ten

I can still feel the warmth of her neck. The smoothness of her hands is a ghost feeling on mines. I don't know how I got to the apartment last night; all I know is that I must have walked the whole way there. It is only when I am in front of the apartment complex that I realized where I was.

Something has changed. That night although I may have not known it, something has changed. Looking at my room, there is a thought that creeps in. It is something that I haven't thought of in a while, but now I have to come to terms with it. Everything that is in this room, everything that defines me, is a lie, it belong to Alex Warren, who lives with his Uncle Gabriel, and Aunt Beatrice. He studies at the University of Portland, and works at the Labs as a part-time security. His area of study is to become a medical technician. He has no brothers, or any sisters. He is paired with Eloise Kurtz who is studying to become a school teacher. All of it is a lie, and as I see the moon now, it comes to mind.

Two more years, then I would have to leave.

Closing my eyes I fight it, the necessity to do what is right, what is right for the cause. I don't know if I believe in that anymore. Finally after a couple of hours, or trying to figure out what to do, one thing comes to mind. The only person I trust with this would be Beatrice. I guess I will see her tomorrow.

The night is filled with flying clocks, and the loud ticking that drives me to run, drives me to try and hide. The nightmares of being captured in an hour glass, feeling the fear of having sand being poured on my head. The nightmare of being buried alive, the pounding of my hands against the glass, screaming for help that doesn't come, that is what causes me to jump out and see that the day is already started.

Pulling my t-shirt and jeans on, I grab my shoes and run downstairs. I have to find a solution, because I am running out of time. The peddling to Beatrice's house couldn't go any faster, I am peddling like there is a fire happening, but realizing that it is the fire that is burning inside of me. The blur of people as I pedal through side streets and sidewalks, shouting something or another that of course I ignore, as it doesn't really matter, nothing really matters.

She is outside watering the plants when I finally make it to the house out of breath.

She places the water pot down and looks at me.

"Is everything okay," she says calmly looking from left and right to make sure no one is watching.

"Can…I…talk…to…you?" I say in between breathes.

She walks me inside and goes to the kitchen grabbing a glass of water. Handing it to me, I chug it down, and finally when I am able to catch my breath, she sits down and with her hands folded on her lap waits for me to speak.

"Any word?" I say.

She knows exactly what I am referring to, and of course knows that information from the outside is sparse. She nods her head no. We have had a couple conversations about this, the need for me to escape, the need for me to leave.

"What has changed?" She says cautiously. She notices something different, and looks at me scanning everything around me. Looking shyly down, she finally realizes why.

"Does she know?" She pauses.

I look at her, and know what she means. It is something that I don't know how she would react.

I nod no.

"It is a risk," she says. "It could be that she accepts you, and then the decision has to be to leave Portland together."

There is an 'or' I know there is. Choice always has the desire outcome and of course the thing you fear the most. The silence between us seems like it is eternal but of course it is only a second or so.

"Or she could reject you, and in order to protect yourself and the cause, you would have to leave that day, because I have seen it, where they are turned in," she says. "There is a real risk here, you could be captured, and you have seen where they take…"

Her voice trails off as her eyes begin to water. Anyone who is caught being a sympathizer or worst caught being an invalid, are immediately taken to the Crypts. It is the firs time, that I know the cost of it, the cost of being me. I always hated that word, invalid. Like everything else in life was valid and because I had no choice of where I was born, I will forever be invalid.

The anger begins to rise in me, because this world, this government believes that my life shouldn't have happened, that the love my parents shared was a disease and I should have never been born.

Both her hands cup mines and I look down.

"The question is," she says leaning in to whisper. "Is she worth it?"

She stands and taps me on the shoulder as she walks into the kitchen. One of the fail safe for anyone who is in the rebellion is that their past information is changed. So Alex Warren lived with their Uncle Gabriel and Beatrice while in High School. When the next assignment came along and I enrolled in the University of Portland, our friends at C.O.R.E. changed the past address of my previous home to another one that doesn't exist. They have been though to torture this information out of those they have caught, the names of sympathizers in the city of Portland, is much more valuable than the life of an invalid.

She walks back with the book of Shhh.

"Thank you so much, but I don't think…" standing up putting up my hands in protest. The last thing I need is a lesson from that book, if it could be called that.

"Please," she says softly. "I want to show you something."

Giving in, I sit back down and she places the book in my lap.

"Turn to the section of 'Legends and Grievances'," she says.

"What does that have to do.." I start to say before I am interrupted.

"Please?" She pleads.

Turning the pages through the many lies that are all wrapped up in this book. From the past, the present and even the future of life, that is unsure, and unfulfilling. The first day she gave me this book, I burned it. I couldn't believe that someone would write something like this. I always believed that books took your mind places that you only wish you could go. But this book, all I could see is the destruction of everything, the lies, and the manipulation of it all.

Turning to the chapter of legends, she tells me to stop at a specific page.

'The Story of Solomon'

"You know this story?" She asks. Looking at it, how couldn't I, they only repeated it over and over in high school.

"Yeah," I say.

"The story listed here isn't really how it happened," she says handing me a book, a very old book. Looking at it is very old and very delicate. The spine of the book has almost completely fallen apart and there is tape that is holding it together.

"Turn to the book of 1 Kings 3, and look for a sub heading called 'A Wise Ruling,' she says. Scanning the book, I read the Story of King named Solomon, just like in the book of Shhh. The King had two women approach him and tell him, that the baby was each their own, just like the book of Shhh. This King though in this very old book, did something that the other King didn't, he saved the baby.

I pass my hand through the pages, making it to the edge and then to the cover closing it. Looking up at her, I hand the book back. She gives me a small half smile and then she raises a hand and touches me on the cheek.

I walk out of the house and getting on my bike, begin to slowly pedal towards the coast. The day is just so beautiful that I am not in a hurry to get there.

The whole day watching the ocean waves come in and out, is just as fulfilling as spending time doing something else. The light from the day begins to crest and the birds begin to fly less and less. Turning around I see her coming down to the beach.

"Hi," I say. "I'm glad you came."

Dropping her shoes she looks at me.

"I said I would, didn't I?"

She definitely doesn't hold back, a firecracker.

"I just meant…that you stood me up last time," I say looking at her with a smile. She lets out a small smile looking down at the sand I say. "Sit?"

We both sit down on the sand, and the wind of the waves just brings a smile to my face. My sands dig into the sand, the one of the smallest pleasures that the Wilds do not have. Most of the coastline has been taken by all the border cities, the final insult to it all, freedom without ever see the horizon. These are the moments that just taking in the beauty of the simple things.

I feel a shell in my hand and tossing it into the ocean coast; I turn slightly to see her with her knees up to her chest. She seems almost as if she is happy for a second.

"Tide's going out," I say to her.

"I know," she says. "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 had always found it funny how easily you pick up on the smallest things when you are paying attention, well at least I'd like to think so.

'Just gets left behind when the water goes out.'

There is some sadness in that, being left behind. The way she says it almost as if she knows what it feels like.

"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."

Such a beautiful thought that she would consider the uncured places beautiful and peaceful, it brings me hope that I could probably tell her. There is a knot though in my heart that is stopping me, it is the thought that she may not want to be with me if she knew. It stops me from saying anything, because how would I even begin to say it.

"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?"

Every time she speaks of her mother, it is like the light disappears, like a dull old wound that never truly healed. In her words I can hear the longing through for the past to be revived.

"So what happened?" I say looking at her finally meeting her eyes. "You don't come here anymore? You mom lose her taste for the ocean?"

Her eyes move from mines and looks towards the horizon, in the same way that I would do. It is weird but I only know her, really know for a couple for a couple of days and yet I feel like we have always known each other. Like we were separated long ago and just now finally found each other.

"She died," she says lowly. "She killed herself. When I was six."

It is there at that moment that I understand the pain of that lost never truly left. Every time she mentions her mother it is one of those subjects that causes her defenses to come down, and she becomes this vulnerable person.

"I am sorry," I say lowly, wishing I could do more to comfort her.

"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."

She is like me. Alone in a world that has taken everything that made her smile. I understand why I feel so close to her, because she has had the same pain as I have had. I never got to know my own father, and truly never really knew my own mother. The only thing I know is what I see, and what I have experienced.

We both hold onto the emotion that our lives have given us. I wonder if pain could be taken the same way society says love can be. I guess like her, I don't want them to take it, because it is like taking them away from me. I have heard it happen though, procedures that do not work. It isn't because the scientist didn't do it right, it was because something inside of them didn't want to let go.

"I didn't know there was something wrong with her. I didn't know she was sick. I was too young to understand." She says. "If I had known, maybe I could have…"

It isn't her fault. I want to grab her hands and tell her that nothing was wrong, she wasn't sick, and that it is the whole society that is wrong. The memories that we have make us who we are today. I never knew my mother, or met my father, but I know that although they suffered greatly, they gave their lives so that I may live and now it is what drives me. The memories of them, of how I would like to remember them are what I keep close to my heart.

I turn to her, and see her eyes, the sadness. I reach out and touch her on her elbow ever so lightly. She turns and looks at me.

"I'll race you," I say with a smile.

She looks at me, then her sadness slowly disappears and there is the light in her eyes that I am totally captivated by. A second passes and I extend my hand to help her up. She unclasps her hands from her knees and then I feel it again, the softness of her hands. The warmth of her skin as her hand slides into mines, small enough to be enveloped by mines.

It is okay I want to say, but instead all I can think of is squeezing her hand, to help reassure her.

Her voice has a small touch of happiness in it.

"Only if you've got a think for total humiliation," she says with smugness.

"So you think you can beat me?" I say returning her smugness with my own.

"I don't think. I know." She retorts.

"We'll see about that." I tip my head towards the horizon. "First one to the buoys, then?"

She looks a little shocked, but intrigued. "You want to race into the bay?"

"Scared?" I ask smiling.

"I'm not scared, I'm just -"

"Good." I say brushing her hair that has fallen over her shoulder. "Then how about a little less conversation and a little more – Go!"

Turning and digging my feet into the sand and making my way into the coast. I am almost touching the water when I hear behind my shoulder.

"No fair! I wasn't ready!" she yells.

The water seems to have followed our lead and begins to retreat running in front of us. I can hear her running behind me and know that pretty soon she will catch me. I maybe fast, but Lena has been running all of her life, this is where she is the happiest, and where she is the best.

Scooping up some sand I turn and see she has almost caught up. Throwing the sand that I scooped up, she lets out a playful shriek and yells at me.

"You are such a cheater!"

Laughing, I yell back. "You can't cheat if there are no rules."

That is when I feel the cold water splashed all over my back and have to jerk to one side. The water isn't warm at all, it is icy cold. Hearing her laugh, and I know the answer to what Beatrice asked me before.

'Is she worth it?'

The buoys are a couple of feet ahead of me, and glancing back I see that I am going to win. Turning back I reach out to touch the buoys and feel her arms around my waist taking me under the water. Coming back to the surface, spitting out water, I hear her yell out.

"I won."

"You cheated," I say looping my arms over the buoys, looking at her lifting her arms cheering to herself.

"No rules," she says, "so no cheating."

Turning to her, "I let you win then."

"Yeah right," she says splashing me. I put up my hands trying to shield the water coming to my face. "You're just a sore loser."

"I don't have much practice at it." I say.

"Whatever," she says lying right next me on the buoy line. Her smile and her laughter still ring through my mind. This is a memory that I hope that she would remember, because it is one that I will always remember.

She looks towards the Old Port, a time before the borders, to a time where like her sand castles it was beautiful and there was no cure to be needed because there was no disease. The sand castles that were once made of brick and stone, not easily taken by the waters of this world, not easily forgotten like the shells left behind. Probably she feels it too, the longing to be free, the desire to see what is out there. It could be that she would accept me.

"Pretty isn't it?" I say.

She looks back towards the horizon and wrinkle her 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."

I let out a laugh. "I wasn't talking about the bridge." I point my chin towards the land beyond the bridge. "I meant past the bridge…I meant the Wilds."

"Can I tell you a secret?" she asks. "I used to think about it a lot. The Wilds, I mean, and what they were like…and the Invalids, whether they really existed."

The word 'Invalid', causes me to flinch.

"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…"

It is hope. Although it would mean that she would have been abandoned, it is hope that she wishes her mother happiness instead of death. It reminds me of the Story of Solomon, the unselfishness of the child true mother, but this time, it is Lena's unselfishness wishing that her mother be alive, and the hurt of being abandoned, than having her mother dead, and gone.

It finally hits me. My whole telling her about me, is because I am selfish, I don't want to lose her. She doesn't see me though, not really. Truly, she is a better person than me. All I was think about was me, about feeling the same way I felt yesterday. It is the first time that I allow the thoughts of it truly penetrate. Love being a disease causing me to act differently, think differently. If I told her, would she love me?

What about you?" she asks, which causes me to think.

"What about me what?" I say.

"Did you used to think about going to the Wilds when you were little? Just for fun, I mean, like a game."

A game? Just for fun? I was only deluding myself. She thinks I am one of them, a brainless empty shell, incapable of feeling, incapable of love. Is it that?

"Yeah sure. A lot." Slapping 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."

"Still?" Even after this?" she says reaching out and touching the scar behind my ear. Pulling back, I look at her.

She deserves to know. I don't want to pretend anymore. Beatrice told me that it was a risk, but what is this, love without risk. I can't stand lying to her. Looking past her, I see the city of Portland, the society that has taken my father, my mother, people I have never knew, people that I could never truly be loved by, and now, they did it again. I let them do it again.

"Lena…" I start to say before I am interrupted by Lena, who is obviously nervous. She begins to babble non-stop.

"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 talks 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?"

Fantasy. It is what she sees life outside.

"Lena, I have to tell you something," I say a little bit more loudly so that she would stop.

"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'm not scared though. My procedure's coming up. Sixty days. It's dorky huh? That I count. But I can't wait."

"Lena," I say louder causing her to stop. "Listen to me. I'm not who – I'm not who you think I am."

I can feel my heart beating faster and faster. I can see her eyes widen gradually. Can she see my heart beating outside my chest, or is that just me trying to calm myself down.

"What do you mean?" she says shyly.

Taking a deep breath, I finally come out and say it.

"I was never cured," I say. She closes her eyes and I can see that she doesn't really get what I am saying. It wasn't what I was expecting. There are two reactions, the voice echoes in my mind, one is that she will accept it and then you will have to leave…

I push myself to not think about the second, but it is hard to keep it from coming to mind.

"I never had the procedure." I say plainly again.

"You mean it didn't work?" She says trying to cover up the confusion probably. "You had the procedure and it didn't work? Like what happened to my mom?"

"No, Lena. I -" start and stop, impossible. How do I say it, so she wouldn't hate me?

The word continues to come back to me over and over. There is any way of saying it without saying everything. She deserves that, after all that she has gone through, she deserves to know everything.

'Trust.'

"I don't know how to explain." I finish.

"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 -" she says with retreating from me.

"No." I say trying to tell her I am not sick. That there is no sickness that it has been all a lie by the government, by everyone. That I am just someone who likes her, who wants to be with her.

She continue to retreat slowly, pretending that I cannot notice it. I reach out to try to stop her from leaving. What can I say? What can I do? The way her eyes look at me, almost as if she is going to die by being next to me. Like everything, the dancing, the laughing, the race through the ocean, meant nothing, because now I am the cause of her mother committing suicide.

"I'm telling you I was never cured. Never paired, or matched, anything. I was never even evaluated." I say calmly, like a person trying to convince someone that they are sane, when the other is looking at them like their not.

"Impossible," she says shaking her head. "Impossible. You have the scars."

"Scars," I say. "Just scars. Not the scars."

I turn my head letting her see it.

"Three tiny scars, an inverted triangle. Easy to replicate. With a scalpel, a penknife, anything," I finish.

She closes her eyes; I can see the color vanish from her face. It is a blow to her to know that I am not what she thinks I am. That I am not part of the society that she believes in, it is more than what she can bare.

"How…?" she says after a second or so.

"You have to understand. Lena, I'm trusting you. Do you see that?" I say trying to calm her. "I didn't mean to -"

I stop myself from saying that 'I didn't mean to fall in love, I didn't mean to feel this way,' but I don't, I can't.

"I didn't want to lie to you." I finally say instead, covering the fact that I am still a coward.

"How?" she says again, louder now.

Looking down at the ocean waves. Coming in and out, and finally realize that I too have abandoned her. That it will be like the second one, she will reject me.

"I'm not from here," I say. "I mean, I wasn't born in Portland. Not exactly."

"Where are you from?" she says, her eyes holding back the emotion that I already see on her face, fear and disappointment.

I tilt my head back and point towards the imaginary line past the bridge, past the islands. "There."

"An…Invalid," she says. "You're an…Invalid."

The word, like scrapping nails on a chalkboard. An invalid, a person who is a ghost person from their lives, a mistake for even being born.

"I've always hated that word," I say looking back at her. The look she shows is one of disgust. It is what over and I have lost the girl that I danced with yesterday. "I suppose…you believe in vampires and werewolves, too?"

Her breathing deepens, and finally her hand lets go of the buoy line and the wave takes her back to shore. I try to grab her, and she twists away from me.

"Don't," she says. "Don't you dare touch me."

"Lena, I swear. I didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't want to lie to you."

"Why are you doing this?" she says. "What do you want from me?"

"Want…?" I say shaking my head. It is clear she didn't know, she didn't feel the same way. It was a lie, I was reading the her wrong.

I place my hands on her shoulder, steadying her.

"Lena. I like you, okay? That's it. That's all. I like you," I say resigning to sharing my heart and letting her stomp on it, let her finally reject it.

The wave comes and finally she stumbles backwards, running back towards the shore.

"Lena!" I say over and over trying to get her to look back, but she doesn't, she moves forward. I start to move after her, but I know, that although I am not tired, something inside is broken, and I cannot muster the will to try and catch her.

I have lost her.