I’ve spent a long time scrutinizing his features, trying to figure out whether he is attractive, and in the end I have come up with this: He is very pleasant to look at. He is not as attractive as I am, but he is smarter, and I like his dark hair, and the way it falls over his right eyebrow when he has not had time to smooth it back.
“She looks tired,” Mrs. Hargrove says. Fred’s mother often talks about me as though I’m not in the room. I don’t take it personally; she does it with everybody. Fred’s father was mayor for more than three terms. Now that Mr. Hargrove is dead, Fred has been groomed to take his place. Since the Incidents in January, Fred campaigned tirelessly for nomination and appointment, and it paid off. Only a week ago, a special interim committee appointed him the new mayor. He will be inaugurated publicly early next week.
Mrs. Hargrove is used to being the most important woman in the room.
“I’m fine,” I say. Lena always said that I could lie my way out of hell.
The truth is, I’m not fine. I’m worried that I can’t stop worrying about Jenny and how thin she looked.
I’m worried that I’ve been thinking of Lena again.
“Of course, the wedding preparations are very stressful,” my mother says.
My father grunts. “You’re not the one writing the checks.”
This makes everybody laugh. The room is suddenly illuminated by a brief flash of light from outside: A journalist, parked in the bushes directly outside the window, is snapping our picture, which will then be sold to local newspapers and TV stations.
Mrs. Hargrove has arranged for paparazzi to be here tonight. She tipped the photographers off to the location of a dinner that Fred arranged for us on New Year’s Eve. Photo opportunities are arranged and carefully plotted, so the public can watch our emerging story and see the happiness we’ve achieved by being paired so perfectly together.
And I am happy with Fred. We get along very well. We like the same things; we have a lot to talk about.
That’s why I’m worried: Everything will go up in smoke if the procedure has not worked correctly.
“I heard on the radio that they’ve evacuated parts of Waterbury,” Fred says. “Parts of San Francisco, too. Riots broke out over the weekend.”
“Please, Fred,” Mrs. Hargrove says. “Do we really have to talk about this at dinner?”
“It won’t help to ignore it,” Fred says, turning to her. “That’s what Dad did. And look what happened.”
“Fred.” Mrs. Hargrove’s voice is strained, but she manages to keep smiling. Click. Just for a second, the dining room walls are lit up by the camera’s flash. “It really isn’t the time—”
“We can’t pretend anymore.” Fred looks around the table, as though appealing to each of us. I drop my eyes. “The resistance exists. It may even be growing. An epidemic—that’s what this is.”
“They’ve cordoned off most of Waterbury,” my mother says. “I’m sure they’ll do the same in San Francisco.”
Fred shakes his head. “This isn’t just about the infected. That’s the problem. There’s a whole system of sympathizers—a network of support. I won’t do what Dad did,” he says with sudden fierceness. Mrs. Hargrove has gone very still. “For years there were rumors that the Invalids still existed, that their numbers were growing, even. You know it. Dad knew it. But he refused to believe.”
I keep my head bent over my plate. A piece of lamb is sitting, untouched, next to green beans and fresh mint jelly. Only the best for the Hargroves. I pray that the journalists outside don’t take a picture now; I’m sure my face is red. Everyone at the table knows that my former best friend tried to run off with an Invalid, and they know—or suspect—that I covered for her.
Fred’s voice gets quieter. “By the time he accepted it—by the time he was willing to act—it was too late.” He reaches out to touch his mother’s hand, but she picks up her fork and begins eating again, stabbing green beans with such force, the tines of her fork make a sharp, clanging noise against the plate.
Fred clears his throat. “Well, I refuse to look the other way,” he says. “It’s time we all face this head-on.”
“I just don’t see why we have to talk about it at dinner,” Mrs. Hargrove says. “When we’re having a perfectly nice time—”
“May I be excused?” I ask too sharply. Everyone at the table turns to me in surprise. Click. I can only imagine what that picture will look like: my mother’s mouth frozen in a perfect O, Mrs. Hargrove frowning; my father lifting a bloody piece of lamb to his lips.
“What do you mean, excused?” my mother says.
“See?” Mrs. Hargrove sighs and shakes her head at Fred. “You’ve made Hana unhappy.”
“No, no. It’s not that. It’s just . . . You were right. I’m not feeling well,” I say. I ball my napkin on the table and then, seeing my mother’s look, fold it and drape it next to my plate. “I have a headache.”
“I hope you’re not coming down with something,” Mrs. Hargrove says. “You can’t be sick for the inauguration.”
“She won’t be sick,” my mother says quickly.
“I won’t be sick,” I parrot. I don’t know exactly what’s wrong with me, but little points of pain are exploding in my head. “I just need to lie down, I think.”
“I’ll call Tony.” My mom pushes away from the table.
“No, please.” More than anything, I want to be left alone. In the past month, since my mother and Mrs. Hargrove determined that the wedding needed to be fast-tracked, to correspond with Fred’s ascension to mayor, it seems the only time I can be alone is when I go to the bathroom. “I don’t mind walking.”
“Walking!” This provokes a miniature eruption. All of a sudden, everyone is speaking at once. My father is saying, Out of the question, and my mother says, Imagine how that would look. Fred leans toward me—It isn’t safe right now, Hana—and Mrs. Hargrove says, You must have a fever.
In the end, my parents decide that Tony will drive me home and return for them later. This is a decent compromise. At least it means I’ll have the house to myself for a bit. I stand up and bring my plate to the kitchen, despite Mrs. Hargrove’s insistence that the housekeeper be allowed to do it. I scrape food into the trash, and flash back to the smell of the Dumpsters yesterday, the way that Jenny materialized from between them.
“I hope the conversation didn’t upset you.”
I turn around. Fred has followed me into the kitchen. He leaves a respectful distance between us.
“It didn’t,” I say. I’m too tired to reassure him further. I just want to go home.
“You don’t have a fever, do you?” Fred looks at me steadily. “You look pale.”
“I’m just tired,” I say.
“Good.” Fred puts his hands in his pockets, dark, creased in front, like my father’s. “I was worried I’d gotten a defective one.”
I shake my head, sure that I’ve misheard him. “What?”
“I’m kidding.” Fred smiles. He has a dimple in his left cheek, and very nice teeth; I appreciate that about him. “I’ll see you soon.” He leans forward and kisses my cheek. I draw back involuntarily. I’m still not used to being touched by him. “Go get your beauty sleep.”
“I will,” I say, but he’s already pushing out of the kitchen and returning to the dining room, where soon, dessert and coffee will be served. In three weeks, he will be my husband, and this will be my kitchen, and the housekeeper will be mine too. Mrs. Hargrove will have to listen to me, and I will choose what we eat every day, and there will be nothing left to want.
Unless Fred is right. Unless I am a defective one.
Lena
The argument continues: where to go, whether to split up.
Some members of the group want to loop south again, and then east to Waterbury, where there are rumors of a successful resistance movement and a large camp of Invalids flourishing in safety. Some want to head all the way out to Cape Cod, which is practically unpopulated and will therefore be a safer place to camp out. A few of us—Gordo, in particular—want to continue north and try to make a break across the U.S. border and into Canada.
In school we were always taught that other countries—places without the cure—had been ravaged by the disease and turned into wastelands. But this, like most other things we were taught, was no doubt a lie. Gordo has heard stories from trappers and drifters about Canada, and he makes it sound like Eden in The Book of Shhh.
“I say Cape Cod,” Pike says. He has white-blond hair, ruthlessly trimmed down to the scalp. “If the bombing begins again—”
“If the bombing begins again, we won’t be safe anywhere,” Tack interrupts him. Pike and Tack are constantly butting heads.
“We’re safer the farther we are from a city,” Pike argues. If the resistance turns into a full-on rebellion, we can expect swift and immediate reprisals from the government. “We’ll have more time.”
“To what? Swim across the ocean?” Tack shakes his head. He is squatting next to Raven, who is repairing one of our traps. It’s amazing how happy she looks here, sitting in the dirt, after a long day of hiking and trapping—happier than she did when we lived together in Brooklyn, posing as cureds, in our nice apartment with shiny edges and polished hard surfaces. There, she was like one of the women we studied in history class, who laced themselves up in corsets until they could barely breathe or speak: white-faced, stifled. “Look, we can’t outrun this. We might as well join forces, build our numbers as best we can.”
Tack catches my eye across the campfire. I smile at him. I don’t know how much Tack and Raven have deciphered about what has happened between Alex and me, and what our history is—they’ve said nothing to me about it—but they have been nicer to me than usual.
“I’m with Tack,” Hunter says. He tosses a bullet into the air, catches it on the back of his hand, then flips it into his palm.
“We could split up,” Raven suggests for the hundredth time. It’s obvious she doesn’t like Pike, or Dani, either. In this new group, the lines of dominance haven’t been so clearly drawn, and what Tack and Raven say doesn’t automatically pass for gospel.
“We’re not splitting up,” Tack says firmly. But immediately he takes the trap from her and says, “Let me help you.”
This is how Tack and Raven work: It’s their private language of push and return, argument and concession. With the cure, relationships are all the same, and rules and expectations are defined. Without the cure, relationships must be reinvented every day, languages constantly decoded and deciphered.
Freedom is exhausting.
“What do you think, Lena?” Raven asks, and Pike, Dani, and the others swivel around to look at me. Now that I’ve proven myself to the resistance, my opinion carries weight. From the shadows, I can sense Alex looking at me too.
