Delirium - Lauren Oliver [135]
Well, soon I’ll be out there too.
There are only a few people on the beach, mostly families walking, and one old man, plodding slowly by the water, staking his cane into the sand. The sun is sinking farther beyond the clouds, and the bay is a hard gray, just barely tinged with green.
“I can’t believe in only a few weeks we won’t have to worry about curfew anymore,” Hana says, then swivels her head to look at me. “Less than three weeks, for you. Sixteen days, right?”
“Yeah.” I don’t like to lie to Hana so I sit up, wrapping my arms around my knees.
“I think on my first night cured I’m going to stay out all night. Just because I can.” Hana props herself up on her elbows. “We can make a plan to do it together—you and me.” There’s a pleading note in her voice. I know I should just say, Yeah, sure, or That sounds great. I know it would make her feel better—it would make me feel better—to pretend that life will go on as usual.
But I can’t force the words out. Instead I start blotting bits of sand from my thighs with a thumb. “Listen, Hana. I have to tell you something. About the procedure . . .”
“What about it?” She squints at me. She’s heard some note of seriousness in my voice, and it has worried her.
“Promise you won’t be mad, okay? I won’t be able to—” I stop myself before I can say, I won’t be able to leave if you’re mad at me. I’m getting ahead of myself.
Hana sits up completely, holding up a hand, forcing a laugh. “Let me guess. You’re jumping ship with Alex, making a run for it, going all rogue and Invalid on me.” She says it jokingly but there’s an edge to her voice, an undercurrent of neediness. She wants me to contradict her.
I don’t say anything, though. For a minute we just stare at each other, and all the light and energy drains from her face at once.
“You’re not serious,” she says finally. “You can’t be serious.”
“I have to, Hana,” I tell her quietly.
“When?” She bites her lip and looks away.
“We decided today. This morning.”
“No. I mean—when. When are you going?”
I hesitate for only a second. After this morning, I feel like I don’t know very much about the world or anything in it. But I do know that Hana would never, ever betray me—not now, at least, not until they stick needles into her brain and pick her apart, tease her into pieces. I realize now that that’s what the cure does, after all: It fractures people, cuts them off from themselves.
But by then—by the time they get to her—it will be too late. “Friday,” I say. “A week from now.”
She breathes out sharply, the air whistling between her teeth. “You can’t be serious,” she repeats.
“There’s nothing for me here,” I say.
She looks back at me then. Her eyes are enormous, and I can tell I’ve hurt her. “I’m here.”
Suddenly the solution comes to me—simple, ridiculously simple. I almost laugh out loud. “Come with us,” I burst out. Hana scans the beach anxiously, but everyone has dispersed: The old man has plodded on, halfway down the beach by now and out of earshot. “I’m serious, Hana. You could come with us. You’d love it in the Wilds. It’s incredible. There are whole settlements there—”
“You’ve been?” she cuts in sharply.
I blush, realizing I’d never told her about my night with Alex in the Wilds. I know she’ll see this, too, as a betrayal. I used to tell her everything. “Just once,” I say. “And only for a couple of hours. It’s amazing, Hana. It’s not like we imagined it at all. And the crossing . . . The fact that you can cross at all . . . So much is different from what we’ve been told. They’ve been lying to us, Hana.”
I stop, temporarily overwhelmed. Hana looks down, picking at the seam of her running shorts.
“We could do it,” I say, more gently. “The three of us together.”
For a long time Hana doesn’t say anything. She looks out at the