《Annabel (Delirium #0.5)》


 Page 1

    When I was a girl, it snowed for a whole summer.


    Every day, the sun rose smudgy behind a smoke-gray sky and hovered behind its haze; in the evenings, it sank, orange and defeated, like the glowing embers of a dying flame.


    And the flakes came down and down¡ªnot cold to touch, but with their own peculiar burn¡ªas the wind brought smells of burning.


    Every night, my mother and father sat us down to watch the news. All the pictures were the same: towns neatly evacuated, cities enclosed, grateful citizens waving from the windows of big, shiny buses as they were carted off to a new future, a life of perfect happiness. A life of painlessness.


    ¡°See?¡± my mother would say, smiling at me and my sister, Carol, in turn. ¡°We live in the greatest country on earth. See how lucky we are?¡±


    And yet the ash continued swirling down, and the smells of death came through the windows, crept under the door, hung in our carpets and curtains, and screamed of her lie.


    Is it possible to tell the truth in a society of lies? Or must you always, of necessity, become a liar?


    And if you lie to a liar, is the sin somehow negated or reversed?


    These are the kinds of questions I ask myself now: in these dark, watery hours, when night and day are interchangeable. No. Not true. During the day the guards come, to deliver food and take the bucket; and at night the others moan and scream. They are the lucky ones. They are the ones who still believe that sound, that voice, will do any good. The rest of us know better, and have learned to live in silence.


    I wonder what Lena is doing now. I always wonder what Lena is doing. Rachel, too: both my girls, my beautiful, big-eyed girls. But I worry about Rachel less. Rachel was always harder than Lena, somehow. More defiant, more stubborn, less feeling. Even as a girl, she frightened me¡ªfierce and fiery-eyed, with a temper like my father¡¯s once was.


    But Lena . . . little darling Lena, with her tangle of dark hair and her flushed, chubby cheeks. She used to rescue spiders from the pavement to keep them from getting squashed; quiet, thoughtful Lena, with the sweetest lisp to break your heart. To break my heart: my wild, uncured, erratic, incomprehensible heart. I wonder whether her front teeth still overlap; whether she still confuses the words pretzel and pencil occasionally; whether the wispy brown hair grew straight and long, or began to curl.


    I wonder whether she believes the lies they told her.


    I, too, am a liar now. I¡¯ve become one, of necessity. I lie when I smile and return an empty tray. I lie when I ask for The Book of Shhh, pretending to have repented.


    I lie just by being here, on my cot, in the dark.


    Soon, it will be over. Soon, I will escape.


    And then the lies will end.


    then


    The first time I saw Rachel and Lena¡¯s father I knew: knew I would marry him, knew I would fall in love with him. Knew he would never love me back, and I wo Neuldn¡¯t care.


    Picture me: seventeen, skinny, scared. Wearing a too-big, beat-up denim jacket I¡¯d bought from a thrift store and a hand-knitted scarf, not even close to warm enough to immunize me from the frigid December wind, which came howling across the Charles River, blew the snow sideways, stripped people in the streets of all their color so they walked, white as ghosts, heads bowed against the fury.


    That was the night Misha took me to see the cousin of a friend of a friend, Rawls, who ran a Brain Shop down on Ninth.


    That¡¯s what we called the dingy centers that sprang up in the decade after the cure became law: Brain Shops. Some of them pretended to be at least half-legit, with waiting rooms like at a regular doctor¡¯s office and tables for lying down. In others, it was just some guy with a knife, ready to take your money and give you a scar, hopefully one that looked realistic enough.


    Rawls¡¯s shop was the second kind. A low basement room, painted black for God knows what reason; a sagging leather couch, a small TV, a stiff-backed wooden chair, and a space heater¡ªand that was pretty much it, except for the smell of blood, a few buckets, and a little curtained-off area, too, where he actually did his work.


    I remember I nearly threw up coming in, I was so nervous. A couple of kids were ahead of me. There was no space on the couch, and I had to stand. I kept thinking the walls were contracting; I was terrified they would collapse entirely, burying us there.


    I¡¯d run away from home almost a month earlier and in that time had been scraping and saving money for a fake.


    In those days it was easier to travel; a decade after the cure was perfected, the walls were still going up, and regulations weren¡¯t as stringent. Still, I¡¯d never been more than twenty miles from home, and I spent practically the whole bus ride down to Boston either with my nose pressed up against the window, watching the bleak blur of starved winter trees and shivering landscapes and guard towers, new and in construction¡ªor in the bathroom, sick with nerves, trying to hold my breath against the sharp stink of pee.


    The last commercial flight: that¡¯s what I watched on TV, at Rawls¡¯s shop, while I waited my turn. The news crews packing the runway, the roar of the plane down the strip, and then the lift: an impossible lift, like a bird¡¯s, so beautiful and easy it made you want to cry. I¡¯d never been on an airplane, and now I never would. The airstrips would be dismantled and airports abandoned. Too little gas, too much risk of contagion.


    I remember my heart was in my throat, and I couldn¡¯t look away from the TV, from the image of the plane as it morphed, grew smaller, turned into a small black bird against the clouds.


    That¡¯s when they came: soldiers, young recruits, fresh out of boot camp. Uniforms crisp and new, boots shining like oil. People were trying to run out the exit in the back, and everyone was shouting. The curtains got torn down; I saw a flimsy folding table covered by a sheet, and a girl stretched out on it, bleeding from her neck. Rawls must have been halfway through her procedure.


    I wanted to help her, but there wasn¡¯t any time.


    The back door was thrown open, and I made it out and into an alley slick with ice, heaped with dirty snow and trash. I fell, cut my hand on the ice, kept going. I knew if I was caught, that was the end¡ªI¡¯d be hauled back to my parents, chucked into the labs, probably ranked a zero.


    That was the first year that a national system of ranking was established, made consistent across the country. Pairing was taking off. Regulatory councils were springing up everywhere, and little kids talked about becoming evaluators when they grew up.


    And no one would choose the girl with the record.


    It was at the corner of Linden and Adams that I saw him. Ran into him, actually¡ªsaw him step out in front of me, hands up, shouting, ¡°Wait!¡± Tried to dodge, lost my footing, stumbled directly into his arms. I was so close, I could see the snow caught in his lashes, smell the damp wool of his coat and the sharpness of aftershave, see where he¡¯d missed the stubble on his jaw. So close that the procedural scar on his neck looked like a tiny white starburst.


    I¡¯d never been that close to a boy before.


    The soldiers behind me were still shouting¡ª¡°Stop!¡± and ¡°Hold her!¡± and ¡°Don¡¯t let her get away!¡± I¡¯ll never forget the way he looked at me¡ªcuriously, almost amused, as though I were a strange species of animal in a zoo.


    Then: He let me go.


    The dagger pin is all I have left. It is comfort and pain, both, because it reminds me of all I¡¯ve had, held, and had taken from me.


    It is my pen, too. With it, I write my story, again and again, in the walls. So I don¡¯t forget. So it becomes real.


    I think of: Conrad¡¯s hands, Rachel¡¯s dark hair, Lena¡¯s rosebud mouth, how when she was an infant, I used to sneak into her bedroom and hold her while she slept. Rachel never let me¡ªfrom birth, she screamed, kicked, would have woken the household and the street.


    But Lena lay still and warm in my arms, submerged in some secret dreamland.


    And she was my secret: those nighttime hours, that twin heartbeat space, the darkness, the joy.


    All of this, I write.


    And so truth shall set me free.


    My room is full of holes. Holes where the stone grows porous, eaten away by mold and moisture. Holes where the mice make .(their homes. Holes of memory, where people and things get lost.


    There is a hole in the bottom of my mattress.


    And in the wall behind my bed, another hole, growing bigger by the day.


    On the fourth Friday of every month, Thomas brings me a change of linens for the cot. Laundry day is my favorite. It helps me keep track of the days. And for the first few nights, before the new sheet is soiled with sweat and the sediment of dust that sifts down on me continuously, like snow, I feel almost human again. I can close my eyes, imagine I am back in the warmth of the old house, with the wood and the sun, the smell of detergent, an illegal song piping softly from the ancient record player.


    And, of course, laundry day is when I get my messages.


    Today I¡¯m up just before the sun. My cell is windowless, and for years I couldn¡¯t tell night from day, morning from evening: a colorless existence, a time without aging or end. In the first year of my imprisonment, I did nothing but dream of the outdoors¡ªthe sun on Lena¡¯s hair, warm wood steps, the smell of the beach at low tide, swollen-belly rain clouds.


    Over time even my dreams became gray and textureless.


    Those were the years I wanted to die.


    When I first broke through the wall, after three years of digging, twisting, carving the soft stone away with a bit of metal no larger than a child¡¯s finger¡ªwhen that last bit of rock crumbled away and went spinning, tumbling into the river below¡ªmy first thought wasn¡¯t even of escape but of air, sun, breath. I slept for two nights on the floor just so I could feel the wind, so I could inhale the smell of snow.


    Today I have stripped my bed of its single sheet and the coarse blanket¡ªwool in winter, cotton in summer¡ªthat is standard issue in Ward Six. No pillows. I once heard the warden say that a prisoner had tried to suffocate himself here, and ever since, pillows have been forbidden. It seems unlikely but then again: Two years ago a prisoner managed to get hold of a guard¡¯s broken shoelaces and choked himself to death on the metal frame of his cot.


    I am at the end of the row, so as always, I get to listen to the rest of the ritual: the doors creaking open, the occasional cry or moan, the squeak of Thomas¡¯s sneakers and then the heavy thud, the click, of the cell doors closing again. This is my only excitement, my only pleasure: waiting for the clean linens, holding the filthy sheet balled in my lap, heart fluttering like a moth in my throat, thinking, Maybe, maybe this time . . .


    Amazing, how hope lives. Without air or water, with hardly anything at all to nurture it.


    The bolts slide back. A second later, the door grinds open and Thomas appears, carrying a folded sheet. I haven¡¯t seen my reflection in eleven years¡ªsince I arrived and sat in the medical wing while a female warden cut off my hair and shaved my hea Nehaved md with a razor, telling me it was for my own good¡ªso the lice would stay out.


    My monthly shower takes place in a windowless, mirrorless room, a stone box with several rusted showerheads and no hot water, and now when my head needs shaving, the warden comes to me, and I am bound and locked to a heavy metal ring on the door while she works. It is by watching Thomas, by seeing the way the years have made his skin puff and sag, carved wrinkles into the corners of his eyes, thinned his hair, that I can estimate what they have done to me.

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    He passes me the new sheet and removes my soiled one. He says nothing. He never does, not out loud. It¡¯s too risky. But for a second, his eyes meet mine, and some communication passes between us.


    Then it¡¯s over. He turns and leaves. The door grinds shut and the bolts click into place.


    I stand and move to the cot. My hands are shaking as I unfold the sheet. Inside it is a pillowcase, carefully concealed, no doubt smuggled up from one of the other wards.


    Time is really just a test of patience. This is how it works, how it has worked for years: a pillowcase one month, occasionally an extra sheet. Linens that go missing and aren¡¯t looked for, linens that can be torn, twisted, braided together.


    I reach into the pillowcase. At the very bottom is a small piece of paper, also carefully folded, containing Thomas¡¯s sole instructions: Not yet.


    My disappointment is physical: a bitter rush of taste, a liquid feeling in my stomach. Another month to wait. I know I should be relieved¡ªthe rope I¡¯ve been making is still too short, and will leave me with a ten-foot drop to the Presumpscot River. More chances to slip, twist or break something, cry out.


    And I absolutely cannot cry out.


    To keep from thinking too much about the wait ahead of me, another thirty days in this airless, dark place¡ªanother thirty days closer to death¡ªI get down on my hands and knees and maneuver under the cot, feeling for the hole in the mattress, as big as a fist. Over the course of a year, I¡¯ve been pulling out handfuls of foam and filler, all of it disposed in the metal chamber pot where I piss and shit and, when the flu makes the rounds, get sick. I wrap my hand around a coil of cotton and pull; inch by inch, all those stolen linens are revealed, torn and braided, made strong to hold my weight. By now, the rope is nearly forty feet long.


    I spend the rest of the evening making careful tears, using the edge of the dagger pin, now blunted nearly useless, to poke and tear holes in the fabric. No point in moving quickly.


    There is nowhere to go, nothing else to do.


    By the time I receive my daily dinner ration, I¡¯ve finished working. I replace the rope in its hiding place, pushing, working it through the opening: a reverse birth. When I¡¯m finished, I eat the food without tasting it, which is probably a blessing. Then I lie on my cot until the lights go off abruptly. T"ju abrupthe whimpering begins, the muttering and the occasional scream of someone gripped in a nightmare or, perhaps, waking from a pleasant dream. Strangely, I¡¯ve learned to find the nighttime sounds almost comforting.


    Eventually, my mind brings me memories of Lena, and then visions of the sea; at


    last, I sleep.


    then


    There was no resistance back then; there was no consciousness, yet, that we needed to resist. There were promises of peace and happiness, a relief from instability and confusion. A path and a place for all. A way to know, always, that your road was the right one. People were flocking to get cured the way they had once flocked to churches. The streets were papered with signs pointing the way to a better future. A central bank; jobs and marriages designed to fit like gloves.


    And a life designed to slowly strangle.


    But there was an underground: Brain Shops, someone who knew someone who could get you a fake ID for the right price; another person who could hook up an intercity bus ticket; someone else who rented basement space to anyone who wanted to disappear.


    In Boston I stayed in the basement apartment of an older couple named Wallace. They weren¡¯t cured; they missed the age cutoff even when the procedure became mandatory, and were allowed to die in peace, in love. Or would have been allowed to¡ªI heard several years later that they had been busted for harboring runaways, people who were dodging the cure, and spent the last few years of their lives in jail.


    A path and a place for everyone, and for the people who disagree, a hole.


    I should never have stolen his wallet. But that¡¯s the problem with love¡ªit acts on you, works through you, resists your attempts to control. That¡¯s what made it so frightening to the lawmakers: Love obeys no laws other than its own.


    That¡¯s what has always made it frightening.


    The basement was accessible only through a narrow alleyway that ran between the Wallaces¡¯ house and their neighbor¡¯s; the door was concealed behind a pile of junk that had to be carefully navigated each time we entered or left. Down a steep flight of stairs was a large, unfinished room: mattresses on the floor, a wild jumble of clothing, and a small toilet and sink, made semiprivate behind a folding screen. The ceiling was crisscrossed with metal pipes and plastic tubes and wiring, so it looked like someone¡¯s intestines tacked above us. It was ugly, freezing, and smelled like dirty feet, and I loved it. In my short time there, I made two good friends: Misha, who hooked me up with Rawls and was trying to get me fake papers, too; and Steff, who taught me how to pick pockets and showed me all the best places to do it.


    That is how I knew the name of the man I would someday marry: I stole his wallet. The slight touch, my hands across his chest, the momentary contact¡ªit was long enough to feel for it in his jacket, slip it into my pocket, and run.


    I should have dumped the wallet and kept the cash, as Steff had taught me to do. But even then love was working on me, making me stupid and curious and careless. Instead I took the wallet back to the crash pad with me and spread out its contents carefully, greedily, on my mattress, like a jeweler bending over her diamonds. One government ID card, pristine, printed with the name conrad haloway. One credit card, gold, issued by the National Bank. One loyalty card at Boston Bean, stamped three times. A copy of his medical certification; he¡¯d been cured exactly six months earlier. Forty-three dollars, which was a fortune to me.


    And, tucked into one of the empty credit card flaps, distorting the leather slightly: one silver dagger pin, the size of


    a child¡¯s finger.


    Three days after Thomas brings me the note telling me to wait, he comes again. This time he is carrying nothing. He merely slides open the door, enters my cell, cuffs me, and hauls me to my feet.


    ¡°Let¡¯s go,¡± he says.


    ¡°Go where?¡± I ask.


    ¡°Don¡¯t ask questions.¡± He speaks loudly, no doubt so that the other prisoners will hear. He shoves me roughly toward the door, out into the narrow corridor that runs between the cells. Above us, the cameras set in the stone ceiling blink like small red eyes.


    Thomas grabs my wrists and propels me forward. My shoulders burn. I have a momentary flash of fear: I¡¯m so weak. How will I make it on my own, in the Wilds?


    ¡°What did I do?¡± I ask him.


    ¡°Breathe,¡± he answers. He puts on a good show. ¡°Didn¡¯t I tell you not to ask questions?¡± At one end of the corridor is the exit to the other wards; at the opposite end is the Tank. The Tank is only a cell, unused, but much smaller than the others, and fitted with nothing but a rusted metal ring hanging from the ceiling. If the residents of Ward Six are too loud, if they give trouble, they are strapped to the ring and whipped or hosed, or simply thrown in here to sit for days in darkness, soiling themselves when they need to go. But the hose is the worst: icy water, emerging with such force it takes your breath away, leaves you blackened and bruised.


    Thomas does everything exactly as he should. He cuffs me to the ceiling, and for a moment, as he reaches above my head, we¡¯re so close that I can smell the coffee on his breath.


    I feel a deep ache in my stomach, a sudden, wrenching pain; Thomas, for all the risks he is taking, still belongs to the other-world, of bus stops and convenience stores and dawn breaking over the horizon; of summer days and driving rains and wood fires in the winter.


    For a moment, I hate him.


    Once he locks the door, he turns to me.


    ¡°We don¡¯t have much time, so listen carefully,¡± he says. And just like that, my hatred evaporates, is replaced by a rush of feeling. Skinny Thomas, the boy I used to see sometimes hanging around the house, careful to pretend to be reading. How did he become this pudgy, hard-faced man, with hair gelled over a pink scalp, with lines etched deep into his face?


    That¡¯s what time does: We stand stubbornly like rocks while it flows all around us, believing that we are immutable¡ªand all the time we¡¯re being carved, and shaped, and whittled away.


    ¡°It will happen soon. As early as this week. Are you ready?¡±


    My mouth is dry. The rope is still too short by seven feet. But I nod. I can make the drop, and with a little luck, I¡¯ll hit a deep spot in the water.


    ¡°You¡¯ll go north from the river, then head east when you hit the old highway. There will be scouts looking for you. They¡¯ll take care of you. Got it?¡±


    ¡°North from the river,¡± I say. ¡°Then east.¡±


    He nods. He looks almost sorry, and I can tell he thinks I won¡¯t make it. ¡°Good luck, Annabel.¡±


    ¡°Thank you,¡± I say. ¡°I can never repay you. . . .¡±


    He shakes his head. ¡°Don¡¯t thank me.¡± For a second we stand there, staring at each other. I try to see him as he once was: the boy Rachel loved. But I can hardly remember Rachel, now, as she was when I last saw her. Strangely, I can more easily picture her as a girl, always a little bossy, always demanding to know why she couldn¡¯t stay up and what was the point of eating green beans and what if she didn¡¯t want to get paired, anyway? And when Lena came along, she bossed her around, too; Lena trotted behind her like a puppy, eyes wide, observing, her fat thumb stuck in her mouth.


    My girls. I know that I will never see them again. For their own safety, I can¡¯t.


    But there is a small, stubborn, stone part of me that still hopes.


    Thomas picks up the hose coiled in the corner. ¡°I told them you needed to be punished, so we could talk,¡± he says. He looks almost sick as he aims the nozzle at me.


    My stomach rolls. The last time I was hosed was years ago. I cracked a rib, and for weeks I ran a fever of more than a hundred, floating in and out of vivid dreams of fire, and faces screaming at me through the smoke. But I nod.


    ¡°I¡¯ll make it quick,¡± he says. His eyes say: I¡¯m sorry.


    Then he turns on the water.


    then


    The girl behind the register was giving me the fish eye.


    ¡°You don¡¯t got no ID?¡± she said.


    ¡°I told you, I left it at home.¡± I was starting to get antsy. I was hungry¡ªI was always hungry back then¡ªand I didn¡¯t like the way the girl was looking at me, with her big bug eyes and the patchwork gauze on her neck, almost showing off the procedure, like she was some war hero and this was her injury to prove it.


    ¡°Haloway your pair or something?¡± She turned his credit card over in her hands, like she¡¯d never seen one.


    ¡°Husband,¡± I snapped. She shifted her eyes to the place where my procedural scar should have been, but I had carefully combed my hair forward and jammed a wool hat down over my ears, so my entire neck was concealed. I shifted my weight, then realized I was fidgeting too much.


    Scene: IGA Market on Dorchester, three days after the bust at Rawls¡¯s. Piled on the conveyor belt between us, the source of all the tension: a tin of instant hot cocoa, two packets of dried noodles, ChapStick, deodorant, a bag of chips. The air smelled stale and yeasty, and after the brutal winds of the streets, the store felt as hot as a desert, and as dry.

 Page 3

    Why did I use his card? To this day, I don¡¯t know. I don¡¯t know whether I was getting overconfident, or whether, just for a moment, I wanted to pretend: pretend that I wasn¡¯t a runaway, pretend that I wasn¡¯t squatting in an unfinished basement with six other girls, pretend that I had a home and a place and a pair, just like she did, just like everyone was supposed to.


    Maybe I was already a little tired of freedom.


    ¡°We¡¯re not supposed to take cards without an ID,¡± she said after a long minute. I¡¯ll never forget her: those black bangs, the eyes as incurious, as flat, as marbles. ¡°If you want, I can call the manager.¡± She said it like she¡¯d be doing me a favor.


    Alarm bells went off in my head. Manager meant authority meant trouble. ¡°You know what? Forget it.¡±


    But she had already swiveled around. ¡°Tony! Hey, Tony! Anybody know where Tony went?¡± Then she turned back to me, exasperated. ¡°Give me a second, okay?¡±


    It was then: a split-second decision, the moment she left the register and went looking for Tony¡ªa thirty, maybe forty-second reprieve. Without thinking, I stuffed the ChapStick in my pocket, pushed the chips and the noodles inside my jacket, and took off. I was a few feet from the door when I heard her yelling. So close to the street, to the blast of cold air and people bundled and indistinguishable. Three feet, then two . . .


    A security guard materialized in front of me. He gripped me by the shoulders. He smelled like beer. Ffacfont>


    He said, ¡°Where do you think you¡¯re going, little lady?¡±


    Within two days, I was on a bus back to Portland. This time my sister, Carol, was with me¡ªand, for extra insurance, a member of the Juvenile Regulatory Commission, a skinny nineteen-year-old with a face full of pimples, hair like a tuft of sea grass, and a wedding ring.


    I knew Carol wouldn¡¯t be able to keep her mouth shut for long¡ªshe never had been able to¡ªand as soon as we had pulled away from the bus terminal, she rounded on me.


    ¡°What you did was selfish,¡± she said. Carol was only sixteen at the time¡ªwe were born almost exactly a year apart¡ªbut even then she could have passed for forty. She carried a purse, an actual purse, and red leather gloves, square-toed black boots, and jeans she actually ironed. Her face was narrower than mine, and her nose was upturned, as though it disapproved of the rest of her features and was trying to distinguish itself from them. ¡°Do you know how worried Mom and Dad are? And how embarrassed?¡±


    My mother had been one of the first volunteers to be cured. She¡¯d had the procedure even before it was federally mandated. After three decades in a marriage with my father¡ªwho was charming and loud when he was sober, mean and loud when he was drunk, and a philanderer whenever he could get his hands on a woman who would sleep with him¡ªshe had welcomed the cure like a beggar welcomes food, water, and the promise of warmth. She¡¯d bullied Dad into it too, and I had to admit, he was better for it. Calmer. Less angry. And he hardly drank anymore either. He hardly did anything anymore, since he¡¯d been air-traffic control most his life¡ªexcept sit in front of the TV or fiddle downstairs at his workbench, playing with old machine parts and radio equipment.


    ¡°Which is it?¡± I blew my breath onto the window, drew a star inside the condensation with my finger, then wiped it off.


    Carol frowned. ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Are they worried? Or are they embarrassed?¡± I blew again, and drew a heart this time.


    ¡°Both.¡± Carol reached out quickly and smudged the heart away. ¡°Stop that.¡± A look of fear flashed across her face.


    ¡°No one¡¯s looking,¡± I said. I leaned my head against the window, feeling suddenly exhausted. I was going home. No more bumping up against commuters, fumbling for easy picks, feeling the mix of shame and elation when a target worked out. No more peeing behind a folding screen in the middle of the night, trying not to wake anyone else up. I¡¯d be cured right away, probably by the end of the week.


    A small part of me was glad. There¡¯s always relief in giving up.


    ¡°Why do you have to be so difficult?¡± Carol said.


    I turned to look at her. My kid sister. We¡¯d never been close. I¡¯d wanted to love her, really. But she Kallime had always been too different, too cautious, likely to tell, impossible to play with.


    ¡°Don¡¯t worry,¡± I said. ¡°I won¡¯t give you any trouble again.¡±


    I slept for most of the trip back to Portland, my hands tucked in my jacket and my forehead resting against the window, and th


    e ID of Conrad Haloway cupped in my right palm.


    I¡¯ve been on Ward Six for eleven years, with nothing but old stories, old words, for comfort. Scratching my way through minutes that feel like years, and years that have run by me like sand, like waste.


    But now, waiting for Thomas to give me the signal, I find I have no patience left.


    I remember that¡¯s how it was when I was pregnant with Lena. The last two weeks seemed longer than the rest of the months combined. I was so fat and my ankles were so swollen, it took energy just to stand. But I couldn¡¯t sleep, couldn¡¯t wait, and in the dark hours, after Rachel and my husband were asleep, I walked. I paced the room that would soon be hers back and forth: twelve steps across, twenty on the diagonal. I kneaded my feet on the carpet. I held my stomach, tight as a bowl, with both hands, and felt her gentle stirrings, her faint heartbeat pulsing under my fingertips like a distant drum.


    And I spoke to her. I told her stories of who I¡¯d been and who I¡¯d wanted to be and the world she was about to enter and the world that had come before.


    I said I was sorry.


    I remember one time I turned and saw Conrad standing in the doorway. He stared at me, and in that moment the wordless thing passed between us, the thing that wasn¡¯t quite love but was so close I could believe in it sometimes¡ªmaybe a kind of understanding.


    ¡°Come to bed, Bells,¡± was all he said.


    Now I find I must walk as well. I can¡¯t lie down anyway: The hose left bruises on my legs and spine, and even the touch of the sheet is painful. I can hardly bring myself to eat, but I know I must. Who knows how long I¡¯ll be out in the Wilds before the scouts find me, or if they even will? I have nothing but a pair of cotton slippers and a cotton jumpsuit. And the snow lies in heavy drifts along the frozen river; the trees will be bare, the animals in hiding.


    If I can¡¯t find help, I¡¯ll die within two, three days. Better to die out there, though, in the world I have always loved¡ªeven now, after all it has done to me.


    Three days pass with no word. Then a fourth and a fifth. The disappointment is constant, suffocating. When the sixth day passes with no sign from Thomas, I begin to lose hope. Maybe he has been found out. Another day goes by. I get angry. He must have forgotten about me.


    My bruises have turned to starbursts, big explosions of improbable colors, yellows and greens and purples. I¡¯m no longer worried or NallimMy bruisesangry. All my hope, the energy that I¡¯ve been eking from thoughts of escape, abandons me at once. I lose even the desire to walk.


    I¡¯m filled with black thoughts: Thomas never intended to help me. The planned escape, the braiding of the rope, the scouts¡ªall of it has been a dream, a fantasy that has kept me going all these years.


    I stay in bed, don¡¯t bother to get up except when I have to relieve myself, and when at last the dinner tray is shoved in through a narrow slot in the door.


    And then I freeze: Underneath the small plastic bowl filled with pasta cooked into a lump is a small square of paper. Another note.


    Thomas has written in all caps: tonight. be ready.


    My stomach goes into my throat, and I¡¯m worried I might be sick. Suddenly the thought of leaving these walls, this room, seems impossible. What do I know about the world outside? What do I know about the Wilds, and the resistance that survives there? When I was taken, I had only just begun my involvement with the movement. A meeting here, a document passed from hand to hand there. . . .


    I¡¯ve been dreaming of escape for eleven years,


    and now, when the time has finally come, I know I¡¯m not ready.


    then


    I didn¡¯t know, at first, that the cure hadn¡¯t worked.


    Installed in my old bedroom at my parents¡¯ house, forbidden from seeing my friends, from leaving the house without permission and without Carol as an escort, I was as good as dead. Shuffling from the bed to the shower, watching the same news on TV, listening to the same music piping from the radio. This was what being cured was like: like being in a fishbowl, circling always inside the same glass.


    I did what I was told, helped my parents with the chores, reapplied to college, since my admission had been rescinded once the facts of my time in Boston became public. I wrote letters of apology: to countless committees, to public officials, to my neighbors, to faceless bureaucrats with long, meaningless titles.


    Slowly I earned back certain freedoms. I could go to the store by myself. I could go to the beach, too. I was able to see old friends, although most of them were forbidden from seeing me. And all that time, my heart was like a dull hammer in my chest.


    It was a full six months before the Portland Evaluation Committee, as it was called then, decided I was ready to be paired. The Marriage Stability Act had just been passed, and the system was still in its infancy. I remember that my mother and I had to go down to CORE, the Center for Organization, Research, and Education, to receive my results, and for the first time since I¡¯d returned to Portland, I was filled with something like excitement. Except it was the bad kind, the kind that turns your stomach and makes your own spit taste a little like throw-up.


    Dread.


    I don¡¯t remember receiving the slender folder containing my results, but I know we were outside, in the car, before I could bring myself to open it. Carol was with us, in the backseat. ¡°Who¡¯d you get?¡± she kept saying. But I couldn¡¯t read the names, couldn¡¯t make the words stand still on the page. The letters kept floating, drifting off the margins, and every picture looked like a collection of abstract shapes. For a minute, I thought I was losing my mind.


    Until I reached my eighth recommended pair: Conrad Haloway. Then I knew I was losing my mind.


    The picture was the same one he had used for his government ID¡ªwhich I still kept, tucked at the bottom of my underwear drawer, concealed within a sock. Next to the picture were the basic facts of his life: where he was born, what school he¡¯d attended, his various scores, his work history, details about his family, and a psychological and social stability rank.


    I felt a sudden surge, like my insides had been powered off, dusty and useless, for the past six months. Now they came online all at once: my heart beating up into my mouth, chest tight, lungs squeezing, squeezing.


    ¡°This one,¡± I said, trying to keep my voice steady. I pointed, placed a finger directly on his forehead between his eyes. The picture was black-and-white, but I remembered them perfectly: light brown, like hazelnut skins.


    My mother leaned over me to look. ¡°He¡¯s a bit old, isn¡¯t he?¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s only just moved to Portland,¡± I said. ¡°He¡¯s been in service to the engineering corps. Working on the walls. See? It says so.¡±

 Page 4

    My mother smiled tightly. ¡°Well, it¡¯s your choice, of course.¡± She reached over and patted me awkwardly on the knee. Even before her cure, she had never been affectionate; no one had ever touched in my family, unless it was my father taking a swing at my mom when he was drunk. ¡°I¡¯m proud of you.¡±


    Carol leaned forward into the front seat. ¡°He doesn¡¯t look like an engineer,¡± was all she said.


    I turned my face to the window. On the drive home, I repeated his name to myself like a private rhythm: Conrad, Conrad, Conrad. My secret music. My husband. I felt something loosen inside my chest. His name warmed me. It spread through my mind, through my whole body, until I could feel the syllables in my fingertips, and all the way down to my toes. Conrad.


    That¡¯s when I knew, without a doubt, that the cure hadn¡¯t worked at all.


    The light goes out, and the nighttime noises begin on the ward: the murmurs and moans and screams.


    I remember other noises¡ªthe sounds of outside: frogs singing, throaty and mournful; crickets humming an accompaniment. Lena as a young girl, her palms cupped carefully to contain a firefly, shrieking with laughter.


    Will I recognize the world outside? Would I recognize Lena, if I saw her?


    Thomas said he would give me the signal. But at least an hour passes with nothing¡ªno sign, no further word. My mouth is dry as dust.


    I am not ready. Not yet. Not tonight. My heartbeat is wild and erratic. I¡¯m sweating already and shaking, too.


    I can barely stand.


    How will I run?


    A jolt goes through me as the alarm system kicks on without warning: a shrill, continuous howl from downstairs, muffled through layers of stone and cement. Doors slam; voices cry out. Thomas must have tripped one of the alarms in a lower ward. The guards will go rushing for it, suspecting an attempted breakout or maybe a homicide.


    That¡¯s my cue.


    I stand up and shove the cot aside, so the hole in the wall is revealed: a tight squeeze, but big enough to fit me. My makeshift rope is coiled on the floor, ready to go, and I thread one end through the metal ring on the door, knot it as tightly as I can.


    I¡¯m not thinking anymore. I¡¯m not afraid, either.


    I toss the free end of the rope out through the hole, hear it snap once in the wind. For the first time since I was imprisoned, I thank God that the Crypts is windowless, at least on this side.


    I go headfirst through the hole, wriggling when my shoulders meet resistance. Soft, wet stone rains down on my neck. My nose is full of the smell of spoiled things.


    Good-bye, good-bye.


    The alarm still wails, as though in response.


    Then my shoulders are through and I¡¯m upside-down over a dizzying drop: forty-five feet at least, to the black and frozen with ice, motionless, reflecting the moon. And the rope, like a spun thread of white water, running vertically toward freedom.


    I make a grab for the rope. I pull, hand over hand, sliding my body, my legs, through the jagged hole in the rock.


    And then I fall.


    My legs leave the lip of rock, and I swing a wild half circle, kicking into air, crying out. I stop with a jerk, right side up, the rope coiled around my wrists. Stomach in my throat. The alarm is still going: high-pitched, hysterical.


    Air, air, nothing but air. I¡¯m frozen, unable to move up or down. I have a sudden memory of a spring cleaning the year before I wa cr bmes New Ros taken, and a giant spiderweb uncovered behind the standing mirror in the bedroom. Dozens of insects were bound, immobile, in white thread, and one had only just been caught¡ªit was still struggling feebly to get out.


    The alarm stops, and the ensuing silence is as loud as a slap. I have to move. I can hear the roar of the river now, and the shush of the wind through the leaves. Slowly I inch downward, wrapping my legs around the rope, swinging, nauseous. There¡¯s a pressure on my bladder, and my palms are burning. I¡¯m too afraid to be cold.


    Please let the rope hold.


    Thirty feet from the river I lose my grip and free-fall several feet before catching myself. The force of my stop makes me cry out, and I bite down on my tongue. The rope lashes in the wind.


    But I¡¯m still safe. And the rope holds.


    Inch by inch. It seems to take forever. Hand over hand. I don¡¯t even notice that my palms are bleeding until I see smears of red on the linens. But I feel no pain. I¡¯m beyond pain now, numb from fear and exhaustion. I¡¯m weaker, even, than I¡¯d feared.


    Inch by inch.


    And then, all at once, I¡¯m at the end of the rope, and seven feet below me is the frozen Presumpscot, a blackened surface of rotted logs and black rocks and ice. I have no choice but to drop and pray for a good landing, try to avoid the water and make it into the drifts, white as a pillow, piled up on the banks.


    I let go.


    then


    I kept up my end of the bargain. I gave my family no trouble. In the months leading up to the marriage ceremony, I said yes when I was supposed to and did what I was told.


    But all the time, love grew inside me like a delicious secret.


    It was exactly that way later, when I was pregnant first with Rachel, and then Lena. Even before the doctors confirmed it, I could always tell. There were the normal changes: the swollen, tender breasts; a sharpening sense of smell; a heaviness in my joints. But it was more than that. I could always feel it¡ªan alien growth, the expansion of something beautiful and other and also entirely mine. A private constellation: a star growing inside my belly.


    If Conrad remembered the skinny, frightened girl he¡¯d held for one brief moment on a frigid Boston street corner, he showed no signs of it when we met. From the beginning, he was polite, kind, respectful. He listened to me, and asked questions about what I thought, what I liked, and what I didn¡¯t. He told me once, early on, that he liked engineering because he enjoyed the mechanics of making things work¡ªstructures, machines, anything. I know he often wished that people were more easily decoded.


    That¡¯s, of course, what th ffone cure was for: for flattening people into paper, into biomechanics and scores.


    A year before Conrad died, he got the diagnosis: a tumor the size of a child¡¯s thumb was growing in his brain. It was sudden and totally unexpected. The doctors bad luck.


    I was sitting next to his hospital bed when he suddenly sat up, confused from a dream. Even as I tried to urge him back against the pillows, he looked at me with wild eyes.


    ¡°What happened to your leather jacket?¡± he asked.


    ¡°Shh,¡± I said, trying to soothe him. ¡°There¡¯s no leather jacket.¡±


    ¡°You were wearing it the first time I saw you,¡± he said, frowning slightly. Then he sagged suddenly back against the pillows, as though the effort of speaking had exhausted him. And I sat next to him while he slept, gripping his hand, watching the sun revolve in the sky outside the window and the patterns of light shifting on his sheet.


    And I felt joy.


    Conrad always held my head¡ªlightly, with both hands¡ªwhen we kissed. He wore glasses for reading, and when he was thinking hard about something, he would polish them. His hair was straight except for a bit that curled behind his left ear, just above his procedural scar. Some of this I observed right away; some of it I learned much later.


    But from the beginning, I knew that in a world where destiny was dead, I was destined, forever, to love him. Even though he didn¡¯t¡ªthough he couldn¡¯t¡ªever love me back.


    That¡¯s the easy thing about falling: There is only one choice after that.


    I count three seconds of air. Then a blast of cold and a force like a fist, driving the breath from me, pummeling me forward. I hit bottom, and pain shoots up my ankle, and then the cold is everywhere, all at once, obliterating all other thought. For a minute, I can¡¯t breathe, can¡¯t get air, don¡¯t know which way is up or down. Just cold, everywhere and in all directions.


    Then the river shoves me upward, spits me out, and I come up gasping, flailing, as ice breaks around me with a noise like a dozen rifles firing at once. Stars spin above me. I manage to make it to the edge of the river, and I slosh into the shallows, shivering so hard my brain feels like it¡¯s bouncing in my skull, coughing up water. I sit forward, cup my hand to the water, and drink through frozen fingers. The water is sweet, slightly gritty with dirt, delicious.


    I haven¡¯t felt the wind, truly felt it, in eleven years.


    It¡¯s colder than I remember.


    I know I have to move. North from the river. East from the old highway.


    I take one last look at the looming silhou nnt>


    Beyond the Crypts, I know, is the old, dusty road that leads to the bus stop¡ªand beyond that, the gray sludge of the service road, which extends all the way on-peninsula and eventually merges with Congress Street. And then: Portland, my Portland, gripped on three sides by water, nestled like a jewel on a small spit of land.


    Somewhere, Lena is sleeping. Rachel, too. My own jewels, the stars I carry with me. I know that Rachel was cured, and out of reach to me now. Thomas told me so.


    But Lena . . .


    My littlest . . .


    I love you. Remember.


    And someday, I will find you again.