For the most part, the government has been successful. We haven’t seen a war since the border was closed, and there is hardly any crime, except for the occasional incident of vandalism or petty theft. There is no more hatred in the United States, at least among the cured. Only sporadic cases of detachment—but every medical procedure carries a certain risk.
But so far, the government has failed to rid the country of the Invalids, and it is the single blemish on the administration, and the system in general. So we don’t talk about them. We pretend that the Wilds—and the people who live there—don’t even exist. It’s rare to hear the word even spoken, except when a suspected sympathizer disappears, or when a young diseased couple is found to have vanished together before a cure can be administered.
One piece of really good news is this: All of yesterday’s evaluations have been invalidated. All of us will receive a new evaluation date, which means I get a second chance. This time I swear I’m not going to screw it up. I feel completely idiotic about my meltdown at the labs. Sitting at the breakfast table, with everything looking so clean and bright and normal—the chipped blue mugs full of coffee, the erratic beeping of the microwave (one of the few electronic devices, besides the lights, Carol actually allows us to use)—makes yesterday seem like a long, strange dream. It’s a miracle, actually, that a bunch of fanatical Invalids decided to let loose a stampede at the exact moment I was failing the most important test of my life. I don’t know what came over me. I think about Glasses showing his teeth, and the moment I heard my mouth say, “Gray,” and I wince. Stupid, stupid.
Suddenly I’m aware that Jenny has been talking to me.
“What?” I blink at Jenny as she swims into focus. I watch her hands as she cuts her toast precisely into quarters.
“I said, what’s wrong with you?” Back and forth, back and forth. The knife dings against the edge of the plate. “You look like you’re about to puke or something.”
“Jenny,” Carol scolds. She is at the sink, washing dishes. “Not while your uncle is eating breakfast.”
“I’m fine.” I rip off a piece of toast, slide it across the stick of butter that’s getting melty in the middle of the table, and force myself to eat. The last thing I need is a good old family-style interrogation. “Just tired.”
Carol turns to look at me. Her face has always reminded me of a doll’s. Even when she’s talking, even when she’s irritated or happy or confused, her expression stays weirdly immobile. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“I slept,” I say. “I just had a bad dream, that’s all.”
At the end of the table, my uncle William starts up from his newspaper. “Oh, God. You know what? You just reminded me. I had a dream last night too.”
Carol raises her eyebrows, and even Jenny looks interested. It’s extremely unusual for people to dream once they’ve been cured. Carol once told me that on the rare occasions she still dreams, her dreams are full of dishes, stacks and stacks of them climbing toward the sky, and sometimes she climbs them, lip to lip, hauling herself up into the clouds, trying to reach the top of the stack. But it never ends; it stretches on into infinity. As far as I know, my sister Rachel never dreams anymore.
William smiles. “I was caulking the window in the bathroom. Carol, you remember I said there was a draft the other day? Anyway, I was piping in the caulk, but every time I finished, it would just flake away—almost like it was snow—and the wind would come in and I’d have to start all over. On and on and on—for hours, it felt like.”
“How strange,” my aunt says, smiling, coming to the table with a plate of fried eggs. My uncle likes them super runny, and they sit on the plate, their yolks jiggling and quivering like hula-hoop dancers, spotted with oil. My stomach twists.
William says, “No wonder I’m so tired this morning. I was doing housework all night.”
Everyone laughs but me. I choke down another bit of toast, wondering whether I’ll dream once I’ve been cured.
I hope not.