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Instantly, her expression softens. “Well, yes, of course. Many of them are younger than you, after all. Not yet eighteen, uncured. ”
I spread my hands as if to say, Of course.
But Mrs. Tulle isn’t done with me, although her voice has lost its edge. “Mrs. Fierstein says you fell asleep in class again. We’re worried, Lena. Do you feel the workload is too much for you? Are you having trouble sleeping at night?”
“I have been a little stressed,” I admit. “It’s all this DFA stuff. ”
Mrs. Tulle raises her eyebrows. “I didn’t realize you were in the DFA. ”
“Division A,” I say. “We’re having a big rally next Friday. Actually, there’s a planning meeting this afternoon in Manhattan. I don’t want to be late. ”
“Of course, of course. I know all about the rally. ” Mrs. Tulle lifts her papers, jogs them against the desk to make sure their edges are aligned, and slides them into a drawer. I can tell I’m off the hook. The DFA is the magic word: Deliria-Free America. Open sesame. She is all kindness now. “It’s very impressive that you’re trying to balance your extracurricular involvements with your schoolwork, Lena. And we support the work the DFA is doing. Just be sure you can find a balance. I don’t want your board scores to suffer because of your social work, however important it is. ”
“I understand. ” I duck my head and look penitent. The new Lena is a good actress.
Mrs. Tulle smiles at me. “Now go on. We don’t want you to be late to your meeting. ”
I stand up, shoulder my tote bag. “Thanks. ”
She inclines her head toward the door, a signal that I can leave.
I walk through the scrubbed linoleum halls: more white walls, more quiet. All the other students have gone home by now.
Then it’s out through the double doors, into the dazzling white landscape: an unexpected March snow, hard, bright light, trees encased in thick black sheaths of ice. I pull my jacket tighter and stomp my way out of the iron gates, onto Eighth Avenue.
This is the girl I am now. My future is here, in this city, full of icicles dangling like daggers getting ready to drop.
There’s more traffic in the sister cities than I’ve ever seen in my life. Hardly anyone had working cars in Portland; in New York, people are richer and can afford the gas. When I first came to Brooklyn, I used to go to Times Square just to watch them, sometimes a dozen at a time, one right after the other.
My bus gets stuck on 31st Street behind a garbage truck that has backed into a soot-colored snowbank, and by the time I get to the Javits Center, the DFA meeting has already begun. The steps are empty, as is the enormous entrance hall, and I can hear the distant, booming feed from a microphone, applause that sounds like a roar. I hurry to the metal detector and unload my bag, then stand with arms and legs splayed while a man sweeps impassively with the wand over my breasts and between my legs. I have long since outgrown being embarrassed by these procedures. Then it’s over to the folding table set just in front of two enormous double doors; behind them, I can hear another smattering of applause, and more microphone-voice, amplified, thunderous, passionate. The words are inaudible.
“Identity card, please,” drones the woman behind the table, a volunteer. I wait while she scans my ID; then she waves me on with a jerk of her head.
The auditorium is enormous. It must fit at least two thousand people and is, as always, almost entirely full. There are a few empty seats off to the very left, close to the stage, and I skirt the periphery of the room, trying to slip into a chair as inconspicuously as possible. I don’t have to worry. Everyone in the room is transfixed by the man behind the podium. The air is charged; I have the sense of thousands and thousands of droplets, suspended, waiting to fall.
“… is not sufficient to ensure our safety,” the man is saying. His voice booms through the room. Under the high fluorescent lights, his hair shines a brilliant black, like a helmet. This is Thomas Fineman, the founder of the DFA. “They talk to us of risk and harm, damages and side effects. But what risk will there be to us as a people, as a society, if we do not act? If we do not insist on protecting the whole, what good is the health of a mere portion?”
A smattering of applause. Thomas adjusts his cuffs, leans closer to the microphone. “This must be our single, unified purpose. This is the point of our demonstration. We ask that our government, our scientists, our agencies, protect us. We ask that they keep faith with their people, keep faith with God and his Order. Did God himself not reject, over thousands of years, millions of species that were faulty or flawed in some way, on his way to a perfect creation? Do we not learn that it is sometimes necessary to purge the weak, and the diseased, in order to evolve to a better society?”
The applause swells, cresting. I clap as well. Lena Morgan Jones claps.
This is my mission, the job that I have been given by Raven: Watch the DFA. Observe. Blend.
They have told me nothing else.
“Finally, we ask the government to stand behind the promise of The Book of Shhh: to ensure the Safety, Health, and Happiness of our cities and our people. ”
I observe:
Rows of high lights.
Rows of half-moon faces, pale, bloated, fearful, and grateful—the faces of the cured.
Gray carpet, rubbed bare by the pressure of so many feet.
A fat man to my right, wheezing, pants belted high over his paunch.
A small area cordoned off next to the stage, three chairs, only one of them occupied.
A boy.
Of all the things I see, the boy is the most interesting. The other things—the carpet, the faces—are the same at every meeting of the DFA. Even the fat man. Sometimes he is fat, sometimes he is thin, sometimes it is a woman instead. But it is all the same—they are always all the same.
The boy’s eyes are dark blue, a stormy color. His hair is caramel blond and wavy, and hangs to his mid-jawline. He is wearing a collared red polo shirt, short-sleeved despite the weather, and pressed dark jeans. His loafers are new, and he also wears a shiny silver watch around one wrist. Everything about him says rich. His hands are folded in his lap. Everything about him says right, too. Even his unblinking expression as he watches his father onstage is perfection and practice, the embodiment of a cured’s controlled detachment.
Of course he isn’t cured, not yet. This is Julian Fineman, Thomas Fineman’s son, and although he is eighteen, he has not yet had the procedure. The scientists have so far refused to treat him. Next Friday, the same day as the big planned DFA rally in Times Square, that will change. He will have his procedure, and he will be cured.
Possibly. It is also possible he will die, or that his mental functioning will be so severely damaged, he might as well be dead. But he will still have the procedure. His father insists on it. Julian insists on it.
I have never seen him in person before, although I have seen his face on posters and in the back of pamphlets. Julian is famous. He is a martyr to the cause, a hero to the DFA, and president of the organization’s youth division.
He is taller than I expected. And better-looking, too. The photos have not done justice to the angle of his jaw, or the broadness of his shoulders: a swimmer’s build.
Onstage, Thomas Fineman is wrapping up his portion of the speech. “We do not deny the dangers of insisting that the cure be administered earlier,” he is saying, “but we assert that the dangers of delaying the cure are even worse. We are willing to accept the consequences. We are brave enough to sacrifice a few for the good of the whole. ” He pauses while again the auditorium is filled with applause, tilting his head appreciatively until the roar fades away. The light winks off his watch: He and his son have identical models.
“Now, I’d like to introduce you to an individual who embodies all the values of the DFA. This young man understands better than anyone the importance of insisting on a cure, even for those who are young, even for those who might be endangered by
its administration. He understands that in order for the United States to prosper, in order for all of us to live happily and in safety, it is necessary to occasionally sacrifice the needs of the individual. Sacrifice is safety, and health is only in the whole. Members of the DFA, please welcome to the stage my son, Julian Fineman. ”
Clap, clap, clap goes Lena, along with the rest of the crowd. Thomas leaves the stage as Julian takes it. They pass each other on the stairs, give each other a brief nod. They do not touch.
Julian has brought notes, which he sets on the podium in front of him. For a moment, the auditorium is filled with the amplified sounds of rustling paper. Julian’s eyes scan the crowd, and for a second they land on me. He half opens his mouth and my heart stops: It is as though he has just recognized me. Then his eyes continue to sweep, and my heart comes hammering back against my ribs. I’m just being paranoid.
Julian fumbles with the microphone to adjust it to his height. He is even taller than his father. It’s funny that they look so different: Thomas, tall and dark and fierce-looking, a hawk; his son, tall and broad and fair, with those improbably blue eyes. Only the hard angle of their jaws is the same.
He runs a hand through his hair, and I wonder whether he is nervous. But when he begins speaking, his voice is full and steady.
“I was nine when I was told I was dying,” he says plainly, and again I feel that expectation hanging in the air, shimmering droplets, as though everyone has just leaned forward a fraction of an inch. “That’s when the seizures began. The first one was so bad I nearly bit off my tongue; during the second seizure, I cracked my head against the fireplace. My parents were concerned. ”
Something wrenches in my stomach—deep inside, underneath the layers I’ve built over the past six months, past the fake Lena with her shell and her ID cards and the three-pointed scar behind her ear. This is the world we live in, a world of safety and happiness and order, a world without love.
A world where children crack their heads on stone fireplaces and nearly gnaw off their tongues and the parents are concerned. Not heartbroken, frantic, desperate. Concerned, as they are when you fail mathematics, as they are when they are late to pay their taxes.
“The doctors told me a tumor was growing in my brain and causing the seizures. The operation to remove it would be life-threatening. They doubted I would make it. But if they did not operate—if they let the tumor grow and expand—I had no chance at all. ”
Julian pauses, and I think I see him shoot a momentary glance in his father’s direction. Thomas Fineman has taken the seat his son vacated, and is sitting, legs crossed, face expressionless.
“No chance at all,” Julian repeats. “And so the sick thing, the growth, had to be excised. It had to be lifted away from the clean tissue. Otherwise, it would only spread, turning the remaining healthy tissue sick. ”
Julian shuffles his notes and keeps his eyes locked to the pages in front of him as he reads out, “The first operation was a success, and for a while, the seizures stopped. Then, when I was twelve, they returned. The cancer was back, this time pressing at the base of my brain stem. ”
His hands tighten on the sides of the podium and release. For a moment, there is silence. Someone in the audience coughs. Droplets, droplets: We are all identical drips and drops of people, hovering, waiting to be tipped, waiting for someone to show us the way, to pour us down a path.