You would be captain of the frigging fencing team, I think. But I don’t say this out loud; I can tell he’s trying to be nice.
“Anyway, we used to talk sometimes. Nothing happened,” he qualifies quickly. “Just a few conversations, here and there. She had a pretty smile. And I felt . . .” He trails off.
Wonder and fear sweep through me. He’s trying to tell me that we’re alike. He somehow knows about Alex—not about Alex specifically, but about someone. “Wait a second.” My mind is churning. “Are you trying to say that before the procedure you were . . . you got sick?”
“I’m just saying I understand.” His eyes flick to mine for barely a fraction of a second, but that’s all I need. I’m positive now. He knows I’ve been infected. I’m both relieved and terrified—if he can see it, other people will see it too.
“My point is only that the cure works.” He places extra emphasis on the last word. I know, now, that he’s trying to be kind. “I’m much happier now. You will be too, I promise.”
Something inside of me fractures when he says that, and I feel like I could cry again. His voice is so reassuring. There’s nothing I want more in that moment than to believe him. Safety, happiness, stability: what I’ve wanted my whole life. And for that moment I think maybe the past few weeks really have just been some long, strange delirium. Maybe after the procedure I’ll wake up as from a high fever, with only a vague recollection of my dreams and a sense of overwhelming relief.
“Friends?” Brian says, offering me his hand to shake, and this time I don’t flinch when he touches me. I even let him hold my hand an extra few seconds.
He’s still facing the street, and as we’re standing there a frown flickers temporarily across his face. “What does he want?” he mutters, and then calls out, “It’s okay. She’s my pair.”
I turn around just in time to see a flash of burnt golden-brown hair—the color of leaves in autumn—disappear around the corner. Alex. I wrench my hand away from Brian’s, but it’s too late. He’s gone.
“Must have been a regulator,” Brian says. “He was just standing there, staring.”
The feeling of calm and reassurance I’d had only a minute earlier vanishes in a rush. Alex saw me—he saw us, holding hands, heard Brian say I was his pair. And I was supposed to have met him an hour ago. He doesn’t know that I couldn’t get out of the house, couldn’t get a message to him. I can’t imagine what he must be thinking about me right now. Or actually, I can imagine.
“Are you okay?” Brian’s eyes are so pale they’re almost gray. A sickly color, not like sky at all—like mold or rot. I can’t believe I thought he could be attractive for even a second. “You don’t look too good.”
“I’m fine.” I try to take a step toward the house and stumble. Brian reaches out to steady me, but I twist away from him. “I’m fine,” I repeat, even though everything around me is breaking, fracturing.
“It’s hot out here,” he says. I can’t stand to look at him. “Let’s go inside.”
He puts a hand on my elbow and propels me up the stairs, through the door, and into the living room, where Carol and Mrs. Scharff are waiting for us, smiling.
Chapter Twenty
Ex rememdium salus.
“From the cure, salvation.”
—Printed on all American currency
By some miracle, I must make a good enough impression on Brian and Mrs. Scharff to satisfy Carol, even though I barely speak during the remainder of their visit (or maybe because I barely speak). It’s midafternoon by the time they leave, and although Carol insists I help out with a few more chores and she makes me stick around for dinner—every minute that I can’t run to Alex an agony, sixty seconds of pure, driving torture—she promises me I can go for a walk when I’m done eating, before curfew. I inhale my baked beans and frozen fish sticks so fast I almost puke, and practically sit bouncing in my chair until she releases me. She even lets me out of dishwashing duty, but I’m too angry at her for cooping me up in the first place to feel grateful.
I go to 37 Brooks first. I don’t really think he’ll be there waiting for me, but I’m hoping for it anyway. But the rooms are empty, the garden, too. I must be half-delirious by that point because I check behind the trees and bushes, as though he might suddenly pop out, like he used to do a few weeks ago when he and Hana and I would play our epic games of hide-and-seek. Just thinking about it brings a sharp pain to my chest. Less than a month ago all of August still stretched before us—long and golden and reassuring, like an endless period of delicious sleep.
Well, now I’ve woken up.
I make my way back through the house. Seeing all our stuff scattered in the living room—blankets, a few magazines and books, a box of crackers and some cans of soda, old board games, including a half-completed game of Scrabble, abandoned when Alex began making up words like quozz and yregg—makes me overwhelmingly sad, and reminds me of that single house that survived the blitz, and that cracked and bombed-out street: a place where everybody went on stupidly doing everyday things, right up until the moment of disaster, and afterward everyone said, “How could they not have known what was coming?”
Stupid, stupid—to be so careless with our time, to believe we had so much of it left.
I head into the streets, frantic and desperate now, but unsure of what to do next. He mentioned to me once that he lived on Forsyth—a long row of gray slab buildings owned by the university—so I go that way. But all the buildings look identical. There must be dozens of them, hundreds of individual apartments. I’m tempted to tear through each and every one until I find him, but that would be suicide. After a couple of students give me suspicious glances—I’m sure I look like a disaster, red-faced and wild-eyed and close to hysterical—I duck into a side street. To calm myself I start reciting the elemental prayers: “H is for hydrogen, a weight of one; when fission’s split, as brightly lit, as hot as any sun . . .”
I’m so distracted walking home that I get lost in the tangle of streets leading away from the UP campus. I end up on a narrow one-way street I’ve never seen before and have to backtrack to Monument Square. The Governor is standing there as always, his empty palm outstretched, looking sad and forlorn in the fading evening light, as though he’s a beggar, forever condemned to ask for alms.
But seeing him gives me an idea. I dig in the bottom of my bag for a scrap of paper and a pen, and scrawl out, Let me explain, please. Midnight at the house. 8/17. Then, after checking to make sure that no one is watching me from the few remaining lit windows that overlook the square, I hop up onto the statue’s base and stuff the note into the little cavity in the Governor’s fist. The chance that Alex will think to check there is a million to one. But still, there’s a chance.
That night, as I’m slipping out of the bedroom, I hear rustling behind me. When I turn around, Gracie’s sitting up in bed again, blinking at me, her eyes as reflective as an animal’s. I touch my finger to my lips. She does the same, an unconscious mimic, and I slip out the door.