River: A Novel (10 page)

 “
How
weird
,” I had said earlier, after he’d mouthed
focus
to me for the
fourth time in an hour.
“I can totally hear your voice in my head when you
do that.”
A second later, I’d felt terrible. Dan acted as though nothing had
happened, but I knew what he’d been hiding: the pain of not knowing what his
own voice would ever sound like. He didn’t move his lips to form words for the
rest of the day.

 When opening
the curtain to the benign night, it felt as though I was unfurling
myself from self-imposed reclusion. The
outside world never looked quite as threatening at three in the morning. Leafless
branches waved stiffly in the wind, changing light patterns from the
streetlamps into colorless animated mosaics. I’m not sure how long I gazed
outside before I saw him. A still figure stemmed from one of the shadows across
from Dan’s building.

 After
inhaling sharply when the man moved, confirming his existence, I let go of the
curtain and covered my mouth in surprise. The person had been watching Dan’s
window. Was he one of the Speakers? How could they have suspected I was no
longer a Mute? Paranoia took over my mind. I thought of the frightening looking
man in the street the day of my arrival, just after Dan had kissed me. I’d
thought at the time that maybe he was just appalled at public displays of
affection. Not that I blamed him—it had been fairly ridiculous.
That can’t
be him
, I told myself while parting the
curtain a millimeter to peer at the shadow. The figure had
disappeared. Shaking it off, I backed away from the window, straight into
Danny.

 Stifling a
scream, I clamped down on my tongue, and my heart jumped viciously. I gasped
out, “God, Dan! Don’t
do
that!” Then I hit him in the arm. He smiled
sleepily, not flinching
at all
, and tilted his head toward the window. “I
thought I saw someone out there, but it was probably just somebody walking by. So,
it was nothing, really,” I answered his silent question breathlessly.  Instantly
awake, Dan walked around me to open the curtain. I didn’t look, knowing the
person was long gone. My breathing
normalized as I thought of the time. “What are you doing up? I
couldn’t sleep, obviously, so what’s your excuse?” He pointed to his ear, then to
me before he shrugged and looked out the window again. Dan had heard me? Jeez. I
guessed that I wouldn’t be sneaking out any time soon. 

 Reading
about the parents, my parents, was out at that point. I wasn’t sure I wanted
Danny around when I read about them. I was secretly afraid I may just lose all
composure and try to flee, though
the Lulling boundary would stop me at the edge of town. In
case of that scenario, I decided to ask Danny more about the border. Even after
taking the antidote in large doses—surely a contributing factor to present insomnia—I
didn’t know how close I could get before the Lulling took me down. “What if I
need to run from the Speakers?” I whispered. Not that I would have anywhere to
go, but in a fight versus flight situation, I was positive flight would be my
only option.

 He signed
to me, asking if I wanted to practice. 

 “Sure.” It
couldn’t hurt, unlike the deadly Taser if I were
found out.

 Danny began
signing, and my eyes automatically squinted, trying to decipher the complicated
gestures. I was pretty sure he was repeating something about the coffee and
time. After the third attempt I took a stab at what he was trying to convey.

 “Okay. So
there is a time limit for the coffee before it runs out of anti-Lulling
juice?” 

 That made sense;
it had to go through a person’s system at some point. Luckily, I could drink my
weight in coffee.

 “Fifteen minutes?
That can’t be right.” 

 He shook
his head and began again.

  “An hour
and a half, that’s better.” I still wasn’t clear about the second part. After a
few seconds of deduction, I guessed again.

 “Fifteen
minutes before they get to you after you pass out?” He nodded tiredly. My
response had taken too long. I had to do better if I were going to fool people
who knew River Elodie into thinking I was her, and just like everyone else: muted. 

 “Sign
something else I don’t know about River.”

 As dawn
filtered through the closed curtains, I became a little bit relieved. The night
had been a long one, and I only had a few more days before I had to go out into
the
world as Elodie Claudette
VonCambridge. That was one of the things I had learned—my new middle and last
names. This new name sounded regal. My surname before had been Grahm, and my
middle name was Lynn. My parents who had abandoned me at least had given me a
first name before dumping me at a church; the nuns had invented the rest. This
made me think of my life growing up in New York.

 My reverie
was brief as I began to obsess about how I’d traveled to River, especially
through the Lulling boundary. In one of our longer sessions, Dan suggested that
adrenaline from the shock of my strange journey had probably counter-acted the massive
melatonin rush triggered by the Lulling device. That was one of the reasons
Dan had tried the antidote in
coffee. The drink itself wasn’t strong enough to remove most symptoms, though
boosted with several other stimulants as well as melatonin blockers, it worked
temporarily.

 I sat at
the little kitchen table, contemplating my new situation for the fiftieth time
while downing more coffee and pancakes, pleasantly shocked by Dan’s cooking
skills. The dinners he fixed were gourmet, and the morning pancakes were
heavenly. Today we had cinnamon chocolate chip. My stomach had gone from
feeling hollowed out to slightly bulging in a few days. I would have thought
that the stress of the predicament I was in would’ve curbed my appetite, but
all I wanted to do was eat. Dan wrote that increased hunger was a side effect. The
adrenaline in the anti-Lull burned up the body’s natural energy quickly, similar
to constantly training for a marathon. 

 The
reprieve from practicing worried me that I would forget everything I’d learned.
Ready for more drills, I noticed Dan looked exhausted, though he didn’t act
burdened. In fact, he would hug me more often than before. As I was not used to
things feeling other than friendship with Dan, at times I suspected
he wanted to kiss me again. I set
down my fork and rubbed my eyes.
One thing to obsess about at a
time
,
please
. 

 “Dan, I
think I want to go over questions and answers again. I figure if I can memorize
certain things, I can improvise the rest, or maybe just learn generic answers
and hope to get it right.” I laughed in a short burst at that. I would be doing
a lot of hoping in a couple of days.

 “Danny? You
ready?” After a moment of silence, I spun around to face the couch where he’d
gone after
breakfast. When
his head didn’t poke up as expected, I sprang from my chair and scuttled over,
heart racing from fear. Maybe he’d been abducted. Aliens were most definitely
back in the equation—the Speakers would be easier to digest if they weren’t
human. Turning the corner to where the sofa was, I breathed again. Dan was
snoring lightly with his arms across his chest in a protective way. I reached
over to the chair next to me and grabbed a throw. While placing the blanket carefully
over my only friend in the universe, I whispered, “Thanks again
, Danny
. I’ll try not to screw up.” 

 I had to
remember to tell him that when he was awake.

 Jittery and
not knowing what to do, I stopped pacing, remembering that Dan now had Super Hearing.
I didn’t want to wake him; the circles under his eyes were rivaling my own,
although they would be good cover when we finally emerged from quarantine—since
the both of us were “sick.” Dan had notified the rest of the building through
his doorman that we had the same strain and were toughing it out together. This
was not exactly a stretch; given that a dozen people had seen us lip-locked the
other day. I didn’t want either of us to become sick for real. A Speaker doctor
examining my throat
and
seeing nothing wrong, as in everything would be intact, would probably not be
good. Sitting back at the table, I pushed the coffee cup away and opted for
orange juice, vowing to get some sleep later.

 Closing my
eyes, I pictured images of Dan signing in my head and what my responses should be—using
non-words for words. Mute signing was similar enough to what little I remembered
of American Sign Language, and I suspected the originators had at least some
experience with it, which gave me the sinking suspicion they did come from
elsewhere.
Besides lacking an alphabet, the language here also prohibited use of facial
expression in part—another way to keep the Mutes caged. 

 Without
divulging my theories to Dan about the Speakers, I had explained that the
vocabulary was comparable to the way some cultures’ writing was really
characters for whole words
and phrases instead of individual letters, and the sign language in River
was just as whole in its emphasis on entire sentences in one or two moves. He
was fascinated by this information, especially my bit knowledge of other
cultures. This gave me hope that he believed I truly was a different Elodie,
and maybe we could find our way back to the real world, or at least the one I
knew. Before Danny let me go on about that, he reminded me of our purpose—to
keep me alive. I still had a lot to learn, and we were running out of time. 

 My eyes
opened again as a jolt of fear ran through me. The Speakers were dangerous and
brutal beneath their so-called benevolence. Wondering idly if the Speakers ever
signed to Mutes conversationally, I guessed that they flaunted their language,
too good to stoop to their subjects’ ways. My imagination shook
with courage as I visualized meeting
a Speaker someday—a long time from now when I would not be as terrified. Blessed
with one hell of a high kick, I thought of aiming straight for the mouth. And
it would be bloody.

  Anger
erupting in my core, I stood stiffly. I had no more excuses. Slowly, I walked
to open the cupboard door with the coffee can behind it, picking it up with
shaking hands and almost dropping it. Folded underneath was a big
mystery. Something I had wondered
about my entire life. Dreaming up scenarios of how my parents would rescue me
in the middle of the night from foster care, telling me it had all been a big
mistake, was how I had survived many sleepless nights when I was a kid.

 Still
holding the coffee, I sat at the table and placed both items carefully in front
of me. While staring at the blue can with pictures of coffee beans flowing into
a steaming mug, I wondered if Dan could send some of the antidote to the
parents. Maybe they could help us escape. Dan had written that his own parents
had pretty much been brainwashed and worked
for the Speakers at their Domain. He rarely saw them, but
they coded him messages now and then about how happy they were. Dropping the
subject, he’d abruptly begun a new round of signing drills, harder than before.

 Maybe the
parents had all been programmed to the Speakers’ mode of thought. What if River
Elodie’s parents suspected me as an imposter and turned me in? Among other things,
Dan had written that mothers here only had one shot at pregnancy and are
intensely protective of their child, as anyone would be, although there is
apparently nothing they can do about the muting. Whether or not the mothers
actually have a baby is irrelevant; due to this rule, pregnant women are
treated very delicately, and all children are well cared for. Any type of
neglect or abuse of pregnant mothers and their children is considered a capital
offense; for this reason the rumor Petra allegedly spread against the
“innocent” Speaker had been an especially serious infraction. This convinced me
even more that she had somehow been a victim. In spite of the madness, I was
glad to hear the kids were well cared for by everyone, except when they had
their voices removed, of course.

 Dan wrote
that he had never been in a room during a birth in River, but to the best of
his knowledge, the baby was taken from the parents almost immediately and given
laser surgery to nullify the vocal cords. Wondering if the mothers commit their
baby’s first cries to memory, the only time they heard their
little voices, brought tears to my
eyes. I had been nauseated at the thought as Dan shrugged reluctantly. What
could they do?  It was the way of life here. Evidently, they had perfected the
procedure so that the infant felt nothing, and then made sure the baby was
perfectly healthy after. The hypocrite psychos made sure that the babies were
healthy after they performed an irreversible surgery to remove their voices
forever. It still made me sick—no matter how it was spun. 

 The
Speakers had to be stopped, didn’t they? Anyone could see that taking away
voices was morally wrong. My stomach felt uneasy as I regretted the second
stack of pancakes I’d eaten. I just hoped that what Danny had written about the
parents wasn’t part of the horror story of River.

 Their names
were Valeria and Marcus VonCambridge. Valeria was a costume designer, and
Marcus was a doctor. River Elodie was on good terms with them; though she only
saw them once a week at Sunday brunch and periodically after a performance. Danny
had coded to them that I was sick but on the mend, and not to worry. Marcus had
wanted to come and take a look, so Dan replied with the excuse that he would just
catch whatever virus we’d contracted. Valeria had sent a basket of fruit with a
“Get Well Soon” code attached. I had seen the fruit earlier.  Dan didn’t write
that it was from the parents until a few hours later, presuming it would upset
me. They were well off and seemed to love her…
us
.