Delirium: The Complete Collection (23 page)

Inside it’s very dark. I can make out only a few rough outlines, and when Alex shuts the door behind us even those vanish, sucked up into black.

“There’s no electricity out here,” Alex says. He’s moving around, bumping up against things, cursing every so often under his breath.

“Do you have candles?” I ask. The trailer smells strange, like autumn leaves that have fallen off their branches. It’s nice. There are other smells too—the sharp citrus sting of cleaning fluid, and very faintly, the tang of gasoline.

“Even better.” I hear rustling, and a spray of water descends on me from above. I let out a small shriek and Alex says, “Sorry, sorry. I haven’t been here in a while. Watch out.” More rustling. And then, slowly, the ceiling above my head trembles and folds back on itself, and all of a sudden the sky is revealed in its enormity. The moon sits almost directly above us, streaming light into the trailer and crowning everything in silver. I see now that the “ceiling” is, in fact, one enormous plastic tarp, a bigger version of the kind of thing you’d use to cover a grill. Alex is standing on a chair, rolling it back, and with every inch more of the sky is revealed and everything inside only seems to glow brighter.

My breath catches in my throat. “It’s beautiful.”

Alex shoots me a look over his shoulder and grins. He continues folding back the tarp, pausing every few minutes to stop, scoot his chair forward, and begin again. “One day a storm took out half the roof. I wasn’t here, fortunately.” He, too, is glowing, his arms and shoulders touched with silver. Just as I did on the night of the raids, I think of the portraits in church of the angels with their sprouting wings. “I decided I might as well get rid of the whole thing.” He finishes with the tarp and jumps lightly off the chair, turning to face me, smiling. “It’s my own convertible house.”

“It’s incredible,” I say, and really mean it. The sky looks so close. I feel like I could reach up and slap my fingers on the moon.

“Now I’ll get the candles.” Alex scoots past me toward the kitchen area and starts rummaging. I can see the big stuff now, though details are still lost in darkness. There’s a small woodstove in one corner. At the opposite end is a twin bed. My stomach does a tiny flip when I see it, and a thousand memories flood me at once—Carol sitting on my bed and telling me, in her measured voice, about the expectations of husband and wife; Jenny sticking her hand on her hip and telling me I won’t know what to do when the time comes; whispered stories of Willow Marks; Hana wondering out loud in the locker room what sex feels like, while I hissed at her to be quiet, checking over my shoulder to make sure no one was listening.

Alex finds a bunch of candles and starts lighting them one by one, and corners of the room flare into focus as he sets the candles carefully around the trailer. What strikes me most are the books: Lumpy shapes that in the half dark appeared to be a part of the furniture now resolve into towering stacks of books—more books than I’ve seen anywhere except for at the library. There are three bookshelves mashed against one wall. Even the refrigerator, whose door has come unhinged, is filled with books.

I take a candle and scan the titles. I don’t recognize any of them.

“What are these?” Some of the books look so old and cracked I’m afraid if I touch them they’ll crumble to bits. I mouth the names I read off the spines, at least the ones I can make out: Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, William Wordsworth.

Alex glances at me. “That’s poetry,” he says.

“What’s poetry?” I’ve never heard the word before, but I like the sound of it. It sounds elegant and easy, somehow, like a beautiful woman turning in a long dress.

Alex lights the last candle. Now the trailer is filled with warm, flickering light. He joins me by the bookshelf and squats, looking for something. He removes a book and stands, passes it to me for inspection.

Famous Love Poetry
. My stomach flips as I see that word—
Love
—printed so brazenly on a book cover. Alex is watching me closely, so to cover up my discomfort I open the book and scan the list of featured authors, listed on the first few pages.

“Shakespeare?” This name I do recognize from health class. “The guy who wrote
Romeo and Juliet
? The cautionary tale?”

Alex snorts. “It’s not a cautionary tale,” he says. “It’s a great love story.”

I think about that first day at the labs: the first time I ever saw Alex. It seems like a lifetime ago. I remember my mind churning out the word
beautiful
. I remember thinking something about sacrifice.

“They banned poetry years ago, right after they discovered a cure.” He takes the book back from me and opens it. “Would you like to hear a poem?”

I nod. He coughs, then clears his throat, then squares his shoulders and rolls his neck like he’s about to be let into a soccer game.

“Go on,” I say, laughing. “You’re stalling.”

He clears his throat again and begins to read: “‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’”

I close my eyes and listen. The feeling I had before of being surrounded by warmth swells and crests inside of me like a wave. Poetry isn’t like any writing I’ve ever heard before. I don’t understand all of it, just bits of images, sentences that appear half-finished, all fluttering together like brightly colored ribbons in the wind. It reminds me, I realize, of the music that struck me dumb nearly two months ago at the farmhouse. It has the same effect, and makes me feel exhilarated and sad at the same time.

Alex finishes reading. When I open my eyes, he’s staring
at me.

“What?” I ask. The intensity of his gaze nearly knocks the breath out of me—as though he’s staring straight
into
me.

He doesn’t answer me directly. He flips forward a few pages in the book, but he doesn’t glance down at it. He keeps his eyes on me the whole time. “You want to hear a different one?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer before beginning to recite, “‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.’”

There’s that word again:
love
. My heart stops when he says it, then stutters into a frantic rhythm.

“‘I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach. . . .’”

I know he’s only speaking someone else’s words, but they seem to come from him anyway. His eyes are dancing with light; in each of them I see a bright point of candlelight reflected.

He takes a step forward and kisses my forehead softly.
“‘I love thee to the level of every day’s most quiet need. . . .’”

It feels as though the floor is swinging—like I’m falling.

“Alex—” I start to say, but the word gets tangled in my throat.

He kisses each cheekbone—a delicious, skimming kiss, barely grazing my skin. “‘I love thee freely. . . .’”

“Alex,” I say, a little louder. My heart is beating so fast I’m afraid it will burst from my ribs.

He pulls back and gives me a small, crooked smile.
“Elizabeth Barrett Browning,” he says, then traces a finger over the bridge of my nose. “You don’t like it?”

The way he says it, so low and serious, still staring into my eyes, makes me feel as though he’s actually asking something else.

“No. I mean, yes. I mean, I do, but . . .” The truth is, I’m not sure what I mean. I can’t think or speak clearly. A single word is swirling around inside me—a storm, a hurricane—and I have to squeeze my lips together to keep it from swelling up to my tongue and fighting its way out into the open.
Love, love, love, love
. A word I’ve never pronounced, not
to
anyone, a word I’ve never even really let myself think.

“You don’t have to explain.” Alex takes another step backward. Again I have the sense, confusedly, that we’re actually talking about something else. I’ve disappointed him somehow. Whatever has just passed between us—and something did, even if I’m not sure what or how or why—has made him sad. I can see it in his eyes, even though he’s still smiling, and it makes me want to apologize, or throw my arms around him and ask him to kiss me. But I’m still afraid to open my mouth—afraid that the word will come shooting out, and terrified about what comes afterward.

“Come here.” Alex sets the book down and offers me his hand. “I want to show you something.”

He leads me over to the bed, and again a wave of shyness overtakes me. I’m not sure what he expects, and when he sits down I hang back, feeling self-conscious.

“It’s okay, Lena,” he says. As always, hearing him say my name relaxes me. He scoots backward on the bed and lies down on his back and I do the same, so we’re lying side by side. The bed is narrow. There’s just enough room for the two of us.

“See?” Alex says, tilting his chin upward.

Above our heads, the stars flare and glitter and flash: thousands and thousands of them, so many thousands they look like snowflakes whirling away into the inky dark. I can’t help it; I gasp. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many stars in my life. The sky looks so close—strung so taut above our heads, beyond the roofless trailer—it feels as though we’re falling into it, as though we could jump off the bed and the sky would catch us, hold us, bounce us like a trampoline.

“What do you think?” Alex asks.

“I love it.” The word pops out, and instantly the weight on my chest dissipates. “I love it,” I say again, testing it. An easy word to say, once you say it. Short. To the point. Rolls off the tongue. It’s amazing I’ve never said it before.

I can tell Alex is pleased. The smile in his voice grows bigger. “The no-plumbing thing is kind of a bummer,” he says. “But you have to admit the view is killer.”

“I wish we could stay here,” I blurt out, and then quickly stutter, “I mean, not really. Not for good, but . . .
You
know what I mean.”

Alex moves his arm under my neck, so I inch over and lay my head in the spot where his shoulder meets his chest, where it fits perfectly. “I’m glad you got to see it,” he says.

For a while we just lie there in silence. His chest rises and falls with his breathing, and after a while the motion starts to lull me to sleep. My limbs feel impossibly heavy, and the stars seem to be rearranging themselves into words. I want to keep looking, to read out their meaning, but my lids are heavy too: impossible, impossible to keep my eyes open.

“Alex?”

“Yeah?”

“Tell me that poem again.” My voice doesn’t sound like my own; my words seem to come from a distance.

“Which one?” Alex whispers.

“The one you know by heart.” Drifting; I’m drifting.

“I know a lot of them by heart.”

“Any one, then.”

He takes a deep breath and begins: “‘I carry your heart with me. I carry it in my heart. I am never without it. . . .’”

He speaks on, words washing over me, the way that sunlight skips over the surface of water and filters into the depths below, lighting up the darkness. I keep my eyes closed. Amazingly, I can still see the stars: whole galaxies blooming from nothing—pink and purple suns, vast silver oceans, a thousand white moons.

It seems like I’ve only been asleep five minutes when Alex is gently shaking me awake. The sky is still inky black, the moon high and bright, but I can tell by the way the candles are pooling around us that I must have been out for at least an hour or so.

“Time to go,” he says, brushing the hair off my forehead.

“What time is it?” My voice is thick with sleep.

“A little before three.” Alex sits up and scoots off the bed, then reaches out a hand and pulls me to my feet. “We’ve got to cross before Sleeping Beauty wakes up.”

“Sleeping Beauty?” I shake my head confusedly.

Alex laughs softly. “After poetry,” he says, leaning down to kiss me, “we move on to fairy tales.”

Then it’s back through the woods; down the broken path that leads past the bombed-out houses; through the woods again. The whole time I feel as though I haven’t quite woken up. I’m not even scared or nervous when we climb the fence. Getting over the barbed wire is infinitely easier the second time around, and I feel as though the shadows have texture, and shield us like a cloak. The guard at hut number twenty-one is still in the exact same position—head tilted back, feet on his desk, mouth open—and soon we’re weaving our way around the cove. Then we’re slipping silently through the streets toward Deering Highlands, and it’s then I have the strangest thought, half dread and half wish: that maybe all of this is a dream, and when I wake up I will find myself in the Wilds. Maybe I’ll wake up and find I’ve
always
been there, and that all of Portland—and the labs, and the curfew, and the procedure—was some long, twisted nightmare.

37 Brooks: In through the window, and the heat and the smell of mildew slams us, a wall. I only spent a few hours there and I miss the Wilds already—the wind through the trees that sounds just like the ocean, the incredible smells of blooming plants, the invisible scurrying things—all that life, pushing and extending in every direction, on and on and on. . . .

No walls. . . .

Then Alex is leading me to the sofa and shaking out a blanket over me, kissing me and wishing me good night. He has the morning shift at the labs, and has just barely enough time to go home, shower, and make it to work on time. I hear his footsteps melting away into the darkness.

Then I sleep.

Love
: a single word, a wispy thing, a word no bigger or longer than an edge. That’s what it is: an edge; a razor. It draws up through the center of your life, cutting everything in two. Before and after. The rest of the world falls away on either side.

Before
and
after
—and
during
, a moment no bigger or longer than an edge.

Chapter Nineteen

Live free or die.
—Ancient saying, provenance unknown, listed in the
Comprehensive Compilation of Dangerous Words and Ideas,
www.ccdwi.gov.org

O
ne of the strangest things about life is that it will chug on, blind and oblivious, even as your private world—your little carved-out sphere—is twisting and morphing, even breaking apart. One day you have parents; the next day you’re an orphan. One day you have a place and a path. The next day you’re lost in a wilderness.

And still the sun rises and clouds mass and drift and people shop for groceries and toilets flush and blinds go up and down. That’s when you realize that most of it—life, the relentless mechanism of existing—isn’t about you. It doesn’t include you at all. It will thrust onward even after you’ve jumped the edge. Even after you’re dead.

When I make my way back into downtown Portland in the morning, that’s what surprises me the most—how normal everything looks. I don’t know what I was expecting. I didn’t really think that buildings would have tumbled down overnight, that the streets would have melted into rubble, but it’s still a shock to see a stream of people carrying briefcases, and shop owners unlocking their front doors, and a single car trying to push through a crowded street.

It seems absurd that they don’t
know
, haven’t felt any change or tremor, even as my life has been completely turned upside down. As I head home I keep feeling paranoid, like someone will be able to smell the Wilds on me, will be able to tell just from seeing my face that I’ve crossed over. The back of my neck itches as though it’s being poked with branches, and I keep whipping off my backpack to make sure there aren’t any leaves or burrs clinging to it—not that it matters, since it’s not like Portland is treeless. But no one even glances in my direction. It’s a little before nine o’clock, and most people are rushing to get to work on time. An endless blur of normal people doing normal things, eyes straight ahead of them, paying no attention to the short, nondescript girl with a lumpy backpack pushing past them.

The short, nondescript girl with a secret burning inside of her like a fire.

It’s as though my night in the Wilds has sharpened my vision around the edges. Even though everything looks superficially the same, it seems somehow different—flimsy, almost, as though you could put your hand through the buildings and sky and even the people. I remember being very young and watching Rachel build a sand castle at the beach. She must have worked on it for hours, using different cups and containers to shape towers and turrets. When it was done it looked perfect, like it could have been made out of stone. But when the tide came in, it didn’t take more than two or three waves to dissolve its shape entirely. I remember I burst into tears, and my mother bought me an ice cream cone and made me share it with Rachel.

That’s what Portland looks like this morning: like something in danger of dissolving.

I keep thinking about what Alex always says:
There are more of us than you think
. I sneak a glance at everyone who goes by, thinking maybe I’ll be able to read some secret sign on their faces, some mark of resistance, but everyone looks the same as always: harried, hurried, annoyed, zoned out.

When I get home, Carol’s in the kitchen washing dishes. I try to scoot past her, but she calls out to me. I pause with one foot on the stairs. She comes into the hallway, wiping her hands on a dish towel.

“How was Hana’s?” she asks. She flicks her eyes all over my face, searchingly, as though checking for signs of something. I try to will back another bout of paranoia. She couldn’t possibly know where I’ve been.

“It was fine,” I say, shrugging, trying to sound casual. “Didn’t get a lot of sleep, though.”

“Mmm.” Carol keeps looking at me intensely. “What did you girls do together?”

She never asks about Hana’s house, and hasn’t for years.
Something’s wrong
, I think.

“You know, the usual. Watched some TV. Hana gets, like, seven channels.” I can’t tell if my voice sounds weird and high-pitched, or if I’m just imagining it.

Carol looks away, twisting her mouth up like she’s accidentally gotten a mouthful of sour milk. I can tell she’s trying to work out a way to say something unpleasant; she gets her sour-milk face whenever she has to give out bad news.
She knows about Alex, she knows, she knows.
The walls press closer and the heat is stifling.

Then, to my surprise, she curls her mouth into a smile, reaches out, and places a hand on my arm. “You know, Lena . . . it won’t be like this for very much longer.”

I’ve successfully avoided thinking about the procedure for twenty-four hours, but now that awful, looming number pops back into my head, throwing a shadow over everything. Seventeen days.

“I know,” I squeeze out. Now my voice
definitely
sounds weird.

Carol nods, and keeps the strange half smile plastered to her face. “I know it’s hard to believe, but you won’t miss her once it’s over.”

“I know.” Like there’s a dying frog caught in my throat.

Carol keeps nodding at me really vigorously. It looks as though her head is connected to a yo-yo. I get the feeling she wants to say something more, something that will reassure me, but she obviously can’t think of anything because we just stand there, frozen like that, for almost a minute.

Finally I say, “I’m going upstairs. Shower.” It takes all my willpower just to get out the words.
Seventeen days
keeps tearing through my mind, like an alarm.

Carol seems relieved that I’ve broken the silence. “Okay,” she says. “Okay.”

I start up the stairs two at a time. I can’t wait to lock myself in the bathroom. Even though it must be more than eighty degrees in the house, I want to stand under a stream of beating hot water, melt myself into vapor.

“Oh, Lena.” Carol calls out to me almost as an afterthought. I turn around and she’s not looking at me. She’s inspecting the fraying border of one of her dish towels. “You should put on something nice. A dress—or those pretty white slacks you got last year. And do your hair. Don’t just leave it to air-dry.”

“Why?” I don’t like the way she won’t look at me, especially since her mouth is going all screwy again.

“I invited Brian Scharff to come over today,” she says
casually, as though it’s an everyday, normal thing.

“Brian Scharff?” I repeat dumbly. The name feels strange in my mouth, and brings with it the taste of metal.

Carol snaps her head up and looks at me. “Not
alone
,” she says quickly. “Of course not alone. His mother will be coming with him. And I’ll be here too, obviously. Besides, Brian had his procedure last month.” As though
that’s
what’s bothering me.

“He’s coming here? Today?” I have to reach out and place one hand on the wall. Somehow I’ve managed to completely forget about Brian Scharff, that neat printed name on a page.

Carol must think I’m nervous about meeting him, because she smiles at me. “Don’t worry, Lena. You’ll be fine. We’ll do most of the talking. I just thought you two should meet, since . . .” She doesn’t finish her sentence. She doesn’t have to.

Since we’re paired. Since we’ll be married. Since I’ll share my bed with him, and wake up every day of my life next to him, and have to let him put his hands on me, and have to sit across from him at dinner eating canned asparagus and listening to him rattle on about plumbing or carpentry or whatever it is he’s going to get assigned to do.

“No!” I burst out.

Carol looks startled. She’s not used to hearing that word, certainly not from me. “What do you mean,
no
?”

I lick my lips. I know refusing her is dangerous, and I know that it’s wrong. But I can’t meet Brian Scharff. I won’t. I won’t sit there and pretend to like him, or listen to Carol talk about where we’ll live in a few years, while Alex is out there somewhere—waiting for me to meet up with him, or tapping his fingers against his desk while he listens to music, or breathing, or doing anything at all. “I mean . . .” I struggle for an excuse. “I mean—I mean, couldn’t we do it some other time? I don’t really feel good.” This, at least, is true.

Carol frowns at me. “It’s an hour, Lena. If you can manage to sleep over at Hana’s house, you can manage that.”

“But—but—” I ball one fist up, squeezing my fingernails into my palm until pain starts blooming there, which gives me something to focus on. “But I want it to be a surprise.”

Carol’s voice takes on an edge. “There’s nothing
surprising
about this, Lena. This is the order of things. This is your life. He is your pair. You will meet him, and you will like him, and that’s that. Now go upstairs and get in the shower. They’ll be coming at one o’clock.”

One. Alex gets off work at noon today; I was supposed to meet him. We were going to have a picnic at 37 Brooks, like we always do whenever he comes off the morning shift, and enjoy the whole afternoon together. “But—” I start to protest, not even sure what else I can say.

“No buts.” Carol crosses her arms and glares at me fiercely. “Upstairs.”

I don’t know how I make it up the stairs; I’m so angry I can barely see. Jenny’s standing on the landing, chewing gum, dressed in one of Rachel’s old bathing suits. It’s too big for her. “What’s wrong with you?” she says, as I push past her.

I don’t answer. I make a beeline for the bathroom and turn the water on as high as it can go. Carol hates it when we waste water, and normally I make my showers as quick as I can, but today I don’t care. I sit on the toilet and stuff my fingers in my mouth, biting down to keep from screaming. This is all my fault. I’ve been ignoring the date of the procedure, and I’ve avoided even
thinking
Brian Scharff’s name. And Carol is absolutely right: This is my life, and the order of things. There’s no changing it. I take a deep breath and tell myself to stop being such a baby. Everyone has to grow up sometime; my time is on September 3.

I go to stand up, but an image of Alex last night—standing so close to me, speaking those weird, wonderful words,
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach
—knocks me down again, and I thud back onto the toilet.

Alex laughing, breathing, living—separately, unknown to me. Waves of nausea overtake me, and I double over with my head between my knees, fighting it.

The disease
, I tell myself.
The disease is progressing
.
It will all be better after the procedure. That’s the
point
.

But it’s no use. When I finally manage to get into the shower, I try to lose myself in the rhythm of the water pounding on the porcelain, but images of Alex flicker through my mind—kissing me, stroking my hair, dancing his fingers over my skin—dancing, flashing, like light from a candle, about to be snuffed out.

The worst is that I can’t even let Alex know I won’t be able to meet him. It’s too dangerous to call him. My plan was to go to the labs and tell him in person, but when I come downstairs, showered and dressed, and head for the door, Carol stops me.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she says sharply. I can tell she’s still angry that I was arguing with her earlier—angry, and probably offended. She no doubt thinks I should be turning cartwheels because I’ve finally been paired. She has a right to think it—a few months ago, I
would
have been turning cartwheels.

I turn my eyes to the ground, attempting to sound as sweet and meek as possible. “I just thought I’d take a walk before Brian comes.” I try to conjure up a blush. “I’m kind of nervous.”

“You’ve been spending enough time out of the house as it is,” Carol snaps back. “And you’ll only get sweaty and dirty again. If you want something to do, you can help me organize the linen closet.”

There’s no way I can disobey my aunt, so I follow her back upstairs and sit on the floor as she passes ratty towel after ratty towel down to me, and I inspect them for holes and stains and damage, fold and refold, count napkins. I’m so angry and frustrated I’m shaking. Alex won’t know what has happened to me. He’ll worry. Or even worse, he’ll think I’m deliberately avoiding him. Maybe he’ll think going to the Wilds freaked me out.

It frightens me, how violent I’m feeling—crazy, almost, and capable of anything. I want to climb up the walls, burn down the house,
something
. Several times I have the fantasy of taking one of Carol’s stupid dish towels and strangling her with it. This is what all the textbooks and
The
Book of
Shhh
and parents and teachers have always warned me about. I don’t know whether they’re right or whether Alex is. I don’t know whether these feelings—this
thing
growing inside of me—is something horrible and sick or the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

Either way, I can’t stop it. I’ve lost control. And the
truly
sick thing is that despite everything, I’m glad.

At twelve thirty Carol moves me downstairs to the living room, which I can tell has been straightened and cleaned. My uncle’s shipping orders, which are usually scattered everywhere, have been stacked in a neat pile, and none of the old schoolbooks and broken toys that usually litter the floor are visible. She plops me down on a sofa and begins messing with my hair. I feel like a prize pig, but I know better than to say anything about it. If I do everything she tells me—if everything goes smoothly—maybe I’ll still have time to go to 37 Brooks once Brian leaves.

“There,” Carol says, stepping away and squinting at me critically. “That’s as good as it’s going to get.”

I bite my lip and turn away. I don’t want her to notice, but her words have sent a sharp pain through me. Amazingly, I’d actually forgotten that I’m supposed to be plain. I’m so used to Alex telling me I’m beautiful. I’m so used to
feeling
beautiful around him. A hollow opens up in my chest. This is what life will be like without him: Everything will become ordinary again.
I’ll
become ordinary again.