Free Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver Page A

she never offers to help and I don’t ask her to. She watches impassively, arms crossed, as I make my slow, agonizing way through the forest.
    Final tally: Two hours. Three blisters on my palms, one the size of a cherry. Arms that shake so badly I can barely bring them to my face when I try to wash off the sweat. A raw, red cut in the flesh of one hand, where the metal handle of one of the buckets has worn away the skin.
    At dinner, Tack gives me the biggest serving of rice and beans, and although I can barely hold my fork because of the blisters, and Squirrel accidentally charred the rice so that it’s brown and crispy on its underside, I think it is the best meal I have had since I came to the Wilds.
    I’m so tired after dinner I fall asleep with my clothes on, almost as soon as my head hits the pillow, and so I forget to ask God, in my prayers, to keep me from waking up.
    It’s not until the following morning that I realize what day it is: September 26.
    Hana was cured yesterday.
    Hana is gone.
    I have not cried since Alex died.
    Alex is alive.
    That becomes my mantra, the story I tell myself every day, as I emerge into the inky dawn and the mist and begin, slowly, painstakingly, to train again.
    If I can run all the way to the old bank—lungs exploding, thighs shaking—then Alex will be alive.
    First it’s forty feet, then sixty, then two minutes straight, then four.
    If I can make it to that tree, Alex will come back.
    Alex is standing just beyond that hill; if I can make it to the top without stopping, he’ll be there.
    At first I trip and nearly twist my ankle about half a dozen times. I’m not used to the landscape of litter, can hardly see in the low, murky dawn light. But my eyes get better, or my feet learn the way, and after a few weeks my body gets used to the planes and angles of the ground, and the geometry of all those broken streets and buildings, and then I can run the whole length of the old main street without watching my feet.
    Then it’s farther, and faster.
    Alex is alive. Just one more push, just a final sprint, and you’ll see.
    When Hana and I were on the track team together, we used to play little mental games like this to keep ourselves motivated. Running is a mental sport, more than anything else. You’re only as good as your training, and your training is only as good as your thinking. If you make the whole eight miles without walking, you’ll get 100 percent on your history boards. That’s the kind of thing we used to say together. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes we’d give up, laughing, at mile seven, saying, Oops! There goes our history score .
    That’s the thing: We didn’t really care. A world without love is also a world without stakes.
    Alex is alive. Push, push, push. I run until my feet are swollen, until my toes bleed and blister. Raven screams at me even as she is preparing buckets of cold water for my feet, tells me to be careful, warns me about the dangers of infection. Antibiotics are not easy to come by here.
    The next morning I wrap my toes in cloth, stuff my feet into my shoes, and run again. If you can … just a little bit farther … just a little bit faster … you’ll see, you’ll see, you’ll see. Alex is alive.
    I’m not crazy. I know he isn’t, not really. As soon as my runs are done and I’m hobbling back to the church basement, it hits me like a wall: the stupidity of it all, the pointlessness. Alex is gone, and no amount of running or pushing or bleeding will bring him back.
    I know it. But here’s the thing: When I’m running, there’s always this split second when the pain is ripping through me and I can hardly breathe and all I see is color and blur—and in that split second, right as the pain crests, and becomes too much, and there’s a whiteness going through me, I see something to my left, a flicker of color (auburn hair, burning, a crown of leaves)—and I know then, too, that if I only turn my head he’ll be