Requiem

Alex, I think, but don’t say. Of course my mother doesn’t know the story of Alex. She knows none of my stories.

My mother looks away. For a second I think she will begin to cry again. But she doesn’t. “When I was in that place away, thinking of you—my two beautiful girls—was the only thing that kept me going. It was the only thing that kept me sane.” Her voice holds an edge, an undercurrent of anger, and I think of visiting the Crypts with Alex: the stifling darkness and echoing, inhuman cries; the smell of Ward Six, the cells like cages.

I persist, stubbornly: “It was hard for me, too. I had no one. And you could have come for me after you escaped. You could have told me . . .” My voice breaks, and I swallow. “After you found me at Salvage—we were touching, you could have shown me your face, you could have said something. . . .”

“Lena.” My mom reaches out to touch my face again, but this time she sees me stiffen, and she drops her hand with a sigh. “Did you ever read the Book of Lamentations? Did you read about Mary Magdalene and Joseph? Did you ever wonder why I named you what I did?”

“I read it.” I read the Book of Lamentations at least a dozen times at least; it is the chapter of The Book of Shhh I know the best. I looked for clues, for secret signs from my mother, for whispers from the dead.

The Book of Lamentations is a story of love. More than that: It’s a story of sacrifice.

“I just wanted you to be safe,” my mother says. “Do you understand that? Safe, and happy. Anything I could do . . . even if it meant I couldn’t be with you . . .”

Her voice gets thick and I have to look away from her, to stop the grief from welling up once again. My mother aged in a small square room with only a bit of eked-out hope, words scratched on the walls day by day, to keep her going.

“If I hadn’t believed, if I hadn’t been able to trust that . . . There were many times I thought about . . .” She trails off.

There’s no need for her to finish her sentence. I understand what she means: There were times she wanted to die.

I remember I used to imagine her sometimes standing on the edge of a cliff, coat billowing behind her. I would see her. For one second, she would always remain suspended in the air, hovering, like a vision of an angel. But always, even in my head, the cliff disappeared, and I would see her falling. I remember how I used to have nightmares in which I would stand, helpless, as she walked off the edge of a cliff, coat billowing behind her. For one second, she would remain suspended in the air, hovering, like a vision; then all at once she would fall. I wonder if, in some way, she was reaching out to me through the echoes of space on those nights— whether I could sense her.

For a while we let silence stretch between us. I dry the moisture from my face with my sleeve. Then I stand up. She stands with me. I’m amazed, as I was when I realized that she had been the one to rescue me from Salvage, that we are roughly the same height.

“So what now?” I say. “Are you taking off again?”

“I’ll go where the resistance needs me,” she says.

I look away from her. “So you are leaving,” I say, feeling a dull weight settle in my stomach. Of course. That’s what people do in a disordered world, a world of freedom and choice: They leave when they want. They disappear, they come back, they leave again. And you are left to pick up the pieces on your own.

A free world is also a world of fracture, just like The Book of Shhh warned us. There is more truth in Zombieland than I wanted to believe.

The wind blows my mother’s hair across her forehead. She twists it back behind her ear, a gesture I remember from years ago. “I need to make sure that what happened to me—what I was made to give up—doesn’t happen again to anyone.” She finds my eyes, forcing me to look at her. “But I don’t want to leave,” she adds quietly. “I—I’d like to know you now, Magdalena.”

I cross my arms and shrug, trying to find some of the hardness I have built during my time in the Wilds. “I don’t even know where to begin,” I say.

She spreads her hands, a gesture of submission. “Me neither. But we can, I think. I can, if you’ll let me.” She cracks a small smile. “You’re part of the resistance too, you know. This is what we do: We fight for what matters to us. Right?”

I meet her eyes. They are the clear blue of the sky stretched high above the trees, a high ceiling of color. I remember: Portland beaches, kite flying, macaroni salads, summertime picnics, my mother’s hands, a lullaby-voice singing me to sleep.

“Right,” I say.

We walk back, together, to the safe house.

Hana

The Crypts looks different from the way I remember it.

I’ve been here only once before, on a school trip in third grade. Weirdly, I don’t remember anything about the actual visit, only that Jen Finnegan threw up in the bus afterward, and the air stank like tuna fish, even after the bus driver opened all the windows.

The Crypts is situated at the northern border and backs up onto the Wilds and the Presumpscot River. That’s why so many prisoners were able to escape during the Incidents. The exploding shrapnel took out huge chunks of the border wall; the inmates who made it out of their cells just ran straight into the Wilds.

After the Incidents, the Crypts was rebuilt, and a new, modern wing was attached. The Crypts was always monstrously ugly, but now it is worse than ever: The steel-and-cement addition runs up awkwardly against the old building, made of blackened stone, with its hundreds of tiny barred windows. It’s a sunny day, and beyond the high roof, the sky is a vivid blue. The whole scene feels off to me: This is a place that should never see sunlight.

For a minute, I stand outside the gates, wondering whether I should turn around. I came by municipal bus, which took me all the way from downtown, emptying as we got closer and closer to this, its final destination. At last, I shared the bus with only the driver and a large, heavily made-up woman wearing nurse’s scrubs. As the bus rolled away, kicking up sprays of mud and exhaust, for a wild second I thought of running after it.

But I have to know. I must.

So I follow the nurse as she shuffles toward the guard hut just outside the gates and flashes her ID card. The guard’s eyes flick to me, and I wordlessly pass him a piece of paper.

He scans the photocopy. “Eleanor?”

I nod. I don’t trust myself to speak. In the photocopy, it’s impossible to make out many of her features, or distinguish the dishwater color of her hair. But if he looks too closely, he’ll see the details don’t line up: the height, the eye color.

Fortunately, he doesn’t. “What happened to the original?”

“Went through the dryer,” I reply promptly. “I had to apply to SVS for a replacement.”

He turns his gaze back to the photocopy. I hope he can’t hear my heart, which is beating loud and hard.

Getting the photocopy was no problem. A quick phone call to Mrs. Hargrove this morning, a proposed cup of tea, a twenty-minute chat, an expressed desire to use the bathroom—and then a two-minute detour to Fred’s study instead. I couldn’t risk being identified as Fred’s future wife. If Cassie is here, it’s possible that some of the wardens know Fred, too. And if Fred finds out I’ve been poking around the Crypts . . .

He has already told me I must not ask questions.

“Business?”

“Just . . . visiting.”

The guard grunts. He hands back my paper and waves me on as the gates begin to shudder open. “Check in at the visitors’ desk,” he grunts. The nurse gives me a curious look before scuttling ahead of me across the yard. I can’t imagine there are many visitors here.

That’s the whole point. Lock them up and let them rot.

I cross the yard and pass through a heavy, bolted steel door, and find myself in a claustrophobic entrance