Requiem

“I told them.” She lets out a tiny exhalation, as though saying the words has given her relief. “I’m sorry. I was jealous.”

I can’t speak. I’m swimming through a fog. “Jealous?” I manage to spit out.

“I—I wanted what you had with Alex. I was confused. I didn’t understand what I was doing.” She shakes her head again.

I have a swinging, seasick feeling. It doesn’t make any sense. Hana—golden girl Hana, my best friend, fearless and reckless. I trusted her. I loved her. “You were my best friend.”

“I know.” Again she looks troubled, as though trying to recall the meaning of the words.

“You had everything.” I can’t stop my voice from rising. The anger is vibrating, ripping through me like a live current. “Perfect life. Perfect grades. Everything.” I gesture to the spotless kitchen, to the sunshine pouring over the marble counters like drizzled butter. “I had nothing. He was my one thing. My only—” The sickness surges up and I take a step forward, clenching my fists, blind with rage. “Why couldn’t you let me have it? Why did you have to take it? Why did you always take everything?”

“I told you I was sorry,” Hana says again mechanically. I could shriek with laughter. I could cry, or tear her eyes out.

Instead I reach out and slap her. The current flows down into my hand, into my arm, before I know what I am doing. The noise is unexpectedly loud, and for a moment I’m sure the guards will burst through the door. But no one comes.

Instantly, Hana’s face begins to redden. But she doesn’t cry out. She doesn’t make a sound.

In the silence, I can hear my own breathing—ragged and desperate. I feel tears pushing at the back of my eyes. I’m ashamed and angry and sick all at once.

Hana turns slowly back to face me. She almost looks sad. “I deserved that,” she says.

Suddenly I am overcome with exhaustion. I am tired of fighting, of hitting and being hit. This is the strange way of the world, that people who simply want to love are instead forced to become warriors. It’s the upside-down nature of life. It’s all I can do not to collapse into a chair again.

“I felt terrible afterward,” Hana says in a voice hardly above a whisper. “You should know that. That’s why I helped you escape. I felt”—Hana searches for the right word—“remorse.”

“What about now?” I ask her.

Hana lifts a shoulder. “Now I’m cured,” she says. “It’s different.”

“Different how?” For a split second, I wish—more than anything, more than breathing—that I had stayed here, with her, that I had let the knife fall.

“I feel freer,” she says. Whatever I was expecting her to say, it isn’t this. She must sense that I’m surprised, because she goes on. “Everything’s kind of . . . muffled. Like hearing sounds underwater. I don’t have to feel things for other people so much.” One side of her mouth quirks into a smile. “Maybe, like you said, I never did.”

My head has started to ache. Over. It’s all over. I just want to curl up in a ball and go to sleep. “I didn’t mean that. You did. Feel things, I mean, for other people. You used to.”

I’m not sure she hears me. She says, almost as an afterthought, “I don’t have to listen to anybody anymore.” Something in her tone is off—triumphant, almost. When I look at her, she smiles. I wonder whether she’s thinking of anyone in particular.

There is the sound of a door opening and closing and the bark of a man’s voice. Hana’s whole face changes. She gets serious again in an instant. “Fred,” she says. She crosses quickly to the swinging doors behind me and pokes her head into the hall tentatively. Then she whirls around to face me, suddenly breathless.

“Come on,” she says. “Quick, while he’s in the study.”

“Come on where?” I say.

Hana looks momentarily irritated. “The back door leads onto the porch. From there you can cut through the garden and onto Dennett. That will take you back to Brighton. Quickly,” she adds. “If he sees you, he’ll kill you.”

I’m so shocked that for a moment I just stand there, gaping at her. “Why?” I say. “Why are you helping me?”

Hana smiles again, but her eyes stay cloudy and unreadable. “You said it yourself. I was your best friend.”

All at once, my energy returns. She’s going to let me go. Before she can change her mind, I move toward her. She presses her back against one of the swinging doors, keeping it open for me, poking her head into the hall every few seconds to make sure the coast is clear. Just as I’m about to scoot past her, I stop.

Jasmine and vanilla. She still wears it after all. She does smell the same.

“Hana,” I say. I’m standing so close to her, I can see the gold threaded through the blue of her eyes. I lick my lips. “There’s a bomb.”

She jerks back a fraction of an inch. “What?”

I don’t have time to regret what I’m saying. “Here. Somewhere in the house. Get out of here, okay? Get yourself out.” She’ll take Fred, too, and the explosion will be a failure, but I don’t care. I loved Hana once, and she is helping me now. I owe this to her.

Once again, her expression is unreadable. “How much time?” she asks abruptly.

I shake my head. “Ten, fifteen minutes tops.”

She nods to show that she has understood. I move past her, into the darkness of the hallway. She stays where she is, pressed against the swinging doors, rigid as a statue. She lifts her chin toward the back door.

Just as I’m placing a hand on a door handle, she calls to me in a whisper.

“I almost forgot.” She moves toward me, her dress rustling, and for a moment I am struck by the impression that she is a ghost. “Grace is in the Highlands. 31 Wynnewood Road. They’re living there now.”

I stare at her. Somewhere, deep inside this stranger, my best friend is buried. “Hana—” I start to say.

She cuts me off. “Don’t thank me,” she says in a low voice. “Just go.”

Impulsively, without thinking about what I am doing, I reach out and seize her hand. Two long pulses, two short ones. Our old signal.

Hana looks startled; then, slowly, her face relaxes. For just one second, she shines as though lit up by a torch from within. “I remember. . . .” she whispers.

A door slams somewhere. Hana wrenches away, looking suddenly afraid. She pivots me around and pushes me toward the door.

“Go,” she says, and I do. I don’t look back.

Hana

I have counted thirty-three seconds on the clock when Fred bursts into the kitchen, red-faced.

“Where is she?” His armpits are wet with sweat, and his hair—so carefully combed and gelled at the ceremony—is a mess.

I’m tempted to ask him who he means, but I know it will only infuriate him. “Escaped,” I say.

“What do you mean? Marcus told me—”

“She hit me,” I say. I hope that Lena left a mark when she slapped me. “I—I cracked my head on the wall. She ran.”

“Shit.” Fred rakes a hand through his hair, steps out into the hall, and bellows for the guards. Then he turns back to me. “Why the hell didn’t you let Marcus take care of it? Why were you alone with her in the first place?”

“I wanted information,” I say. “I thought she was more likely to give it to me alone.”

“Shit,” Fred says again. The more worked up he gets, strangely, the calmer I feel.

“What’s going on, Fred?”

He kicks a chair suddenly, sending it skittering across the kitchen. “Goddamn chaos, that’s what’s going on.” He can’t stop moving; he clenches his fist, and for a moment, I think he might go for me, just to have something to punch. “There must be a thousand people rioting. Some of them Invalids. Some of them just kids. Stupid, stupid. . . . If they knew—”