Requiem

She slides the plate of bread in front of me when I’ve finished with the towel, and fills a glass with water, along with real ice cubes, five of them rattling joyfully together.

“Eat,” she says. “Drink.”

“I’m not hungry,” I lie.

She rolls her eyes, and once again I see the old Hana float up into this new impostor. “Don’t be stupid. Of course you’re hungry. You’re starving. You’re probably dying of thirst, too.”

“Why are you doing this?” I ask her.

Hana opens her mouth and then closes it again. “We were friends,” she says.

“Were,”I say firmly. “Now we’re enemies.”

“Are we?” Hana looks startled, as though the idea has never occurred to her. Once again, I feel a flicker of unease, a squirming feeling of guilt. Something isn’t right. I force the feelings down.

“Of course,” I say.

Hana watches me for a second more. Then, abruptly, she gets up from the table and moves over to the windows. Once her back is to me, I quickly take a piece of bread and stuff it in my mouth, eating as quickly as I can without choking. I wash it down with a long slug of water, so cold it brings a blazing, delicious pain to my head.

For a long time, Hana doesn’t say anything. I eat another piece of bread. She can no doubt hear me chewing, but she doesn’t comment on it or turn around. She allows me to keep up the pretense that I am not eating, and I experience a brief burst of gratitude.

“I’m sorry about Alex,” she says at last, still without turning.

My stomach gives an uncomfortable twist. Too much; too quickly.

“He didn’t die.” My voice sounds overloud. I don’t know why I feel the urge to tell her. But I need her to know that her side, her people, didn’t win, at least not in this case. Even though of course, in some ways, they did.

She turns around. “What?”

“He didn’t die,” I repeat. “He was thrown into the Crypts.”

Hana flinches, as though I’ve reached out and slapped her. She sucks her lower lip into her mouth again and starts chewing. “I—” She stops herself, frowning a little.

“What?” I know that face; I recognize it. She knows something. “What is it?”

“Nothing, I . . .” She shakes her head, as though to dislodge an idea there. “I thought I saw him.”

My stomach surges into my throat. “Where?”

“Here.” She looks at me with another one of her inscrutable expressions. The new Hana is much harder to read than the old one. “Last night. But if he’s in the Crypts . . .”

“He’s not. He escaped.” Hana, the light, the kitchen—even the bomb ticking quietly underneath us, moving us slowly toward oblivion—suddenly seem far away. As soon as Hana suggests it, I see that it makes sense. Alex was all alone. He would have gone back to familiar territory.

Alex could be here—somewhere in Portland. Close. Maybe there’s hope after all.

If I can only get out of here.

“So?” I push up from the chair. “Are you going to call the regulators, or what?”

Even as I’m talking, I’m pla

But if I can get her out of the kitchen for even a few seconds—I’ll put the chair through the window, cut through the garden, try to lose the guards in the trees. The garden probably backs up onto another street; if not, I’ll have to loop around to Essex. It’s a long shot, but it’s a chance.

Hana watches me steadily. The clock above the stove seems to be moving at record speed, and I imagine the timer on the bomb ticking forward as well.

“I want to apologize to you,” she says calmly.

“Oh yeah? For what?” I don’t have time for this. We don’t have time for this. I push away thoughts of what will happen to Hana even if I manage to escape. She’ll be here, in the house . . .

My stomach is clenching and unclenching. I’m worried the bread will come straight back up. I have to stay focused. What happens to Hana isn’t my concern, and it isn’t my fault, either.

“For telling the regulators about 37 Brooks,” she says. “For telling them about you and Alex.”

Just like that, my brain powers down. “What?”

“I told them.” She lets out a tiny exhalation, as though saying the words has given her relief. “I’m sorry. I was jealous.”

I can’t speak. I’m swimming through a fog. “Jealous?”I manage to spit out.

“I—I wanted what you had with Alex. I was confused. I didn’t understand what I was doing.” She shakes her head again.

I have a swinging, seasick feeling. It doesn’t make any sense. Hana—golden girl Hana, my best friend, fearless and reckless. I trusted her. I loved her. “You were my best friend.”

“I know.” Again she looks troubled, as though trying to recall the meaning of the words.

“You had everything.” I can’t stop my voice from rising. The anger is vibrating, ripping through me like a live current. “Perfect life. Perfect grades. Everything.” I gesture to the spotless kitchen, to the sunshine pouring over the marble counters like drizzled butter. “I had nothing. He was my one thing. My only—” The sickness surges up and I take a step forward, clenching my fists, blind with rage. “Why couldn’t you let me have it? Why did you have to take it? Why did you always take everything?”

“I told you I was sorry,” Hana says again mechanically. I could shriek with laughter. I could cry, or tear her eyes out.

Instead I reach out and slap her. The current flows down into my hand, into my arm, before I know what I am doing. The noise is unexpectedly loud, and for a moment I’m sure the guards will burst through the door. But no one comes.

Instantly, Hana’s face begins to redden. But she doesn’t cry out. She doesn’t make a sound.

In the silence, I can hear my own breathing—ragged and desperate. I feel tears pushing at the back of my eyes. I’m ashamed and angry and sick all at once.

Hana turns slowly back to face me. She almost looks sad. “I deserved that,” she says.

Suddenly I am overcome with exhaustion. I am tired of fighting, of hitting and being hit. This is the strange way of the world, that people who simply want to love are instead forced to become warriors. It’s the upside-down nature of life. It’s all I can do not to collapse into a chair again.

“I felt terrible afterward,” Hana says in a voice hardly above a whisper. “You should know that. That’s why I helped you escape. I felt”—Hana searches for the right word—“ remorse.”

“What about now?” I ask her.

Hana lifts a shoulder. “Now I’m cured,” she says. “It’s different.”

“Different how?” For a split second, I wish—more than anything, more than breathing—that I had stayed here, with her, that I had let the knife fall.

“I feel freer,” she says. Whatever I was expecting her to say, it isn’t this. She must sense that I’m surprised, because she goes on. “Everything’s kind of . . . muffled. Like hearing sounds underwater. I don’t have to feel things for other people so much.” One side of her mouth quirks into a smile. “Maybe, like you said, I never did.”

My head has started to ache. Over. It’s all over. I just want to curl up in a ball and go to sleep. “I didn’t mean that. You did. Feel things, I mean, for other people. You used to.”

I’m not sure she hears me. She says, almost as an afterthought, “I don’t have to listen to anybody anymore.” Something in her tone is off—triumphant, almost. When I look at her, she smiles. I wonder whether she’s thinking of anyone in particular.

There is the sound of a door opening and closing and the bark of a man’s voice. Hana’s whole face changes. She gets serious again in an instant. “Fred,” she says. She crosses quickly to the swinging doors behind me and pokes her head into the hall tentatively. Then she whirls around to face me, suddenly breathless.