In the years before the cure was perfected, it was offered on a trial basis only. The risks attached to it were great. At the time one out of every hundred patients suffered a fatal loss of brain function after the procedure.
Nonetheless, people swarmed the hospitals in record number, demanding to be cured; they camped outside the laboratories for days at a time, hoping to secure a procedural slot.
These years are also known as the Miracle Years because of the quantity of lives that were healed and made whole, and the number of souls brought out of sickness.
And if there were people who died on the operating table, they died for a good cause, and no one can lament them. . . .
—From “The Miracle Years: The Early Science of the Cure,” A Brief History of the United States of America, by E. D. Thompson, p. 87
When I get into the house it’s even hotter than usual: a wet, suffocating wall of heat. Carol must be cooking. The house smells like browned meat and spices—mixed with the normal summer smells of sweat and mildew, it’s kind of nauseating. For the past few weeks we’ve been eating dinner out on the porch: runny macaroni salads, cold cuts, and sandwiches from my uncle’s deli counter.
Carol pokes her head out of the kitchen as I go by. Her face is red and she’s sweating big-time. Dark swaths of sweat have left pit stains on her pale blue blouse, navy crescents.
“Better get changed,” she says. “Rachel and David will be here any second.”
I’d completely forgotten my sister and her husband were coming over for dinner. Normally I see Rachel four or five times a year, tops. When I was younger, especially after Rachel had first moved out of Carol’s house, I used to count the days until she would come and see me. I don’t think I fully understood then about the procedure and what it meant for her—for me—for us. I knew that she’d been saved from Thomas, and from the disease, but that was it. I think I thought that otherwise things would be exactly the same. I thought that as soon as she came to see me it would be like old times again, that we would bust out our socks to have a dance party, or she would pull me onto her lap and start braiding my hair, launch into one of her stories—of distant places and witches who could change into animals.
But she only skimmed a hand over my head as she came through the door, and applauded politely when Carol made me recite my multiplication and division tables.
“She’s grown up now,” Carol told me, when I asked her why Rachel didn’t like to play anymore. “Someday you’ll see.”
After that I stopped paying attention to the notation that appeared every few months on the kitchen wall calendar: R to visit.
At dinner the big topics of conversation are Brian Scharff—Rachel’s husband, David, works with Brian’s cousin’s friend, so David feels like he’s an expert on the family—and Regional College of Portland, where I’ll be starting in the fall. It’s the first time in my life I’ll be in class with members of the opposite sex, but Rachel tells me not to worry.
“You won’t even notice,” she says. “You’ll be so busy with work and studying.”
“There are safeguards,” says Aunt Carol. “All the students are vetted.” Code for: All the students are cured.
I think of Alex and almost say, Not all of them.
Dinner drags on well past curfew. By the time my aunt helps me clear the plates it’s almost eleven o’clock, and still Rachel and her husband make no sign to leave. That’s another thing I’m excited about: In thirty-six days, I won’t have to worry about curfew anymore.
After dinner my uncle and David go out onto the porch. David has brought two cigars—cheap ones, but still—and the smell of the smoke, sweet and spicy and just a little bit oily—floats in through the windows, intermingles with the sound of their voices, fills the house with blue haze. Rachel and Aunt Carol stay in the dining room, drinking cups of watered-down boiled coffee, the dirty pale color of old dishwater. From upstairs I hear the sound of scampering feet. Jenny will tease Grace until she’s bored, until she climbs into bed, sour and dissatisfied, letting the dullness and sameness of another day lull her to sleep.
I wash the dishes—many more of them than usual, since Carol insisted on having a soup (hot carrot, which we all choked down, sweating) and a pot roast slathered in garlic and limp asparagus, probably rescued from the very bottom of the vegetable bin, and some stale cookies. I’m full, and the warmth of the dishwater on my wrists and elbows—plus the familiar rhythms of conversation, the pitter-patter of feet upstairs, the heavy blue smoke—make me feel very sleepy. Carol has finally remembered to ask about Rachel’s children; Rachel goes over their accomplishments as though reciting a list she has only memorized recently, and with difficulty—Sara is reading already; Andrew said his first word at only thirteen months.
“Raid, raid. This is a raid. Please do as you are commanded and do not try and resist. . . .”
The voice booming from outside makes me jump. Rachel and Carol have paused momentarily in their conversation, are listening to the commotion in the street. I can’t hear David and Uncle William, either. Even Jenny and Grace have stopped fooling around upstairs.
Patchy interference from the street; the sounds of hundreds and hundreds of boots, clicking away in time; and that awful voice, amplified through a bullhorn: “This is a raid. Attention, this is a raid. Please be ready with your identification papers. . . .”
A raid night. Instantly I think of Hana and the party. The room starts spinning. I reach out, grabbing on to the counter.
“Seems pretty early for a raid,” Carol says mildly from the dining room. “We had one just a few months ago, I think.”
“February eighteenth,” Rachel says. “I remember. David and I had to come out with the kids. There was some problem with SVS that night. We stood in the snow for half an hour before we could be verified. Afterward Andrew had pneumonia for two weeks.” She relates this story as though she’s talking about some minor inconvenience at the Laundromat, like she’s misplaced a sock.
“Has it been that long?” Carol shrugs, takes a sip of her coffee.
The voices, the feet, the static—it’s all coming closer. The raiding parties move as one, from house to house—sometimes hitting every house on a street, sometimes skipping whole blocks, sometimes going every other. It’s random. Or at least, it’s supposed to be random. Certain houses always get targeted more than others.
But even if you’re not on a watch list you can end up standing in the snow, like Rachel and her husband, while the regulators and police try to prove your validity. Or—even worse—while the raiders come inside your house, tear the walls down, and look for signs of suspicious activity. Private property laws are suspended on raid nights. Pretty much every law is suspended on raid nights.
We’ve all heard horror stories: pregnant women stripped down and probed in front of everybody, people thrown in jail for two or three years just for looking at a policeman the wrong way, or for trying to prevent a regulator from entering a certain room.
“This is a raid. If you are asked to step out of the house, please make sure you have all your identification papers in hand, including the papers of any children over the age of six months. . . . Anyone who resists will be detained and questioned. . . . Anyone who delays will be charged with obstruction. . . .”
At the end of the street. Then a few houses away. . . . Then two houses away. . . . No. Next door. I hear the Richardsons’ dog start barking furiously. Then Mrs. Richardson, apologizing. More barking—then someone (a regulator?) mutters something, and I hear a few heavy thuds and a whimper, then someone else saying, “You don’t have to kill the damn thing,” and someone else saying, “Why not? Probably has fleas, anyway.”
Then for a while there’s quiet: just the occasional cackle of walkie-talkies, someone reciting identification numbers into a phone, the shuffling of papers.
Then: “All right, then. You’re in the clear.” And the boots start up again.
For all their nonchalance, even Rachel and Carol tense up as the boots clomp by our house. I can see Carol gripping her coffee cup tightly, knuckles white. My heart is jumping and skipping, a grasshopper in my chest.
But the boots pass us by. Rachel heaves out an audible sigh of relief as we hear the regulators pound on a door farther down the street. “Open up. . . . This is a raid.”
Carol’s teacup clatters in its saucer, making me jump. “Silly, isn’t it?” she says, forcing a laugh. “Even when you haven’t done anything wrong, it still makes you jumpy.”
I feel a dull pain in my hand and realize I’m still holding on to the counter as though it’s going to save my life. I can’t relax, can’t calm down, even as the sounds of the footsteps grow fainter, the bullhorn voice more and more distorted, until it is completely unintelligible. All I can picture are the raiding parties—sometimes as many as fifty in a single night—swirling around Portland, swarming it, surrounding it like water cascading around a whirlpool, sweeping up anyone and everyone they can find and accuse of misbehavior or disobedience, and even people they can’t.
Somewhere out there Hana is dancing, spinning, blond hair fanning out behind her, smiling—while around her boys are pressing close and unapproved music pumps through the speakers. I fight a feeling of incredible nausea. I don’t even want to think about what will happen to her—to all of them—if they’re caught.
All I can do is hope she hasn’t made it to the party yet. Maybe she took too long to get ready—it seems possible, Hana’s always late—and was still at home when the raids started. Even Hana would never venture outside during raids. It’s suicide.
But Angelica Marston and everyone else . . . Every single person there . . . Everyone who just wanted to hear some music . . .
I think about what Alex said the night I ran into him at Roaring Brook Farms: I came to hear the music, like everybody else.
I will the image out of my mind and tell myself it’s not my problem. I should be happy if the party is raided and everyone there is busted. What they’re doing is dangerous, not just for them but for all of us: That’s how the disease gets in.
But the underneath part of me, the stubborn part that said gray at my first evaluation, keeps pressing and nagging at me. So what? it says. So they wanted to hear some music. Some real music—not the dinky little songs that get tooted out at the Portland Concert Series, all boring rhythms and bright, chipper notes. They’re not doing anything that bad.
Then I remember the other thing Alex said: Nobody’s hurting anybody.
Besides, there’s always the possibility that Hana didn’t run late tonight, and she’s out there, oblivious, as the raids circle closer and closer. I have to squeeze my eyes shut against the thought, and against the thought of dozens of glittering blades descending on her. If she’s not thrown in jail she’ll be carted directly to the labs—she’ll be cured before dawn, regardless of the dangers or risks.
Somehow, despite my racing thoughts and the fact that the room continues its frantic spinning, I’ve managed to clean all the dishes. I’ve also come to a decision.
I have to go. I have to warn her.
I have to warn all of them.
By the time Rachel and David leave and everyone is settled in bed it’s midnight. Every second that passes feels like agony. I can only hope the door-to-door on peninsula is taking longer than usual, and it will be a while before the raiders make it to Deering Highlands. Maybe they’ve decided to skip the Highlands altogether. Given the fact that the majority of the houses up there are vacant, it’s always a possibility. Still, since Deering Highlands used to be the hotbed of resistance in Portland, it seems doubtful.
I slip out of bed, not bothering to change out of my sleep pants and T-shirt, both of which are black. Then I put on black flats, and, even though it’s about a thousand degrees, pull a black ski hat out of the closet. Can’t be too careful tonight.
Just as I’m about to crack open the bedroom door I hear a small noise behind me, like the mewing of a cat. I whip around. Grace is sitting up in bed, watching me.
For a second we just stare at each other. If Grace makes a noise, or gets out of bed, or does anything, she’s bound to wake Jenny, and then I’m done, finished, kaput. I’m trying to think of what I can say to reassure her, trying to fabricate a lie, but then, miracle of miracles, she just lies back down in bed and closes her eyes. And even though it’s very dark, I would swear that there’s the smallest smile on her face.
I feel a quick rush of relief. One good thing about the fact that Gracie refuses to speak? I know she won’t tell on me.
I slip out into the street without any other problems, even remembering to skip the third-to-last stair, which last time let out such an awful squeak I thought for sure Carol would wake up.
After the noise and the commotion of the raids, the street is freakily still and quiet. Every single window is dark, all the blinds drawn, like the houses are trying to turn away from the street, or put up their shoulders against prying eyes. A stray piece of red paper sweeps by me, turning on the wind like the tumbleweed you see in old cowboy movies. I recognize it as a raider’s notice, a proclamation filled with impossible-to-pronounce words explaining the legality of suspending everyone’s rights for the evening. Other than that, it could be any other night—any other quiet, dead, ordinary night.
Except that on the wind, just faintly, you can hear the distant murmur of footsteps, and a high wail as if someone is crying. The sounds are so quiet you might almost mistake them for ocean and wind sounds. Almost.
The raiders have moved on.
I start off quickly in the direction of Deering Highlands. I’m too afraid to take my bike. I’m worried the little reflective patch on the wheels will attract too much attention. I can’t think about what I’m doing, can’t think about the consequences if I’m caught. I don’t know where I even got this rush of resolution. I never would have thought I’d have the courage to leave the house on a raid night, not in a million years.
I guess Hana was wrong about me. I guess I’m not scared all the time.
I’m passing a black trash bag heaped on the sidewalk when a low whimper stops me short. I spin around, my whole body on high alert in an instant. Nothing. The sound is repeated: an eerie, crooning sound that makes the hair on my arms stand up. Then the garbage bag by my feet shakes itself.
No. Not a garbage bag. It’s Riley, the Richardsons’ black mutt.
I take a few shaky steps toward him. I need only one glance to know that he’s dying. He’s completely coated with a sticky, shiny, black substance—blood, I realize as I get closer. That’s the reason I mistook his fur, in the dark, for the slick black surface of a plastic bag. One of his eyes is pressed to the pavement; the other is open. His head has been clubbed in. Blood is flowing freely from his nose, black and viscous.
I think of the voice I heard—Probably has fleas, anyway, the regulator said—and the swift thudding sound that followed.
Riley is staring at me with a look so mournful and accusatory I swear for a second it’s like he’s a human and he’s trying to tell me something—trying to say, You did this to me. A wave of nausea overtakes me and I’m tempted to get down on my knees and scoop him up in my arms, or strip off my clothes and start soaking the blood off him. But at the same time I feel paralyzed. I can’t move.
As I’m standing there, frozen, he gives a long, shuddering jerk, from the tip of his tail to his nose. Then he goes still.
Instantly my arms and legs unfreeze. I stumble backward, bile pushing itself up into my mouth. I careen in a full circle, feeling like I did the day I got drunk with Hana, totally out of control of my own body. Anger and disgust are shredding through me, making me want to scream.
I find a flattened cardboard box sitting behind a Dumpster and drag it over to Riley’s body, covering him completely. I try not to think of the insects that will tear into him by morning. I’m surprised to feel tears prick at my eyes. I wipe them away with the back of my arm. But as I start off toward Deering all I can think is, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, like a mantra, or a prayer.
One good thing about raids: They’re loud. All I have to do is pause in the shadows and listen for the footsteps, the static, the bullhorn voices. I switch directions, choose the side streets, the ones that have been skipped over or raided already. Evidence of the raids is everywhere: overturned garbage cans and Dumpsters, trash picked through and spilled out onto the street, mountains of old receipts and shredded letters and rotting vegetables and foul-smelling goop I don’t even want to identify, red notices coating everything like a dust. My shoes get slick from clomping over it, and in the worst places I have to keep my arms out like a tightrope walker just to stay on my feet. I pass a few houses marked with a big X, black paint splashed across their walls and windows like a black gash, and my stomach sinks. The people who live in these houses have been identified as troublemakers or resisters. The hot wind whistling through the streets carries sounds of yelling and crying, dogs barking. I do my best not to think about Riley.
I stick to the shadows, slipping in and out of alleys and darting from one Dumpster to the next. Sweat is pooling at the base of my neck and under my arms, and it’s not just from the heat. Everything looks strange and grotesque and distorted, certain streets glittering with glass from smashed windows, the smell of burning in the air.
At one point, I come around a corner onto Forest Avenue just as a group of regulators turns onto it from the other end. I whip back around, pressing flat against the wall of a hardware store and inching back in the direction I’ve come. The chances any of the regulators saw me are slim—I was a block away and it’s pitch-black—but still, my heart never goes back to its normal pace. I feel like I’m playing some giant video game, or trying to solve a really complicated math equation. One girl is trying to avoid forty raiding parties of between fifteen to twenty people each, spread out across a radius of seven miles. If she has to make it 2.7 miles through the center, what is the probability she will wake up tomorrow morning in a jail cell? Please feel free to round pi to 3.14.
Before the shakedown, Deering Highlands was a nicer part of Portland. The houses were big and new—at least for Maine, which means they were built within the past hundred years—and set back behind gates and hedges, on streets with names like Lilac Way and Timber Road. There are a few families still clinging on in some of the houses, dirt-poor ones who can’t afford to move anywhere else, or haven’t gotten permission for a new residence, but for the most part it’s totally empty. Nobody wanted to stay on; nobody wanted to be associated with the resistance.
The weirdest thing about Deering Highlands is how quickly it was abandoned. There are still rusting toys scattered among the grass and cars parked in some of the driveways, though most of them have been picked apart, cleaned of metal and plastic like corpses scavenged by enormous buzzards. The whole area has the forlorn look of an abandoned animal: houses drooping slowly into the overgrown lawns.
Normally I get freaked out just being in the vicinity of the Highlands. A lot of people say it’s bad luck, like passing a graveyard without holding your breath. But tonight, when I finally make it there, I feel like I could dance a jig on the sidewalk. Everything is dark and quiet and undisturbed, not a single raider’s notice to be seen, not a whisper of conversation or the brush of a heel on a sidewalk. The raiders haven’t come yet. Maybe they won’t come at all.
I speed quickly through the streets, picking up the pace now that I don’t have to worry so much about sticking to the shadows and moving soundlessly. Deering Highlands is pretty big, a maze of winding streets that all look weirdly similar, houses looming out of the darkness like ships run aground. The lawns have all gone wild over the years, trees stretching their gnarled branches to the sky and casting crazy zigzag shadows on the moonlit pavement. I get lost on Lilac Way—somehow I manage to make a complete circle and wind up hitting the same intersection twice—but when I turn onto Tanglewild Lane I see a dull light burning dimly in the distance, behind a knotted mass of trees, and I know I’ve found the place.
An old mailbox is staked crookedly in the ground next to the driveway. A black X is still faintly visible on one of its sides. 42 Tanglewild Lane.
I can see why they’ve chosen this house for the party. It’s set back pretty far from the road, and surrounded on all sides by trees so dense I can’t help but think of the dark and whispering woods on the far side of the border. Walking up the driveway is creepy. I keep my eyes focused on the fuzzy pale light of the house, which expands and brightens slowly as I get closer, eventually resolving into two lit windows. The windows have been covered with some kind of fabric, maybe to hide the fact that there are people inside. It isn’t working. I can see shadow-people moving back and forth inside the house. The music is very quiet. It’s not until I make it onto the porch that I hear it at all—faint, muffled strains that seem to vibrate up from the floorboards. There must be a basement.
I’ve been rushing to arrive, but I hesitate with my hand on the front door, my palm slick with sweat. I haven’t given much thought to how I’ll get everyone out. If I just start screaming about a raid it will cause a panic. Everyone will stream into the streets at once, and then the chances of getting home undetected go to zero. Someone will hear something; the raiders will catch on, and then we’ll all be screwed.
I do a mental correction. They’ll be screwed. I am not like these people on the other side of the door. I’m not them.
But then I think of Riley shuddering, going limp. I am not those people either, the ones who did that, the ones who watched. Even the Richardsons didn’t bother trying to save him, their own dog. They didn’t even cover him up as he was dying.
I would never do that. Never ever ever. Not even if I had a million procedures. He was alive. He had a heartbeat and blood and breath, and they left him there like trash.
They. Me. Us. Them. The words ricochet in my head. I palm my hands on the back of my pants and open the door.
Hana said this party would be smaller, but to me it seems even more crowded than the last one, maybe because the rooms are tiny and totally packed. They are filled with a choking curtain of cigarette smoke, which shimmers over everything and makes it look as though everyone is swimming underwater. It’s deathly hot in here, at least ten degrees hotter than it was outside—people move slowly and have rolled up their short sleeves above the shoulders, tugged their jeans to their knees, and wherever there is skin, there is a glistening sheen on it. For a moment I can only stand there and watch. I think, I wish I had a camera. If I ignore the fact that there are hands touching hands and bodies bumping together and a thousand things that are terrible and wrong, I can see that it’s kind of beautiful.
Then I realize I’m wasting time.
There’s a girl standing directly in front of me, blocking my way. She has her back to me. I reach out and put a hand on her arm. Her skin is so hot it burns. She turns to me, face red and flushed, craning her head backward to hear.
“It’s a raid night,” I say to her, surprised that my voice comes out so steady.
The music is soft but insistent—it’s definitely coming up from a basement of some kind—not as crazy as the last time but just as strange and just as gorgeous. It reminds me of warm, dripping things, honey and sunlight and red leaves swirling down on the wind. But the layers of conversation, the creakings of footsteps and floorboards, make it difficult to hear.
“What?” She sweeps her hair away from her ear.
I open my mouth to say raid but instead of my voice it’s someone else’s that comes out: an enormous, mechanical voice bellowing from outside, a voice that seems to shake and rattle from all sides at once, a voice that cuts through the warmth and the music like a cold razor edge through skin. At the same time the room starts spinning, a swirling mass of red and white lights revolving over terrified, stunned faces.
“Attention. This is a raid. Do not try to run. Do not try to resist. This is a raid.”
A few seconds later, the door explodes inward and a spotlight as bright as the sun turns everything white and motionless, turns everything to dust and statue.
Then they let the dogs loose.