The lead regulator continues to examine me, the flashlight directed glaringly at my face, my ID card in his hand. For a second he seems to waver, and I’m sure he’s going to let me go, but then he passes my ID to another regulator. “Run it through with SVS, will you? Make sure it’s valid.”
My heart plummets. SVS is the Secure Validation System, a computer network where all the valid citizenships, for every single person in the entire country, are stored. It can take twenty to thirty minutes for the computer system to match codes, depending on how many other people are calling into the system. He can’t really think I’ve forged an identity card, but he’s going to waste my time while someone checks.
And then, miraculously, a voice pipes up from the back of the group. “She’s valid, Gerry. I recognize her. She comes into the store. Lives at 172 Cumberland.”
Gerry swings around, lowering his flashlight in the process. I blink away the floating dots in my vision. I recognize a few faces vaguely—a woman who works in the local dry cleaners and spends her afternoons leaning in the doorway, chewing gum and occasionally spitting out into the street; the traffic officer who works downtown near Franklin Arterial, one of the few areas of Portland that has enough car traffic to justify one; one of the guys who collects our garbage—and there, in the back, Dev Howard, who owns the Quikmart down the street from my house.
Normally my uncle brings home most of our groceries—canned goods and pasta and sliced meats, for the most part—from his combo deli and convenience store, Stop-N-Save, all the way over on Munjoy Hill, but occasionally, if we’re desperate for toilet paper or milk, I’ll run out to the Quikmart. Mr. Howard has always creeped me out. He’s super-skinny and has hooded black eyes that remind me of a rat’s. But tonight I feel like I could hug him. I didn’t even think he knew my name. He’s never said a word to me except, “Will that be all today?” after he has rung up my purchases, glowering at me from underneath the heavy shade of his eyelids. I make a mental note to thank him the next time I see him.
Gerry hesitates for a fraction of a second longer, but I can see that the other regulators are starting to get restless, shifting from foot to foot, eager to continue the patrol and find someone to bust.
Gerry must sense it too, because he jerks his head abruptly in my direction. “Let her have the ID.”
Relief makes me feel like laughing, and I have to struggle to look serious as I take my ID and tuck it into place. My hands are shaking ever so slightly. It’s strange how being around the regulators will do that to you. Even when they’re being relatively nice, you can’t help but think of all the bad stories you’ve heard—the raids and the beatings and the ambushes.
“Just be careful, Magdalena,” Gerry says, as I straighten up. “Make sure you’re home before curfew.” He tilts his flashlight into my eyes again. I lift my arm to my eyes, squinting against the dazzle. “You wouldn’t want to get into any trouble.”
He says it lightly, but for a moment I think I hear something hard running under his words, a current of anger or aggression. But then I tell myself I’m just being paranoid. No matter what the regulators do, they exist for our protection, for our own good.
The regulators sweep away in a group around me, so for a few seconds I’m caught up in a tide of rough shoulders and cotton jackets, unfamiliar cologne and sweat-smells. Walkie-talkies sputter to life and fade away again around me. I catch snippets of words and broadcasts: Market Street, a girl and a boy, possibly infected, unapproved music on St. Lawrence, someone appears to be dancing . . . I get bumped side to side against arms and chests and elbows, until finally the group passes and I’m spit out again, left alone on the street as the regulators’ footsteps grow more distant behind me. I wait until I can no longer hear the fuzz of their radio chatter or their boots hitting the pavement.