Still, I take precautions, determined not to make one false step, determined to prove to myself that I’m not like my mother—that the thing with Alex was a fluke, a mistake, a horrible, horrible accident. I can’t ignore how close I was to danger. I don’t even want to think about what would happen if anyone found out what Alex was, if anyone knew that we had stood together shivering in the water, that we had talked, laughed, touched. It makes me feel sick. I have to keep repeating to myself that my procedure is less than two months away now. All I have to do is keep my head down and make it through the next seven weeks and I’ll be fine.
I come home every evening a full two hours before curfew. I volunteer to spend extra days at the store, and I don’t even ask for my usual eight-dollar-an-hour wage. Hana doesn’t call me. I don’t call her, either. I help my aunt cook dinner, and I clear and wash the dishes unprompted. Gracie is in summer school—she’s only in first grade and they’re already talking about holding her back—and every night I pull her onto my lap and help her sludge through her work, whispering in her ear, begging her to speak, to focus, to listen, cajoling her, finally, into writing at least half of the answers down in her workbook. After a week my aunt stops looking at me suspiciously whenever I walk into the house, stops demanding to know where I’ve been, and another weight eases off me: She trusts me again. It wasn’t easy to explain why on earth Sophia Hennerson and I would decide on an impromptu swim in the ocean—in our clothes, no less—just after a big family dinner, even harder to explain why I came home pale and shaking, and I could tell my aunt didn’t buy it. But after a while she relaxes around me again, stops looking at me distrustfully, like I’m some caged-up animal she’s worried will go feral.
Days pass, time ticks away, seconds click forward like dominoes toppling in a line. Every day the heat gets worse and worse. It creeps through the streets of Portland, festers in the Dumpsters, makes the city smell like a giant armpit. The walls sweat and the trolleys cough and shudder, and every day people gather in front of the municipal buildings, praying for a brief blast of cold air whenever the mechanized doors swoosh open because a regulator or politician or guard has to go in and out.
I have to give up my runs. The last time I do a full loop outside I find that my feet carry me down to Monument Square, past the Governor. The sun is a high white haze, all the buildings cut sharply against the sky like a series of metal teeth. By the time I make it to the statue I’m panting, exhausted, and my head is spinning. When I grab the Governor’s arm and swing myself up onto the statue’s base, the metal burns underneath my hand and the world seesaws crazily, light zigzagging everywhere. I’m dimly aware that I should go inside, out of the heat, but my brain is all foggy and so there I go, poking my fingers around the hole in the Governor’s cupped fist. I don’t know what I’m looking for. Alex already told me that the note he’d left for me months ago must have turned to pulp by now. My fingers come out sticky, pieces of melting gum stringing between my thumb and forefinger, but still I root around. And then I feel it slide between my fingers, cool and crisp, folded in a square: a note.
I’m half-delirious as I open it, but still I don’t really expect it to be from him. My hands begin to shake as I read:
Lena,
I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.
Alex
I don’t remember the run home, and my aunt finds me later half passed out in the hallway, murmuring to myself. She has to put me in a bathtub full of ice to get my temperature down. When I finally come to I can’t find the note anywhere. I realize I must have dropped it, and feel half-relieved and half-disappointed. That evening we read that the Time and Temperature Building registered 102 degrees: the hottest day on record for the summer so far.
My aunt forbids me to run outside for the rest of the summer. I don’t put up a fight. I don’t trust myself, can’t be sure my feet won’t lead me back down to the Governor, to East End Beach, to the labs.
I receive a new date for the evaluations and spend my evenings in front of the mirror rehearsing my answers. My aunt insists on accompanying me to the labs again, but this time I don’t see Hana. I don’t see anyone I recognize. Even the four evaluators are different: floating oval faces, different shades of brown and pink, two-dimensional, like shaded drawings. I am not afraid this time. I don’t feel anything.
I answer all the questions exactly as I should. When I am asked to give my favorite color, for just the briefest, tiniest of seconds my mind flashes on a sky the color of polished silver, and I think I hear a word—gray—whispered quietly into my ear.
I say, “Blue,” and everyone smiles.
I say, “I’d like to study psychology and social regulation.” I say, “I like to listen to music, but not too loudly.” I say, “The definition of happiness is security.” Smiles, smiles, smiles all around, a room full of teeth.