Hana: A Delirium Short Story (6 page)

I've been fooling myself this whole time.

"Don't be upset." Steve must sense that he's made the wrong move. His voice turns soft again, lilting. He reaches for me again. "You're so pretty."

"Don't touch me." I jerk backward and accidentally knock my head against the wall. Starbursts explode in my vision.

Steve puts a hand on my shoulder. "Oh, shit, Hana. Are you okay?"

"I said, don't touch me." I push roughly past him, careening into the next room, which is now so packed with people I can barely force my way toward the stairs. I hear Steve call my name only once. After that, he either gives up or his voice is drowned in the coursing swell of sound. It is hot; everyone is slick with sweat, lost in shadow, as though they've been floundering in oil. Even when my vision clears, I feel unsteady on my feet.

I need air.

I need to get out of here. There's a roaring in my head, distinct from the throb of the music--a distant, high-pitched scream knifing me Cm kI need to in two.

I stop moving. No. The scream is real. Someone is screaming. For a second I think I must have imagined it--it must have been the music, which continues screeching on--but then all at once the scream crests and becomes a huge surge, coasting over the sound of the band.

"Run! Raid! Run!"

I am frozen, paralyzed with fear. The music breaks off with a crash. Now there is nothing but screaming, and I am being pushed, shoved by the waves of people around me.

"Raid! Run!"

Out. Out. I need to get out. Someone elbows me in the back, and I barely manage to right myself. Stairs--I need to get to the stairs. I can see them from where I am standing, can see a surge of people fighting and clawing upward. Then suddenly there is a tremendous splinter of wood and a crest in the screaming. The door at the top of the stairs has been shattered; the people behind it are falling, tumbling into the people behind them, who are tumbling, tumbling down . . .

This isn't happening. It can't be.

A man is silhouetted huge in the great, gaping mouth of the shattered door. A regulator. He is holding a gun. From behind him, two giant shapes rocket forward into the crowd, and the screams swell in pitch and become the sounds of snarling and snapping.

Dogs.

As the regulators start forcing their way in, my body at last unfreezes. I turn around, away from the stairs, into the thick mass of people, all shoving and running in different directions: openmouthed, panicked. I'm hemmed in on all sides. By the time I force myself out of the main room, several regulators have made it down the stairs. I glance behind them and see them scything through the crowd with their nightsticks.

A huge, amplified voice is booming, "This is a raid. Do not try to run. Do not try to resist."

There is a small ground-level window set high in the room with the dingy mattresses and the couch, and people are crowded around it, yelling at one another, fumbling for a latch or a way to open it. A boy springs onto the sofa and swings hard at the window with his elbow. It shatters outward. He stands on the arm of the sofa and hoists himself up and through it. Now people are fighting to get out this way. People are swinging at one another, clawing, fighting to be first.

I look over my shoulder. The regulators are drawing closer, their heads bobbing above the rest of the crowd, like grim-faced sailors pushing through a storm. I'll never make it out in time.

I struggle against the current of bodies, which is flowing strong toward the window, to the promise of escape, and hurtle into the next room. This is where I stood with Steve and asked him whether he liked me only five minutes ago, although it already seems like the dream from a different lifetime. There are no windows here, no doors or exits.

Hide. It's the only thing to do. Hide and hope that there are too many people to sniff out one by one. I pick my way quickly around the enormous pile of debris heaped against one wall, over broken-down chairs and tables and ol Ctabone by ond strips of tattered upholstery.

"This way, this way!"

The regulator's voice is loud enough, close enough, to be heard over the chaos of other sounds. I stumble, catching my shin against a piece of rusted metal. The pain is sharp and makes my eyes water. I ease down into the space between the wall and the pile of junk and slowly adjust the metal sheet so that it blocks me from view.

Then there is nothing to do but wait, and listen, and pray.

Every minute is an hour and an agony. I wish, more than anything, that I could put my hands over my ears and hum, drown out the terrible soundtrack that's looping around me: the screaming, the thud of the nightsticks, the dogs snarling and barking. And the people begging, too, pleading as they are hauled away in handcuffs:
Please, you don't understand, please, let me go, it was a mistake, I didn't mean to . . .
Over and over again, a nightmare-song stuck on repeat.

Suddenly I think of Lena, lying safe somewhere in her bed, and my throat squeezes up and I know I'm going to cry. I've been so stupid. She was right about everything. This isn't a game. It wasn't worth it either--the hot, sweaty nights, letting Steve kiss me, dancing--it has all amounted to nothing. Meaningless.

The only meaning that matters is the dogs and the regulators and the guns. That is the truth. Crouching, hiding, pain in my neck and back and shoulders. That is reality.

I squeeze my eyes shut.
I'm sorry, Lena.
You were right.
I imagine her giving a fitful stir in her sleep, kicking one heel out of the blanket. The thought gives me some comfort. At least she's safe, away from here.

Hours: Time is elastic, gaping like a mouth, squeezing me down a long, narrow, dark throat. Even though the basement must be ninety degrees, I can't stop shivering. As the sounds of the raid begin to quiet, finally, I'm worried that the chattering of my teeth will give me away. I have no idea what time it is or how long I've been crouched against the wall. I can no longer feel the pain in my back and shoulders; my whole body feels weightless, outside my control.

At last it is silent. I edge cautiously out from my hiding place, hardly daring to breathe. But there is no movement anywhere. The regulators have gone, and they must have caught or chased out everyone who was here. The darkness is impermeable, a stifling blanket. I still don't want to risk the stairs, but now that I am free, and moving, the need to get
out
, to escape this house, is rising like panic inside me. A scream is pressing at my throat, and the effort of swallowing back makes my throat hurt.

I feel my way toward the room with the couch. The window high in the wall is just visible; beyond it, the sheen of dew on the grass glows slightly in the moonlight. My arms are shaking. I can barely manage to haul myself up onto the ledge, scooting forward with my face in the dirt, inhaling the smell of growth, still fighting the urge to scream, or sob.

And then, finally, I'm out. The sky glitters with hard-edged stars, vast and indifferent. The moon is high and round, lighting the tree
s silver.

The C"jurent. Tre are bodies lying in the grass.

I run.

five

The morning after the raids, I wake up to a message from Lena.

"Hana, you need to call me. I'm working today. You can reach me at the store."

I listen to it twice, and then a third time, trying to judge her tone. Her voice has none of its usual singsong, no teasing lilt. I can't tell whether she's angry or upset or just irritated.

I am dressed and on my way to the Stop-N-Save before realizing I've made the decision to see her. I still feel as though a great block of ice has been lodged inside me, in my very center, making me feel numb and clumsy. Somehow, miraculously, I managed to sleep when I at last made it home, but my dreams were full of screams, and dogs drooling blood.

Stupid: That is what I've been. A child, a fairy-tale chaser. Lena was right all along. I flash to Steve's face--bored, detached, waiting for me to finish my tantrum--to his silken voice, like an unwanted touch:
Don't be upset. You're so pretty.

A line from
The Book of Shhh
comes back to me:
There is no love, only disorder.

I've had my eyes closed all this time. Lena was right. Lena will understand--she'll have to, even if she's still angry at me.

I slow my bike as I pedal past Lena's uncle's storefront, where Lena works shifts all through the summer. I don't spot anyone but Jed, though, a huge lump of a man who can barely string a sentence together to ask you whether you'd like to buy a Big Gulp soda for a dollar. Lena always thought he must have been damaged by the cure. Maybe she's right. Or maybe he was just born that way.

I pull around to the narrow alley in back, which is crowded with Dumpsters and smells sickly sweet, like old, rotten trash. A blue door halfway down the alley marks the entrance to the storeroom in the back of the Stop-N-Save. I can't think of how many times I've come here to hang with Lena while she's supposed to be doing inventory, snacking on a stolen bag of chips and listening to a portable radio I snagged from my parents' kitchen. For a moment, I get a fierce ache underneath my ribs, and I wish I could go back--vacuum over this summer and the underground parties and Angelica. There were so many years when I didn't think about
amor deliria nervosa
at all, or question
The Book of Shhh
or my parents.

And I was happy.

I prop my bike against a Dumpster and knock softly on the door. Almost immediately, it scrapes inward.

Lena freezes when she sees me. Her mouth falls open a little. I've been thinking about what I wanted to say to her all morning, but now--confronted by her shock--the words shrivel up. She was the one who told me to find her at the store, and now she's acting like she's never seen me before.

What comes out is, "Are you going to let me in, F"jures nor what?"

She starts, as though I've just interrupted a daydream. "Oh, sorry. Yeah, come in." I can tell she's just as nervous as I am. There's a jumpy, hopped-up energy to her movements. When I enter the storeroom, she practically slams the door behind me.

"Hot in here." I'm biding time, trying to shake loose all the words I planned on saying.
I was wrong. Forgive me. You were right about everything.
They're coiled like wires in the back of my throat, electric-hot, and I can't get them to unwind. Lena says nothing. I pace the room, not wanting to look at her, worried that I'll see the same expression I saw on Steve's face last night--impatience, or worse, detachment. "Remember when I used to come and hang out with you here? I'd bring magazines and that stupid old radio I used to have? And you'd steal--"

"Chips and soda from the cooler," she finishes. "Yeah, I remember."

Silence stretches uncomfortably between us. I continue circling the small space, looking everywhere but at her. All those coiled words are flexing and tightening their metal fingers, shredding at my throat. Unconsciously, I've brought my thumb to my mouth. I feel small sparks of pain as I begin ripping at the cuticles, and it brings back an old comfort.

"Hana?" Lena says softly. "Are you okay?"

That single stupid question breaks me. All the metal fingers relax 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 the regulators' 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--solid, real, on my side--makes 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.

Then somebody knocks on the door, very clearly, four times. I pull away from Lena quickly.

"What's that?" I say, dragging my forearm across my eyes, trying to get control of myself. Lena tries to pass it off as though she hasn't heard. Her face has gone white, her eyes wide and terrified. When the knocking starts up again, she doesn't move, just stays frozen where she is.

"I thought nobody comes in this way." I cross my arms, watching Lena narrowly. There's a suspicion needling, pricking at some corner of my mind, but I can't quite focus on it.

"They don't. I mean--sometimes--I mean, the delivery guys--"

As she stammers excuses, the door opens, and
he
pokes his head in--the boy from the day Lena and I jumped the gate at the lab complex, just after we had our evaluations. His eyes land on me and he, too, freezes.

At first I think there must be a mistake. He must have knocked on the wrong door. Lena will yell at him now, tell him to clear off. But then my mind grinds slowly into gear and I realize that no, he has just called Lena's name. This was obviously planned.

"You're late," Lena says. My heart squeezes up like a shutter, and for just a second the world goes totally dark. I have been wrong about everything and everyone.

"Come inside and shut the door," I say sharply. The room feels much smaller once he is in it. I've gotten used to boys this summer but never here, like this, in a familiar place and in daylight. It is like discovering that someone else has been using your toothbrush; I feel both dirty and disoriented. I feel myself swivel toward Lena. "Lena Ella Haloway Tiddle." I pronounce her full name, very slowly, partly because I need to reassure myself of her existence--Lena, 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--the fact of my remembering him--explains anything.

"Oh, I
remember
Alex," I say. "What I don't remember is why Alex is
here
."

Lena makes a few unconvincing noises of excuse. Her eyes fly to his. A message passes between them. I can
feel
it, encoded and indecipherable, like a zip of electricity, as though I've just passed too close to one of the border fences. My stomach turns. Lena and I used to be able to speak like that.