“Yes. I came right away.” She sits on the bed. “I was sleeping, you know.”
“Sorry to inconvenience you. I didn’t exactly ask to get knocked out and dragged here.” I’ve never spoken to Rachel this way, and I can see it surprises her. She rubs her forehead tiredly, and for a second a glimpse of the Rachel I used to know—my older sister Rachel, the one who tortured me with tickles and braided my hair and complained that I always got bigger scoops of ice cream—flickers through.
Then the blankness is back, like a veil. It’s amazing how I’ve always just accepted it, the way that most cureds seem to walk through the world as though wrapped in a thick cloak of sleep. Maybe it’s because I, too, was sleeping. It wasn’t until Alex woke me up that I could see things clearly.
For a while Rachel doesn’t say anything else. I have nothing to say to her, either, so we just sit there. I close my eyes, waiting for the pain to begin ebbing away, trying to sort out words from the tangle of voices downstairs and the sounds of footsteps and muffled exclamations and the television going in the kitchen, but I can’t make out any specific conversations.
Finally Rachel says, “What happened tonight, Lena?”
When I open my eyes, I see she’s staring at me again. “You think I’ll tell you?”
She gives a minute shake of her head. “I’m your sister.”
“As if that means something to you.”
She recoils slightly, just a fraction of an inch. When she speaks again her voice is flinty. “Who was he? Who infected you?”
“That’s the question of the evening, isn’t it?” I roll away from her, facing the wall, feeling cold. “If you came here to grill me, you’re wasting your time. You might as well go home again.”
“I came here because I’m worried,” she says.
“About what? About the family? About our reputation?” I keep staring stubbornly at the wall, pulling the thin summer blanket all the way to my neck. “Or maybe you’re worried that everyone will think you knew? Maybe you think you’ll get labeled a sympathizer?”
“Don’t be difficult.” She sighs. “I’m worried about you. I care, Lena. I want you to be safe. I want you to be happy.”
I swivel my head to look at her, feeling a rush of anger—and, deeper than that, hatred. I hate her; I hate her for lying to me. I hate her for pretending to care, for even using that word in my presence. “You’re a liar,” I spit out. Then, “You knew about Mom.”
This time the veil drops. She jerks back. “What are you talking about?”
“You knew that she didn’t—that she didn’t really kill herself. You knew that they took her.”
Rachel squints at me. “I really have no idea what you’re talking about, Lena.”
And I can tell, then, that at least I’m wrong about this. Rachel doesn’t know. She never knew. I feel a twin flood of relief and regret.
“Rachel,” I say, more gently. “She was in the Crypts. She’s been in the Crypts this whole time.”
Rachel stares at me for one long second, her mouth falling open. Then she stands abruptly, smoothing down the front of her pants as though brushing away invisible crumbs. “Listen, Lena . . . You got bumped on the head pretty badly.” Again, as though I’ve somehow done it myself. “You’re tired. You’re confused.”
I don’t correct her. There’s no point. It’s too late for Rachel, anyway. She will always exist behind the wall. She will always be asleep.
“You should try to get some sleep,” she says. “I’ll refill your water.” She takes the glass and then moves toward the door, switching off the overhead light as she goes. She pauses in the doorway for a bit with her back turned to me. The light from the hallway looks fuzzy around her, and makes her features blur to black so she looks like a shadow-person, a silhouette.
“You know, Lena,” she says at last, turning back around to face me, “things are going to get better. I know you feel angry. I know you think we don’t understand. But I do understand.” She breaks off, staring down into the empty glass. “I was just like you. I remember: those feelings, that anger and passion, the sense that you can’t live without it, that you’d rather die.” She sighs. “But trust me, Lena. It’s all part of the disease. It’s a sickness. In a few days you’ll see. This will all feel like a dream to you. It was like a dream to me.”
“And you’re happier now? You’re glad you did it?” I ask her.
Maybe she takes my question as a sign that I’m listening and paying attention. In any case, she smiles. “Much,” she says.
“Then you’re not just like me,” I whisper fiercely. “You’re not like me at all.”
Rachel opens her mouth to say something else, but at that moment Carol comes to the door. Her face is flushed and red and her hair is sticking up at strange angles, but when she speaks she sounds calm. “Everything’s all right,” she says in a low voice to Rachel. “Everything’s been settled.”
“Thank God,” Rachel says. Then, grimly: “But she won’t go willingly.”
“Do they ever?” Carol asks drily. Then she disappears again.
Carol’s tone of voice has frightened me. I try to sit up on my elbows, but my arms feel like they’ve been turned to Jell-O. “What’s settled?” I ask, surprised to hear that my voice sounds slurry.
Rachel looks at me for a second. “I told you, we just want you to be safe,” she says flatly.
“What did you settle?” Panic is filling me, made even worse by the simultaneous heaviness that seems to be creeping over me. I have to struggle to keep my eyes open.
“Your procedure.” That’s Carol. She has just stepped back into the room. “We managed to get you in early. You’ll have your cure on Sunday, first thing in the morning. After that, we hope, you’ll be okay.”
“Impossible.” I’m choking. Sunday morning is less than forty-eight hours from now. No time to alert Alex—no time to plan our escape. No time to do anything. “I won’t do it.” My voice doesn’t even sound like my own now: It’s one long groan.
“Someday you’ll understand,” Carol says. Both she and Rachel are advancing toward me, and then I see that they are holding, stretched between them, coils of nylon cord. “Someday you’ll thank us.”
I try to thrash out but my body is impossibly heavy and my vision starts to blur. Clouds roll through my mind; the world goes to fuzz. I think, So she was lying about the Advil—and then I think, That hurts, as something sharp digs deep into my wrists, and then I don’t think anything at all.
Chapter Twenty-Six
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
—From “i carry your heart with me(i carry it in,” a poem by e. e. cummings, banned, listed in the Comprehensive Compilation of Dangerous Words and Ideas, www.ccdwi.gov.org
When I wake up again it’s because someone is repeating my name. As I struggle into consciousness I see wisps of blond hair, like a halo, and for a confused moment think maybe I’ve died. Maybe the scientists were wrong and heaven isn’t just for the cured.
Then Hana’s features sharpen, and I realize she’s leaning over me. “Are you awake?” she’s saying. “Can you hear me?”
I groan and she sits back a little, exhaling. “Thank God,” she says. She’s keeping her voice to a whisper and she looks frightened. “You were so still I thought for a minute that you—that they—” She breaks off. “How do you feel?”