Pandemonium

Page 36

 

  “It’s okay,” I tell him. “You can read what you like here. ”

  “I—” He starts to speak, then breaks off, shaking his head. He is still watching me with that strange look on his face. My skin feels hot. The bath must have been too warm. “I remember this book,” he says finally, but I get the sense that is not what he was going to say originally. “It was in my father’s study. His second study. The one I told you about. ”

  I nod. He holds up the book. It’s a copy of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

  “I haven’t read it yet,” I confess. “Tack always said it was one of his favorites—” I suck in a quick breath. I shouldn’t have said Tack’s name. I’ve been trusting Julian, letting him in. But he is still Julian Fineman, and the resistance’s strength depends on its secrets.

  Fortunately, he doesn’t comment on it. “My brother—” He coughs and begins again. “I found this book with his things. After he died. I don’t know why; I don’t know what I was looking for. ”

  A way back, I think, but I don’t say it.

  “I kept it. ” Julian twists one side of his mouth into a smile. “I cut a slit in my mattress; I used to store it in there, so my dad wouldn’t find it. I started reading it that day. ”

  “Is it good?” I ask him.

  “It’s full of illegal things,” Julian says slowly, as though he’s reevaluating the meaning of the words. His eyes slide away from mine, and for a moment there’s a heavy pause. Then his eyes click back to mine, and this time when he smiles, it’s full of light. “But yes. It’s good. It’s great, I think. ”

  For some reason I laugh; just that, the way he says it, breaks up the tension in the room, makes everything seem easy and manageable. We were kidnapped; we were beaten and chased; we have no way to get home. We come from two different worlds, and we belonged to two different sides. But everything will be okay.

  “I filled a bath for you,” I say. “It should be hot by now. You can take clean clothes. ” I gesture to the shelves, neatly stacked and labeled: MEN’S SHIRTS, WOMEN’S PANTS, CHILDREN’S SHOES. Raven’s work, of course.

  “Thanks. ” Julian grabs a new shirt and pants from the shelves, and, after a moment of hesitation, replaces Great Expectations among the books. Then he straightens up, hugging the clothes to his chest. “It’s not so bad here, you know?”

  I shrug. “We do what we can,” I say, but I’m secretly pleased.

  He starts to move around me, toward the bathing room. When we’re side by side he stops abruptly. His whole body stiffens. I see a tremor run through him, and for a terrifying second I think, Oh my God, he’s having an attack.

  Then he says simply, “Your hair…”

  “What?” I’m so surprised I can barely croak out the word.

  Julian’s not looking at me, but I can feel an alertness in his whole body, an absorption, and it makes me feel even more exposed than if he were staring.

  “Your hair smells like roses,” he says, and before I can respond, he wrenches away from me and into the hall, and I am left alone, with a fluttering in my chest.

  While Julian bathes, I set out dinner for us. I’m too tired to light up the old woodstove, so I set out crackers, and open up two cans of beans, and one each of mushrooms and tomatoes; whatever doesn’t need to be cooked. There’s salted beef, too. I take only a small tin of it, even though I’m so hungry I could probably eat a whole cow myself. But we have to save for others. That is a rule.

  There are no windows in Salvage and it is dark. I turn off the lantern; I don’t want to waste battery power. Instead I find a few thick candles—already burned down almost to stubs—and set those out on the floor. There is no table in Salvage. When I lived here with Raven and Tack, after Hunter had gone with the others even farther south, to Delaware, we ate like this every night, bent over a communal plate, knees bumping, shadows flickering on the walls. I think it was the happiest I’d been since leaving Portland.

  From the bathing room I hear watery, sloshing sounds, and humming. Julian, too, is finding heaven in small things. I go to the front door and crack it. The sun is already setting. The sky is pale blue and threaded with pink and gold clouds. The metal detritus around Salvage—the junk and the shrapnel—smolders red. I think I see a flicker of movement to my left. It must be the cat again, picking its way through the junk.

  “What are you looking at?”

  I whirl around, slamming the door accidentally. I didn’t hear Julian come up behind me. He is standing very close. I can smell his skin, soapy and yet somehow still boy. His hair curls wetly around his jawline.

  “Nothing,” I say, and then because he just stands there, staring at me, I say, “You look almost human. ”

  “I feel almost human,” he says, and runs a hand through his hair. He has found a plain white T-shirt and jeans that fit.

  I’m glad Julian doesn’t ask too many questions about this homestead, and who stays here, and when it was built. I know he must be dying to. I light the candles and we sit cross-legged on the ground, and for a while we’re too busy eating to talk about much of anything. But afterward we do talk: Julian tells me about growing up in New York and asks me questions about Portland. He tells me about wanting to study mathematics in college, and I tell him about running cross-country.

  We don’t talk about the cure, or the resistance, or the DFA, or what happens tomorrow, and for that hour while we’re sitting across from each other on the floor, I feel as though I have a real friend. He laughs easily, like Hana did. He’s a good talker, and an even better listener. I feel weirdly comfortable around him—more comfortable, even, than I did with Alex.

  I don’t mean to think the comparison, but I do, and it’s there, and I stand up abruptly, while Julian is in the middle of a story, and carry the plates to the sink. Julian breaks off, and watches me clatter the dishes into the basin.

  “Are you okay?” Julian asks.

  “Fine,” I say too sharply. I hate myself in that moment, and I hate Julian, too, without knowing why. “Just tired. ”

  That, at least, is true. I am suddenly more tired than I have ever been in my life. I could sleep forever; I could let sleep fall over me like snow.

  “I’ll find us some blankets,” Julian says, and stands up. I feel him hesitating behind me, and I pretend to be busy at the sink. I can’t bear to look at him right now.

  “Hey,” he says. “I never got to thank you. ” He coughs. “You saved my life down there—in the tunnels. ”

  I shrug, keeping my back toward him. I am gripping the edges of the sink so tightly my knuckles are white. “You saved my life too,” I say. “I almost got stuck by a Scavenger. ”

  When he speaks again, I can tell that he’s smiling. “So I guess we saved each other. ”

  I do turn around then; but Julian has already taken up a candle and disappeared with it into the hall, so I am left with the shadows.

  Julian has selected two lower bunks, and made them up as best he can, with sheets that don’t quite fit and thin woolen blankets. He has placed my backpack at the foot of my bed. There are a dozen beds in the room, and yet he has chosen two right next to each other. I try not to think about what this means. He is sitting on his bunk, head ducked, wrestling off his socks. When I enter with the candle, he looks up at me, his face so full of open happiness that I almost drop the candle, and the flame sputters out. Now we are left in darkness.

  “Can you find your way?” he says.

  “Yes. ” I feel my way toward his voice, using the other bunks to guide me.

  “Easy. ” His hand skates across my back, briefly, as I pass him and find my own bunk. I lie down beneath the sheet and the woolen blanket. Both of them smell like mildew and, very faintly, like mouse shit, but I’m grateful for the warmth. The heat from the fire in the bathing room didn’t penetrate this far. When I exhale, small clouds of breath crystallize in the darkness. It will be hard to sleep. The exhaustion that hit af
ter dinner has evaporated just as quickly as it came. My body is on high alert, full of a twinkling frost. I am incredibly aware of Julian’s breathing, his long body almost next to mine in the pitch dark. I can feel that he is awake too.

  After a while he speaks. His voice is low, a little bit hoarse.

  “Lena?”

  “Yeah?” My heart is beating high and fast in my throat and chest. I hear Julian roll over to face me. We are only a few feet apart—that is how close the beds have been built together.

  “Do you ever think about him? About the boy who infected you?”

  Images flash in the darkness: a crown of auburn hair, like autumn leaves burning; the blur of a body, a shape running next to me; a dream-figure. “I try not to,” I say.

  “Why not?” Julian’s voice is quiet.

  I say, “Because it hurts. ”

  Julian’s breath is rhythmic, reassuring.

  I ask, “Do you ever think of your brother?”

  There is a pause. “All the time,” Julian says. Then, “They told me it would be better after I was cured. ” There are a few more moments of silence. Then Julian speaks again. “Can I tell you another secret?”

  “Yes. ” I pull my blanket tighter around my shoulders. My hair is still wet.

  “I knew it wouldn’t work. The cure, I mean. I knew it would kill me. I—I wanted it to. ” The words come out in a low rush. “I’ve never told anyone that before. ”

  Suddenly I could cry. I want to reach over and grab his hand. I want to tell him it’s okay, and feel the softness of his seashell ear against my lips. I want to curl up against him, as I would have done with Alex, and let myself breathe in his warm skin.

  He is not Alex. You don’t want Julian. You want Alex. And Alex is dead.

  But that’s not quite true. I want Julian, too. My body is filled with aching. I want Julian’s lips on mine, full and soft; and his warm hands on my back and in my hair. I want to lose myself in him, dissipate into his body, feel our skin melting together.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, willing away the thought. But with my eyes closed, Julian and Alex melt together. Their faces merge and then separate, then collapse again, like images reflected in a stream, passing over each other until I am no longer sure which of them I am reaching for—in the dark, in my head.

  “Lena?” Julian asks again, this time even more quietly. He makes my name sound like music. He has moved closer to me. I can feel him, the long lines of his body, a place where the darkness has been displaced. I have shifted too, without meaning to. I am on the very edge of my bed, as close to him as possible. But I won’t roll over to face him. I will myself still. I freeze my arms and legs, and try to freeze my heart, too.

  “Yes, Julian?”

  “What does it feel like?”

  I know what he is talking about, but still I ask, “What does what feel like?”

  “The deliria. ” He pauses. Then I hear him slide slowly out of bed. He is kneeling in the space between our bunks. I cannot move or breathe. If I turn my head, our lips will be six inches apart. Less. “What does it feel like to be infected?”