Delirium (Delirium #1)(28)

She looks away, biting her lip, and I can tell she’s debating whether or not to trust me. “There’s this party tonight . . .”

“What?” Zoom. The fear floods back in.

She rushes on. “It’s something I found on one of the floaters—it’s a music thing, a few bands playing out by the border in Stroudwater, on one of the farms.”

“You can’t be serious. You’re not—you’re not actually going, right? You’re not even thinking about it.”

“It’s safe, okay? I promise. These websites . . . it’s really amazing, Lena, I swear you’d be into it if you looked. They’re hidden. Links, usually, embedded on normal pages, approved government stuff, but I don’t know, somehow you can tell they don’t feel right, you know? They don’t belong.”

I grasp at a single word. “Safe? How can it be safe? That guy you met—the censor—his whole job is to track down people who are stupid enough to post these things—”

“They’re not stupid, they’re incredibly smart, actually—”

“Not to mention the regulators and patrols and the youth guard and curfew and segregation and just about everything else that makes this one of the worst ideas—”

“Fine.” Hana raises her arms and brings them slapping down against her thighs. The noise is so loud it makes me jump. “Fine. So it’s a bad idea. So it’s risky. You know what? I don’t care.”

For a second there’s silence. We’re glaring at each other, and the air between us feels charged and dangerous, a thin electrical coil, ready to explode.

“What about me?” I say finally, struggling to keep my voice from shaking.

“You’re welcome to come. Ten thirty, Roaring Brook Farms, Stroudwater. Music. Dancing. You know—fun. The stuff we’re supposed to be having, before they cut out half of our brain.”

I ignore the last part of her comment. “I don’t think so, Hana. In case you’ve forgotten, we have other plans for tonight. Have had plans for tonight for, oh, the past fifteen years.”

“Yeah, well, things change.” She turns her back to me, but I feel like she’s reached out and punched me in the stomach.

“Fine.” My throat is squeezing up. This time I know it’s the real deal, and I’m on the verge of crying. I go over to her bed and start gathering up my stuff. Of course my bag has spilled over on its side, and now her comforter is covered with little scraps of paper and gum wrappers and coins and pens. I start stuffing these back into my bag, fighting back the tears. “Go ahead. Do whatever you want tonight. I don’t care.”

Maybe Hana feels bad, because her voice softens a little bit. “Seriously, Lena. You should think about coming. We won’t get in any trouble, I promise.”

“You can’t promise that.” I take a deep breath, wishing my voice would stop quivering. “You don’t know that. You can’t be positive. “

“And you can’t go on being so scared all the time.”

That’s it: That does it. I whirl around, furious, something deep and black and old rising inside of me. “Of course I’m scared. And I’m right to be scared. And if you’re not scared it’s just because you have the perfect little life, and the perfect little family, and for you everything is perfect, perfect, perfect. You don’t see. You don’t know.”

“Perfect? That’s what you think? You think my life is perfect?” Her voice is quiet but full of anger.

I’m tempted to move away from her but force myself to stay put. “Yeah. I do.”

Again she lets out a barking laugh, a quick explosion. “So you think this is it, huh? As good as it gets?” She turns a full circle, arms extended, like she’s embracing the room, the house, everything.

Her question startles me. “What else is there?”

“Everything, Lena.” She shakes her head. “Listen, I’m not going to apologize. I know you have your reasons for being scared. What happened to your mom was terrible—”

“Don’t bring my mom into this.” My body goes tight, electric.

“But you can’t go on blaming her for everything. She died more than ten years ago.”

Anger swallows me, a thick fog. My mind careens wildly like wheels over ice, bumping up against random words: Fear. Blame. Don’t forget. Mom. I love you. And now I see that Hana is a snake—has been waiting a long time to say this to me, has been waiting to squirm her way in, as deep and painful as she can go, and bite.

“Fuck you.” In the end, these are the two words that come.

She holds up both hands. “Listen, Lena, I’m just saying you have to let it go. You’re nothing like her. And you’re not going to end up like her. You don’t have it in you.”

“Fuck you.” She’s trying to be nice, but my mind is closed up and the words come out on their own, cascading over one another, and I wish every single one was a punch so that I could hit her in the face, bambambambam. “You don’t know a single thing about her. And you don’t know me. You don’t know anything.”

“Lena.” She reaches for me.

“Don’t touch me.” I’m stumbling backward, grabbing my bag, bumping against her desk as I move toward the door. My vision is cloudy. I can barely make out the banisters. I’m tripping, half falling down the stairs, finding the front door by touch. I think Hana might be calling to me, but everything is lost to a roaring, rushing in my ears, inside my head. Sunshine, brilliant, brilliant white light—cool biting iron under my fingers, the gate—ocean smells, gasoline. Wailing, growing louder. A punctuated shriek: beep, beep, beep.