Pandemonium (26 page)

“Are you cold?” Julian asks.

“A little,” I say. I can barely get the words out. My throat, too, is frozen.

There’s a pause. Then Julian rolls over onto his side and loops his arm around me, scooting forward so our bodies are pressed together, and I am cupped in the space around him. His heart beats through my back—a strange, stuttering rhythm.

“Aren’t you worried about the
deliria
?” I ask him.

“Yes,” he says shortly. “But I’m cold, too.”

After a while his heartbeat becomes more regular, and mine slows to match his. The coldness melts out of me.

“Lena?” Julian whispers. I’ve had my eyes closed. The moon is now directly above us, a high white beam.

“Yeah?”

I can feel Julian’s heart speed up again. “Do you want to know how my brother died?”

“Okay,” I say, even though something in his tone of voice makes me afraid.

“My brother and my dad never really got along,” Julian says. “My brother was stubborn. Headstrong. He had a bad temper, too. Everyone said he would be okay once he was cured.” Julian pauses. “It just got worse and worse as he got older, though. My parents were talking about having his cure moved up. It looked bad, you know, for the DFA and all. He was wild, and he didn’t listen to my father, and I’m not even sure he believed in the cure. He was six years older than me. I was—I was scared for him. Do you know what I mean?”

I can’t bring myself to speak, so I just nod. Memories are crowding me, surging from the dark places where I have walled them up: the constant, buzzing anxiety I felt as a child, watching my mom laughing, dancing, singing along to strange music that piped from our speakers, a joy threaded through with terror; fear for Hana; fear for Alex; fear for all of us.

“Seven years ago, we had another big rally in New York. That’s when the DFA was going national. It was the first rally I attended. I was eleven years old. My brother begged off. I don’t remember what excuse he gave.”

Julian shifts. For a second his arms tighten around me, an involuntary gripping; then he relaxes again. Somehow I know he has never told this story before.

“It was a disaster. Halfway through the rally, protesters stormed city hall—that’s where we were—half of them masked. The fight turned violent, and the police came to break it up, and suddenly it was just a brawl. I hid behind the podium, like a little kid. Afterward, I was so ashamed.

“One of the protesters got too close to the stage; too close to my dad. He was screaming something—I couldn’t hear what. It was loud, and he was wearing a ski mask. The guard brought him down with a nightstick. Weirdly, I remember I could hear that; the crack of the wood against his knee, the thud as he collapsed. That’s when my dad saw it, must have seen it: the birthmark on the back of his left hand, shaped like a big half-moon. My brother’s birthmark. He jumped off the stage into the audience, tore off the mask, and … it was him. My brother was lying there, in agony, his knee shattered in a thousand places. But I’ll never forget the look he gave my father. Totally calm, and resigned, too, like … like he knew what was going to happen.

“We finally made it out—had a police escort all the way home. My brother was stretched out in the back of the van, moaning. I wanted to ask him whether he was okay, but I knew my dad would kill me. He drove the whole way home without saying a word, without taking his eyes off the road. I don’t know what my mom was feeling. Maybe not much. But I think she was worried.
The Book of Shhh
says that our obligations to our children are sacred, right? ‘And the good mother will finish discharging her duties in heaven…’” Julian quotes softly. “She wanted him to see a doctor, but my dad wouldn’t hear of it. My brother’s knee looked bad—swollen to the size of a basketball, practically. He was sweating like crazy, in so much pain. I wanted to help. I wanted to—” A tremor passes through Julian’s body. “When we got home, my dad threw my brother into the basement and locked it. He was going to leave him there for a day, in the dark. So my brother would learn his lesson.”

I picture Thomas Fineman: the clean-pressed clothing and gold cuff links, which must give him such satisfaction; the polished watch and the neatly trimmed hair. Pure, clean, spotless, like a man who can always count on a good night’s sleep.
I hate you
, I think, for Julian’s sake. Julian has never gotten to know those words, to feel the relief in them.

“We could hear my brother crying through the door. We could hear him from the dining room when we ate dinner. My dad made us sit through a whole meal. I’ll never forgive him for that.” The last part is spoken in a whisper. I find his hand and lace my fingers in his and squeeze. He gives me a small pulse back.

For a while we lie there in silence. Then, from above, there’s a soft rushing sound: then the sound separates, becomes thousands of raindrops hitting the pavement. Water drums down through the grates, pinging off the metal rails of the old tracks.

“And then the crying stopped,” Julian says simply, and I think of that day in the Wilds with Raven, taking turns mopping Blue’s head while the sun broke in a wave over the trees, long after we had felt her grow cold under our hands.

Julian clears his throat. “They said afterward it was a freak accident; a blood clot from his injury that migrated into his brain. One-in-a-million chance. My dad couldn’t have known. But still, I—”

He breaks off. “After that, you know, I was always so careful. I would do everything right. I would be the perfect son, a model for the DFA. Even once I found out the cure would probably kill me. It was more than fear,” Julian says, a sudden rush of words. “I thought if I followed the rules, things would turn out all right. That’s the thing about the cure, isn’t it? It isn’t just about
deliria
at all. It’s about order. A path for everyone. You just have to follow it and everything will be okay. That’s what the DFA is about. That’s what I believed in—what I’ve had to believe in. Because otherwise, it’s just … chaos.”

“Do you miss him?” I ask.

Julian doesn’t answer right away, and I know, somehow, that nobody has ever asked him this before. “I think so,” he says finally, in a low voice. “I did for a long time. My mom—my mom told me it wouldn’t be so bad after the cure. I wouldn’t think about him that way anymore, she said.”

“That’s even worse,” I say quietly. “That’s when they’re really gone.”

I count three long seconds of silence, and in each one of them, Julian’s heart drums against my back. I’m not cold anymore. If anything, I’m too hot. Our bodies are so close—skin sticking to skin, fingers entangled. His breath is on my neck.

“I don’t know what’s going on anymore,” Julian whispers. “I don’t understand anything. I don’t know what’s supposed to happen next.”

“You’re not supposed to know,” I say, and it’s true: The tunnels may be long, and twisted, and dark; but you are supposed to go through them.

More silence. Finally Julian says, “I’m scared.”

He barely whispers it; but I can feel his lips moving against my neck, as though the words are being spelled there.

“I know,” I say. “Me too.”

I can’t stay awake any longer. I’m carried back and forth through time and memory, between this rain and rains before it, as though climbing up and down a spiral staircase. Julian has his arm around me, and then Alex does; then Raven is holding my head in her lap, and then my mother is singing to me.

“I’m less scared with you,” Julian says. Or maybe it is Alex who speaks, or maybe I’ve only dreamed the words. I open my mouth to respond but find I can’t speak. I’m drinking water, and then I’m floating, and then there is nothing but sleep, liquid and deep.

W
e bury Blue by the river. It takes us hours to break through the frozen ground and make a hole big enough to accommodate her. We have to remove her jacket before we bury her. We can’t afford to lose it. She feels so light as we lower her into the ground, just like a baby bird, hollow-boned and fragile.

At the last second, as we’re about to cover her with dirt, Raven pushes forward, suddenly hysterical. “She’ll be cold,” she says. “She’ll freeze like that.” Nobody wants to stop her. She strips off her sweater and slides into the makeshift grave, taking Blue in her arms and wrapping her in it. She’s crying. Most of us turn away, embarrassed. Only Lu steps forward.

“Blue will be okay, Raven,” she says softly. “The snow will keep her warm.”

Raven looks up, her face wild, tear-streaked. She scans our faces once as though struggling to remember who we are. Then she jerks, suddenly, to her feet, and climbs up out of the lip of the grave.

Bram steps forward and starts to shovel the dirt over Blue’s body again, but Raven stops him.

“Leave her,” Raven says. Her voice is loud and unnaturally high-pitched. “Lu’s right. It’s going to snow any minute.”

It does start to snow as we’re packing up camp. It continues to snow all day, as we make our way silently through the woods in a long, ragged line. The cold is a constant pain now, a fierce ache in my chest and fingers and toes, and the snow is mostly driving ice, and burns like hot ash. But I imagine that for Blue it falls more gently, and covers her like a blanket, where it will keep her safely until spring.

I
t’s still raining in the morning.

I sit up slowly. I have a wicked headache, and I’m dizzy. Julian is no longer next to me. The rain is pouring through the grates, long, twisting gray ribbons of it, and he is standing underneath them.

His back is turned to me, and he has stripped down to a pair of faded cotton shorts he must have found when we scavenged for clothing and supplies. My breath catches in my throat. I know I should look away, but I can’t. I’m transfixed by the sight of the rain coursing over his back—broad and muscled and strong, just like Alex’s was—the rolling landscapes of his arms and shoulders; his hair, now dark with water; the way he tips his head back and lets the rain run into his open mouth.

In the Wilds, I finally got used to seeing men naked or half-naked. I got used to the strangeness of their bodies, the bits of curling hair on their chests, and sometimes on their backs and shoulders, to the broad, flat panes of their stomachs and wings of their hipbones, arcing over the waistband of their pants. But this is different. There is a perfect stillness to him, and in the pallid gray light he seems to glow slightly, like a statue carved out of white rock.

He is beautiful.

He shakes his head a bit and water pinwheels from his hair, a glittering semicircle: Happy and unaware, he starts to hum quietly. All of a sudden I am horribly embarrassed: I’m trespassing on a private moment. I clear my throat loudly. He whips around. When he sees me awake, he jumps out of the stream of water and scoops his clothes up off the platform lip, covering himself with them.

“I didn’t know you were awake,” he says, fighting to get his T-shirt on, even though he’s soaking wet. He accidentally gets his head caught in an armhole and has to try again. I would laugh if he didn’t look so desperate.

Now that he has cleaned away the blood, I can see his face clearly. His eyes are no longer swollen, but they are ringed with deep purple bruises. The cuts on his lip and forehead are scabbing over. That’s a good sign.

“I just woke up,” I say as he finally gets his shirt on. “Did you sleep at all?”

Now he’s wrestling with his jeans. His hair makes a pattern of water spots around the neck of his T-shirt.

“A little,” he says guiltily. “I didn’t mean to. I must have dropped off around five. It was already getting light.” His jeans are on. He hauls himself up onto the platform, surprisingly graceful. “Ready to move on?”

“In a bit,” I say. “I’d like—I’d like to get clean, like you did. Under the grates.”

“Okay.” Julian nods, but doesn’t move. I can feel myself blushing again. It has been a long time since I’ve felt this way, so open and exposed. I’m losing the thread of the new Lena, the hard one, the warrior made in the Wilds. I can’t seem to pull myself back into her body.

“I’ll need to get undressed,” I blurt out, since Julian doesn’t seem to be taking the hint.

“Oh—oh, right,” he stammers, backing away. “Of course. I’ll just—I’ll go scout ahead.”

“I’ll be quick,” I say. “We should get moving again.”

I wait until Julian’s footsteps are a faint echo in the cavernous space before stepping out of my clothes. For a minute it’s possible to forget that the Scavengers are somewhere out there in the dark, looking for us. For a minute it’s possible to forget what I’ve done—what I’ve had to do—to escape, to forget the pattern of blood seeping across the storeroom floor, the Scavenger’s eyes, surprised, accusatory. I stand naked on the lip of the platform, reaching my arms up toward the sky, as ribbons of water continue twisting through the grates: liquid gray, as though the sky has begun to melt. The cold air raises goose bumps on my skin. I lower myself to a crouch and ease myself off the platform, splashing into the tracks, feeling the bite of metal and wood on my bare feet. I slosh my way over to the grates. Then I tip my head back so the rain hits me square in the face and courses down my hair, my back, my aching shoulders and chest.