Delirium (Delirium #1)(48)

She cuts me off. “Like I said, it’s no big deal.” She crosses her arms and shrugs. I don’t know whether she believes me or not but it’s clear that, after all, things are different. This isn’t going to be some big, happy reunion. “So you got matched?”

Her voice is polite now, and slightly formal, so I take on the same tone. “Brian Scharff. I accepted. You?”

She nods. A muscle flexes at the corner of her mouth, almost imperceptible. “Fred Hargrove.”

“Hargrove? Like the mayor?”

“His son.” Hana nods, looks away again.

“Wow. Congratulations.” I can’t help sounding impressed. Hana must have killed at the evaluations. Not that that’s any surprise, really.

“Yeah. Lucky me.” Hana’s voice is completely toneless. I can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic. But she is lucky, whether she knows it or not.

And there it is: Even though we’re standing in the same patch of sun-drenched pavement, we might as well be a hundred thousand miles apart.

You came from different starts and you’ll come to different ends: That’s an old saying, something Carol used to repeat a lot. I never really understood how true it was until now.

This must be why Carol didn’t tell me Hana called. Three phone calls is a lot of phone calls to forget, and Carol’s pretty careful about stuff like that. Maybe she was trying to hurry up the inevitable, skip us both to the ending, the part where Hana and I aren’t friends anymore. She knows that after the procedure—once the past and all our shared history has loosened its grip on us, once we don’t feel our memories so much—we won’t have anything in common. Carol was probably trying to protect me, in her own way.

There’s no point in confronting her about it. She won’t try and deny it. She’ll just give me one of her blank looks and rattle off a proverb from The Book of Shhh. Feelings aren’t forever. Time waits for no man, but progress waits for man to enact it.

“You walking home?” Hana is still looking at me like I’m a stranger.

“Yeah,” I say. I gesture to my T-shirt. “I figured I should probably get inside before I blind someone with this.”

A smile flits over Hana’s face. “I’ll walk with you,” she says, which surprises me.

For a while we walk in silence. We’re not that far from my house, and I’m worried we’ll go the whole way back without speaking at all. I’ve never seen Hana so quiet, and it’s making me nervous.

“Where are you coming from?” I say, just to say something.

Hana starts next to me, as though I’ve woken her from a dream. “East End,” she says. “I’m on a strict tanning schedule.”

She presses her arm next to mine. It’s at least seven shades darker than mine, which is still pale, maybe a little more freckled than it is in the winter. “Not you, huh?” This time she smiles for real.

“Um, no. Haven’t gotten down to the beach very much.” I will away a blush.

Thankfully, Hana doesn’t notice, or if she does she doesn’t say anything. “I know. I was looking for you.”

“You were?” I shoot her a look from the corner of my eye.

She rolls her eyes. I’m glad to see her attitude is coming back online. “I mean, not actively. But I’ve been down there a few times, yeah. Haven’t seen you.”

“I’ve been working a lot,” I say. I don’t add, to avoid East End, actually.

“You still running?”

“No. Too hot.”

“Yeah, me too. Figured I’d give it a rest until fall.” We walk a few more paces in silence and then Hana squints at me, tilting her head. “So what else?”

Her question catches me off guard. “What do you mean, what else?”

“That is what I mean. I mean, what else? Come on, Lena. It’s the last summer, remember? The last summer of no responsibilities and all that good stuff. So what have you been doing? Where have you been?”

“I—nothing. I haven’t done anything.” This was the whole point—to stay out of trouble, to do as little as possible—but saying the words makes me feel kind of sad. The summer seems to be narrowing rapidly, shrinking down to a fine point before I’ve even had a chance to enjoy it. It’s already almost August. We’ll have another five weeks of this weather before the wind starts cutting in at night and the leaves get trimmed with edges of gold. “What about you?” I say. “Good summer so far?”

“The usual.” Hana shrugs. “I’ve been going to the beach a lot, like I said. Been babysitting for the Farrels some.”

“Really?” I wrinkle my nose. Hana’s always had a thing against children. She’s always staying they’re too sticky and clingy, like Jolly Ranchers that have been left too long in a hot pocket.

She makes a face. “Yeah, unfortunately. My parents decided I needed to ‘practice managing a household,’ or some crap like that. You know they’re actually making me work out a budget? Like figuring out how to spend sixty dollars a week is going to teach me about paying bills, or responsibility or something.”

“Why? It’s not like you’ll even have a budget.” I don’t mean to sound bitter but there it is, the difference in our futures cutting between us again.