popping out of my mouth.
“I didn’t hate her,” Hana says, like she’s trying to explain algebra to a two-year-old. “I didn’t know her. I always thought she was a bitch, you know?
Because of her clothes and stuff. But that’s all her parents. They’re super strict, really protective and stuff.” Hana shakes her head. “She’s not like that at all.
She’s… different.”
That word seems to vibrate in the air for a second: different. For a second I have an image of Hana and Angelica, arms linked, trying not to laugh, sneaking through the streets after curfew: Angelica fearless and beautiful and fun, just like Hana. I push the image out of my head. Down the street one of the kids kicks the can, hard. It skitters between two dented silver garbage cans that have been set out in the road, a makeshift goal. Half of the kids start jumping up and down, pumping their fists; the others, Jenny included, gesticulate and yell something about offsides. It occurs to me for the first time how ugly my street must look to Hana, all the houses squished together, half of them missing windowpanes, porches sagging in the middle like old beaten-down mattresses. It’s so different from the clean, quiet streets in West End, from the silent, gleaming cars and the gates and the green hedges.
“You could come tonight,” Hana says quietly.
A rush of hatred overwhelms me. Hatred for my life, for its narrowness and cramped spaces; hatred for Angelica Marston, with her secretive smile and rich parents; hatred for Hana, for being so stupid and careless and stubborn, first and foremost, and for leaving me behind before I was ready to be left; and underneath all those layers something else, too, some white-hot blade of unhappiness flashing in the very deepest part of me. I can’t name it, or even focus on it clearly, but somehow I understand that this—this other thing—makes me the angriest of all.
“Thanks for the invitation,” I say, not even bothering to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “Sounds like a blast. Will there be boys there too?”
Either Hana doesn’t notice the tone of my voice—which is doubtful—or she chooses to ignore it. “That’s kind of the whole point,” she says, deadpan. “Well, and the music.”
“Music?” I say. I can’t help but sound interested. “Like the last time?”
Hana’s face lights up. “Yeah. I mean, no. Different band. But these guys are supposed to be amazing—even better than last time.” She pauses, then repeats quietly, “You could come with us.”
Despite everything, this gives me pause. In the days after the party at Roaring Brook Farms, snatches of music seemed to follow me everywhere: I heard it winging in and out of the wind, I heard it singing off the ocean and moaning through the walls of the house. Sometimes I woke up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, my heart pounding, with the notes sounding in my ears. But every time I was awake and trying to remember the melodies consciously, hum a few notes or recall any of the chords, I couldn’t.
Hana’s staring at me hopefully, waiting for my response. For a second I actually feel bad for her. I want to make her happy, like I always did, want to see her give a whoop and put her fist in the air and flash me one of her famous smiles. But then I remember she has Angelica Marston now, and something hardens in my throat, and knowing that I’m going to disappoint her gives me a kind of dull satisfaction.
“I think I’ll pass,” I say. “But thanks anyway.”
Hana shrugs, and I can tell she’s fighting to look like it’s no big deal. “If you change your mind…” She tries to smile but can’t keep it up for longer than a second. “Tanglewild Lane. Deering Highlands. You know where to find me.”
Deering Highlands. Of course. The Highlands is an abandoned subdivision off-peninsula. A decade ago the government discovered sympathizers—and, if the rumors are true, even some Invalids—living together in one of the big mansions out there. It was a huge scandal, and the bust the result of a yearlong sting operation. When all was said and done, forty-two people had been executed and another hundred thrown in the Crypts. Since then Deering Highlands has been a ghost town: avoided, forgotten, condemned.
“Yeah, well. You know where to find me.” I gesture lamely down the street.
“Yeah.” Hana looks down at her feet, hops from one to the other. There’s nothing else to say, but I can’t stand to turn around and just walk away. I have a terrible feeling this is the last time I’ll see Hana before we’re cured. Fear seizes me all at once, and I wish I could backpedal through our conversation, take back all the sarcastic or mean things that I said, tell her I miss her and I want to be best friends again.
But just when I’m about to blurt this out, she gives me a quick wave and says, “Okay, then. See you around,” and the moment collapses in on itself and with it, my chance to speak.
“Okay. See you.”
Hana starts off down the road. I’m tempted to watch her go. I get the urge to memorize her walk—to imprint her in my brain somehow, just as she is—but as I’m watching her waver in and out of the fierce sunlight, her silhouette gets confused with another one in my head, a shadow weaving in and out of darkness, about to walk off the cliff, and I don’t know who I’m looking at anymore.
Suddenly the edges of the world are blurring and there’s a sharp pain in my throat, so I turn around and walk quickly toward the house.
“Lena!” she calls out to me, just before I reach the gate.
I spin around, heart leaping, thinking maybe she’ll be the one to say it. I miss you. Let’s go back.
Even from a distance of fifty feet, I can see Hana hesitating. Then she makes this fluttering gesture with her hand and calls out, “Never mind.” This time when she turns around she doesn’t waver. She walks straight and quickly, turns a corner, and is gone.
But what did I expect?
That’s the whole point, after all: There’s no going back.
Chapter Thirteen
In the years before the cure was perfected, it was offered on a trial basis only. The risks attached to it were great. At the time one out of every hundred patients suffered a fatal loss of brain function after the procedure.
Nonetheless, people swarmed the hospitals in record number, demanding to be cured; they camped outside the laboratories for days at a time, hoping to secure a procedural slot.
These years are also known as the Miracle Years because of the quantity of lives that were healed and made whole, and the number of souls brought out of sickness.
And if there were people who died on the operating table, they died for a good cause, and no one can lament them…
When I get into the house it’s even hotter than usual: a wet, suffocating wall of heat. Carol must be cooking. The house smells like browned meat and spices—mixed with the normal summer smells of sweat and mildew, it’s kind of nauseating. For the past few weeks we’ve been eating dinner out on the porch: runny macaroni salads, cold cuts, and sandwiches from my uncle’s deli counter.
Carol pokes her head out of the kitchen as I go by. Her face is red and she’s sweating big-time. Dark swaths of sweat have left pit stains on her pale blue blouse, navy crescents.
“Better get changed,” she says. “Rachel and David will be here any second.”
I’d completely forgotten my sister and her husband were coming over for dinner. Normally I see Rachel four or five times a year, tops. When I was younger, especially after Rachel had first moved out of Carol’s house, I used to count the days until she would come and see me. I don’t think I fully understood then about the procedure and what it meant for her—for me—for us. I knew that she’d been saved from Thomas, and from the disease, but that was it. I think I thought that otherwise things would be exactly the same. I thought that as soon as she came to
