August 27. I left Portland on August 21. I’ve lost almost a week in the Wilds, in this upside-down place.
This is not my world. My world is unfolding miles away: a world of doors that lead to rooms, and clean white walls, and the quiet hum of refrigerators; a world of carefully plotted streets, and pavement that is not full of fissures. Another pang shoots through me. In less than a month, Hana will have her procedure.
Alex was the one who understood things here. He could have built up this collapsed street for me, turned it into a place of sense and order. He was going to lead me through the wilderness. With him, I would have been okay.
“Can I get you anything?” Sarah’s voice is uncertain.
“I’ll be all right.” I can barely force the words out, past the pain. “It’s just the food. Not used to it.”
I’m going to be sick again. I duck my head between my knees, coughing to force down the sob that shudders through me.
Sarah must know, though, because she says, in the quietest voice, “You get used to it after a while.” I get the sense she’s talking about more than the breakfast.
After that there is nothing to do but make our way back: down the bombed-out road, through the shards, metal glittering in the high grass like snakes lying in wait.
Grief is like sinking, like being buried. I am in water the tawny color of kicked-up dirt. Every breath is full of choking. There is nothing to hold on to, no sides, no way to claw myself up. There is nothing to do but let go.
Let go. Feel the weight all around you, feel the squeezing of your lungs, the slow, low pressure. Let yourself go deeper. There is nothing but bottom. There is nothing but the taste of metal, and the echoes of old things, and days that look like darkness.
now
That is the girl I was then: stumbling, sinking, lost in brightness and space. My past had been wiped clean, bleached a stark and spotless white.
But you can build a future out of anything. A scrap, a flicker. The desire to go forward, slowly, one foot at a time. You can build an airy city out of ruins.
This is the girl I am right now: knees pressed together, hands on my thighs. Silk blouse pulling tight against my neck, skirt with a woolen waistband, standard issue, bearing the Quincy Edwards High School crest. It’s itchy; I wish I could scratch, but I won’t. She would take that as a sign of nerves, and I am not nervous, will never be nervous again in my life.
She blinks. I don’t. She is Mrs. Tulle, the principal, with a face like a fish pressed to glass; eyes so large they appear distorted.
“Is everything okay at home, Magdalena?”
It’s strange to hear her use my full name. Everyone has always called me Lena.
“Fine,” I say.
She shuffles the papers on her desk. Everything in her office is ordered, all the edges lined up correctly. Even the water glass on her desk is centered perfectly on its coaster. The cureds have always liked order: straightening, aligning, making adjustments. Cleanliness Is Next to Godliness, and Order Is Ascension. It gives them something to do, I guess—tasks to fill those long, empty hours.
“You live with your sister and her husband, is that correct?”
I nod, repeat the story of my new life: “My mother and father were killed in one of the Incidents.”
This, at least, is not so much of a lie. The old Lena, too, was an orphan; as good as one, anyway.
I do not have to clarify the reference to the Incidents. Everyone has heard about them by now: last fall, the resistance coordinated its first major, violent, visible strikes. In a handful of cities, members of the resistance—helped by sympathizers, and in some cases, young uncureds—caused simultaneous explosions in important municipal buildings.
In Portland, the resistance chose to explode a portion of the Crypts. In the ensuing chaos, two dozen civilians were killed. The police and regulators were able to restore order, but not before several hundred prisoners had escaped.
It’s ironic. My mother spent ten years tunneling her way out of that place, when she might have just waited another few months and strolled free.
Mrs. Tulle winces.
“Yes, I saw that in your records.” Behind her, a humidifier whirs quietly. Still, the air is dry. Her office smells like paper and, faintly, of hairspray. A trickle of sweat rolls down my back. The skirt is hot.
“We’re concerned that you seem to be having trouble adjusting,” she says, watching me with those fish eyes. “You’ve been eating lunch by yourself.” It’s an accusation.
Even this new Lena feels slightly embarrassed; the only thing worse than having no friends is being pitied for having no friends. “To be honest, I’m having some trouble with the girls,” new Lena says. “I’m finding them a little bit … immature.” As I speak, I angle my head away slightly, so she can see the triangular scar just behind my left ear: the mark of the procedure, the mark of being cured.