“Aunt Carol wants you downstairs,” she says to Jenny, and Jenny scurries eagerly for the door, shooting one last look over her shoulder at me, her face a mixture of fear and fascination. I wonder if that’s how I looked all those years ago when Rachel got the deliria and had to be pinned down on the floor by four regulators before she could be dragged to the labs.
Rachel comes over to the bed, still watching me with that same unreadable expression. “How are you feeling?” she asks.
“Fabulous,” I say sarcastically, but she just blinks at me.
“Take these.” She lays out two white pills on the table.
“What are those? Tranquilizers?”
Her eyelids flutter. “Advil.” Irritation has crept into her voice, and I’m glad of it. I don’t like that she’s standing there, composed and detached, evaluating me like I’m a taxidermy specimen.
“So . . . Carol called you?” I’m debating whether to trust her about the Advil, but decide to risk it. My head is killing me, and at this point I’m not sure how much more damaging a tranquilizer would be. It’s not exactly like I can make a break for the door in this condition, anyway. I swallow the two pills with a large gulp of water.
“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.