Lauren Oliver - Delirium (18 page)

In the end my sister was cured. She came back to me gentle and content, her nails spotless and round, her hair pulled back in a long, thick braid. Several months later she was pledged to an IT tech, roughly her age, and several weeks after she graduated from college they married, their hands linked loosely under the canopy, both of them staring straight ahead as though at a future of days unmarred by worry or discontent or disagreement, a future of identical days, like a series of neatly blown bubbles.

Thomas was cured too. He was married to Ella, once my sister's best friend, and now everybody is happy. Rachel told me a few months ago that the two couples often see each other at picnics and neighborhood events, since they live fairly close to each other in the East End. The four of them sit, making polite and quiet conversation, with not a sole flicker of the past to disturb the stillness and completeness of the present.

That's the beauty of the cure. No one mentions those lost, hot days in the field, when Thomas kissed Rachel's tears away and invented worlds just so he could promise them to her, when she tore the skin off her own arms at the thought of living without him. I'm sure she's embarrassed by those days, if she remembers them at all. True, I don't see her that often now--just once every couple of months, when she remembers she is supposed to stop by--and in that way I guess you could say that even with the procedure I lost a little bit of her. But that's not the point. The point is that she's protected. The point is that she's safe.

I'll tell you another secret, this one for your own good. You may think the past has something to tell you. You may think that you should listen, should strain to make out its whispers, should bend over backward, stoop down low to hear its voice breathed up from the ground, from the dead places. You may think there's something in it for you, something to understand or make sense of.

But I know the truth: I know from the nights of Coldness. I know the past will drag you backward and down, have you snatching at whispers of wind and the gibberish of trees rubbing together, trying to decipher some code, trying to piece together what was broken. It's hopeless. The past is nothing but a weight. It will build inside of you like a stone.

Take it from me: If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging at your back and running its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do--the only thing--is run.

In the days that follow Alex's confession, I check constantly for symptoms of the disease. When I'm manning the register at my uncle's store I lean forward on my elbow, keep my hand resting on my cheek so I can crook my fingers back toward my neck and count my pulse, make sure it's normal. In the mornings I take long, slow breaths, listening for rasping or hitches in my lungs. I wash my hands constantly. I know the deliria isn't like a cold--you can't get it from being sneezed on--but still, it's contagious, and when I woke up the day after our meeting at East End with my limbs still heavy and my head as light as a bubble and an ache in my throat that refused to go away, my first thought was that I'd been infected.

After a few days I feel better. The only weird thing is the way my senses seem to have dulled. Everything looks washed out, like a bad color copy. I have to load my food with salt before I can taste it, and every time my aunt speaks to me it seems like her voice has been muted a few degrees. But I read through The Book of Shhh, and all the recognized symptoms of deliria, and don't see anything that matches up, so in the end I figure I'm safe.

Still, I take precautions, determined not to make one false step, determined to prove to myself that I'm not like my mother--that the thing with Alex was a fluke, a mistake, a horrible, horrible accident. I can't ignore how close I was to danger. I don't even want to think about what would happen if anyone found out what Alex was, if anyone knew that we had stood together shivering in the water, that we had talked, laughed, touched. It makes me feel sick. I have to keep repeating to myself that my procedure is less than two months away now. All I have to do is keep my head down and make it through the next seven weeks and I'll be fine.

I come home every evening a full two hours before curfew. I volunteer to spend extra days at the store, and I don't even ask for my usual eight-dollar-an-hour wage. Hana doesn't call me. I don't call her, either. I help my aunt cook dinner, and I clear and wash the dishes unprompted. Gracie is in summer school--she's only in first grade and they're already talking about holding her back--and every night I pull her onto my lap and help her sludge through her work, whispering in her ear, begging her to speak, to focus, to listen, cajoling her, finally, into writing at least half of the answers down in her workbook. After a week my aunt stops looking at me suspiciously whenever I walk into the house, stops demanding to know where I've been, and another weight eases off me: She trusts me again. It wasn't easy to explain why on earth Sophia Hennerson and I would decide on an impromptu swim in the ocean--in our clothes, no less--just after a big family dinner, even harder to explain why I came home pale and shaking, and I could tell my aunt didn't buy it. But after a while she relaxes around me again, stops looking at me distrustfully, like I'm some caged-up animal she's worried will go feral.

Days pass, time ticks away, seconds click forward like dominoes toppling in a line. Every day the heat gets worse and worse. It creeps through the streets of Portland, festers in the Dumpsters, makes the city smell like a giant armpit. The walls sweat and the trolleys cough and shudder, and every day people gather in front of the municipal buildings, praying for a brief blast of cold air whenever the mechanized doors swoosh open because a regulator or politician or guard has to go in and out.

I have to give up my runs. The last time I do a full loop outside I find that my feet carry me down to Monument Square, past the Governor. The sun is a high white haze, all the buildings cut sharply against the sky like a series of metal teeth. By the time I make it to the statue I'm panting, exhausted, and my head is spinning. When I grab the Governor's arm and swing myself up onto the statue's base, the metal burns underneath my hand and the world seesaws crazily, light zigzagging everywhere. I'm dimly aware that I should go inside, out of the heat, but my brain is all foggy and so there I go, poking my fingers around the hole in the Governor's cupped fist. I don't know what I'm looking for. Alex already told me that the note he'd left for me months ago must have turned to pulp by now. My fingers come out sticky, pieces of melting gum stringing between my thumb and forefinger, but still I root around. And then I feel it slide between my fingers, cool and crisp, folded in a square: a note.

I'm half-delirious as I open it, but still I don't really expect it to be from him. My hands begin to shake as I read:

Lena, I'm so sorry. Please forgive me. Alex

I don't remember the run home, and my aunt finds me later half passed out in the hallway, murmuring to myself. She has to put me in a bathtub full of ice to get my temperature down. When I finally come to I can't find the note anywhere. I realize I must have dropped it, and feel half-relieved and half- disappointed. That evening we read that the Time and Temperature Building registered 102 degrees: the hottest day on record for the summer so far.

My aunt forbids me to run outside for the rest of the summer. I don't put up a fight. I don't trust myself, can't be sure my feet won't lead me back down to the Governor, to East End Beach, to the labs.

I receive a new date for the evaluations and spend my evenings in front of the mirror rehearsing my answers. My aunt insists on accompanying me to the labs again, but this time I don't see Hana. I don't see anyone I recognize. Even the four evaluators are different: floating oval faces, different shades of brown and pink, two-dimensional, like shaded drawings. I am not afraid this time. I don't feel anything.

I answer all the questions exactly as I should. When I am asked to give my favorite color, for just the briefest, tiniest of seconds my mind flashes on a sky the color of polished silver, and I think I hear a word --gray--whispered quietly into my ear.

I say, "Blue," and everyone smiles.

I say, "I'd like to study psychology and social regulation." I say, "I like to listen to music, but not too loudly." I say, "The definition of happiness is security." Smiles, smiles, smiles all around, a room full of teeth.

After I'm done, as I am leaving, I think I see a shifting shadow, a flicker in my peripheral vision. I glance up quickly at the observation deck. Of course, it's empty.

Two days later we receive the results of my boards--all passes--and my final score: Eight. My aunt hugs me, the first time she has hugged me in years. My uncle pats me on the shoulder awkwardly and gives me the largest piece of chicken at dinner. Even Jenny looks impressed. Gracie rams the top of her head into my leg, one, two, three times, and I step away from her, tell her to stop fussing. I know she's upset that I'll be leaving her.

But that's life, and the sooner she gets used to it, the better.

I receive my "Approved Matches" too, a list of four names and statistics--age, scores, interests, recommended career path, salary projections--printed neatly on a white sheet of paper with the Portland city crest at its top. At least Andrew Marcus isn't on it. I recognize only one name: Chris McDonnell. He has bright red hair and teeth that stick out like a rabbit's. I only know him because once when I was playing outside last year with Gracie, he started chanting, "There goes the retard and the orphan," and without really thinking about what I was doing, I scooped up a rock from the ground and turned around and hurled it in his direction. It caught him on the temple. For a second his eyes crossed and uncrossed. He lifted his fingers to his head, and when he pulled them away they were dark with blood. For days afterward I was terrified to go out, terrified I'd be arrested and thrown in the Crypts. Mr. McDonnell owned a tech services firm, and was a volunteer regulator besides. I was convinced he would come after me for what I'd done to his son.

Chris McDonnell. Phinneas Jonston. Edward Wung. Brian Scharff. I stare at the names for so long that the letters rearrange themselves into nonsense words, into baby babble. Gone Crap, Just Fine, Won't Spill, Pick Chris, Sharp Things.

In mid-July, when my procedure is only seven weeks away, it's time to make my decision. I rank my choices arbitrarily, inserting numbers next to names: Phinneas Jonston (1), Chris McDonnell (2), Brian Scharff (3), Edward Wung (4). The boys will be submitting their rankings too; the evaluators will do their best to match preferences.

Two days later I receive the official notification: I'll be spending the rest of my life with Brian Scharff, whose hobbies are "watching the news" and "fantasy baseball," and who plans to work "in the electricians' guild," and who can "someday expect to make $45,000," a salary that "should support two to three kids." I'll be pledged to him before I begin Regional College of Portland in the fall. When I graduate we'll be married.

At night I sleep dreamlessly. In the mornings I wake to fog. Chapter Twelve

In the decades before the development of the cure, the disease had become so virulent and widespread it was extraordinarily rare for a person to reach adulthood without having contracted a significant case of amor deliria nervosa (please see "Statistics, Pre�Border Era"). . . . Many historians have argued that pre-cure society was itself a reflection of the disease, characterized by fracture, chaos, and instability. . . . Almost half of all marriages ended in dissolution. . . . Incidence of drug use skyrocketed, as did alcohol-related deaths.

People were so desperate for relief and protection from the disease they began widespread experimentation with makeshift folk remedies that were in themselves deadly, consuming concoctions of drugs assembled from common cold medications and synthesized into an extremely addictive and often fatal compound (please see "Folk Cures Through the Ages"). . . .

The discovery of the procedure to cure deliria is typically credited to Cormac T. Holmes, a neuroscientist who was a member of the initial Consortium of New Scientists and one of the first disciples of the New Religion, which teaches the Holy Trinity of God, Science, and Order. Holmes was canonized several years after his death, and his body was preserved and displayed in the All-Saints' Monument in Washington, DC (see photographs on pp. 210�212).

--From "Before the Border," A Brief History of the United States of America, by E. D. Thompson, p. 121

One hot evening toward the end of July I'm walking home from the Stop-N-Save when I hear someone call my name. I turn around and see Hana jogging up the hill toward me.

"So what?" she says as she gets closer, panting a little. "You're just going to walk by me now?"

The obvious hurt in her voice surprises me. "I didn't see you," I say, which is the truth. I'm tired. Today we did inventory at the store, unshelving and reshelving packages of diapers, canned goods, rolls of paper towels, counting and recounting everything. My arms are aching, and whenever I close my eyes I see bar codes. I'm so tired I'm not even embarrassed to be out in public wearing my paint-spotted Stop- N-Save T-shirt, which is about ten sizes too big for me.

Hana looks away, biting her lip. I haven't spoken to her since that night at the party and I'm searching desperately for something to say, something casual and normal. It suddenly seems incredible to me that this was my best friend, that we could hang out for days and never run out of things to talk about, that I would come home from her house with my throat sore from laughing. It's like there's a glass wall between us now, invisible but impenetrable.

I finally come up with, "I got my matches," at the same time that Hana blurts out, "Why didn't you call me back?"

Both of us pause, startled, and then again start up at the same time. I say, "You called?" and Hana says, "Did you accept yet?"

"You first," I say.

Hana actually seems uncomfortable. She looks at the sky, at a small child standing across the street in a baggy swimsuit, at the two men loading buckets of something into a truck down the street-- everywhere but at me. "I left you, like, three messages."