To our left we can see the bright white silhouette of the lab complex and beyond it, distantly, Old Port, all the docks like gigantic wooden centipedes. To our right is Tukey’s Bridge, and the long string of guard huts that runs its length and continues up along the border. Alex catches me looking.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” he says.
The bridge is mottled gray-green, all coated in backsplash and algae, and it looks like it’s keening slightly into the wind. I wrinkle my nose. “It looks kind of like it’s rotting, doesn’t it? My sister always said that someday it would fall into the ocean, just topple right over.”
Alex laughs. “I wasn’t talking about the bridge.” He tilts his chin just slightly, gesturing. “I meant past the bridge.” He pauses for just a fraction of a second. “I meant the Wilds.”
Beyond Tukey’s Bridge is the northern border, located along the far side of Back Cove. As we’re standing there the lights in the guard huts click on, one after another, shining out against the deepening blue sky—a sign that it’s getting late and I should be going home soon. Still, I can’t force myself to leave, even as I feel the water around my chest start to bubble and eddy, the tide turning. Beyond the bridge the lush greens of the Wilds move together in the wind like an endlessly re-arranging wall, a thick wedge of green cutting down toward the bay and separating Portland from Yarmouth. From here we can just make out the barest section of it, an empty place marked with no lights, no boats, no buildings: impenetrable and strange and black. But I know that the Wilds extend back, go on for miles and miles and miles all through the mainland, all across the country, like a monster reaching its tentacles around the civilized parts of the world.
Maybe it was the race, or beating him to the buoys, or the fact that he didn’t criticize me or my family when I told him about my mother, but in that moment the giddiness and happiness is still flowing strong and I feel like I could tell Alex anything, ask him anything. So I say, “Can I tell you a secret?” I don’t wait for him to answer; I don’t have to, and knowing that makes me feel dizzy and careless. “I used to think about it a lot. The Wilds, I mean, and what they were like . . . and the Invalids, whether they really existed.” Out of the corner of my eye I think I see him flinch slightly, so I press on, “I used to sometimes think . . . I used to pretend that maybe my mom didn’t die, you know? That maybe she’d only run away to the Wilds. Not that that would be any better. I guess I just didn’t want her to be gone for good. It was better to imagine her out there somewhere, singing. . . .” I break off, shaking my head, amazed that I feel so comfortable talking to Alex. Amazed, and grateful. “What about you?” I say.
“What about me what?” Alex is watching me with an expression I can’t read. Like I’ve hurt him, almost, but that doesn’t make any sense.
“Did you used to think about going to the Wilds when you were little? Just for fun, I mean, like a game.”
Alex squints, looks away from me, and grimaces. “Yeah, sure. A lot.” He reaches out and slaps the buoys. “None of these. No walls to run into. No eyes. Freedom and space, places to stretch out. I still think about the Wilds.”
I stare at him. Nobody uses words like that anymore: freedom, space. Old words. “Still? Even after this?”
Without meaning to or thinking about it I reach out and brush my fingers, once, against the three-pronged scar on his neck.
He jerks away from my touch as though I’ve scalded him, and I drop my hand, embarrassed.
“Lena . . . ,” he says, in the strangest voice: like my name is a sour thing, a word that tastes bad in his mouth.
I know I shouldn’t have touched him like that. I’ve overstepped my boundaries, and he’s going to remind me of it, of what it means to be uncured. I think I will die of humiliation if he starts to lecture me, so to cover my discomfort I start babbling. “Most cureds don’t think about that kind of stuff. Carol—that’s my aunt—she always said it was a waste of time. She always said there was nothing out there but animals and land and bugs, that all the talk of Invalids was make-believe stuff, kid stuff. She said believing in Invalids is the same thing as believing in werewolves or vampires. Remember how people used to say there were vampires in the Wilds?”
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.