Текст книги "Requiem"

Автор книги: Лорен Оливер

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

Hana

Out of the shifting liquid of my sleep, the dream rises and takes shape:

Lena’s face.

Lena’s face, floating out of the shadow. No. Not shadow. She is pushing up from the ash, from a deep drift of cinders and char. Her mouth is open. Her eyes are closed.

She is screaming.

Hana.She is screaming for me. The ash is tumbling like sand into her open mouth, and I know she will soon be buried again, forced into silence, back into the dark. And I know, too, that I have no chance of reaching her—no hope of saving her at all.

Hana,she screams, while I stand motionless .

Forgive me,I say.

Hana, help.

Forgive me, Lena.

“Hana!”

My mother is standing in the doorway. I sit up, bewildered and terrified, Lena’s voice echoing in my mind. I dreamed. I am not supposed to dream.

“What’s wrong?” She’s silhouetted in the doorway; behind her, I can just make out the small night-light outside my bathroom. “Are you sick?”

“I’m fine.” I pass a hand across my forehead. It comes away wet. I’m sweating.

“Are you sure?” She moves as though to come into the room, but at the last second remains in the doorway. “You cried out.”

“I’m sure,” I say. And then, because she seems to be expecting more: “Nerves, I guess, about the wedding.”

“There’s nothing at all to be nervous about,” she says, sounding annoyed. “Everything’s under control. It will all work beautifully.”

I know she is talking about more than the ceremony itself. She means the marriage in general: It has been tabulated and coordinated—made to work beautifully, engineered for efficiency and perfection.

My mother sighs. “Try and get some sleep,” she says. “We’re going to a church at the labs with the Hargroves at nine thirty. The final dress fitting’s at eleven. Andthere’s the interview for House and Home.”

“Good night, Mom,” I say, and she withdraws without closing the door. Privacy means less to us than it once did: another unanticipated benefit, or side effect, of the cure. Fewer secrets.

At least, fewer secrets in mostcases.

I go to the bathroom and splash water on my face. Although the fan is on, I still feel overheated. For a second, when I look into the mirror, I can almost see Lena’s face staring at me from behind my eyes—a memory, a vision of a buried past.

Blink.

She’s gone.

Lena

Alex is not back when Raven, Tack, Julian, and I return to the safe house. Julian has revived and has insisted he is fine to walk, but Tack keeps an arm around his shoulders anyway. Julian is unsteady on his feet and still bleeding freely. As soon as we reach the safe house, Bram and Hunter babble excitedly about what happened until I give them the dirtiest look I can. Coral comes to the doorway, blinking sleepily, one arm around her stomach.

Alex is not back by the time we’ve cleaned Julian off—“Broken,” he says with a wince, in a thick voice, when Raven skates a finger over the bridge of his nose—and he is not back by the time we all, finally, lie down in our cots with our thin blankets, and even Julian manages to sleep, breathing noisily through his mouth.

By the time we wake up, Alex has already come and gone. His belongings are missing, as well as a jug of water and one of the knives.

He has left nothing except for a note, which I find neatly folded under one of my sneakers.

The Story of Solomon is the only way I know how to explain.

And then, in smaller letters:

Forgive me.

Hana

Thirteen days until the wedding. The presents have already begun to trickle in: soup bowls and salad tongs, crystal vases, mountains of white linen, monogrammed towels, and things I’ve had no name for before now: ramekins; zesters; pestles. This is the language of married, adult life, and it is completely foreign to me.

Twelve days.

I sit and write thank-you cards in front of the television. My father leaves at least one TV on practically all the time now. I wonder if this is partly because he wants to prove that we can afford to waste electricity.

For what seems like the tenth time today, Fred steps onto the screen. His face is tinged orange with foundation. The sound is muted, but I know what he is saying. The news has been broadcasting and rebroadcasting the announcement about the Department of Energy and Power, and Fred’s plans for Black Night.

On the night of our wedding, one-third of the families in Portland—anyone suspected of sympathizing or resisting—will be plunged into darkness.

The lights burn bright for those who obey; the others will live in shadow all the days of their lives( The Book of Shhh, Psalm 17). Fred used that quote in his speech.

Thank you for the lace-edged linen napkins. They are exactly what I would have chosen for 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 smellthe 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. Whereis 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.

“I knew he would make a great mayor. Didn’t mind Hargrove Senior, and I’m sure he did his best, but if you want my opinion, he was just a little soft. He actually wanted the Crypts torn apart. . . .” She shakes her head. “I say, bury them there and let them rot.”

I snap suddenly to attention. “What?”

She descends on me with her hairbrush, tugging and pulling. “Don’t get me wrong—I likedHargrove Senior. But I think he had the wrong idea about certain kinds of people.”

“No, no.” I swallow. “What did you say after that?”

She tilts my chin forcefully up toward the light and examines me. “Well, I think they should be left to rot in the Crypts—criminals, I mean, and sick people.” She begins looping hair, experimenting with the way it falls.

Stupid. I’ve been so stupid.

“And then you think of the way he died.” Debbie has returned to the subject of Fred’s father; he died January 12, the day of the Incidents, after the bombs went off in the Crypts. The whole eastern facade was blown clean away; prisoners suddenly found themselves in cells with no walls, and yards with no fences. There was a mass insurrection; Fred’s father arrived with the police, and died trying to restore order.

My ideas come hard and fast, like a thick snow, building a white wall I can’t get above or around.

Bluebeard kept a locked room, a secret space where he stashed his wives. . . . Locked doors, heavy bolts, women rotting in stone prisons . . .

Possible. It’s possible. It fits. It would explain the note, and why she wasn’t in CORE’s system. She might have been invalidated. Some prisoners are. Their identities, their histories, their whole lives are erased. Poof.A single keystroke, a metal door sliding shut, and it’s as though they never existed.

Debbie prattles on. “Good riddance, I say, and they should be grateful we don’t just shoot ’em on the spot. Did you hear about what happened in Waterbury?” She laughs, a sound too loud for the quiet room. Small bursts of pain fire off in my head.

On Saturday morning, in just a single hour, an enormous camp of resisters outside Waterbury was eradicated. Only a handful of our soldiers were injured.

Debbie grows serious again. “You know what? I think the lighting’s better upstairs, in your mom’s room. Don’t you think?”

I find myself agreeing, and before I know it I am also moving. I float up the stairs in front of her. I lead the way to my mother’s bedroom as though I am drifting, or dreaming, or dead.

Lena

A dull feeling settles over us after Alex’s departure. He was causing problems, but he was still one of us, one of the group, and I think everyone—except for Julian—feels the loss.

I walk around in a near daze. Despite everything, I took comfort in his presence, in seeing him, in knowing he was safe. Now that he has gone off on his own, who knows what will happen to him? He is no longer mine to lose, but the grief is there, a gnawing sense of disbelief.

Coral is pale, and silent, and wide-eyed. She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t eat much, either.

Tack and Hunter talked about going after him, but Raven quickly made them see the foolishness of the idea. He no doubt had many hours’ head start, and a single person, moving rapidly on foot, is even harder to track than a group. They’d be wasting time, resources, and energy.

There’s nothing we can do,she said, careful to avoid looking at me, but let him go.

So we do. Suddenly there is no amount of lanterns that can chase away the shadows that often fall between us, the shades of other people and other lives lost to the Wilds, to this struggle, to the world split in two. I can’t help but think of the camp, and of Pippa, and the line of soldiers we saw threading through the woods.

Pippa said we could expect the contacts from resistance within three days, but the third day winds slowly into evening with no sign of anyone.

Each day, we get a little more stir-crazy. It’s not anxiety, exactly. We have enough food and, now that Tack and Hunter have found a stream nearby, enough water. Spring is here: The animals are out, and we have begun trapping successfully.

But we are completely cut off—from news of what has happened in Waterbury and what is happening in the rest of the country. It’s far too easy to imagine, as another morning washes like a gentle wave over the old, towering oaks, that we are the only people left in the world.

I can no longer bear to be inside, underground. Each day, after whatever lunch we can scrounge up, I pick a direction and start walking, trying not to think about Alex and about his message to me, and usually finding that I can think of nothing else.

Today, I go east. It’s one of my favorite times of day: that perfect in-between moment when the light has a liquid feel, like a slow pour of syrup. Still, I can’t shake loose the knot of unhappiness in my chest. I can’t shake loose the idea that the rest of our lives might simply look like this: this running, and hiding, and losing the things we love, and burrowing underground, and scavenging for food and water.

There will be no turn in the tide. We will never march back into the cities, triumphant, crying out our victory in the streets. We will simply eke out a living here until there is no living to be eked.

The Story of Solomon. Strange that Alex picked that story, of all the stories in The Book of Shhh, when it was the one that so consumed me after I found out he was alive. Could he have known, somehow? Could he have known that I felt just like that poor, severed baby in the story?

Was he trying to tell me that he felt the same way?

No. He told me that our past together, and what we shared, was dead. He told me he never loved me.

I keep pushing through the woods, barely paying attention to where I’m going. The questions in my head are like a strong tide, dragging me back over and over to the same places.

The Story of Solomon. A king’s judgment. A baby cleaved in two and a stain of blood seeping into the floor . . .

At a certain point, I realize I have no idea how long I’ve been walking, or how far I’ve ended up from the safe house. I haven’t been paying attention to the landscape as I go, either—a rookie’s error. Grandpa, one of the oldest Invalids at the homestead near Rochester, used to tell stories of sprites that supposedly lived in the Wilds, switching the location of trees and rocks and rivers, just to confuse people. None of us actually believed in that stuff, but the message was true enough: The Wilds is a mess, a shifting maze, and will turn you around in circles.

I begin retracing my steps, looking for places my heel has left imprints in the mud, scanning for signs of trampled underbrush. I force all thoughts of Alex out of my head. It’s too easy to get lost in the wilderness; if you are not careful, you will be swallowed up in it forever.

I see a flash of sunlight between the trees: the stream. I drew water just yesterday, and should be able to navigate back from here. But first, a quick wash. By this point, I’m sweating.

I push through the last bit of undergrowth, onto a wide bank of sun-bleached grass and flat stone.

I stop.

Someone else is already here: a woman, crouching, forty feet down from me on the opposite bank, her hands submerged in the water. Her head is down, and all I can see is a tangle of gray hair, streaked with white. For a second I think she might be a regulator, or a soldier, but even from a distance I can tell her clothes are not standard-issue. The backpack next to her is patched and old, her tank top is stained with yellow rings of sweat.

A man hidden from view calls out something unintelligible, and she responds, without looking up, “Just another minute.”

My body goes tight and still. I know that voice.

She draws a bit of fabric out of the water, a piece of clothing she has been washing, and straightens up. As she does, my breath stops. She holds the cloth taut between two hands and winds it rapidly around itself, then unwinds it just as quickly, sending a pinwheel of water arching across the bank.

And I am suddenly five years old again, standing in our laundry room in Portland, listening to the throaty gurgle of soapy water draining slowly from the sink, watching her do the same thing with our shirts, our underwear; watching the stippling of water across the tile walls; watching her turn and clip, clip, our clothing to the lines crisscrossing our ceiling, and then turn again, smiling at me, humming to herself. . . .

Lavender soap. Bleach. T-shirts dripping onto the floor. It is now. I am there.

She is here.

She spots me and freezes. For a second she doesn’t say anything, and I have time to notice how different she is than in my memory of her. She is so much harder now, her face so sharp with angles and lines. But underneath it I detect another face, like an image hovering just underneath the surface of water: the laughing mouth and round, high cheeks, the sparkling eyes.

Finally she says, “Lena.”

I inhale. I open my mouth.

I say, “Mom.”

For an interminable minute we just stand there, staring at each other, as the past and present continue to converge and then separate: my mother now, my mother then.

She starts to say something. Just then two men come crashing out of the woods, mid-conversation. As soon as they spot me, they raise their rifles.

“Wait,” my mother says sharply, raising a hand. “She’s with us.”

I’m not breathing. I exhale as the men lower their guns. My mother continues to stare at me—silent, amazed, and something else. Afraid?

“Who are you?” one of the men says. He has brilliant red hair, streaked with white. He looks like an enormous marmalade cat. “Who are you with?”

“My name is Lena.” Miraculously, my voice doesn’t tremble. My mother flinches. She always used to call me Magdalena, and hated the abbreviation. I wonder whether it still bothers her after all this time. “I came from Waterbury with some others.”

I wait for my mother to give some indication that we know each other—that I’m her daughter—but she doesn’t. She exchanges a look with her two companions. “Are you with Pippa?”

I shake my head. “Pippa stayed,” I say. “She directed us to come here, to the safe house. She told us the resistance would be coming”

The other man, who is brown and wiry, laughs shortly and shoulders his rifle. “You’re looking at it,” he says. “I’m Cap. This is Max”—he jerks his thumb toward the marmalade-cat man—“and this is Bee.” He inclines his head toward my mother.

Bee. My mother’s name is Annabel. This woman’s name is Bee. My mother is always moving. My mother had soft hands that smelled like soap, and a smile like the first bit of sunlight creeping over a trimmed lawn.

I do not know who this woman is.

“Are you heading back to the safe house?” Cap asks.

“Yes,” I manage to say.

“We’ll follow you,” he says with a half bow that, given our surroundings, seems more than a little ironic. I can feel my mother watching me again, but as soon as I look at her, she averts her eyes.

We walk in near silence back to the safe house, although Max and Cap exchange a few scattered words of conversation, mostly coded talk I don’t understand. My mother—Annabel, Bee—is quiet. As we near the safe house, I find myself unconsciously slowing, desperate to extend the walk, willing my mother to say something, to acknowledge me.

But all too soon we have reached the splintered over-structure, and the stairway leading underground. I hang back, allowing Max and Cap to pass down the stairs first. I’m hoping my mother will take the hint too and delay for a moment, but she just follows Cap underground.

“Thanks,” she says softly as she passes me.

Thanks.

I can’t even be angry. I’m too shocked, too dazed by her sudden appearance: this mirage-woman with the face of my mother. My body feels hollow, my hands and feet huge, balloonlike, as though they belong to someone else. I watch the hands feel their way down the wall, watch the feet go clomp-clomp-clompdown the stairs.

For a second I stand at the base of the stairwell, disoriented. In my absence, everyone has returned. Tack and Hunter talk over each other, firing off questions; Julian rises from a chair as soon as he sees me; Raven bustles around the room, organizing, ordering people around.

And in the middle of it, my mother—removing her pack, taking a chair, moving with unconscious grace. Everyone else breaks apart into flutter and flurry, like moths circling a flame, undifferentiated blurs against the light. Even the room looks different now that she’s inside it.

This must be a dream. It has to be. A dream of my mother who is not really my mother, but someone else.

“Hey, Lena.” Julian cups my chin in his hands and leans down to give me a kiss. His eyes are still swollen and ringed with purple. I kiss him back automatically. “You okay?” He pulls away from me, and I purposely avoid his eyes.

“I’m okay,” I tell him. “I’ll explain later.” There’s a bubble of air caught in my chest, making it hard to breathe or speak.

He doesn’t know. Nobody knows, except for Raven and maybe Tack. They’ve worked with Bee before.

Now my mother won’t look at me at all. She accepts a cup of water from Raven and begins to drink. And just that—that small motion—makes anger uncoil inside me.

“I shot a deer today,” Julian is saying. “Tack spotted it halfway across the clearing. I didn’t think I had a chance—”

“Good for you,” I cut him off. “You pulled a trigger.”

Julian looks hurt. I’ve been horrible to him for days now. This is the problem: Take away the cure, and the primers, and the codes, and you are left with no rules to follow. Love comes only in flashes.

“It’s food, Lena,” he says quietly. “Didn’t you always tell me that this wasn’t a game? I’m playing for real—for keeps.” He pauses. “To stay.” He emphasizes the last part, and I know that he is thinking of Alex, and then I can’t help but think of him too.

I need to keep moving, find my balance, get away from the stifling room.

“Lena.” Raven is at my side. “Help me get some food on, will you?”

This is Raven’s rule: Stay busy. Go through the motions. Stand up.

Open a can. Pull water.

Do something.

I follow her automatically to the sink.

“Any news from Waterbury?” Tack asks.

For a moment there is silence. My mother is the one to speak.

“Gone,” she says simply.

Raven accidentally slices too hard through a strip of dried meat, and pulls her finger away, gasping, sucking it in her mouth.

“What do you mean, gone?” Tack’s voice is sharp.

“Wiped out.” This time Cap speaks up. “Mowed down.”

“Oh my God.” Hunter thuds heavily into a chair. Julian is standing perfectly rigid, taut, hands clenched; Tack’s face has turned stony. My mother—the woman who was my mother—sits with her hands folded on her lap, motionless, expressionless. Only Raven continues moving, wrapping a kitchen towel around her cut finger, sawing through the dried meat, back and forth, back and forth.

“So what now?” Julian asks, voice tight.

My mother looks up. Something old and deep flexes inside me. Her eyes are still the vivid blue I remember, still unchanged, like a sky to tumble into. Like Julian’s eyes.

“We have to move,” she says. “Give support where it can do good. The resistance is still gathering strength, gathering people—”

“What about Pippa?” Hunter bursts out. “Pippa said to wait for her. She said—”

“Hunter,”Tack says. “You heard what Cap said.” He lowers his voice. “Wiped out.”

There’s another moment of heavy silence. I see a muscle twitch in my mother’s jaw—a new tic—and she turns away, so I can see the faded green number tattooed along her neck, just beneath the vicious spate of angry scars, the products of all her failed procedures. I think about the years she spent in her tiny, windowless cell in the Crypts, chipping away at the walls with the metal pendant my father had given her, carving the word Loveendlessly over the stone. And somehow, now, after less than a year of freedom, she has entered the resistance. More than that. She is at its center.

I don’t know this woman at all; I don’t know how she became who she is, or when her jaw began to twitch and her hair began to gray, and she began to pull a veil over her eyes, and avoid the gaze of her daughter.

“So where do we go?” Raven asks.

Max and Cap exchange a look. “There’s something stirring up north,” Max says. “In Portland.”

“Portland?” I parrot the word without meaning to speak. My mother glances up at me, and I think she looks afraid. Then she drops her eyes.

“That’s where you come from, right?” Raven asks me.

I lean back against the sink, close my eyes for a second, and have a vision of my mother on the beach, running ahead of me, laughing, kicking up dark sand, a loose green tunic dress snapping around her ankles. I open my eyes again quickly and manage to nod.

“I can’t go back there.”

The words come out with more force than I intended, and everyone turns to look at me.

“If we go anywhere, we all go together,” Raven says.

“There’s a big underground in Portland,” Max says. “The network is growing—has been since the Incidents. That was only the beginning. What’s going to happen next . . .” He shakes his head, eyes bright. “It’s going to be big.”

“I can’t,” I repeat. “And I won’t.” Memories are coming fast: Hana running next to me by Back Cove, our sneakers squelching in the mud; fireworks over the bay on the Fourth of July, sending tentacles of light over the water; Alex and me lying, laughing, on the blanket at 37 Brooks; Grace shivering next to me in the bedroom at Aunt Carol’s, wrapping her thin arms around my waist, her smell of grape bubblegum. Layers and layers of memories, a life I have tried to bury and kill—a past that was dead, like Raven always said—suddenly surging, threatening to pull me under.