Requiem

myself.

Thank you for the crystal sugar bowl. It will look perfect on the dining room table.

The doorbell rings. I hear my mother head to the door, and the murmur of muffled voices. A moment later, she comes into the room, red-faced, agitated.

“Fred,” she says as he steps into the room behind her.

“Thank you, Evelyn,” he says in a clipped voice, and she takes it as a cue to leave us. She closes the door behind her.

“Hi.” I climb to my feet, wishing I were wearing something other than an old T-shirt and ratty shorts. Fred is dressed in dark jeans and a white button-down, sleeves rolled to the elbows. I feel his eyes sweep over me, absorbing my messy hair, the rip in the hem of my shorts, the fact that I am wearing no makeup. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

He doesn’t say anything. There are two Freds looking at me now, screen-Fred and the real thing. Screen-Fred is smiling, leaning forward, easy and relaxed. The real Fred stands stiffly, glaring at me.

“Is—is something wrong?” I say after the silence has extended several seconds. I cross the room to the TV and turn it off, partly so I don’t have to watch Fred watching me, and partly because I can’t stand the double vision.

When I turn around again, I suck in a quick breath. Fred has moved closer, silently, and he is now standing a mere six inches away, face white and furious. I have never seen him look this way before.

“What—?” I start to say, but he cuts me off.

“What the hell is this?” He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a folded manila envelope, throws it down on the glass coffee table. The motion sends several photographs fanning out of the envelope and onto the table.

There I am, frozen, preserved in a camera lens: Click. Walking, head down, next to a dilapidated house—the Tiddles’ house in Deering Highlands—empty backpack looped over one shoulder. Click. From behind: pushing through a blur of green growth, reaching up to swat away a low-hanging branch. Click. Turning, surprised, scanning the woods behind me, looking for a source of the sound, the soft rustle of movement, the click.

“Do you want to explain to me,” Fred says coldly, “what you were doing in Deering Highlands on Saturday?”

A flash of anger goes through me, and also fear. He knows. “You’re having me followed?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Hana,” he says in the same flat tone. “Ben Bradley’s a friend of mine. He works for the Daily. He was on assignment, and he saw you going into the Highlands. Naturally, he was curious.” His eyes have darkened. They’re the color of wet concrete. “What were you doing?”

“Nothing,” I say quickly. “I was exploring.”

“Exploring.” Fred practically spits the word. “Do you understand, Hana, that the Highlands is a condemned neighborhood? Do you have any idea what kind of people live there? Criminals. Infected people. Sympathizers and rebels. They nest in those buildings like cockroaches.”

“I wasn’t doing anything,” I insist. I wish he wouldn’t stand so close. I’m suddenly paranoid he’ll be able to smell the fear, the lies, the way dogs can.

“You were there,” Fred says. “That’s bad enough.” Although we’re separated by only a few inches, he moves forward. I unconsciously step backward, bumping into the television console behind me. “I’ve just gone on record saying we won’t tolerate any more civil disobedience. Do you know how bad it would look if people found out my pair was sneaking around in Deering Highlands?” Once again, he inches forward. Now I have nowhere to go, and force myself to stay very still. He narrows his eyes. “But maybe that was the whole point. You’re trying to embarrass me. Mess with my plans. Make me seem like an idiot.”

The edge of the TV console is digging into the back of my thighs. “I hate to break it to you, Fred,” I say, “but not everything I do is about you. In fact, most things I do are about me.”

“Cute,” he says.

For a second we stand there, staring at each other. The stupidest thought comes to me: When Fred and I were getting paired, where was this, this hard, cold center, listed among his Characteristics and Qualities?

Fred draws away a few inches, and I allow myself to exhale.

“Things will be very bad for you if you go back there,” he says.

I force myself to meet his gaze. “Is that a warning or a threat?”

“It’s a promise.” His mouth quirks into a small smile. “If you’re not with me, you’re against me. And tolerance is not one of my virtues. Cassie would tell you that, but I’m afraid she doesn’t get much of an audience these days.” He barks a laugh.

“What—what do you mean?” I wish I could keep the tremor from my voice.

He narrows his eyes. I hold my breath. For a second I think he’ll admit it—what he did to her, where she is.

But he simply says, “I won’t have you ruin what I’ve worked so hard to achieve. You will listen to me.”

“I’m your pair,” I say. “Not your dog.”

It happens lightning-quick. He closes the distance between us, and his hand is around my throat, and the breath is crushed out of me. Panic, heavy and black, sits in my chest. Saliva builds in my throat. Can’t breathe.

Fred’s eyes, stony and impenetrable, swim in my vision. “You’re right,” he says. He is totally calm now as he tightens his fingers around my throat. My vision shrinks to a single point: those eyes. For a second, everything goes dark—blink—and then he is there again, staring at me, speaking in that lullaby-voice. “You aren’t my dog. But you will still learn to sit when I tell you. You will still learn to obey.”

“Hello? Anyone here?”

The voice echoes from the foyer. Instantly Fred releases me. I suck in a breath, then start to cough. My eyes are stinging. My lungs stutter in my chest, trying to suck in air.

“Hello?”

The door swings open and Debbie Sayer, my mother’s hairdresser, bursts into the room. “Oh!” she says, and stops. Her face reddens when she sees Fred and me. “Mayor Hargrove,” she says. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. . . .”

“You didn’t interrupt,” Fred says. “I was on my way out.”

“We had an appointment,” Debbie adds uncertainly. She looks at me. I swipe a hand across my eyes; it comes away damp. “We were going to talk styles for the wedding. . . . I didn’t get the time wrong, did I?”

The wedding: It seems absurd now, a bad joke. This is my promised path: with this monster, who can smile in one moment and squeeze my throat in the next. I feel tears pushing at my eyes again and press my palms against my eyelids, willing them back.

“No.” My throat is raw. “You’re right.”

“Are you all right?” Debbie asks me.

“Hana suffers from allergies,” Fred answers smoothly, before I’ve had a chance to respond. “I’ve told her a hundred times to get a prescription. . . .” He reaches out and takes my hand, squeezes my fingers—too hard, but not so much that Debbie will notice. “She’s very stubborn.”

He withdraws his hand. I bring my aching fingers behind my back, flexing them, still fighting the urge to cry. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Fred says, directing a smile toward me. “You haven’t forgotten about the cocktail party, have you?”

“I haven’t forgotten,” I say, refusing to look at him.

“Good.” He crosses the room. In the hall, I hear him begin to whistle.

Debbie begins chattering the moment he is out of earshot. “You’re so lucky. Henry—that’s my pair, you know—looks as though he’s had his face squashed by a rock.” She laughs. “He’s a good match for me, though. We’re big supporters of your husband—or soon-to-be, I guess we should say. Big supporters.”

She places a blow dryer, two brushes, and a translucent bag of pins side by side on top of the thank-you cards and the photographs, which she has not noticed. “You know, Henry met your husband just recently at a fund- raiser. Where is my hair spray?”

I close my eyes. Maybe this is all a dream—Debbie, the wedding, Fred. Maybe I’ll wake up, and it will be last summer, or two summers ago, or five: before any of this was real.