“For standing me up.” One corner of his mouth hitches higher, and again I have the feeling that he’s sharing some delicious secret with me, that he’s trying to tell me something. “You were a no-show at Back Cove that day.”
I feel a burst of triumph—he was waiting for me at Back Cove! He did want me to meet him! At the same time the anxiety blooms inside of me. He wants something from me. I’m not sure what it is, but I can sense it, and it makes me afraid.
“So?” He folds his arms and rocks back on his heels, still smiling. “Are you going to apologize, or what?”
His easiness and self-assurance aggravate me, just like they did at the labs. It’s so unfair, so different from how I feel, like I’m about to have a heart attack, or melt into a puddle.
“I don’t apologize to liars,” I say, surprised by how steady my voice sounds.
He winces. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Come on.” I roll my eyes, feeling more and more confident by the second. “You lied about seeing me at evaluations. You lied about recognizing me.” I’m ticking his lies off on my fingers. “You lied about even being inside the labs on Evaluation Day.”
“Okay, okay.” He holds up both hands. “I’m sorry, okay?
Look, I’m the one who should apologize.” He stares at me for a second and then sighs. “I told you, security isn’t allowed in the labs during evaluations. To keep the process ‘pure’ or something, I don’t know. But I really needed a cup of coffee, and there’s this machine on the second floor of the C complex that has the good kind, with real milk and everything, so I used my code to get in. That’s it. End of story. And afterward I had to lie about it. I could lose my job. And I only work at the stupid labs to subsidize my school . . .” He trails off. For once he doesn’t look confident. He looks worried, like he’s scared I might actually tell on him.
“So why were you on the observation deck?” I press on.
“Why were you watching me?”
“I didn’t even make it to the second floor,” he says. He is staring at me closely, as though judging my reaction. “I came inside and—and I just heard this crazy noise. That rushing, roaring sound. And something else, too.
Screaming or something.”
I close my eyes briefly, recalling the feeling of the burning white lights, my impression of hearing the ocean pounding outside the labs, of hearing my mother scream across the distance of a decade. When I open them again, Alex is still watching me.
“Anyway, I had no idea what was going on. I thought—I don’t know, it’s stupid—but I thought maybe the labs were under attack or something. And then as I’m standing there, all of a sudden there’s, like, a hundred cows charging me. . . .” He shrugs. “There was a staircase to my left. I freaked out and booked it. Figured cows don’t climb stairs.” A smile appears again, this time fleeting, tentative. “I ended up on the observation deck.”
A perfectly normal, reasonable explanation. I feel relieved, and less frightened of him now. At the same time there’s something working under my chest, a dull feeling, a disappointment. And some stubbornness, a part of me that still doubts him. I remember the way he looked on the observation deck, head tilted back, laughing; the way he winked at me. The way he looked—amused, confident, happy. Totally unafraid.
A world without fear . . .
“So you don’t know anything about how . . . how it happened?” I can’t believe I’m being so bold. I ball up my fists and squeeze, hoping he doesn’t notice the sudden strangled sound of my voice.
“The mix-up in the deliveries, you mean?” He says it smoothly, without a pause or a break in his voice, and the last of my doubts vanish. Just like any cured, he doesn’t question the official story. “I wasn’t in charge of signing for deliveries that day. The guy who was—Sal— was fired. You’re supposed to check the cargo. I guess he skipped that step.” He cocks his head to one side, spreads his hands. “Satisfied now?”
“Satisfied,” I say. But the pressure in my chest is still there. Even though earlier I was desperate to be out of the house, now I just wish I could blink and be home, sit up in bed, pushing the covers off of my legs, realizing that everything— the party, seeing Alex—was a dream.
“So . . . ?” He tilts his head back toward the barn. The band is playing something loud and fast paced. I don’t know why the music appealed to me before. It just seems like noise now—rushing noise. “Think we can get closer without getting trampled?”
I ignore the fact that he has just said “we,” a word that for some reason sounds amazingly appealing when pronounced with his lilting, laughing accent. “Actually, I was just heading home.” I realize I’m angry at him without knowing why—for not being what I thought he was, I guess, even though I should be grateful that he’s normal, and cured, and safe.
“Heading home?” he repeats disbelievingly. “You can’t go home.”
I’ve always been careful not to let myself give in to feelings of anger or irritation. I can’t afford to at Carol’s house. I owe her too much—and besides, after the few tantrums I threw as a child, I hated the way she looked at me sideways for days, as though analyzing me, measuring me. I knew she was thinking, Just like her mother. But now I give in, let the anger surge. I’m sick of people acting like this world, this other world, is the normal one, while I’m the freak. It’s not fair: like all the rules have suddenly been changed and somebody forgot to tell me.
“I can, and I am.” I turn around and start heading up the hill, figuring he’ll leave me alone. To my surprise, he doesn’t.
“Wait!” He comes bounding up the hill after me.
“What are you doing?” I whirl around to face him— again, surprised by how confident I sound, considering that my heart is rushing, tumbling. Maybe this is the secret to talking to boys—maybe you just have to be angry all the time.
“What do you mean?” We’re both slightly out of breath from hoofing it up the hill, but he still manages a smile.
“I just want to talk to you.”
“You’re following me.” I cross my arms, which helps me feel as though I’m closing off the space between us.
“You’re following me again.”
There it is. He starts backward, and I get a momentary, sick twinge of pleasure that I’ve surprised him. “Again?”
he repeats. I’m glad that for once I’m not the one stuttering, or struggling to find words.
The words fly out: “I think it’s a little bit strange that I go pretty much my whole life without seeing you, and then all of a sudden I start seeing you everywhere.” I hadn’t planned on saying this—it actually hadn’t struck me as strange—but the second the words are out of my mouth I realize they’re true.
I think he’s going to be angry, but to my surprise he tips his head back and laughs, long and loud, moonlight turning the curve of his cheeks and chin and nose silver. I’m so surprised by his reaction I just stand there, staring at him. Finally he looks at me. Even though I still can’t make out his eyes—the moon draws everything starkly, highlighting it in bright, crystalline silver or leaving it in blackness—I have the impression of heat, and light, the same impression I had that day at the labs.
“Maybe you just haven’t been paying attention,” he says quietly, rocking forward slightly on his heels.
I take an unconscious, half-shuffling step backward. I find myself frightened by his closeness; by the fact that even though our bodies are separated by several inches I feel as though we’re touching.
“What—what do you mean?”
“I mean that you’re wrong.” He pauses, watching me, and I struggle to keep my face composed, even though I can feel my left eye straining and fluttering. Hopefully in the darkness he can’t tell. “We’ve seen each other plenty.”
“I would remember if we’d met before.”
“I didn’t say that we’d met.” He doesn’t try to close the new distance between us and I’m grateful, at least, for that. He chews on the corner of a lip—a gesture that makes him look younger. “Let me ask you a question,”
he goes on. “How come you don’t run past the Governor anymore?”
Without meaning to I gasp a little. “How do you know about the Governor?”
“I take classes at UP,” he says. University of Portland—I remember now, the afternoon we walked up to see the ocean from the back of the lab complex, hearing bits of his conversation floating back to me on the wind. He did say he was a student. “I worked at the Grind last semester, in Monument Square. I used to see you all the time.”
My mouth opens and shuts. No words come out; my brain goes on lockdown whenever I need it the most. Of course I know the Grind; Hana and I used to run past it two, maybe three times a week, watching the college students float in and out like drifting snowflakes, blowing the steam from the top of their cups. The Grind looks out onto a small square, all cobblestone, called Monument Square: It marked the halfway point of one of the six-mile routes I used to do all the time.
In its center is a statue of a man, half-eroded from snow and weather and scrawled over with a few looping curls of graffiti. He is striding forward, one hand holding his hat on his head so that it looks like he is walking through a horrible storm, or a headwind. His other fist is extended in front of him. It’s obvious that he was, in the distant past, holding something—probably a torch— but at some point that portion of the statue was broken or stolen. So now the Governor strides forward with an empty fist, a circular hole cut in his hand, a perfect hiding place for notes and secret stuff. Hana and I used to check his fist sometimes, to see if there was anything good inside. But there wasn’t—just a few pieces of wadded-up chewing gum and some coins.
I don’t actually know when Hana and I started calling him the Governor, or why. The wind and rain has rubbed the plaque at the base of the statue indecipherable. No one else calls him that. Everyone else just says, “The statue at Monument Square.” Alex must have overheard us talking about the Governor one day.
Alex is still looking at me, waiting, and I realize I never answered his question. “I have to switch my routes up,”
I say. I probably haven’t run past the Governor since March or April. “It gets boring.” And then, because I can’t help it, I squeak out, “You remember me?”
He laughs. “You were pretty hard to miss. You used to run around the statue and do this jumping, whooping thing.”
Heat creeps up my neck and cheeks. I must be going a deep red again, and I thank God for the fact that we’ve moved away from the stage lights. I completely forgot; I used to jump up and try to high-five the Governor as Hana and I ran past, a way of psyching myself up for the run back to school. Sometimes we would even scream out, “Halena!” We must have looked completely crazy.