Delirium - Lauren Oliver [105]
37 Brooks: In through the window, and the heat and the smell of mildew slams us, a wall. I only spent a few hours there and I miss the Wilds already—the wind through the trees that sounds just like the ocean, the incredible smells of blooming plants, the invisible scurrying things—all that life, pushing and extending in every direction, on and on and on. . . .
No walls. . . .
Then Alex is leading me to the sofa and shaking out a blanket over me, kissing me and wishing me good night. He has the morning shift at the labs, and has just barely enough time to go home, shower, and make it to work on time. I hear his footsteps melting away into the darkness.
Then I sleep.
Love: a single word, a wispy thing, a word no bigger or longer than an edge. That’s what it is: an edge; a razor. It draws up through the center of your life, cutting everything in two. Before and after. The rest of the world falls away on either side.
Before and after—and during, a moment no bigger or longer than an edge.
Chapter Nineteen
Live free or die.
—Ancient saying, provenance unknown, listed in the Comprehensive Compilation of Dangerous Words and Ideas, www.ccdwi.gov.org
One of the strangest things about life is that it will chug on, blind and oblivious, even as your private world—your little carved-out sphere—is twisting and morphing, even breaking apart. One day you have parents; the next day you’re an orphan. One day you have a place and a path. The next day you’re lost in a wilderness.
And still the sun rises and clouds mass and drift and people shop for groceries and toilets flush and blinds go up and down. That’s when you realize that most of it—life, the relentless mechanism of existing—isn’t about you. It doesn’t include you at all. It will thrust onward even after you’ve jumped the edge. Even after you’re dead.
When I make my way back into downtown Portland in the morning, that’s what surprises me the most—how normal everything looks. I don’t know what I was expecting. I didn’t really think that buildings would have tumbled down overnight, that the streets would have melted into rubble, but it’s still a shock to see a stream of people carrying briefcases, and shop owners unlocking their front doors, and a single car trying to push through a crowded street.
It seems absurd that they don’t know, haven’t felt any change or tremor, even as my life has been completely turned upside down. As I head home I keep feeling paranoid, like someone will be able to smell the Wilds on me, will be able to tell just from seeing my face that I’ve crossed over. The back of my neck itches as though it’s being poked with branches, and I keep whipping off my backpack to make sure there aren’t any leaves or burrs clinging to it—not that it matters, since it’s not like Portland is treeless. But no one even glances in my direction. It’s a little before nine o’clock, and most people are rushing to get to work on time. An endless blur of normal people doing normal things, eyes straight ahead of them, paying no attention to the short, nondescript girl with a lumpy backpack pushing past them.
The short, nondescript girl with a secret burning inside of her like a fire.
It’s as though my night in the Wilds has sharpened my vision around the edges. Even though everything looks superficially the same, it seems somehow different—flimsy, almost, as though you could put your hand through the buildings and sky and even the people. I remember being very young and watching Rachel build a sand castle at the beach. She must have worked on it for hours, using different cups and containers to shape towers and turrets. When it was done it looked perfect, like it could have been made out of stone. But when the tide came in, it didn’t take more than two or three waves to dissolve its shape