The Innocence Treatment

by Ari Goelman

  “I keep my promises.”

  He grinned. “Yeah, well, don’t feel too bad about that. You’re still recovering from major brain surgery.”

  “Funny.” I put one hand on his shoulder and hesitated. Somehow in all my brooding about being a human petri dish, I’d forgotten to think about what it would be like to tell Sasha. What would he think of me? Why did I care so much? All my anger at the Department and exhilaration at being out at night and … whatever it was that I felt for Sasha … it made it hard to think straight. I wanted to kiss him, and I wanted to hit him.

  I pointed at the tree house with my free hand. “Race you up?”

  He didn’t respond, but I read the tension in his body. The instant before he moved, I hip checked him to one side, and leaped up the tree ahead of him.

  It wasn’t even close. I made it to the tree house at least ten seconds before him. “You win,” he said. “So? What did you find?”

  The remnants of my good mood vanished. “You must already know,” I said. “You deleted the files the Department has on me. I don’t see you as a guy who’d delete something without knowing what it is.”

  He made a face. “Maybe I just knew you’d be telling me tonight.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t sure I’d be coming.”

  “Did I say that?” he asked. “I was probably just being polite.”

  I didn’t respond, and after a minute, he said, “If I already know, what’s the harm in telling me? And anyway, you keep your promises, right?”

  I still didn’t say anything. Mostly because I really didn’t feel like talking about the Innocence Treatment. He waited. I let the silence stretch for a minute or two, the only noise the distant sound of traffic on Bradley Street.

  Finally, I took a deep breath and told him. He made surprised sounds and faces in the right places, but I wasn’t sure how authentic they were. I still have a hard time telling when Sasha is lying.

  I’ve thought about this a lot, Dr. Corbin, and I think a lot of my new talent for seeing lies is just basically a willingness to be clear-eyed. Maybe not everyone could be quite as “talented” as me, but they could definitely be a little more perceptive if they wanted, don’t you think? So I’m not sure if my confusion around Sasha is because he’s such a great liar, or if it’s just that I like him so much that I want to believe him. I want to believe he really likes me.

  Sitting next to him in the tree house, I was super-conscious of his nearness. Of his smell, some boy deodorant mixed with the slightly spicy scent of his sweat.

  He shook his head when I was done explaining about the Innocence Treatment. “So if that’s the big secret, why are they still so interested?” he finally asked.

  “You mean, if the whole point of my existence was to produce chemicals, why are they still following me when I’ve already produced those chemicals?”

  He gently ran his hand over the stubbled and scarred back of my head. “Lauren. Just because that’s what Corbin was after, that doesn’t make it the whole point of your life.”

  I leaned against him, embarrassed at how relieved I was that he wasn’t repulsed by me. “Okay,” I said, keeping my voice as level as I could. “So why do you think she’s still having me followed?”

  “I have no idea,” he said. “Scientific curiosity?” His teeth glinted in the moonlight. “Wondering how anyone can be so hot?”

  I laughed despite myself.

  Nothing else happened in the tree house tonight that would matter to someone else. Funny how important something like putting your tongue in another person’s mouth can feel when it’s happening to you, and how irrelevant (and let’s be honest, slightly gross) it sounds when you’re telling someone about it.

  It’s embarrassing. We’d just been talking about a chemical that has the power to pretty significantly mess up the world, but for a few minutes, all I could think about was how Sasha tasted and smelled.

  Eventually I tore myself away. I walked home alone, still not knowing if I could trust Sasha at all. Probably not caring quite as much as I should.

  I got home to find that the sheet I’d left dangling out my window was gone, and the window to my room was shut. Uh-oh.

  Shouldn’t have been a big deal, right? I’d just discovered that my life was a side effect of an evil science experiment. Who cared if I was in trouble with my parents?

  Still, I dragged my feet as I walked up the front walkway to my house. I didn’t want to tell my parents what I’d discovered. It would make them feel bad, and they couldn’t do anything about it, anyway. I wondered if they suspected anything. I figured they had to. I mean, what are the chances that the same doctor who helped them conceive would just happen to be the one who came up with the treatment to fix their daughter?

  I opened the front door and found Evelyn sitting on the stairs looking exhausted. “Oh,” I said. “Hey!”

  “Oh,” she said, imitating my perky tone. “Hey!”

  I stood there for a moment, and in the same cheery voice, she said, “How’s it going?”

  “Good.” I cautiously started walking up the stairs. “How about you?”

  “Great, great! Oh,” she said, like she was just remembering. “A weird thing happened before. I heard this thump from your room. Opened the door and—”

  “My door was locked.”

  “Seriously?” she said. “You think Mom and Dad would let you have a room that really locks? You stick the end of a paper clip in the little hole in the doorknob and your door opens right up.”

  “Oh.”

  “So I opened the door and you’ll never guess what I found.”

  “I think I might guess,” I said.

  She smiled a little, then frowned again. “Being the good sister that I am, I went outside, made sure that you weren’t lying injured in the yard. Then I went back up to your room, pulled up the sheets, threw out the one you ripped, and remade your bed. I didn’t wake up Mom or Dad. Though I would have if you had been out for another thirty minutes.”

  “Thanks, Ev,” I said. “I really appreciate it.” I started to walk past her up the stairs, and she touched my leg.

  “Sit down,” she said. “I don’t want to wake Mom and Dad with our yelling.”

  “We aren’t yelling.”

  “I’m just anticipating,” Evelyn said. “So aren’t you going to ask what I expect from you? Having been so kind and all?”

  “Wait. By ‘being so kind,’ do you mean snooping around my—”

  “I mean cleaning up your mess. I mean making your bed. You’re not gonna ask what I expect? I’ll tell you anyway. I expect you to tell me what the fuck is going on. Where were you?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “You can’t tell me?”

  “Okay. I don’t want to tell you.”

  Evelyn stared at me. “Lauren, I know you wouldn’t deliberately narc on me, but Sasha…”

  “This has nothing to do with you,” I said. Which was mostly true. It definitely had nothing to do with her in the way she thought it did. And if I told her the truth, I didn’t trust her ability to control herself. She’d tell Peter, or she’d post a furious comment to some activist blog the Department keeps under surveillance. (Sasha claims that every activist blog is read by twice as many Department employees as actual “activists.”) “And I will never tell Sasha anything about you.”

  “So you were with Sasha.”

  “I was,” I said, realizing I needed to tell Evelyn something or she wouldn’t leave it alone. “We were fooling around. That’s all.”

  Her top lip curled. “You were fooling around?”

  “I knew you wouldn’t approve.”

  “You’re fooling around with a guy who puts people in jail for saying things against the Department.” She stared at me. “Why wouldn’t I approve of that?”

  I stood. The best thing I could do for Evelyn was to let her write me off. That way, when the Department took me in, she wouldn’t be tempted to do anything stupid. “The
Department keeps people safe. You included. Talking trash about the Department doesn’t make you a hero, Ev.”

  “I don’t…” She was blinking her eyes more than usual and her voice had a tiny quaver. “I never said I was a hero. I know Peter’s been kind of a jerk, but I can’t believe you’re really buying into the Department’s—”

  “Believe it. Leave me alone.” I walked up the stairs, not wanting her to see my own eyes tearing.

  I found my room warm, the window closed. I lay on the fresh sheets Evelyn had put on my bed. After a few minutes I heard Evelyn go into her room. I lay awake for a long time, then eventually got up and typed this into the computer.

  I wonder how much time I have left.

  Your patient/drug factory,

  Lauren Fielding

  JOURNAL OF LAUREN C. FIELDING

  Monday, November 3, 2031

  Dr. Corbin:

  After everything that happened this weekend, it’s weird how normal everything feels at school. Riley and Gabriella and I are back to being good friends. Don’t get me wrong—it’s not like it used to be. I’m not that person anymore. But after the party Saturday night, they seem to have made their peace with the new me. Or maybe I’ve made my peace with the old them.

  Whatever, it is, it feels good to be friends again. I saw Riley at her locker this morning and I stopped. “Hey, Riley!” I said. “Great party!”

  She looked surprised for a second, then grinned. “It was pretty great, wasn’t it? Sorry you had to leave early. I was so mad about that dirtbag breaking Sasha’s glasses. I swear to God, it’s the last time I let other people’s security into one of my parties.” She hesitated. “Someone said you beat the guy up afterward.”

  “Me?” I forced a giggle. “I just pushed between him and Sasha, that’s all.”

  “Well, sorry again.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. I stared at her face, looking for a sign of whether or not her father had found out about Sasha and me accessing the Department’s system from his office. “How’s your dad?”

  She gave me an odd look. “I don’t know. How’s your dad?”

  I laughed a little. “No, seriously. Is everything okay with him at work?”

  Her lips thinned. “Are you joining the Evelyn Fielding school of ‘Riley’s dad is horrible because he’s high up in the Department’?”

  “Not at all. It’s just I’ve heard things are a little rocky at the Department, what with the Emergency Act expiring. I was wondering if that’s made a difference to your father.”

  Riley relaxed a little. “As though I would know. I stopped asking my dad about work years ago. I got tired of him making the same stupid joke. ‘Hey, Cedar, we’d tell her, but then we’d have to kill her, isn’t that right, Cedar? Hey, Cedar, do we tell Riley about work? No! We don’t do that.’”

  It was a good enough imitation of her father that I found myself laughing. Together, we started walking to first-period chemistry class. “So he hasn’t been particularly stressed out or anything lately?”

  She snorted. “My dad’s never been, like, the most relaxed guy in the world, but I haven’t noticed any change.”

  Evelyn rounded the corner in front of us, and Riley and I automatically paused. Evelyn swept past, not looking at me.

  “Whoa. What’s up with her?” Riley asked.

  I couldn’t think of a reason not to tell Riley. “She’s mad that I’m dating Sasha.”

  “She’s jealous?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Right. She’s mad because he supposedly works for the Department.”

  I shot Riley a disbelieving look. “C’mon. Of course he works for the Department. Just ask your dad if you don’t believe me.”

  She held up her hands. “Actually, I have asked my dad. He claims he has no idea. He might even be telling the truth. The Department’s a big place. Anyway, what does Evelyn care? Your father does contracts for the Department all the time.”

  I didn’t answer Riley, but stared after Evelyn, resisting the urge to chase her down the hallway and apologize. Tell her everything, if that’s what it would take for her to not be mad at me. I’m sure she’s never been this angry with me before. I actually don’t remember her ever being mad at me, but that’s probably just because I missed it, back when I missed everything.

  I didn’t see Evelyn again at school, but after school, when Sasha and I were walking home, I saw her walking a block or so ahead of us. Sasha must have noticed the expression on my face because he pointed at me, then at Evelyn, and made a little walking gesture with his index finger and middle finger, obviously inviting me to walk home with my sister. It’s amazing how good he is at communicating in ways that his glasses don’t catch.

  I gave my head a minute shake. The thing is, when you’re alienating someone for their own good, you can’t tell them, Hey, I’m alienating you for your own good, so you don’t do something stupid and self-sacrificing when the Department picks me up.

  Sasha and I talked about it at the tree house later.

  “You want me to talk to your sister?” he said. He’d brought a couple of sleeping bags to the tree house to make it more comfortable, and at this point we were lying together, my head on his shoulder, his arm around me. “It’s obviously bothering you, having her furious with you.”

  I pulled a few inches away and eyed him incredulously. “You think you talking to her would help?”

  “I don’t mean give her a hard time about her politics. I mean appeal to her bleeding heart. Let her know my refugee background. I can be really pathetic.” He widened his eyes and blinked.

  I snorted. “That doesn’t look pathetic. It looks like you have something in your eye.”

  “That could be pathetic.” He clapped his free hand over his right eye, and said, “Argh. My eye. I … I think I’m blind now. Damn it. That was my favorite eye, too. Now I can never become a champion archer.”

  I laughed again, but quickly sobered. “I don’t want Evelyn to feel sorry for you. I want her to write me off. Corbin’s going to bring me in at some point, and when she does, I want Evelyn to think something like ‘Well, too bad, but she brought that on herself, running around with a Departmental agent.’”

  He eyed me skeptically. “You think that’s going to work? She’s not an idiot. You and I could also just stay away from each other during the day. Evelyn wouldn’t be nearly so mad at you if she didn’t see the two of us hanging out all the time. And it’s not like you and I can really talk while I’m wearing my glasses anyway.”

  “Sure we can talk.” I put my head back on his shoulder. “Just not about the Department or my origins as a laboratory rat. Not my favorite topics of conversation anyway. I don’t want to stop walking home with you.” I suppose I could pretend this is a rational thing. Like I’m worried about getting taken in earlier if I stop hanging out with Sasha. But the truth is, I just don’t want to stay away from him.

  He’s the one person who knows what I am. Why I was created. And he still likes me. I know he’s a liar, and a Departmental agent who’s also working with some third party. I know I can’t trust him, and I don’t. But he’s funny and kind and he knows what I am, and he still likes me. That much is true and not a lie. I feel it when he touches me.

  My time with him today was the best part of my day. The one part when—for a few minutes, anyway—I felt like I could just be myself.

  JOURNAL OF LAUREN C. FIELDING

  Wednesday, November 5, 2031

  Dr. Corbin:

  I got your messages yesterday and the day before. You’re starting to lose patience with me, aren’t you? You know what’s weird? I’m almost tempted to start sending you my real journal entries again. Not that I trust you, or that I’m getting stupid again.

  But I feel like I’m going crazy, and you probably are one of the only people in the world who would understand. Mostly because it’s your fault.

  I feel like my brain is splitting in two. I think most people figure out early ho
w to dissemble—how to show other people just a part of what they’re thinking and feeling. I never had to learn that, and now I have this inside-self and this outside-self, and they’re getting further and further apart.

  On the one hand, I’ve been walking around with this pit of anger in my stomach all week. Just looking for a fight. Today I walked out of English class and I happened to see Jimmy Porten down the hall. I don’t know what he saw in my face, but he turned on his heel and ran in the opposite direction. And it was the smart thing for him to do, too. I was totally ready—not just ready, but eager, crazily eager—to kick his ass, to hurt him, to make him feel some piece of what I’m feeling.

  At self-defense class yesterday evening, I almost broke Nora Edgemont’s arm. Nora Edgemont, for God’s sake. The most clean-cut, straight-A, volunteers-for-the-canned-food-drive-around-Christmas-and-volunteers-in-the-animal-shelter-the-rest-of-the-time person you’ve ever met. She even smells pure. Like baby kittens or something.

  We matched up to spar last night. We used to be great sparring partners, in part because she was the only person in class who was nearly as bad as I was.

  Last night we started like we always used to. She smiled at me. I smiled at her. “You ready?” she said.

  “Any time!” I said, still smiling, even as my stomach churned acid up the back of my throat, even as I wondered: When are they going to come for me? Tonight? Tomorrow? What does Dr. Corbin even want with me now that she’s taken the Innocence Treatment from my brain?

  Nora started with a right overhand jab. Not hard. Not—and I want to emphasize this—not in any way mean-spirited or underhanded. I ducked the jab easily, grabbed her arm, kicked her legs out from under her, and took her down.

  And here’s where it almost got crazy. Her left arm was pinned beneath her and I had her right arm wrapped up in an armlock. She couldn’t tap out. And for a second, I had the thought: I could break her arm and I’d just say, “She didn’t tap out. I didn’t know I was hurting her, not in time.” No one would blame me.