“I still don’t see how you know all this,” I say. “I mean, how did you guys figure it out? Did you just keep running people at the fence, to see whether they got fried in certain places?”
Alex cracks a tiny smile. “Trade secrets. But I can tell you there were some observational experiments involving wild animals.” He raises his eyebrows. “Ever eaten fried beaver?”
“Ew.”
“Or fried skunk?”
“Now you’re just trying to gross me out.”
There are more of us than you think: That’s another one of Alex’s favorite expressions, his constant refrain. Sympathizers everywhere, uncured and cured, positioned as regulators, police officers, government officials, scientists. That’s how we’ll get past the guard huts, he tells me. One of the most active sympathizers in Portland is matched with the guard who works the night shift at the northern tip of Tukey’s Bridge, right where we’ll be crossing. She and Alex have developed a sign. On nights he wants to cross over, he leaves a certain flyer in her mailbox, the stupid photocopied kind that takeout delis and dry cleaners give out. This one advertises for a free eye exam with Dr. Swild (which seems pretty obvious to me, but Alex says that resisters and sympathizers live with so much stress they need to be allowed their little private jokes) and whenever she finds it she makes sure to put an extra-large dose of Valium in the coffee she makes for her husband to drink during his shift.
“Poor guy,” Alex says, grinning. “No matter how much coffee he drinks, he just can’t seem to stay awake.” I can tell how much the resistance means to him, and how proud he is of the fact that it is there, healthy, thriving, shooting its arms through Portland. I try to smile, but my cheeks feel stiff. It still blows my mind that everything I’ve been taught is so wrong, and it’s still hard for me to think of the sympathizers and resisters as allies and not enemies.
But sneaking over the border will make me one of them beyond a shadow of a doubt. At the same time, I can’t seriously consider backing out now. I want to go; and if I’m honest with myself, I became a sympathizer a long time ago, when Alex asked me whether I wanted to meet him at Back Cove and I said yes. I seem to have only hazy memories of the girl I was before then—the girl who always did what she was told and never lied and counted the days until her procedure with feelings of excitement, not horror and dread. The girl who was afraid of everyone and everything. The girl who was afraid of herself.
When I get home from the store the next day, I make a big point of asking Carol if I can borrow her cell phone. Then I text Hana: Sleepover 2nite w A? This has been our code recently whenever I need her to cover for me. We’ve told Carol we’ve been spending a lot of time with Allison Doveney, who recently graduated with us. The Doveneys are even richer than Hana’s family, and Allison is a stuck-up bitch. Hana originally protested against using her as the mysterious “A,” on the grounds that she didn’t even like to think about pretend hanging out with her, but I convinced her in the end. Carol would never call the Doveneys to check up on me. She’d be too intimidated, and probably embarrassed—my family is impure, tainted by Marcia’s husband’s defection and, of course, by my mother, and Mr. Doveney is the president and founder of the Portland chapter of the DFA, Deliria-Free America. Allison Doveney could hardly stand to look at me when we were in school together, and way back in elementary school, after my mother died, she asked to switch desks to be farther away from me, telling the teacher that I smelled like something dying.
Hana’s response comes almost immediately. U got it. C u tonight.
I wonder what Allison would think if she knew I’d been using her as cover for my boyfriend. She would freak out for sure, and the thought makes me smile.
A little before eight o’clock I come downstairs with my overnight bag slung conspicuously over my shoulder. I’ve even let a little bit of my pajamas poke out. I’ve packed the whole bag exactly as I would have if I were really going to Hana’s. When Carol gives me a flitting smile and tells me to have a good time, I feel a brief pang of guilt. I lie so often and so easily now.