I had the fantasy only a few times before I realized how wrong it was. If my parents had escaped to the Wilds it would make them sympathizers, resisters. It was better that they were dead. Besides, I learned pretty quickly that my fantasies about the Wilds were just that—make- believe, little kiddie stuff. The Invalids have nothing, no way of trading or getting red patchwork quilts or chairs, or anything else for that matter. Rachel once told me that they must live like animals, filthy, hungry, desperate. She says that’s why the government doesn’t bother doing anything about them, doesn’t even acknowledge their existence. They’ll die out soon enough, all of them, freeze or starve or just let the disease run its course, turn them against each other, have them raging and fighting and clawing one another’s eyes out.
She said as far as we know that’s already happened—she said the Wilds might be empty now, dark and dead, full of only the rustle and whispers of animals.
She’s probably right about the other stuff—about the Invalids living like animals—but she’s obviously wrong about that. They’re alive, and out there, and they don’t want us to forget it. That’s why they stage the demonstrations. That’s why they let the cows loose in the labs.
I’m not nervous until I get to East End Beach. Even though the sun is sinking behind me, it lights the water white and makes everything shimmer. I shield my eyes against the glare and spot Alex down by the water, a long black brushstroke against all that blue. I flash back to last night, to the fingers of one of his hands just pressed against my lower back, so lightly it was like I was only dreaming them—the other hand cupping mine, dry and reassuring as a piece of wood warmed by the sun. We really danced, too, the kind of dancing that people do at their wedding after the pairing has been formalized, but better somehow, looser and less unnatural.
He has his back toward me, facing the ocean, and I’m glad. I feel self- conscious as I plod down the rickety, salt-warped stairs that lead from the parking lot to the beach, pausing to unlace and kick off my sneakers, which I carry in one hand. The sand is warm on my bare feet as I set off toward him.
An old man is coming up from the water, carrying a fishing pole. He shoots me a suspicious glance, then turns to stare at Alex, then looks at me again and frowns. I open my mouth to say, “He’s cured,” but the man just grunts at me as he walks past, and I can’t imagine he’d bother to call the regulators, so I don’t say anything. Not that we’d get in trouble trouble if we were caught—that’s what Alex meant when he said, “I’m safe”—but I don’t want to answer a lot of questions and have my ID number run through SVS and all of that.
Besides, if the regulators did haul ass all the way out to East End Beach to check out “suspicious behavior,” only to discover it was some cured taking pity on a seventeen-year-old nobody, they’d definitely be annoyed—and guaranteed to take it out on someone.
Taking pity. I push the words out of my mind quickly, surprised by how difficult it is to even think them. All day I tried not to worry about why on earth Alex would be so nice to me. I even imagined—for one brief, stupid second— that maybe after my evaluation I’d get matched with him. I’d had to shunt that thought aside too. Alex has already received his printed sheet, his recommended matches—he would have gotten it even before his cure, directly after the evaluations. He’s not married yet because he’s still in school, end of story. But he will be, as soon as he finishes.
Of course, then I started wondering about the kind of girl he’s been matched with—someone like Hana, I decided, with bright blond hair and an irritating ability to make even pulling her hair into a ponytail look graceful, like a choreographed dance.
There are four other people on the beach: a mother and a child, one hundred feet away, the mother sitting in a faded fabric folding chair, staring blankly toward the horizon, while the child—who is probably no more than three— toddles in the waves, gets knocked over, lets out a shriek (of pain? pleasure?) and struggles back to her feet. Beyond them a couple is walking, a man and a woman, not touching. They must be married. Both have their hands clasped in front of them, and both look straight ahead, not talking—and not smiling, either, but calm, as though they are each surrounded by an invisible protective bubble.
Then I’m coming up behind Alex and he turns and sees me, smiles. The sun catches his hair, turns it momentarily white. Then it smolders back to its normal golden-brown color.
“Hi,” he says. “I’m glad you came.”
I feel shy again, stupid holding my ratty shoes in one hand. I can feel my cheeks getting hot, so I look down, drop my shoes, turn them over once in the sand with my toe. “I said I would, didn’t I?” I don’t mean for the words to come out so harshly and I wince, mentally cursing myself. It’s like there’s a filter set up in my brain, except instead of making things better, it twists everything around so what comes out of my mouth is totally wrong, totally different from what I was thinking.
Thankfully, Alex laughs. “I just meant that you stood me up last time,” he says. He nods toward the sand. “Sit?”
“Sure,” I say, relieved. I feel much less awkward once we’re both settled in the sand. There’s less chance of falling over or doing something dumb. I draw my legs up to my chest, resting my chin on my knees. Alex leaves a good two or three feet of space between us.
We sit in silence for a few minutes. At first I’m searching frantically for something to say. Every beat of silence seems to stretch into an infinity, and I’m pretty sure Alex must think I’m a mute. But then he flicks a half- buried seashell out of the sand and hurls it into the ocean, and I realize he’s not uncomfortable at all. After that I relax. I’m even glad for the silence.
Sometimes I feel like if you just watch things, just sit still and let the world exist in front of you—sometimes I swear that just for a second time freezes and the world pauses in its tilt. Just for a second. And if you somehow found a way to live in that second, then you would live forever.
“Tide’s going out,” Alex says. He chucks another seashell in a high arc, and it just hits the break.
“I know.” The ocean is leaving a litter of pulpy green seaweed, twigs, and scrabbling hermit crabs in its wake, and the air smells tangy with salt and fish. A seagull pecks its way across the beach, blinking, leaving tiny thatched claw prints. “My mom used to bring me here when I was little. We’d walk out a little bit at low tide—as far as you can go, anyway. Crazy stuff gets stranded on the sand—horseshoe crabs and giant clams and sea anemone. Just gets left behind when the water goes out. She taught me to swim here too.” I’m not sure why the words bubble out of me then, why I have the sudden urge to talk. “My sister used to stay on the shore and build sand castles, and we would pretend that they were real cities, like we’d swum all the way to the other side of the world, to the uncured places. Except in our games they weren’t diseased at all, or destroyed, or horrible. They were beautiful and peaceful, and built of glass and light and things.”
Alex stays silent, tracing shapes in the sand with a finger. But I can tell he’s listening.
The words tumble on: “I remember my mom would bounce me in the water on her hip. And then one time she just let me go. I mean, not for real real. I had those little inflatable thing-ies on my arms. But I was so scared I started bawling my head off. I was only a few years old but I remember it, I swear I do. I was so relieved when she scooped me back up. But—but disappointed, too. Like I’d lost the chance at something great, you know?”
“So what happened?” Alex tips his head to look at me.
“You don’t come here anymore? Your mom lose her taste for the ocean?”
I look away, toward the horizon. The bay is relatively calm today. Flat, all shades of blue and purple as it draws away from the beach with a low sucking sound.
Harmless. “She died,” I say, surprised by how difficult it is to say. Alex is quiet next to me and I rush on, “She killed herself. When I was six.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, so low and quiet I almost miss it.
“My dad died when I was eight months old. I don’t remember him at all. I think—I think it kind of broke her, you know? My mom, I mean. She wasn’t cured. It didn’t work. I don’t know why. She had the procedure three separate times, but it didn’t . . . it didn’t fix her.” I pause, sucking in a breath, afraid to look at Alex, who is as still and silent next to me as a statue, as a carved piece of shadow. Still, I can’t stop speaking. I realize, strangely, that I’ve never told the story of my mother before. I’ve never had to. Everyone around me, everyone in school, all my neighbors and my aunts’ friends—they all knew about my family already, and my family’s shameful secrets. That’s why they always looked at me pityingly, from the corner of their eyes.
That’s why for years I rode a wave of whispering into every room, was slapped with sudden silence when I entered— silence and guilty, startled faces. Even Hana knew before she and I were desk partners in second grade. I remember because she found me in the bathroom stall, crying into a piece of paper towel, stuffing my mouth with it so no one would hear, and she kicked the door right open with a foot and stood there staring. Is it because of your mom? she said, the first words she ever spoke to me.
“I didn’t know there was something wrong with her. I didn’t know she was sick. I was too young to understand.” I keep my eyes focused on the horizon, a solid thin line, taut as a tightrope. The bay edges farther from us, and as always I have the same fantasy I did as a child: that maybe it won’t come back, maybe the whole ocean will disappear forever, drawn back across the surface of the earth like lips retracting over teeth, revealing the cool, white hardness underneath, the bleached bone. “If I had known, maybe I could have . . .”
At the last second my voice falters and I can’t say any more, can’t finish the sentence. Maybe I could have stopped it. It’s a sentence I’ve never spoken before, never even allowed myself to think. But the idea is there, looming up solid and unavoidable, a sheer rock face: I could have stopped it. I should have stopped it.
We sit in silence. At some point during my story the mother and child must have packed up and gone home; Alex and I are all alone on the beach. Now that the words aren’t bubbling, rushing out of me, I can’t believe how much I’ve shared with a next-to-perfect stranger— and a boy, no less. I’m suddenly, itchingly, squirmingly embarrassed. I’m desperate for something else to say— something harmless, about the tide or the weather—but as usual my mind goes totally blank now that I actually need it to function. I’m afraid to look at Alex. When I finally work up the courage to shoot him a tiny sidelong glance, he’s sitting, staring out at the bay. His face is completely unreadable except for a tiny muscle, which flutters in and out at the base of his jaw. My heart sinks.