Hana: A Delirium Short Story by Oliver, Lauren (3)

three

I wake to blinding sunshine and a searing pain in my head; I forgot to draw the shades last night. There's a sour taste in my mouth. I move clumsily to the bathroom, brush my teeth, and splash water on my face. As I straighten up, I see it: a blue-purple blemish on my neck just below my right ear, a tiny constellation of bruised and broken capillaries.

I don't believe it. He gave me a Devil's Kiss.

We always got checked for kisses at school; we had to stand in a line with our hair pulled back while Mrs. Brinn examined our chests, necks, collarbones, shoulders. Devil's Kisses are a sign of illegal activity--and a symptom, too, of the disease taking root, spreading through your bloodstream. Last year, when Willow Marks was caught in Deering Oaks Park with an uncured boy, the story was that she'd been under surveillance for weeks, after her mom had noticed a Devil's Kiss on her shoulder. Willow was taken out of school to get cured a full eight months before her scheduled procedure, and I haven't seen her since.

I rummage through the bathroom cabinet, and luckily manage to find an old tube of foundation and some yellowish concealer. I layer on the makeup until the kiss is no more than a faint blue spot on my skin, then arrange my hair in a messy side-bun knotted just behind my right ear. I'll have to be very careful over the next few days; I'm sporting a mark of the disease. The idea is both thrilling and terrifying.

My parents are downstairs in the kitchen. My father is watching the morning news. Even though it's Sunday, he is dressed for work and eating a bowl of cereal standing up. My mother is on the telephone, working its cord around her finger, making the occasional noise of assent. I know immediately that she must be talking to Minnie Phillips. My father watches the news; my mother calls Minnie for information. Mrs. Phillips works at the records bureau, and her husband is a policeman--between the two of them, they know everything that happens in Portland.

Almost everything, that is.

I think of the twisting, darkened rooms of uncureds last night--all of them touching, whispering, breathing one another's air--and feel a rush of pride.

"Morning, Hana," my dad says without taking his eyes off the television screen.

"Good morning." I'm careful to keep the left side of my body angled toward him as I slide into a chair at the kitchen table and shake a handful of cereal into my palm.

Donald Seigal, the mayor's minister of information, is being interviewed on TV.

"Stories of a resistance are vastly overblown," he is saying smoothly. "Still, the mayor is responsive to the concerns of the community . . . new measures will be effectuated . . ."

"Unbelievable." My mother has hung up the phone. She takes the remote and mutes the television. My father makes a noise of irritation. "Do you know what Minnie just told me?"

I fight the urge to smile. I knew it. That is the thing about people once they're cured: They're predictable. That is, supposedly, one of the procedure's benefits.

My mom continues, without waiting for a response, "There was another incident. A fourteen-year-old girl this time, and a boy from CPHS. They were caught sneaking around the streets at three in the morning."

"Who was it?" my dad asks. He has given up on the news and is now rinsing his bowl in the sink.

"One of the Sterling girls. The younger one, Sarah." My mother watches my dad expectantly. When he doesn't react, she says, "You remember Colin Sterling and his wife. We had lunch with them at the Spitalnys' in March."

My father grunts.

"So terrible for the fam--" My mother stops abruptly, turning to me. "Are you all right, Hana?"

"I--I think I swallowed the wrong way," I gasp. I stand up and reach for a glass of water. My fingers are shaking.

Sarah Sterling. She must have been caught on her way back from the party, and for a second I have the worst, most selfish thought: Thank God it wasn't me. I take long, slow sips of water, willing my heart to stop pounding. I want to ask what happened to Sarah--what will happen--but I don't trust myself to speak. Besides, these stories always end the same way.

"She'll be cured, of course," my mother finishes, as though reading my mind.

"She's too young," I blurt out. "There's no way it'll work right."

My mother turns to me calmly. "If you're old enough to catch the disease, you're old enough to be cured," she says.

My father laughs. "Soon you'll be volunteering for the DFA. Why not operate on infants, too?"

"Why not?" My mother shrugs.

I stand up, bracing myself against the kitchen table as a rush of blackness sweeps through my head, clouding my vision. My father takes the remote and turns the volume up on the television again. Now it is Fred's father, Mayor Hargrove, whose image comes into focus.

"I repeat, there is no danger of a so-called 'resistance movement,' or any significant spread of the diseasef w the di," he is saying. I walk quickly out into the hall. My mom calls something to me, but I'm too focused on the drone of Hargrove's voice--"Now, as ever, we declare a zero-tolerance policy for disruptions and dissidence"--to hear what she says. I take the stairs two at a time and shut myself into my room, wishing more than ever that my door had a lock.

But privacy breeds secrecy, and secrecy breeds sickness.

My palms are sweating as I pull out my phone and dial Angelica's number. I'm desperate to talk to someone about what happened to Sarah Sterling--I need Angelica to tell me it's okay, and we're safe, and also that the underground won't be disrupted--but we'll have to speak carefully, in codes. All our phone calls are regulated and recorded, periodically, by the city.

Angelica's cell phone goes straight to voice mail. I dial her house number, which rings and rings. I have a flash of panic: For a second, I worry she must have been caught too. Maybe even now, she's being dragged down to the labs, strapped down for her procedure.

But no. She lives a few doors down from me. If Angelica had been caught, I would have heard about it.

The urge is there, sudden and overwhelming: I need to see Lena. I need to talk with her, to spill everything, to tell her about Fred Hargrove, who has already had and given up one match, and his mother's obsessive weeding, and Steve Hilt, and the Devil's Kiss, and Sarah Sterling. She will make me feel better. She will know what I should do--what I should feel.

This time, when I go downstairs, I make sure to tiptoe; I don't want to have to answer my parents' questions about where I'm heading. I get my bike from the garage, where I stashed it after riding home last night. A purple scrunchie is looped around its left handle. Lena and I have the same bike, and a few months ago we started using the scrunchies to differentiate them. After our fight I pulled the scrunchie off and shoved it in the bottom of my sock drawer. But the handlebars looked sad and naked, and so I had to replace it.

It is just after eleven, and the air is full of shimmering, wet heat. Even the seagulls seem to be moving more slowly; they drift across the cloudless sky, practically motionless, as though they are suspended in liquid blue. Once I make it out of the West End and its protective shelter of ancient oaks and shaded, narrow streets, the sun is practically unbearable, high and unforgiving, as though a vast glass lens has been centered over Portland.

I make a point of detouring past the Governor, the old statue that stands in the middle of a cobblestone square near the University of Portland, which Lena will attend in the fall. We used to run together past the Governor regularly, and made a habit of reaching up and slapping his outstretched hand. I always made a wish simultaneously, and now, although I don't stop to slap his hand, I reach out with a toe and skim the base of the statue for good luck as I ride past. I wish, I think, but don't get any further. I don't know exactly what to wish for: to be safe or to be unsafe, for things to change or for things to stay the same.

The ride to Lena's house takes me longer than usual. A garbage truck has broken down on Congress Street, and the police are redirecting people up ChestnIle up Cut and around on Cumberland. By the time I get to Lena's street, I'm sweating, and I stop when I'm still a few blocks away from her house to drink from a water fountain and blot my face. Next to the fountain is a bus stop, with a sign warning of curfew restrictions--SUNDAY TO THURSDAY, 9 P.M.; SATURDAY AND SUNDAY, 9:30 P.M.--and as I go to chain my bike up, I notice the smudgy glass waiting area is papered with flyers. They are all identical, and feature the crest of Portland above bolded black type.

I stand for a minute, scanning the words over and over, as though they will suddenly mean something different. People have always reported suspicious behavior, of course, but it has never come with a financial reward. This will make it harder, much harder, for me, for Steve, for all of us. Five hundred dollars is a lot of money to most people these days--the kind of money most people don't make in a week.

A door slams and I jump, almost knocking over my bike. I notice, for the first time, that the whole street is papered with flyers. They are posted on gates and mailboxes, taped to disabled streetlamps and metal garbage cans.

There is movement on Lena's porch. Suddenly she appears, wearing an oversized T-shirt from her uncle's deli. She must be going to work. She pauses, scanning the street--I think her eyes land on me, and I lift my hand in a hesitant wave, but her eyes keep tracking, drifting over my head, and then sweeping off in the other direction.

I'm about to call out to her when her cousin Grace comes flying down the cement porch steps. Lena laughs and reaches out to slow Grace down. Lena looks happy, untroubled. I'm seized by sudden doubt: It occurs to me that Lena might not miss me at all. Maybe she hasn't been thinking of me; maybe she's perfectly happy not speaking to me.

After all, it's not like she's tried to call.

As Lena starts making her way down the street, with Grace bobbing beside her, I turn around quickly and remount my bike. Now I'm desperate to get out of here. I don't want her to spot me. The wind kicks up, rustling all those flyers, the exhortations of safety. The flyers lift and sigh in unison, like a thousand people waving white handkerchiefs, a thousand people waving good-bye.