Finally Alex comes up to the counter with a pack of gum, a bag of chips, and a root beer.
“Will that be all?” I say, careful to keep my voice steady. But I can feel the color rising to my cheeks. His eyes are amazing today, almost pure gold.
He nods. “That’s all.”
I ring him up, my hands shaking, desperate to say something more to him but worried that Jed will hear. At that moment another customer comes in, an older man who has the look of a regulator. So I count out Alex’s change as slowly and carefully as I can, trying to keep him standing in front of me for as long as possible.
But there are only so many ways you can count change for a five-dollar bill. Eventually I pass him his change. Our hands connect as I place the bills in his palm, and a shock of electricity goes through me. I want to grab him, pull him toward me, kiss him right there.
“Have a great day.” My voice sounds high-pitched, strangled. I’m surprised I can even get the words out.
“Oh, I will.” He shoots me his amazing, crooked smile as he backs up toward the door. “I’m going to the Cove.”
And then he’s gone, pivoting out into the street. I try to watch him go, but the sun blinds me as soon as he’s out the door and he turns into a winking, blurry shadow, wavering and disappearing.
I can’t stand it. I hate thinking of him weaving through the streets, getting farther and farther away. And I have five more hours to get through before I’m supposed to meet him. I’ll never make it. Before I can think about what I’m doing, I duck around the counter, peeling off the apron I’ve been wearing since dealing with a leak in one of the freezer cases.
“Jed, grab the register for a second, okay?” I call.
He blinks at me confusedly. “Where are you going?”
“Customer,” I say. “I gave him the wrong change.”
“But—,” Jed starts to say. I don’t stop to hear his objections. I can imagine what they’ll be, anyway. But you counted his change for five minutes. Oh well. So Jed will think I’m stupid. I can live with it.
Down the street Alex is paused on the corner, waiting for a city truck to grumble past.
“Hey!” I shout out, and he turns. A woman pushing a stroller on the other side of the street stops, raises her hand to shield her eyes, and follows my progress down the street. I’m going as fast as I can, but the pain in my leg makes it difficult to do more than hobble along. I can feel the woman’s gaze pricking up and down my body like a series of needles.
“I gave you the wrong change,” I call out again, even though I’m close enough to him now to speak normally. Hopefully it will get the woman off my back. But she keeps watching us.
“You shouldn’t have come,” I whisper, when I catch up to him. I pretend to press something into his hand. “I told you I’d meet you later.”
He moves his hand easily to his pocket, picking up seamlessly on our little charade, and whispers back, “I couldn’t wait.”
Alex waggles his hand in my face and looks stern, like he’s scolding me for being careless. But his voice is soft and sweet. Again I have the sensation that nothing else is real—not the sun, or the buildings, or the woman across the street, still staring at us.
“There’s a blue door around the corner, in the alley,” I say quietly as I back away, raising my hands like I’m apologizing. “Meet me there in five. Knock four times.” Then, more loudly, I say, “Listen, I’m really sorry. Like I said, it was an honest mistake.”
Then I turn and limp back to the store. I can’t believe what I’ve just done. I can’t believe the risks I’m taking. But I need to see him. I need to kiss him. I need it as much as I’ve ever needed anything. I have that same pressing feeling in my chest like when I’m at the very end of one of my sprints and I’m just dying, screaming to stop, to catch my breath.
“Thanks,” I say to Jed, taking my spot behind the counter. He mumbles something unintelligible to me and shuffles back toward his clipboard and pen, which he has left lying on the floor in aisle three: CANDY, SODA, CHIPS.
The guy I made for a regulator has his nose buried in one of the freezer compartments. I’m not sure whether he’s looking for a frozen dinner or just taking advantage of the free cold air. Either way, as I look at him I have a flashback to last night, to the whistling of the air as the clubs came down like scythes, and I feel a rush of hatred for him—for all of them. I fantasize about pushing the old guy inside the freezers and bolting the door over his head.
Thinking about the raids makes me anxious about Hana again. News of the raids is in all the papers. Apparently hundreds of people all over Portland were taken last night to be interrogated, or summarily shipped off to the Crypts, though I didn’t hear anyone reference the party in the Highlands specifically.
I tell myself if Hana hasn’t called me back by this evening, I’ll go to her house. I tell myself that in the meantime there’s no point in worrying, but all the same the guilty feeling keeps worming around in my stomach.
The old guy is still hovering over the freezer compartments and paying me absolutely no attention. Good. I slip on the apron again, and then, after checking to see that Jed isn’t watching, reach up and grab all the bottles of ibuprofen—about a dozen of them—and slide them into the apron pocket.
Then I sigh loudly. “Jed, I need you to cover for me again.”
He looks up with those watery blue eyes. Blink, blink. “I’m reshelving.”
“Well, we’re totally out of painkillers back here. Didn’t you notice?”
He stares at me for several long seconds. I keep my hands clasped tightly behind my back. Otherwise I’m sure their trembling would give me away. Finally he shakes his head.
“I’m going to see if I can dig some up in the supply room. Grab the register, okay?” I slip out from behind the counter slowly, so I don’t rattle, keeping my body angled slightly away from him. Hopefully he won’t notice the bulge in my apron. This is one symptom of the deliria no one ever tells you about: Apparently the disease turns you into a world-class liar.
I slip around a teetering pile of sagging cardboard boxes stacked at the back of the store and shoulder my way into the supply room, shutting the door behind me. Unfortunately it doesn’t lock, so I drag a crate of applesauce in front of the door, just in case Jed decides to come investigate when my search for the ibuprofen takes longer than usual.
A moment later there’s a quiet tap on the door that leads out into the alley. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
The door feels heavier than usual. It takes all my strength just to yank it open.
“I said to knock four times—” I’m saying, as the sun cuts into the room, temporarily dazzling me. And then the words dry up in my throat and I nearly choke.
“Hey,” Hana says. She’s standing in the alley, shifting from foot to foot, looking pale and worried. “I was hoping you’d be here.”
For a second I can’t even answer her. I’m overwhelmed with relief—Hana is here, intact, whole, fine—and at the same time anxiety starts drumming through me. I scan the alley quickly: no sign of Alex. Maybe he saw Hana and got scared off.
“Um.” Hana wrinkles her forehead. “Are you going to let me in, or what?”