Family members sit in white plastic folding chairs, under a cream white tarp fluttering with flags: the school flag, the city flag, the state flag, the American flag. They applaud politely as each graduate goes up to receive her diploma.
When it’s my turn I scan the audience, looking for my aunt and my sister, but I’m so nervous about tripping and falling as I take my place on the stage and reach for the diploma in Principal McIntosh’s hand, I can’t see anything but color—green, blue, white, a mess of pink and brown faces—or make out any individual sounds beyond the shush of clapping hands. Only Hana’s voice, loud and clear as a bell:
“Hallelujah, Halena!” That’s our special pump-you-up chant that we used to do before track meets and tests, a combination of both of our names.
Afterward we line up to take individual portraits with our diplomas. An official photographer has been hired, and a royal blue backdrop set up in the middle of the soccer field, where we all stand and pose. We’re too excited to take the pictures seriously, though. People keep doubling over laughing in their pictures, so all you can see is the crown of their heads.
When it’s my turn for a picture, at the very last second Hana jumps in and throws one arm around my shoulders, and the photographer is so startled he presses down on the shutter anyway. Click! There we are: I’m turning to Hana, mouth open, surprised, about to laugh. She’s a full head taller than me, has her eyes shut and her mouth open. I really do think there was something special about that day, something golden and maybe even magic, because even though my face was all red and my hair looked sticky on my forehead, it’s like Hana rubbed off on me a little bit—because despite everything, and just in that one picture, I look pretty. More than pretty. Beautiful, even.
The school band keeps playing, mostly in tune, and the music floats across the field and is echoed by the birds wheeling in the sky. It’s like something lifts in that moment, some huge pressure or divide, and before I know what’s happening all my classmates are crushing together in a huge hug, jumping up and down and screaming, “We did it! We did it! We did it!” And none of the parents or teachers try to separate us. As we start to break away I see them encircling us, watching with patient expressions, hands folded. I catch my aunt’s gaze and my stomach does a weird twist and I know that she, like everyone else, is giving us this moment—our last moment together, before things change for good and forever.
And things will change—are changing, even at that second. As the group dissolves into clumps of students, and the clumps dissolve into individuals, I notice Theresa Grass and Morgan Dell already starting across the lawn toward the street. They are each walking with their families, heads down, without once looking back. They haven’t been celebrating with us, I realize, and it occurs to me I haven’t seen Eleanor Rana or Annie Hahn or the other cureds either. They must have already gone home. A curious ache throbs in the back of my throat, even though of course this is how things are: Everything ends, people move on, they don’t look back. It’s how they should be.
I catch sight of Rachel through the crowd and go running up to her, suddenly eager to be next to her, wishing she would reach down and ruffle my hair like she used to when I was very little, and say, “Good job, Loony,” her old nickname for me.
“Rachel!” I’m breathless for no reason, and I have trouble squeezing the words out. I’m so happy to see her I feel like I could burst into tears. I don’t though, obviously. “You came.”
“Of course I came.” She smiles at me. “You’re my only sister, remember?”
She passes me a bouquet of daisies she has brought with her, loosely wrapped in brown paper. “Congratulations, Lena.”
I stick my face in the flowers and inhale, trying to fight down the urge to reach out and hug her. For a second we just stand there, blinking at each other, and then she reaches out to me. I’m sure she’s going to put her arms around me for old times’ sake, or at the very least give me a one-armed squeeze.
Instead she just flicks a bang off my forehead. “Gross,” she says, still smiling. “You’re all sweaty.”
It’s stupid and immature to feel disappointed, but I do. “It’s the gown,” I say, and realize that yes, that must be the problem: The gown is what’s choking me, stifling me, making it hard to breathe.
“Come on,” she says. “Aunt Carol will want to congratulate you.”
Aunt Carol is standing at the field’s periphery with my uncle, Grace, and Jenny, talking to Mrs. Springer, my history teacher. I fall into step beside Rachel.
She is only a few inches taller than I am and we walk together, in sync, but separated by three feet of space. She is quiet. I can tell she’s already wondering when she can go home and get on with her life.
I let myself look back once. I can’t help it. I watch the girls circulating in their orange gowns like flames. Everything seems to zoom back, recede away at once. All the voices intermingle and become indistinguishable from one another—like the constant white noise of the ocean running underneath the rhythm of the Portland streets, so constant you hardly notice it. Everything looks stark and vivid and frozen, as though drawn precisely and outlined in inkparents’ smiles frozen, camera flashes blinding, mouths open and white teeth glistening, dark glossy hair and deep blue sky and unrelenting light, everyone drowning in light—everything so clear and perfect I’m sure it must already be a memory, or a dream.
Chapter Eight
During the summers I have to help my uncle at the Stop-N-Save on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, mostly stocking shelves and working behind the deli counter and occasionally helping with filing and accounting in the little office behind the cereal and dry goods aisle. Thankfully, in late June, Andrew Marcus gets cured and reassigned to a permanent position at another grocery store.
On the Fourth of July I head to Hana’s house in the morning. Every year we go to see the fireworks at the Eastern Promenade. A band is always playing and vendors set up their carts, selling fried meat on skewers and corn on the cob and apple pie floating in a puddle of ice cream, served in little paper boats. The Fourth of July—the day of our independence, the day we commemorate the closing of our nation’s border forever—is one of my favorite holidays. I love the music that pipes through the streets, love the way the steam rising thick from the grills makes the streets look cloudy, the people shadowy and unclear. I especially love the temporary extension of curfew: Instead of being home at nine o’clock, all uncureds are allowed to stay out until eleven. In recent years Hana and I
