I wake sometime later in ink purple darkness with the sensation of someone in the room, some loosening of the restraints on my wrists. For a second my heart soars and I think, Alex, but then I look up and see Gracie, perched at the head of my bed, working at the cords binding me to the headboard. She is pulling and untwisting and bending forward, occasionally, to chew at the nylon with her teeth, giving the impression of a quiet and industrious animal gnawing its way through a fence.
Just like that, the cord snaps and I’m free. The pain in my shoulders is agonizing; my arms are full of a thousand pinpricks. But still, in that moment of release, I could shout and jump for joy. This is how my mother must have felt when she saw the first shaft of sunlight penetrate the fissure in her stone prison walls.
I sit up, rubbing my wrists. Gracie crouches against the headboard, watching me, and I lean forward and wrap her up in a big hug. She smells like apple soap and a little like sweat. Her skin is hot, and I can’t think of how nervous she must have been, sneaking up to my room. I’m surprised by how thin and fragile she feels, trembling ever so slightly in my arms.
But she’s not fragile—not by a long shot. Gracie is strong, I realize, perhaps stronger than any of us. It occurs to me that for a long time she has been doing her own version of resisting, and the fact that she is a born resister makes me smile into her hair. She’ll be okay. She’ll be more than okay.
I pull away just a little bit so I can whisper in her ear. “Is Uncle William still out there?”
Gracie nods, then places both hands under the side of her head, indicating that William is sleeping.
I lean forward again. “Are there regulators in the house?”
Gracie nods again, holding up two fingers, and my stomach sinks. Not just one regulator—two of them.
I stand up, testing my legs, which are cramping from being immobilized for almost two full days. I tiptoe to the window and open the blinds as quietly as possible, conscious of Uncle William slumbering only ten feet away from me. The sky outside is a rich, dark purple, the color of eggplant, and the street is draped with shadows as though it has been covered over with velvet. Everything is totally still, totally silent, but at the horizon is just the faintest blush, a gradual lightening: Dawn isn’t far off.
I ease open the window carefully, feeling a sudden desire to smell the ocean. There it is: the smell of salt spray and mist, a smell mixed, in my mind, with the idea of constant revolution, an eternal tide. I feel overwhelmingly sad then. I know there’s no way to find Alex in the middle of this enormous sprawling, sleeping city, and no way for me to reach the border on my own. My best bet is to try and make it down to the cliffs, to the ocean, to walk into the water until it closes over my head. I wonder if it will hurt. I wonder if Alex will be thinking of me.
Somewhere deeper in the city a motor is running, a distant, earthy growl, like an animal panting. In a few hours the bright blush of morning will push through all that darkness, and shapes will reassert themselves, and people will wake up and yawn and brew coffee and get ready for work, everything the same as usual. Life will go on. Something aches at the very core of me, something ancient and deep and stronger than words: the filament that joins each of us to the root of existence, that ancient thing unfurling and resisting and grappling, desperately, for a foothold, a way to stay here, breathe, keep going. But I will it away; I will it to curl up again, to let go.
I’d rather die my way than live yours.
The motor is getting louder now, approaching. And now I see a solitary motorcycle, a dark black speck, coming up the street. For a second I pause, fascinated. I’ve only seen a working motorcycle twice before, and despite everything it strikes me as beautiful, the way it weaves up the street, barely glinting, cutting through the dark, like the sleek black head of an otter through the water. And the rider, too, just a dark shape massed on the back of the bike like liquid, like shadow, bent forward, just the crown of the head visible, drawing ever closer, taking on shape and detail.
The crown of the head: like the color of leaves in autumn, burning, burning.
Alex.
I can’t help it: I let out a little cry of excitement.
Outside the bedroom door, there’s a thumping sound, like something banging against the wall. I hear Uncle William mutter, “Shit.”
Alex pulls into the narrow alley that separates our property—a strip of grass, really, a single, anemic tree, and a waist-high chain-link fence—from the next. I wave at him frantically. He cuts the engine of the motorcycle, turning his face upward, toward the house. It’s still very dark, so I’m not sure he can see me.
I risk calling his name softly, into the yard. “Alex!”
He swivels his head toward my voice, a grin splitting his face, spreading his arms as though to say, You knew I would come, didn’t you? It reminds me of how he looked the first time I ever saw him on the balcony in the labs, all twinkle and flash, like a star winking through the darkness just for me.
And in that second I’m so filled with love it’s as though my body transforms into a single blazing beam of light, shooting up, up, up, beyond the room and walls and city: as though everything has dropped away behind us, and Alex and I are alone in the air, and totally free.
Then the door to my bedroom flies open and William starts yelling.
Suddenly the house is noise and light, footsteps and shouting. Uncle William is just standing in the doorway, shouting for Carol, and it’s like in one of those scary movies when a sleeping beast is woken, except now the house is the beast. Feet pound up the stairs—the regulators, I think—and at the end of the hall Carol flies out of her bedroom, her nightgown flapping behind her like a cape, mouth twisted open into one long, indecipherable shout.
I shove against the screen as hard as I can, but it’s stuck. Below me Alex is screaming something too, but I can’t make it out over the motorcycle engine, roaring to life again.
“Stop her!” Carol is yelling, and William comes to life, unfreezing, lunging into the room. Pain burns my shoulder as I shove against the screen again, feel it strain outward for a second and then resist. No time, no time, no time. Any second now William will grab me and it will all be over.
Then Gracie yells, “Wait!”
Everyone freezes just for a second. It is the first and only time Gracie has ever spoken aloud to them. William trips over himself and stares at his granddaughter, slack-jawed. Carol freezes in the doorway, and behind her, Jenny rubs her eyes as though convinced she is dreaming. Even the regulators—both of them—pause at the top of the stairs.
That second is all I need. I give another shove and the screen shudders and pops outward, clattering onto the street. And before I can think about what I’m doing, or the two-story drop to the street below, I’m swinging out of the window and letting go, the air sweeping me up like an embrace so for a moment my heart sings again and I think, I’m flying.
Then I’m hitting the ground with such force that my legs give way and the air gets knocked out of me in a rush. My left ankle twists and wrenching pain goes through my whole body. I skid forward on my hands and knees, rolling against the fence. Above me the shouting has started up again, and a moment later the front door of the house bursts open and two men spill out onto the porch.
“Lena!” That’s Alex’s voice. I look up. He’s leaning over the chain-link fence, extending his hand. I fling one arm upward and he grabs me by the elbow, half dragging me over the fence; a bit of it catches on my tank top, tearing the fabric, nicking my skin. There’s no time to be scared. On the porch there is an explosion of static. One regulator is shouting into his walkie-talkie. The other one is loading a gun. Strangely, in the middle of all the chaos, I have the stupidest thought: I didn’t know that regulators were allowed to carry guns.