hana-tate

This is the past: It drifts, it gathers. If you are not careful, it will bury you. This is half the reason for the cure: It clean-sweeps; it makes the past, and all its pain, distant, like the barest impression on sparkling glass.But the cure works differently for everybody; and it does not work perfectly for all.

I feel as though I__ in a dream, where strange things are happening but they don__ feel strange. Everything is cloudy__verything is wrapped in a fog__nd I__ filled from head to toe with the single, burning desire to get closer to the music, to hear the music better, for the music to go on and on and on.

As soon as she sees me she swings forward and hits a key on her keyboard. The music cuts off instantly. Strangely, the silence that follows seems just as loud.

Lena Ella Haloway Tiddle." I pronounce her full name, very slowly, partly because I need to reassure myself of her existence__ena, my friend, the worried one, the one who always pleaded for safety first, who now makes secret appointments to meet with boys. "You have some explaining to do.""Hana, you remember Alex," Lena says weakly, as though that__he fact of my remembering him__xplains any

Hana?" Lena says softly. "Are you okay?"That single stupid question breaks me. All the metal fingers relax me at once, and the tears they've been holding back come surging up at once. Suddenly I am sobbing and telling her everything: about the raid, and the dogs, and the sounds of skulls cracking underneath regulator's nightsticks. Thinking about it again makes me feel like I might puke. At a certain point, Lena puts her arms around me and starts murmuring things into my hair. I don't even know what she's saying, and I don't care. JUst having her here__olid, real, on my side__akes me feel better than I have in weeks. Slowly I manage to stop crying, swallowing back the hiccups and sobs that are still running through me. I try to tell her that I've missed her, and that I've been stupid and wrong, but my voice is muffled and thick

Every day, streets papered with more and more for .Reward, reward, reward.Reward for information.If you see something, say something.A paper town, a paper world: paper rustling in the airm whispering to me, hissing out a message of posion and jealousy.If you know something, do something.I'm sorry, Lena.

I want to apologize to you,_ she says calmly.__h yeah? For what?_ I don__ have time for this. We don__ have time for this. I push away thoughts of what will happen to Hana even if I manage to escape. She__l be here, in the house . . .My stomach is clenching and unclenching. I__ worried the bread will come straight back up. I have to stay focused. What happens to Hana isn__ my concern, and it isn__ my fault, either.__or telling the regulators about 37 Brooks,_ she says. __or telling them about you and Alex.__ust like that, my brain powers down. __hat?"__ told them._ She lets out a tiny exhalation, as though saying the words has given her relief. ____ sorry. I was jealous.__ can__ speak. I__ swimming through a fog. __ealous?_ I manage to spit out.____ wanted what you had with Alex. I was confused. I didn__ understand what I was doing._ She shakes her head again.I have a swinging, seasick feeling. It doesn__ make any sense. Hana__olden girl Hana, my best friend, fearless and reckless. I trusted her. I loved her. __ou were my best friend.___ know._ Again she looks troubled, as though trying to recall the meaning of the words.__ou had everything._ I can__ stop my voice from rising. The anger is vibrating, ripping through me like a live current. __erfect life. Perfect grades. Everything._ I gesture to the spotless kitchen, to the sunshine pouring over the marble counters like drizzled butter. __ had nothing. He was my one thing. My only__ The sickness surges up and I take a step forward, clenching my fists, blind with rage. __hy couldn__ you let me have it? Why did you have to take it? Why did you always take everything?

I came to find you last night," Lena says more quietly. "When I knew there was going to be a raid...I snuck out. I was there when__hen the regulators came. I barely made it out. Alex helped me. We hid in a shed until they were gone..."I close my eyes and reopen them. I remember wiggling into the damp earth, bumping my hip against the window. I remember standing, and seeing the dark forms of bodies lying like shadows in the grass, and the sharp geometry of a small she shed, nestled in the trees.Lena was there. It was almost unimaginable."I can't believe that. I can't believe you snuck out during a raid__or me." My throat feels thick again, and I will myself not to start crying. For a moment I am overwhelmed by a feeling so huge and strange, I have no name for it: It surges over the guilt and the shock and the envy; it plunges a hand into the deepest part of myself and roots me to Lena.

It__ for the best. But no matter how many times I repeat it, the strange, hollow feeling in my stomach doesn__ go away. And ridiculous as it is, I can__ shake the persistent, needling feeling that I__e forgotten something, or missed something, or lost something forever.