Delirium (Delirium #1)(12)

I wasn’t supposed to have heard. Mrs. Eisner gave a startled little gasp when she saw me, and her mouth shut quickly, like a cork popping back into a bottle. My aunt just stood there, and in that second it was as though the world and the future collapsed down into a single point, and I understood that this—the kitchen, the spotless cream linoleum floors, the glaring lights, and the vivid green mass of Jell-O on the counter—was all that was left now that my mother was gone.

Suddenly I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t stand the sight of my aunt’s kitchen, which I now understood would be my kitchen. I couldn’t stand the Jell-O. My mother hated Jell-O. An itchy feeling began to work its way through my body, as though a thousand mosquitoes were circulating through my blood, biting me from the inside, making me want to scream, jump, squirm.

I ran.

Hana, one foot on a bench, is lacing up her shoes when I come in. My awful secret is that I like to run with Hana partly because it’s the single, sole, solitary shred of a thing that I can do better than she can, but I would never admit that out loud in a million years.

I haven’t even had a chance to put my bag down before she’s leaning forward and grabbing my arm.

“Can you believe it?” She’s fighting a smile, and her eyes are a pinwheel of color—blue, green, gold—flashing like they always do when she’s excited about something. “It was definitely the Invalids. That’s what everybody’s saying, anyway.”

We’re the only people in the locker room—all the sports teams have finished their seasons—but I instinctively whip my head around when she says the word. “Keep your voice down.”

She pulls back a little, tossing her hair over one shoulder. “Relax. I did recon. Even checked the toilet stalls. We’re in the clear.”

I open up the gym locker I’ve had for all my ten years at St. Anne’s. At its bottom is a film of gum wrappers and shredded notes and lost paper clips, and on top of that, my small limp pile of running clothes, two pairs of shoes, my cross-country team jersey, a dozen half-used bottles of deodorant, conditioner, and perfume. In less than two weeks I’ll graduate and never see the inside of this locker again, and for a second I get sad. It’s gross, but I’ve actually always loved the smell of gyms: the industrial cleaning fluid and the deodorant and soccer balls and even the lingering smell of sweat. It’s comforting to me. It’s so strange how life works: You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it’s taking forever to come. Then it happens and it’s over and all you want to do is curl back up in that moment before things changed.

“Who’s everybody, anyway? The news is saying it was just a mistake, a shipping error or something.” I feel the need to repeat the official story, even though I know just as well as Hana that it’s BS.

She straddles the bench, watching me. As usual, she’s oblivious to the fact that I hate it when other people see me change. “Don’t be an idiot. If it was on the news, it definitely isn’t true. Besides, who mixes up a cow and a box of prescription meds? It’s not like it’s hard to tell the difference.”

I shrug. She’s right, obviously. She’s still looking at me, so I angle slightly away. I’ve never been comfortable with my body like Hana and some of the other girls at St. Anne’s, never gotten over the awkward feeling that I’ve been fitted together just a little wrong in some very key places. Like I’ve been sketched by an amateur artist: If you don’t look too closely, it’s all right, but start focusing and all the smudges and mistakes become really obvious.

Hana kicks one leg out and begins stretching, refusing to let the issue drop. Hana’s more fascinated with the Wilds than anyone I’ve ever met. “If you think about it, it’s pretty amazing. The planning and all that. It would have taken at least four or five people—maybe more—to coordinate everything.”

I think briefly of the boy I saw on the observation deck, of his flashing, autumn-leaf-colored hair, and the way he tipped his head back when he laughed so I could see the vaulted black arch of his mouth. I told no one about him, not even Hana, and now I feel I should have.

Hana goes on, “Someone must have had security codes. Maybe a sympathizer—”

A door bangs loudly at the front of the locker room, and Hana and I both jump, staring at each other with wide eyes. Footsteps click quickly across the linoleum. After a few seconds of hesitation, Hana launches smoothly into a safe topic: the color of the graduation gowns, which are orange this year. Just then Mrs. Johanson, the athletic director, comes around the bank of lockers, swinging her whistle around one finger.

“At least they’re not brown, like at Fielston Prep,” I say, though I’m barely listening to Hana. My heart is pounding and I’m still thinking about the boy, and wondering whether Johanson heard us say the word sympathizer. She doesn’t do anything but nod as she passes us, so it seems unlikely.

I’ve learned to get really good at this—say one thing when I’m thinking about something else, act like I’m listening when I’m not, pretend to be calm and happy when really I’m freaking out. It’s one of the skills you perfect as you get older. You have to learn that people are always listening. The first time I ever used the cell phone that my aunt and uncle share, I was surprised by the patchy interference that kept breaking up my conversation with Hana at random intervals, until my aunt explained that it was just the government’s listening devices, which arbitrarily cut into cell phone calls, recording them, monitoring conversations for target words like love, or Invalids, or sympathizer. No one in particular is targeted; it’s all done randomly, to be fair. But it’s almost worse that way. I pretty much always feel as though a giant, revolving gaze is bound to sweep over me at any second, lighting up my bad thoughts like an animal lit still and white in the ever-turning beam of a lighthouse.