“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 booksmore 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 meas 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 wh
ile 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
One 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.
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