Lauren Oliver - Delirium (9 page)

The regulators sweep away in a group around me, so for a few seconds I'm caught up in a tide of rough shoulders and cotton jackets, unfamiliar cologne and sweat-smells. Walkie-talkies sputter to life and fade away again around me. I catch snippets of words and broadcasts: Market Street, a girl and a boy, possibly infected, unapproved music on St. Lawrence, someone appears to be dancing . . . I get bumped side to side against arms and chests and elbows, until finally the group passes and I'm spit out again, left alone on the street as the regulators' footsteps grow more distant behind me. I wait until I can no longer hear the fuzz of their radio chatter or their boots hitting the pavement.

Then I take off, feeling again a lifting sensation in my chest, that same sense of happiness and freedom. I can't believe how easy it was to get out of the house. I never knew I could lie to my aunt--I never knew I could lie, period--and when I think about how narrowly I escaped getting grilled by the regulators for hours, it makes me want to jump up and down and pump my fist in the air. Tonight the whole world is on my side. And I'm only a few minutes from Back Cove. My heart picks up its rhythm as I think about skidding down the sloping hill of grass, seeing Alex framed against the last, dazzling rays of sun--as I think about that single word breathed into my ear. Gray.

I tear down Baxter, which loops around the last mile down to Back Cove. And then I stop short. The buildings have fallen away behind me, giving way to ramshackle sheds, sparsely situated on either side of the cracked and run-down road. Beyond that, a short strip of tall, weedy grass slants down toward the cove. The water is an enormous mirror, tipped with pink and gold from the sky. In that single, blazing moment as I come around the bend, the sun--curved over the dip of the horizon like a solid gold archway--lets out its final winking rays of light, shattering the darkness of the water, turning everything white for a fraction of a second, and then falls away, sinking, dragging the pink and the red and the purple out of the sky with it, all the color bleeding away instantly and leaving only dark.

Alex was right. It was gorgeous--one of the best I've ever seen.

For a moment I can't move or do anything but stand there, breathing hard, staring. Then a numbness creeps over me. I'm too late. The regulators must have been wrong about the time. It must be after eight thirty now. Even if Alex decides to wait for me somewhere along the long loop of the cove, I don't have a prayer of finding him and making it home before curfew.

My eyes sting and the world in front of me goes watery, colors and shapes sloshing together. For a second I think I must be crying, and I'm so startled I forget everything--forget about my disappointment and frustration, forget about Alex standing on the beach, the thought of his hair catching the dying rays of sun, flashing copper. I can't remember the last time I cried. It's been years. I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand, and my vision sharpens again. It's just sweat, I realize, relieved; I'm sweating, it's getting in my eyes. Still, the sick, leaden feeling won't work its way out of my stomach.

I stay there for a few minutes, straddling my bike, squeezing the handlebars hard until I'm a little bit calmer. Part of me wants to say, screw it, to shove off, both legs extended, and go flying down the hill toward the water with the wind whipping up my hair--screw curfew, screw the regulators, screw everyone. But I can't; I couldn't; I could never. I have no choice. I have to get home.

I maneuver my bike around in a clumsy circle and start back up the street. Now that the adrenaline and excitement have faded, my legs feel like they're made out of iron, and I'm panting before I've gone a quarter of a mile. This time I'm careful to stay alert for regulators and police and patrols.

On the way home I tell myself that it's probably for the best. I must be crazy, zooming around in the half dark just to meet up with some guy on the beach. Besides, everything has been explained: He works at the labs, probably just snuck in on evaluation day for some completely innocent reason--to use the bathroom, or refill his water bottle.

And I remind myself that I probably imagined the whole thing--the message, the meeting up. He's probably sitting in his apartment somewhere, doing course work for his classes. He's probably already forgotten about the two girls he met at the lab complex today. He was probably just being nice earlier, making casual conversation.

It's for the best. But no matter how many times I repeat it, the strange, hollow feeling in my stomach doesn't go away. And ridiculous as it is, I can't shake the persistent, needling feeling that I've forgotten something, or missed something, or lost something forever. Chapter Seven

Of all the systems of the body--neurological, cognitive, special, sensory--the cardiological system is the most sensitive and easily disturbed. The role of society must be to shelter these systems from infection and decay, or else the future of the human race is at stake. Like a summer fruit that is protected from insect invasion, bruising, and rot by the whole mechanism of modern farming; so must we protect the heart.

--"The Role and Purpose of Society," The Book of Shhh, p. 353

I was named after Mary Magdalene, who was nearly killed from love: "So infected with deliria and in violation of the pacts of society, she fell in love with men who would not have her or could not keep her." (Book of Lamentations, Mary 13:1).

We learned all about it in Biblical Science. First there was John, then Matthew, then Jeremiah and Peter and Judas, and many other nameless men in-between.

Her last love, they say, was the greatest: a man named Joseph, a bachelor all his life, who found her on the street, bruised and broken and half-crazy from deliria. There's some debate about what kind of man Joseph was--whether he was righteous or not, whether he ever succumbed to the disease--but in any case, he took good care of her. He nursed her to health and tried to bring her peace.

By this time, however, it was too late. She was tormented by her past, haunted by the loves lost and damaged and ruined, by the evils she had inflicted on others and that others had inflicted on her. She could hardly eat; she wept all day; she clung to Joseph and begged him never to leave her, but couldn't find comfort in his goodness.

And then one morning, she woke and Joseph was gone--without a word or an explanation. This final abandonment broke her at last and she fell to the ground, begging God to put her out of her misery.

He heard her prayers, and in his infinite compassion he instead removed from her the curse of deliria, with which all humans had been burdened as punishment for the original sin of Eve and Adam. In a sense, Mary Magdalene was the very first cured.

"And so after years of tribulation and pain, she walked in righteousness and peace until the end of her days" (Book of Lamentations, Mary 13:1).

I always thought it was strange that my mother named me Magdalena. She didn't even believe in the cure. That was her whole problem. And the Book of Lamentations is all about the dangers of deliria. I've done a lot of thinking about it, and in the end I guess I've figured out that despite everything, my mother knew that she was wrong: that the cure, and the procedure, were for the best. I think even then she knew what she was going to do--she knew what would happen. I guess my name was her final gift to me, in a way. It was a message.

I think she was trying to say, Forgive me. I think she was trying to say, Someday, even this pain will be taken away.

You see? No matter what everyone says, and despite everything, I know she wasn't all bad.

The next two weeks are the busiest of my life. Summer explodes into Portland. In early June the heat was there but not the color--the greens were still pale and tentative, the mornings had a biting coolness --but by the last week of school everything is Technicolor and splash, outrageous blue skies and purple thunderstorms and ink-black night skies and red flowers as bright as spots of blood. Every day after school there's an assembly, or ceremony, or graduation party to go to. Hana gets invited to all of them; I get invited to most, which surprises me.

Harlowe Davis--who lives with Hana in the West End, and whose father does something for the government--invites me to come over for a "casual good-bye thing." I didn't even think she knew my name--whenever she's talking to Hana her eyes have always skated past me, like I'm not worth focusing on. I go anyway. I've always been curious about her house, and it turns out to be as spectacular as I imagined. Her family has a car, too, and electric appliances everywhere that obviously get used every day, washers and dryers and huge chandeliers filled with dozens and dozens of lightbulbs. Harlowe has invited most of the graduating class--there are sixty-seven of us in total and probably fifty at the party--which makes me feel less special, but it's still fun. We sit in the backyard while the housekeeper runs in and out of the house with plates and plates of food--coleslaw and potato salad and other barbecue stuff--and her father turns out spare ribs and hamburgers on the enormous smoking grill. I eat until I feel like I'm about to burst and have to roll backward onto the blanket I'm sharing with Hana. We stay there until almost curfew, when the stars are peeking through a curtain of dark blue and the mosquitoes rise up all at once and we all go shrieking and laughing back into the house, slapping them away. Afterward I think it's one of the nicest days I've had in a long time.

Even girls I don't really like--like Shelly Pierson, who has hated me since sixth grade, when I won the science fair and she took second place--start being nice. I guess it's because we all know the end is close. Most of us won't see one another after graduation, and even if we do it will be different. We'll be different. We'll be adults--cured, tagged and labeled and paired and identified and placed neatly on our life path, perfectly round marbles set to roll down even, well-defined slopes.

Theresa Grass turns eighteen before school ends and gets cured; so does Morgan Dell. They're absent for a few days and come back to school just before graduation. The change is amazing. They seem peaceful now, mature and somehow remote, like they're encased in a thin layer of ice. Only two weeks ago Theresa's nickname was Theresa Gross, and everyone made fun of her for slouching and chewing on the ends of her hair and generally being a mess, but now she walks straight and tall with her eyes fixed straight in front of her, her lips barely curled in a smile, and everyone shifts a little in the halls so she can pass easily. Same thing goes for Morgan. It's like all their anxiety and self-consciousness has been removed along with the disease. Even Morgan's legs have stopped trembling. Whenever she used to have to speak in class, the trembling would get so bad it would rock the desk. But after the procedure, just like that--whoosh! The shaking stops. Of course they're not the first girls in our class to get cured--Eleanor Rana and Annie Hahn were both cured way back in the fall, and half a dozen other girls have had the procedure this past semester--but in them the difference is somehow more pronounced.

I keep going with my countdown. Eighty-one days, then eighty, then seventy-nine.

Willow Marks never comes back to school. Rumors filter back to us--that she had her procedure and it turned out fine; that she had her procedure and now her brain is going haywire, and they're talking about committing her to the Crypts, Portland's combo prison-and-mental-ward; that she ran away to the Wilds. Only one thing is for sure: The whole Marks family is under constant surveillance now. The regulators are blaming Mr. and Mrs. Marks--and the whole extended family--for not instilling in her a proper education, and only a few days after she was supposedly found in Deering Oaks Park, I overhear my aunt and uncle whispering that both of Willow's parents have been fired from their jobs. A week later we hear that they've had to move in with a distant relative. Apparently people kept throwing rocks at their windows, and a whole side of their house was written over with a single word: SYMPATHIZERS. It makes no sense, because Mr. and Mrs. Marks were on record insisting that their daughter have the procedure early, despite the risks, but as my aunt says, people get like that when they're scared. Everyone is terrified that the deliria will somehow find its way into Portland on a large scale. Everyone wants to prevent an epidemic.

I feel bad for the Marks family, of course, but that's the way things are. It's like the regulators: You may not like the patrols and the identity checks, but since you know it's all done for your protection, it's impossible not to cooperate. And it may sound awful, but I don't think about Willow's family for long. There's just too much end-of-high-school paperwork to file, and nervous energy, and lockers to clean out and final exams to take and people to say good-bye to.

Hana and I can barely find time to run together. When we do, we stick to our old routes by silent agreement. She never mentions the afternoon at the labs again, to my surprise. But Hana's mind has a tendency to skip around, and her new obsession is a collapse at the northern end of the border that people are saying might have been caused by Invalids. I don't even consider going down to the labs again, not for one single solitary second. I focus on everything and anything besides my lingering questions about Alex--which isn't too hard, considering that I now can't believe I spent an evening biking up and down the streets of Portland, lying to Carol and the regulators, just to meet up with him. The very next day it felt like a dream, or a delusion. I tell myself I must have gone temporarily insane: brain scramble, from running in the heat.

On graduation day Hana sits three rows ahead of me at the commencement ceremony. As she files past me to take her seat she reaches out for my hand--two long pumps, two short ones--and when she sits down she tilts her head back so I can see that she has taken a marker and scrawled on the top of her graduation cap: THANK GOD! I stifle a laugh, and she turns around and makes a pretend-stern face at me. All of us are giddy, and I've never felt closer to the St. Anne's girls than that day--all of us sweating under the sun, which beams down on us like an exaggerated smile, fanning ourselves with the commencement brochures, trying not to yawn or roll our eyes while Principal McIntosh drones on about "adulthood" and "our entrance into the community order," nudging one another and tugging on the collars of our scratchy graduation gowns to try to let some air down our necks.