catching on fire. One minute it’s three o’clock in the afternoon. The next minute, I swear, the light is draining from the sky and it’s almost curfew.
Alex tells me stories about his life: about his “aunt” and “uncle,” and some of the work they do, although he’s still pretty vague about what the sympathizers and the Invalids are aiming for and how they’re working to achieve it. That’s okay. I’m not sure I want to know. When he mentions the need for resistance, there is a tightness to his voice, and anger coiling underneath his words. At those times, and only for a few seconds, I’m still afraid of him, still hear the word Invalid drumming in my ear.
But mostly Alex tells me normal stuff, about his aunt’s Frito pie and how whenever they get together his uncle gets a little too tipsy and tells the same stories about the past over and over. They’re both cured, and when I ask him whether they aren’t happier now, he shrugs and says, “They miss the pain, too.”
This seems incredible to me, and he looks at me out of the corner of his eye and says, “That’s when you really lose people, you know. When the pain passes.”
Mostly, though, he talks about the Wilds and the people who live there, and I lay my head on his chest and close my eyes and dream of it: of a woman everyone calls Crazy Caitlin,
who makes enormous wind chimes out of scrap metal and crushed soda cans; of Grandpa Jones, who must be at least ninety but still hikes through the woods every day, foraging for berries and wild animals to eat; of campfires outside and sleeping under the stars and staying up late to sing and talk and eat, while the night sky goes smudgy with smoke.
I know that he still goes back there sometimes, and I know he still considers it his real home. He nearly says as much when I tell him one time that I’m sorry I can’t go home with him to check out his studio on Forsyth Street, where he has lived since starting at the university—if any of his neighbors saw me going into the building with him, we’d be finished. But he corrects me really quickly, “That’s not home.”
He admits that he and the other Invalids have found a way to get in and out of the Wilds, but when I press him for details he clams up.
“Someday maybe you’ll see,” is all he says, and I’m equal parts terrified and thrilled.