Alex smiles, but it’s more like a wince. “Lena, I have to tell you something.” His voice is a little stronger now, but something about his tone makes me afraid to let him speak.
Now I can’t stop talking. “Did it hurt? The procedure, I mean. My sister said it was no big deal, not with all the painkillers they give you, but my cousin Marcia used to say it was worse than anything, worse than having a baby, even though her second kid took, like, fifteen hours to deliver—” I break off, blushing, mentally cursing myself for the ridiculous conversational turn. I wish I could rewind back to last night’s party, when my brain was coming up empty; it’s like I’ve been saving up for a case of verbal vomit. “I’m not scared, though,” I nearly scream, as Alex again opens his mouth to speak. I’m desperate to salvage the situation somehow. “My procedure’s coming up. Sixty days. It’s dorky, huh? That I count. But I can’t wait.”
“Lena.” Alex’s voice is stronger, more forceful now, and it finally stops me. He turns so that we’re face-to-face. At that moment my shoes skim off the sand bottom, and I realize that the water is lapping up to my neck. The tide is coming in fast. “Listen to me. I’m not who—I’m not who you think I am.”
I have to fight to stand. All of a sudden the currents tug and pull at me. It’s always seemed this way. The tide goes out a slow drain, comes back in a rush. “What do you mean?”
His eyes—shifting gold, amber, an animal’s eyes—search my face, and without knowing why, I’m scared again. “I was never cured,” he says. For a moment I close my eyes and imagine I’ve misheard him, imagine I’ve only confused the shushing of the waves for his voice. But when I open my eyes he’s still standing there, staring at me, looking guilty and something else—sad, maybe?—and I know I heard correctly. He says, “I never had the procedure.”
“You mean it didn’t work?” I say. My body is tingling, going numb, and I realize then how cold it is. “You had the procedure and it didn’t work? Like what happened to my mom?”
“No, Lena. I—” He looks away, squinting, says under his breath, “I don’t know how to explain.”
Everything from the tips of my fingers through the roots of my hair now feels as if it’s encased in ice. Disconnected images run through my head, a skipping movie reel: Alex standing on the observation deck, his hair like a crown of leaves; turning his head, showing the neat three-pronged scar just beneath his left ear; reaching out to me and saying, I’m safe. I won’t hurt you. The words start rattling out of me again but I don’t feel them, hardly feel anything. “It didn’t work and you’ve been lying about it. Lying so you could still go to school, still get a job, still get paired and matched and everything. But really you’re not—you’re still—you might still be—” I can’t bring myself to say the word. Diseased. Uncured. Sick. I feel like I’ll be sick.
“No.” Alex’s voice is so loud it startles me. I take a step back, sneakers slipping on the slick and uneven bottom of the ocean floor, and nearly go under, but when Alex makes a move to touch me I jerk backward, out of his reach. Something hardens in his face, like he’s made a decision. “I’m telling you I was never cured. Never paired or matched or anything. I was never even evaluated.”
“Impossible.” The word barely squeezes itself out, a whisper. The sky is whirling above me, all blues and pinks and reds swirling together until it looks like parts of the sky are bleeding. “Impossible. You have the scars.”
“Scars,” he corrects me, a little more gently. “Just scars. Not the scars.” He looks away then, giving me a view of his neck. “Three tiny scars, an inverted triangle. Easy to replicate. With a scalpel, a penknife, anything.”
I close my eyes again. The waves swell around me and the motion, the lift and the drop, convinces me I really will throw up, right here in the water. I choke down the feeling, trying to hold back the realization that is battering at the back of my mind, threatening to overwhelm me—fighting back the feeling of drowning. I open my eyes and croak out, “How . . . ?”
“You have to understand. Lena, I’m trusting you. Do you see that?” He’s staring at me so intently I can feel his eyes like a touch, and I keep my eyes averted. “I didn’t mean to—I didn’t want to lie to you.”
“How?” I repeat, louder now. Somehow my brain gets stuck on the word lie and makes an endless loop: No way to avoid evaluations unless you lie. No way to avoid procedure unless you lie. You must lie.