Requiem

Julian sucks in a deep breath. Then, all in a rush, he says, “I love you.”

Just as I blurt out, “Don’t say it.”

There’s another beat of silence. Julian looks startled. “What?” he finally says.

I wish I could take the words back. I wish I could say I love you, too. But the words are caught in the cage of my chest. “Julian, you have to know how much I care about you.” I try to touch him, and he jerks backward.

“Don’t,” he says. He looks away from me. The silence stretches long between us. It is growing darker by the minute. The air is textured with gray, like a charcoal drawing that has begun to smudge.

“It’s because of him, isn’t it?” he says at last, clicking his eyes back to mine. “Alex.”

I don’t think Julian has ever said his name.

“No,” I say too forcefully. “It’s not him. There’s nothing between us anymore.”

He shakes his head. I can tell he doesn’t believe me.

“Please,” I say. I reach for him again, and this time he lets me run my hand along his jaw. I crane onto my tiptoes and kiss him once. He doesn’t pull away, but he doesn’t kiss me back, either. “Just give me time.”

.Finally he gives in. I take his arms and wind them around my body. He kisses my nose, and then my forehead, then traces his way to my ear with his lips.

“I didn’t know it would be like this,” he says in a whisper. And then: “I’m scared.”

I can feel his heart beating through the layers of our clothing. I don’t know what, exactly, he is referring to—the Wilds, the escape, being with me, loving someone—but I squeeze him tightly, and rest my head on the flat slope of his chest.

“I know,” I say. “I’m scared too.”

Then, from a distance, Raven’s voice echoes through the thin air. “Grub’s on! Eat up or opt out!”

Her voice startles a flock of birds. They go screaming into the sky. The wind picks up, and the Wilds come alive again with rustling and scurrying and creaking: a constant nonsense-babble.

“Come on,” I say, and take Julian back toward the dead house.

Hana

Explosions: a sudden shattering of the sky. First one, then another; then a dozen of them, rapid gunfire sounds, smoke and light and bursts of color against a pale-blue evening sky.

Everyone applauds as the final round of fireworks blooms above the terrace. My ears are ringing, and the smell of smoke makes my nostrils burn, but I clap too.

Fred is officially the mayor of Portland now.

“Hana!” Fred moves toward me, smiling, as cameras light up around him. During the fireworks, as everyone surged onto the terraces of the Harbor Golf and Country Club, we were separated. Now he seizes my hands.

“Congratulations,” I say. More cameras go off— click, click, click—like another miniature volley of fireworks. Every time I blink, I see bursts of color behind my eyelids. “I’m so happy for you.”

“Happy for us, you mean,” he says. His hair—which he gelled and combed so carefully—has over the course of the night become increasingly unruly, and migrated forward, so a stray lock of hair falls over his right eye. I feel a rush of pleasure. This is my life and my place: here, next to Fred Hargrove.

“Your hair,” I whisper. He brings a hand automatically to his head, patting his hair into place again.

“Thank you,” he says. Just then a woman I recognize vaguely from the staff of the Portland Dailyshoulders up to Fred.

“Mayor Hargrove,” she says, and it gives me a thrill to hear him referred to that way. “I’ve been trying to get a word with you all night. Do you have a minute—?”

She doesn’t wait to hear his response but draws him away from me. He turns his head over his shoulder and mouths, Sorry. I give him a small wave to show that I understand.

Now that the fireworks are done, people flow back into the ballroom, where the reception will continue. Everyone is laughing and chattering. This is a good night, a time of celebration and hope. In his speech, Fred promised to restore order and stability to our city and to root out the sympathizers and resisters who have nested among us—like termites, he said, slowly eroding the basic structure of our society and our values.

No more,he said, and everyone applauded.

This is what the future looks like: happy pairs, bright lights and pretty music, tasteful draped linens and pleasant conversation. Willow Marks and Grace, the rotting houses of Deering Highlands, and the guilt that compelled me out of the house and onto my bike yesterday—all of it seems like a bad dream.

I think of the way Willow looked at me, so sadly: They got you, too.

They didn’tget me, I should have said. They saved me.

The last, wispy fingers of smoke have dispersed. The green hills of the golf course are swallowed in purple shadow.

For a second I stand on the balcony, enjoying the order of it all: the trimmed grass and carefully plotted landscape, the pattern of day into night into day again, a predictable future, a life without pain.

As the crowd on the terrace thins, I catch the eye of a boy standing at the opposite side of the deck. He smiles at me. He looks familiar, although for a moment I can’t place him. But as he begins moving toward me, I feel a jolt of recognition.

Steve Hilt. I almost don’t believe it.

“Hana Tate,” he says. “I guess I can’t call you Hargrove yet, can I?”

“Steven.” Last summer I called him Steve. Now it seems inappropriate. He is changed; that must be why I didn’t recognize him at first. As he inclines his head toward a waitress, depositing his empty wineglass on a tray, I see he has been cured.

But it is more than that: He is heavier, his stomach a round swell under his button-down shirt, his jawline blurring into his neck. His hair is combed straight across his forehead, the same way my dad wears it.

I try to remember the last time I saw him. It might have been the night of the raid in the Highlands. I had gone to the party mostly because I was hoping to see him. I remember standing in the half-dark basement while the floor thudded with the rhythm of the music, sweat and moisture coating the walls, the smell of alcohol and sunscreen and bodies packed into a tight space. And he had pressed his body against mine—he was so thin then, tall and ski

I believed I loved him. I believed he loved me.

And then: the first scream.

Gunfire.

Dogs.

“You look good,” Steven says. Even his voice sounds different. Again, I can’t help but think of my father, the easy, low-belly voice of a grown-up.

“So do you,” I lie.

He tips his head, gives me a look that says both Thanksand I know. Unconsciously, I withdraw a few inches. I can’t believe that I kissed him last summer. I can’t believe that I risked everything—contagion, infection—on this boy.

But no. He was a different boy back then.

“So. When is the happy event? Next Saturday, isn’t it?” He puts his hands in his pockets and rocks back on his heels.

“The Friday after.” I clear my throat. “And you? You’ve been paired, then?” It never occurred to me last summer to ask.

“Sure have. Celia Briggs. Do you know her? She’s at UP now. We won’t be married until she’s finished.”

I do know Celia Briggs. She went to New Friends Academy, a St. A

As though he can tell what I’m thinking, Steven says, “She’s not the prettiest girl, but she’s decent. And her dad’s chief of the Regulatory Office, so we’ll be all set up. That’s how we scored an invite to this shindig.” He laughs. “Not bad, I have to say.”