Delirium

Chapter Five

That night, I have the dream again.

I’m at the edge of a big white cliff made out of sand. The ground is unsteady. The ledge I’m standing on is starting to crumble, to flake away and tumble down, down, down—thousands of feet below me, into the ocean, which is whipping and snapping so hard it looks like one gigantic, frothing stew, all whitecaps and surging water. I’m terrified I’m going to fall, but for some reason I can’t move or back away from the edge of the cliff, even as I feel the ground sifting away from underneath me, millions of molecules rearranging themselves into space, into wind: Any second I’m going to fall.

And just before I know that there’s nothing underneath me but air—that at any split second I’m going to feel the wind shrieking around me as I drop down into the water—the waves lashing underneath me open up for a moment and I see my mother’s face, pale and bloated and splotched with blue, floating just below the surface. Her eyes are open, her mouth is split apart as though she is screaming, her arms are extended on either side of her, bobbing in the current, as though she is waiting to embrace me.

That’s when I wake up. That’s when I always wake up.

My pillow is damp, and I’ve got a scratchy feeling in my throat. I’ve been crying in my sleep. Gracie is folded next to me, one cheek squashed flat against the sheets, her mouth making endless, noiseless repetitions. She always gets into bed with me when I’m having the dream. She can sense it, somehow.

I brush her hair away from her face and pull the sweat-soaked sheets away from her shoulders. I’ll be sorry to leave Grace when I move out. Our secrets have made us close, bonded us together. She is the only one who knows of the Coldness: a feeling that comes sometimes when I’m lying in bed, a black, empty feeling that knocks my breath away and leaves me gasping as though I’ve just been thrown in icy water. On nights like that—although it is wrong and illegal—I think of those strange and terrible words, I love you, and wonder what they would taste like in my mouth, try to recall their lilting rhythm on my mother’s tongue.

And of course I keep her secret safe. I’m the only one who knows that Grace isn’t stupid, or slow: There’s nothing wrong with her at all. I’m the only one who has ever heard her speak. One night after she’d come to sleep in my bed I woke up in the very early morning, the nighttime shadows ebbing off our walls. She was sobbing quietly into the pillow next to me, pronouncing the same word over and over, stuffing her mouth with blankets so I could barely hear her: “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy.” As though she was trying to chew her way around it; as though it was choking her in her sleep. I’d put my arms around her and squeezed, and after what felt like hours she exhausted herself on the word and fell back to sleep, the tension in her body slowly relaxing, her face hot and bloated from the tears.

That’s the real reason she doesn’t speak. All the rest of her words are crowded out by that single, looming one, a word still echoing in the dark corners of her memory. Mommy.

I know. I remember.

I sit up and watch the light strengthen on the walls, listen for the sounds of the seagulls outside, take a drink from the glass of water next to my bed. Today is June 2. Ninety-four days.

I wish, for Grace, the cure could come sooner. I comfort myself by thinking that someday she will have the procedure too. Someday she will be saved, and the past and all its pain will be rendered as smoothly palatable as the food we spoon to our babies.

Someday we will all be saved.

By the time I drag myself down to breakfast—feeling as though someone is grinding sand into both of my eyes—the official story about the incident at the labs has been released. Carol keeps our small TV on low while she makes breakfast, and the murmur of the newscasters’ voices almost puts me back to sleep. “Yesterday a truck full of cattle intended for the slaughterhouse was mixed up with a shipment of pharmaceuticals, resulting in the hilarious and unprecedented chaos you see on your screen.” Cue: nurses squealing, swatting at lowing cows with clipboards.

This doesn’t make any sense, but as long as no one mentions the Invalids, everyone’s happy. We’re not supposed to know about them. They’re not even supposed to exist; supposedly, all the people who live in the Wilds were destroyed over fifty years ago, during the blitz.

Fifty years ago the government closed the borders of the United States. The border is guarded constantly by military personnel. No one can get in. No one goes out. Every sanctioned and approved community must also be contained within a border—that’s the law—and all travel between communities requires official written consent of the municipal government, to be obtained six months in advance. This is for our own protection. Safety, Sanctity, Community: That is our country’s motto.

For the most part, the government has been successful. We haven’t seen a war since the border was closed, and there is hardly any crime, except for the occasional incident of vandalism or petty theft. There is no more hatred in the United States, at least among the cured. Only sporadic cases of detachment—but every medical procedure carries a certain risk.

But so far, the government has failed to rid the country of the Invalids, and it is the single blemish on the administration, and the system in general. So we don’t talk about them. We pretend that the Wilds—and the people who live there—don’t even exist. It’s rare to hear the word even spoken, except when a suspected sympathizer disappears, or when a young diseased couple is found to have vanished together before a cure can be administered.

One piece of really good news is this: All of yesterday’s evaluations have been invalidated. All of us will receive a new evaluation date, which means I get a second chance. This time I swear I’m not going to screw it up. I feel completely idiotic about my meltdown at the labs. Sitting at the breakfast table, with everything looking so clean and bright and normal—the chipped blue mugs full of coffee, the erratic beeping of the microwave (one of the few electronic devices, besides the lights, Carol actually allows us to use)—makes yesterday seem like a long, strange dream. It’s a miracle, actually, that a bunch of fanatical Invalids decided to let loose a stampede at the exact moment I was failing the most important test of my life. I don’t know what came over me. I think about Glasses showing his teeth, and the moment I heard my mouth say, “Gray,” and I wince. Stupid, stupid.

Suddenly I’m aware that Jenny has been talking to me.

“What?” I blink at Jenny as she swims into focus. I watch her hands as she cuts her toast precisely into quarters.

“I said, what’s wrong with you?” Back and forth, back and forth. The knife dings against the edge of the plate. “You look like you’re about to puke or something.”

“Jenny,” Carol scolds. She is at the sink, washing dishes. “Not while your uncle is eating breakfast.”

“I’m fine.” I rip off a piece of toast, slide it across the stick of butter that’s getting melty in the middle of the table, and force myself to eat. The last thing I need is a good old family-style interrogation. “Just tired.”

Carol turns to look at me. Her face has always reminded me of a doll’s. Even when she’s talking, even when she’s irritated or happy or confused, her expression stays weirdly immobile. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“I slept,” I say. “I just had a bad dream, that’s all.”

At the end of the table, my uncle William starts up from his newspaper. “Oh, God. You know what? You just reminded me. I had a dream last night too.”

Carol raises her eyebrows, and even Jenny looks interested. It’s extremely unusual for people to dream once they’ve been cured. Carol once told me that on the rare occasions she still dreams, her dreams are full of dishes, stacks and stacks of them climbing toward the sky, and sometimes she climbs them, lip to lip, hauling herself up into the clouds, trying to reach the top of the stack. But it never ends; it stretches on into infinity. As far as I know, my sister Rachel never dreams anymore.

William smiles. “I was caulking the window in the bathroom. Carol, you remember I said there was a draft the other day? Anyway, I was piping in the caulk, but every time I finished, it would just flake away—almost like it was snow—and the wind would come in and I’d have to start all over. On and on and on—for hours, it felt like.”

“How strange,” my aunt says, smiling, coming to the table with a plate of fried eggs. My uncle likes them super runny, and they sit on the plate, their yolks jiggling and quivering like hula-hoop dancers, spotted with oil. My stomach twists.

William says, “No wonder I’m so tired this morning. I was doing housework all night.”

Everyone laughs but me. I choke down another bit of toast, wondering whether I’ll dream once I’ve been cured.

I hope not.

This year is the first year since sixth grade that I don’t have a single class with Hana, so I don’t see her until after school, when we meet up in the locker room to go running, even though cross-country season ended a couple of weeks ago. (When the team went to Regionals it was only the third time I’d ever been out of Portland, and even though we went just forty miles along the gray, bleak municipal highway, I could still hardly swallow, the butterflies in my throat were so frantic.) Still, Hana and I try to run together as much as we can, even during school vacations.

I started running when I was six years old, after my mom committed suicide.

The first day I ever ran a whole mile was the day of her funeral. I’d been told to stay upstairs with my cousins while my aunt prepared the house for the memorial service and laid out all the food. Marcia and Rachel were supposed to get me ready, but in the middle of helping me dress they’d started arguing about something and had stopped paying me any attention at all. So I had wandered downstairs, my dress zipped halfway up my back, to ask my aunt for help. Mrs. Eisner, my aunt’s neighbor at the time, was there. As I came into the kitchen she was saying, “It’s horrible, of course. But there was no hope for her anyway. It’s much better this way. It’s better for Lena, too. Who wants a mother like that?”

I wasn’t supposed to have heard. Mrs. Eisner gave a startled little gasp when she saw me, and her mouth shut quickly, like a cork popping back into a bottle. My aunt just stood there, and in that second it was as though the world and the future collapsed down into a single point, and I understood that this—the kitchen, the spotless cream linoleum floors, the glaring lights, and the vivid green mass of Jell-O on the counter—was all that was left now that my mother was gone.

Suddenly I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t stand the sight of my aunt’s kitchen, which I now understood would be my kitchen. I couldn’t stand the Jell-O. My mother hated Jell-O. An itchy feeling began to work its way through my body, as though a thousand mosquitoes were circulating through my blood, biting me from the inside, making me want to scream, jump, squirm.

I ran.

Hana, one foot on a bench, is lacing up her shoes when I come in. My awful secret is that I like to run with Hana partly because it’s the single, sole, solitary shred of a thing that I can do better than she can, but I would never admit that out loud in a million years.

I haven’t even had a chance to put my bag down before she’s leaning forward and grabbing my arm.

“Can you believe it?” She’s fighting a smile, and her eyes are a pinwheel of color—blue, green, gold—flashing like they always do when she’s excited about something. “It was definitely the Invalids. That’s what everybody’s saying, anyway.”

We’re the only people in the locker room—all the sports teams have finished their seasons—but I instinctively whip my head around when she says the word. “Keep your voice down.”

She pulls back a little, tossing her hair over one shoulder. “Relax. I did recon. Even checked the toilet stalls. We’re in the clear.”

I open up the gym locker I’ve had for all my ten years at St. Anne’s. At its bottom is a film of gum wrappers and shredded notes and lost paper clips, and on top of that, my small limp pile of running clothes, two pairs of shoes, my cross-country team jersey, a dozen half-used bottles of deodorant, conditioner, and perfume. In less than two weeks I’ll graduate and never see the inside of this locker again, and for a second I get sad. It’s gross, but I’ve actually always loved the smell of gyms: the industrial cleaning fluid and the deodorant and soccer balls and even the lingering smell of sweat. It’s comforting to me. It’s so strange how life works: You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it’s taking forever to come. Then it happens and it’s over and all you want to do is curl back up in that moment before things changed.

“Who’s everybody, anyway? The news is saying it was just a mistake, a shipping error or something.” I feel the need to repeat the official story, even though I know just as well as Hana that it’s BS.

She straddles the bench, watching me. As usual, she’s oblivious to the fact that I hate it when other people see me change. “Don’t be an idiot. If it was on the news, it definitely isn’t true. Besides, who mixes up a cow and a box of prescription meds? It’s not like it’s hard to tell the difference.”

I shrug. She’s right, obviously. She’s still looking at me, so I angle slightly away. I’ve never been comfortable with my body like Hana and some of the other girls at St. Anne’s, never gotten over the awkward feeling that I’ve been fitted together just a little wrong in some very key places. Like I’ve been sketched by an amateur artist: If you don’t look too closely, it’s all right, but start focusing and all the smudges and mistakes become really obvious.

Hana kicks one leg out and begins stretching, refusing to let the issue drop. Hana’s more fascinated with the Wilds than anyone I’ve ever met. “If you think about it, it’s pretty amazing. The planning and all that. It would have taken at least four or five people—maybe more—to coordinate everything.”

I think briefly of the boy I saw on the observation deck, of his flashing, autumn-leaf-colored hair, and the way he tipped his head back when he laughed so I could see the vaulted black arch of his mouth. I told no one about him, not even Hana, and now I feel I should have.

Hana goes on, “Someone must have had security codes. Maybe a sympathizer—”

A door bangs loudly at the front of the locker room, and Hana and I both jump, staring at each other with wide eyes. Footsteps click quickly across the linoleum. After a few seconds of hesitation, Hana launches smoothly into a safe topic: the color of the graduation gowns, which are orange this year. Just then Mrs. Johanson, the athletic director, comes around the bank of lockers, swinging her whistle around one finger.

“At least they’re not brown, like at Fielston Prep,” I say, though I’m barely listening to Hana. My heart is pounding and I’m still thinking about the boy, and wondering whether Johanson heard us say the word sympathizer. She doesn’t do anything but nod as she passes us, so it seems unlikely.

I’ve learned to get really good at this—say one thing when I’m thinking about something else, act like I’m listening when I’m not, pretend to be calm and happy when really I’m freaking out. It’s one of the skills you perfect as you get older. You have to learn that people are always listening. The first time I ever used the cell phone that my aunt and uncle share, I was surprised by the patchy interference that kept breaking up my conversation with Hana at random intervals, until my aunt explained that it was just the government’s listening devices, which arbitrarily cut into cell phone calls, recording them, monitoring conversations for target words like love, or Invalids, or sympathizer. No one in particular is targeted; it’s all done randomly, to be fair. But it’s almost worse that way. I pretty much always feel as though a giant, revolving gaze is bound to sweep over me at any second, lighting up my bad thoughts like an animal lit still and white in the ever-turning beam of a lighthouse.

Sometimes I feel as though there are two me’s, one coasting directly on top of the other: the superficial me, who nods when she’s supposed to nod and says what she’s supposed to say, and some other, deeper part, the part that worries and dreams and says “Gray.” Most of the time they move along in sync and I hardly notice the split, but sometimes it feels as though I’m two whole different people and I could rip apart at any second. Once I confessed this to Rachel. She just smiled and told me it would all be better after the procedure. After the procedure, she said, it would be all coasting, all glide, every day as easy as one, two, three.

“Ready,” I say, spinning my locker closed. We can still hear Mrs. Johanson shuffling around in the bathroom, whistling. A toilet flushes. A faucet goes on.

“My turn to pick the route,” Hana says, eyes sparkling, and before I can open my mouth to protest, she lunges forward and smacks me on the shoulder. “Tag. You’re it,” she says, and just as easily spins off the bench and sprints for the door, laughing, so I have to run to catch up.

Earlier in the day it rained, and the storm cooled everything off. Water evaporates from puddles in the streets, leaving a shimmering layer of mist over Portland. Above us the sky is now a vivid blue. The bay is flat and silver, the coast like a giant belt cinched around it, keeping it in place.

I don’t ask Hana where she’s going, but it doesn’t surprise me when she starts winding us toward Old Port, toward the old footpath that runs along Commercial Street and up to the labs. We try to keep on the smaller, less trafficked streets, but it’s pretty much a losing game. It’s three thirty. All the schools have been released, and the streets surge with students walking home. A few buses rumble past, and one or two cars squeeze by. Cars are considered good luck. As they pass, people reach out their hands and brush along the shiny hoods, the clean, bright windows, which will soon be smudged with fingerprints.

Hana and I run next to each other, reviewing all the day’s gossip. We don’t talk about the botched evaluations yesterday, or the rumors of the Invalids. There are too many people around. Instead she tells me about her ethics exam, and I tell her about Cora Dervish’s fight with Minna Wilkinson. We talk about Willow Marks, too, who has been absent from school since the previous Wednesday. Rumor is that Willow was found by regulators last week in Deering Oaks Park after curfew—with a boy.

We’ve been hearing rumors like that about Willow for years. She’s just the kind of person people talk about. She has blond hair, but she’s always coloring different streaks into it with markers, and I remember once on a freshman class trip to a museum, we passed a group of Spencer Prep boys and she said, so loud one of our chaperones could have easily heard, “I’d like to kiss one of them straight on the lips.” Supposedly she was caught hanging out with a boy in tenth grade and got off with a warning because she showed no signs of the deliria. Every so often people make mistakes; it’s biological, a result of the same kind of chemical and hormonal imbalances that occasionally lead to Unnaturalism, to boys being attracted to boys and girls to girls. These impulses, too, will be resolved by the cure.

But this time it is serious, apparently, and Hana drops the bomb just as we turn onto Center: Mr. and Mrs. Marks have agreed to move the date of Willow’s procedure up by a full six months. She’ll be missing graduation day to get cured.

“Six months?” I repeat. We’ve been running hard for twenty minutes, so I’m not sure if the heavy thumping in my chest is a result of the exercise or the news. I’m feeling more out of breath than I should be, like someone’s sitting on my chest. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

Hana tips her head to the right, gesturing the way to a shortcut through an alley. “It’s been done before.”

“Yeah, but not successfully. What about all the side effects? Mental problems? Blindness?” There are a few reasons why the scientists won’t let anyone under the age of eighteen have the procedure, but the biggest one is that it just doesn’t seem to work as well for people younger than that, and in the worst cases it’s been known to cause all kind of crazy problems. Scientists speculate that the brain and its neuro-pathways are still too plastic before then, still in the middle of forming themselves. Actually, the older you are when you have the procedure, the better, but most people are scheduled for the procedure as close as possible to their eighteenth birthday.

“I guess they think it’s worth the risk,” Hana says. “Better than the alternative, you know? Amor deliria nervosa. The deadliest of all deadly things.” This is the catchphrase that’s written on every mental health pamphlet ever written about the deliria; Hana’s voice is flat as she repeats it, and it makes my stomach dip. All of yesterday’s craziness has made me forget Hana’s comment to me before the evaluations. But now I remember, and remember how strange she looked too, eyes cloudy and unreadable.

“Come on.” I feel a straining in my lungs and my left thigh is starting to cramp. The only way to push through it is to run harder and faster. “Let’s pick it up, Slug.”

“Bring it.” Hana’s face splits into a grin, and both of us start pumping faster. The pain in my lungs swells up and blossoms until it feels like it’s everywhere, tearing through all my cells and muscles at once. The cramp in my leg makes me wince every time my heel hits the pavement. It’s always like this on miles two and three, like all the stress and anxiety and irritation and fear get transformed into little needling points of physical pain, and you can’t breathe or imagine going farther or think anything but: I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

And then, just as suddenly, it’s gone. All the pain lifts away, the cramp vanishes, the fist eases off my chest, and I can breathe easily. Instantly a feeling of total happiness bubbles up inside of me: the solid feeling of the ground underneath me, the simplicity of the movement, rocketing off my heels, pushing forward in time and space, total freedom and release. I glance over at Hana. I can tell from her expression that she’s feeling it too. She has made it through the wall. She senses me looking and whips around, her blond ponytail a bright arc, to give me the thumbs-up.

It’s strange. When we run I feel closer to Hana than at any other time. Even when we’re not talking, it’s like there’s an invisible cord tethering us together, matching our rhythms, our arms and our legs, as though we’re both responding to the same drumbeat. More and more it has been occurring to me that this, too, will change after our procedures. She’ll retreat to the West End and make friends with her neighbors, with people richer and more sophisticated than I am. I’ll stay in some crappy apartment on Cumberland, and I won’t miss her, or remember what it felt like to run side by side. They’ve warned me that after my procedure I may not even like running anymore, period. Another side effect of the cure: People often change their habits afterward, lose interest in their former hobbies and things that had given them pleasure.

“The cured, incapable of strong desire, are thus rid of both remembered and future pain” (“After the Procedure,” The Safety, Health, and Happiness Handbook, p. 132).

The world is spinning by, people and streets a long, unfurling ribbon of color and sound. We run past St. Vincent’s, the biggest all-boys school in Portland. A half-dozen boys are outside playing basketball, lazily dribbling the ball around, calling to one another. Their words are a blur, an indistinct series of shouts and barks and short bursts of laughter, the way that boys always sound whenever they’re together in groups, whenever you only hear them from around corners or across streets or down the beach. It’s like they have a language all their own, and for about the thousandth time I think how glad I am that segregation policies keep us separate most of the time.

As we run by I think I sense a momentary pause, a fraction of a second when all their eyes lift and turn in our direction. I’m too embarrassed to look. My whole body goes white-hot, like someone’s just stuck me headfirst into an oven. But a second later I feel their eyes sweeping past me, a wind, latching on to Hana. Her blond hair flashes next to me, a coin in the sun.

The pain is creeping back into my legs, a leaden feeling, but I force myself to keep going as we round the corner of Commercial Street and leave St. Vincent’s behind. I feel Hana straining to keep up next to me. I turn my head, barely managing to gasp out, “Race you.” But as Hana pulls up, arms pumping, and nearly passes me, I put my head down and lunge forward, cycling my legs as fast as I can, trying to suck air into my lungs, which feel like they’ve shrunk to the size of a pea, fighting the screaming in my muscles. Blackness eats the edges of my vision, and all I can see is the chain-link fence that rises up in front of us suddenly, blocking our path, and then I’m reaching out and thwacking it so hard it begins to shake, turning around to yell, “I won!” as Hana pulls up a second behind me, gasping for breath. Both of us are laughing now, hiccuping and taking huge gulping breaths of air as we pace around in circles, trying to walk it off.

When she can finally breathe again, Hana straightens up, laughing. “I let you win,” she says, an old joke of ours.

I toe some gravel in her direction. She ducks away, shrieking. “Keep telling yourself that.”

My hair has come out of its ponytail and I wrestle it out of its elastic, flipping my head down so I get the wind on my neck. Sweat drips down into my eyes, stinging.

“Nice look.” Hana pushes me lightly and I stumble sideways, whipping my head up to swipe back at her.

She sidesteps me. There’s a gap in the chain-link fence that marks the beginning of a narrow service road. This is blocked with a low metal gate. Hana hops it and gestures for me to follow. I haven’t really been paying attention to where we are: The service drive threads down through a parking lot, a forest of industrial Dumpsters and cargo storage sheds. Beyond those is the familiar string of white square buildings, like giant teeth. This must be one of the side entrances of the lab complex. I see now that the chain-link fence is looped on top with barbed wire and marked at twenty-foot intervals with signs that all read: PRIVATE PROPERTY. NO TRESPASSING. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

“I don’t think we’re supposed to—” I start to say, but Hana cuts me off.

“Come on,” she calls out. “Live a little.”

I do a quick scan of the parking lot beyond the gate and the road behind us: no one. The small guard hut just past the gate is also empty. I lean over and peek inside. There’s a half-eaten sandwich sitting on wax paper, and a stack of books piled messily on a small desk next to an old-fashioned radio, which is spitting static and patchy bits of music into the silence. I don’t see any surveillance cameras, either, though there must be some. All the government buildings are wired. I hesitate for a second longer, then swing myself over the gate and catch up to Hana. Her eyes are lit up with excitement, and I can tell that this was her plan, and her destination, all along.

“This must be how the Invalids got in,” she says in a breathless rush, as though we’ve been talking about yesterday’s drama at the labs all this time. “Don’t you think?”

“Doesn’t seem like it would have been hard.” I’m trying to sound casual but the whole thing—the empty service road and the enormous parking lot, shimmering in the sun, the blue Dumpsters and the electrical wires zigzagging across the sky, the sparkling white slope of the lab roofs—makes me uneasy. Everything is silent and very still—frozen, almost, the way things are in a dream, or just before a major thunderstorm. I don’t want to say it to Hana, but I’d give pretty much anything to head back to Old Port, to the complex nest of familiar streets and stores.

Even though there’s no one around, I have the impression of being watched. It’s worse than the normal feeling of being observed in school and on the street and even at home, having to be cautious about what you do and say, the close, blocked-in feeling that everyone gets used to eventually.

“Yeah.” Hana kicks at the packed dirt road. A plume of dust puffs up, resettles slowly. “Pretty crappy security for a major medical facility.”

“Pretty crappy security for a petting zoo,” I say.

“I resent that.” The voice comes from behind us, and both Hana and I jump.

I spin around. The world seems to freeze for an instant.

A boy is standing behind us, arms crossed, head cocked to the side. A boy with caramel-colored skin and hair that’s a golden-brown color, like autumn leaves getting ready to fall.

It’s him. The boy from yesterday, from the observation deck. The Invalid.

Except he isn’t an Invalid, obviously. He’s wearing a short-sleeved blue guard’s uniform over jeans, and he’s got a laminated government ID clipped to his collar.

“I leave for two seconds to get a refill”—he gestures to the bottle of water he’s holding—“and I come back to find a full-fledged break-in.”

I’m so confused I can’t move or speak or do anything. Hana must think I’m scared, because she jumps in quickly, “We weren’t breaking in. We weren’t doing anything. We were just running and we . . . um, we got lost.”

The boy crosses his arms in front of his chest, rocking back on his heels.

“Didn’t see any of the signs outside, huh? ‘No Trespassing’? ‘Authorized Personnel Only’?”

Hana looks away. She’s nervous too. I can feel it. Hana’s a thousand times more confident than I am, but neither of us is used to standing in the open and talking to a boy, especially not a boy-guard, and it must have occurred to Hana that he already has plenty of grounds to arrest us.

“Must have missed them,” she mumbles.

“Uh-huh.” He raises his eyebrows. It’s obvious he doesn’t believe us, but at least he doesn’t look angry. “They’re pretty subtle. Only a few dozen of them. I can see how you might not have noticed.”

He looks away for a second, squinting, and I get the feeling he’s trying to stop himself from laughing. He’s not like any guard I’ve ever seen—at least, not the typical guards you see at the border and all around Portland, fat and scowly and old. I think about how sure I was yesterday that he came from the Wilds, the solid certainty deep inside of me.

I was wrong, obviously. As he turns his head I see the unmistakable sign of someone who is cured: the mark of the procedure, a three-pointed scar just behind the left ear, where the scientists insert a special three-pronged needle used exclusively for immobilizing the patient so that the cure can be administered. People show off their scars like badges of honor; you hardly see any cureds with long hair, and the women who haven’t lopped off their hair entirely are careful to wear it pulled back.

My fear recedes. Talking to a cured isn’t illegal. The rules of segregation don’t apply.

I’m not sure if he has recognized me or not. If so, he hasn’t given any sign of it. Finally I can’t take it anymore and I burst out, “You. I saw you—” At the last second I can’t finish the sentence. I saw you yesterday.

You winked at me.

Hana looks startled. “You two know each other?” She shoots a look at me.

Hana knows I’ve hardly ever exchanged two words with a boy before, unless it’s “Excuse me” in the street or “Sorry for stepping on your toes” when I trip on somebody. We’re not supposed to have more than minimal contact with uncured boys outside of our own families. Even after they’ve been cured, there’s hardly a need or excuse for it, unless we’re dealing with a doctor or teacher or someone like that.

He turns to look at me. His face is completely professional and composed, but I swear I see something flickering in his eyes, a look of amusement or pleasure. “No,” he says smoothly. “We’ve never met. I’m sure I would remember.” The flash in his eyes is back—is he laughing at me?

“I’m Hana,” Hana says. “And this is Lena.” She jabs me with an elbow. I know I must look like a fish, standing there with my mouth gaping open, but I’m too outraged to speak. He’s lying. I know he’s the one I saw yesterday, would bet my life on it.

“Alex. Nice to meet you.” Alex keeps his eyes on me as he and Hana shake hands. Then he extends a hand to me. “Lena,” he says thoughtfully. “I’ve never heard that name before.”

I hesitate. Shaking hands makes me feel awkward, like I’m playing dress-up in an adult’s too-big clothing. Besides, I’ve never actually touched skin-to-skin with a stranger. But he’s just standing there with his hand out, so after a second I reach out and shake. The moment we touch, a tiny electrical shock buzzes through me, and I pull away quickly.

“It’s short for Magdalena,” I say.

“Magdalena.” Alex tips his head back, watching me from narrowed eyes. “Pretty.”

I’m momentarily distracted by the way he says my name. In his mouth it sounds musical, not clunky and angular, the way my teachers have always made it sound. His eyes are a warm amber color, and as I look at him I have a sudden, flashing memory of my mother pouring syrup over a stack of pancakes. I look away, feeling ashamed, as though he has somehow been responsible for dredging the memory up, has reached in with his hand and wrenched it from me. Embarrassment makes me feel angry, and I press on, “I do know you. I saw you yesterday in the labs. You were on the observation deck, watching—watching everything.” Again, my courage fails me at the last second and I don’t say, Watching me.

I can feel Hana glaring at me, but I ignore her. She must be furious I haven’t told her any of this.

Alex’s face doesn’t change. He doesn’t blink or drop his smile for even a fraction of a second. “Case of mistaken identity, I guess. Guards aren’t allowed in the labs during evaluations. Especially not part-time guards.”

For a second longer we stand there, staring at each other. Now I know he’s lying, and the easy, lazy grin on his face makes me want to reach out and slap him. I ball my fists and suck in a deep breath, willing myself to stay calm. I’m not the violent type. I don’t know why I’m feeling so aggravated.

Hana jumps in, breaking the tension. “So this is it? A part-time security guard and some ‘Keep Out’ signs?”

Alex keeps his eyes on me a half second longer. Then he turns to look at Hana as though noticing her for the first time. “What do you mean?”

“I would have thought the labs would be better protected, that’s all. It doesn’t seem like it would be too hard to break into this place.”

Alex raises his eyebrows. “Thinking about making the attempt?”

Hana freezes, and my blood goes to ice. She has gone too far. If Alex reports us as potential sympathizers, or troublemakers, or anything, we’re in for months and months of surveillance and investigation—and we can kiss our chances of passing the evaluations with decent scores good-bye. I picture a lifetime of watching Andrew Marcus fish snot out of his nose with a thumbnail and feel queasy.

Alex must sense our fear, because he raises both hands. “Relax. I was kidding. You don’t exactly seem like terrorists.” It occurs to me how ridiculous we must look in our running shorts and sweaty tank tops and neon sneakers. Or at least, I must look ridiculous. Hana looks like a model for athletic wear. Again, I feel a fit of blushing coming on, followed by a surge of irritation. No wonder the regulators decided on the segregation of boys and girls: Otherwise, it would have been a nightmare, this feeling angry and self-conscious and confused and annoyed all the time.

“This is just the loading area, anyway, for freight and stuff.” Alex gestures beyond the line of cargo sheds. “Real security starts closer to the facilities. Full-time guards, cameras, electrified fence, the whole shebang.”

Hana doesn’t look at me, but when she speaks I can hear the excitement creeping into her voice. “The loading area? Like, where the deliveries come?”

In my head I start praying, Don’t say anything dumb. Don’t say anything dumb. Do not mention the Invalids.

“You got it.”

Hana dances on her feet, shifting her weight back and forth. I try to shoot her a warning look, but she avoids my eyes.

“So this is where the trucks come? With medical equipment and . . . and other stuff?”

“Exactly.” Again I have the impression of something flickering behind Alex’s eyes, even as the rest of his face stays totally neutral. I don’t trust him, I realize, and again wonder why he is lying about being in the labs yesterday. Maybe only because it’s forbidden, like he said. Maybe because he was laughing instead of trying to help out.

And maybe, after all, he really doesn’t recognize me. We made eye contact for only a few seconds, and I’m sure to him I was only a blurry, in-between face, easy to forget. Not pretty. Not ugly, either. Just plain, like a thousand other faces you would see on the street.

He, on the other hand, is most definitely not in-between. There’s something insane to me about standing in the open talking to a strange boy, even if he is cured, and though my head is whirling, it’s like my vision gets razor sharp, making everything look ultra-detailed. I notice the way a piece of his hair curls around his scar, like a frame; I notice his large brown hands and the whiteness of his teeth and the perfect symmetry of his face. His jeans are faded and belted low on his hips, and the laces in his sneakers are the weirdest ink-color blue, like he has colored them in with a pen.

I wonder how old he is. He looks my age, but he must be slightly older, maybe nineteen. I wonder, too—a brief, flitting thought—whether he’s already been paired. But of course he has; he must have been.

I’ve been staring at him accidentally and he turns suddenly to look at me. I drop my eyes, feeling a quick and irrational terror that he has managed to read my thoughts.

“I’d love to look around,” Hana hints not-so-subtly. I reach out and pinch her when Alex isn’t looking and she shrinks away, giving me a guilty look. At least she doesn’t start grilling him about what happened yesterday, and get us thrown in jail or dragged through an interrogation.

Alex tosses his water bottle in the air, catches it in one hand. “Trust me, there’s nothing to see. Unless you’re a fan of industrial waste. There’s plenty of that around here.” He tips his head toward the Dumpsters. “Oh—and the best view of the bay in Portland. We’ve got that going for us too.”

“Really?” Hana wrinkles her nose, momentarily distracted from her detective mission.

Alex nods, tosses the bottle again, catches it. As it arcs through the air the sun winks through the water like light from a jewel. “That I can show you,” he says. “Come on.”

All I want is to get out of here, but Hana says, “Sure,” so I trudge along after her, silently cursing her curiosity and fixation with all things Invalid-related and vowing never to let her pick our running route again. She and Alex walk in front, and I pick up scattered bits of their conversation: I hear him say he takes classes at one of the colleges but miss what he says he studies; Hana tells him we’re about to graduate. He tells her he’s nineteen; she says that we’re both turning eighteen in several months. Thankfully, they avoid talking about the botched evaluations yesterday.

The service road connects with another, smaller drive, which runs parallel to Fore Street, slanting steeply uphill toward the Eastern Promenade. Here there are rows of long, metal storage sheds. The sun is flat and high and unrelenting. I’m incredibly thirsty, but when Alex turns around and offers me a sip from his water bottle, I say, “No,” quickly and too loud. The thought of putting my mouth where his mouth has been makes me feel anxious all over again.

As we come up to the top of the hill—all three of us panting a little from the climb—the bay unfolds to our right like a gigantic map, a sparkling, shimmering world of blues and greens. Hana gasps a little. It really is a beautiful view: unobstructed and perfect. The sky is full of poufy white clouds that make me think of feather pillows, and seagulls turn lazy arcs over the water, patterns of birds forming and dissolving in the sky.

Hana walks forward a few feet. “It’s amazing. Gorgeous, isn’t it? No matter how long I live here I never get used to it.” She turns and looks at me. “I think this is my favorite way to see the ocean. Middle of the afternoon, sunny and bright. It’s just like a photograph. Don’t you think, Lena?”

I’m feeling so relaxed—enjoying the wind at the top of the hill, which sweeps over my arms and legs and makes me feel cool and delicious, enjoying the view of the bay and the high, blinking eye of the sun—I’ve almost forgotten that Alex is with us. He’s been hanging back, standing a few feet behind us, and ever since we came up the hill he hasn’t said a word.

Which is why I nearly jump out of my skin when he leans forward and directs a single word into my ear: “Gray.”

“What?” I whirl around, my heart pounding. Hana has turned back to the water and is going on about wishing she had her camera and how you never seem to have anything you really need. Alex is bent close to me—so close I can see his individual eyelashes, like perfect brushstrokes on a canvas portrait—and now his eyes are literally dancing with light, burning as though on fire.

“What did you say?” I repeat. My voice comes out a croaky whisper.

He leans another inch closer, and it’s like the flames seep out of his eyes and light my whole body on fire. I’ve never been this close to a boy before. I feel like fainting and running all at the same time. But I can’t move.

“I said, I prefer the ocean when it’s gray. Or not really gray. A pale, in-between color. It reminds me of waiting for something good to happen.”

He does remember. He was there. The ground seems to be dissolving under my feet the way it does in the dream about my mother. All I can see are his eyes, the shifting pattern of shadow and light turning there.

“You lied,” I manage to croak out. “Why did you lie?”

He doesn’t answer me. He pulls away a few inches and says, “Of course it’s even prettier at sunset. Around eight thirty the sky looks like it’s on fire, especially at Back Cove. You should really see it.” He pauses, and though his voice is low and casual I get the feeling he’s trying to tell me something important. “Tonight it will probably be amazing.”

My brain grinds into action, slowly processing his words, the way he’s emphasizing certain details. Then it clicks: He has given me a time and a place. He’s telling me to meet him. “Are you asking me to—?” I start to say, but just then Hana runs back up to me, grabbing my arm.

“God,” she says, laughing. “Can you believe it’s after five already? We’ve got to go.” She’s dragging me backward before I can respond or protest, and by the time I think to look over my shoulder to see if Alex is watching or giving me any kind of sign, he has disappeared from view.