Delirium - Lauren Oliver [118]
I had sworn that day that I would never, ever return to the Crypts for any reason. But the morning after my conversation with Alex I’m standing outside its gates, pacing, one arm wrapped around my stomach. I wasn’t able to force anything down this morning except the thick black sludge my uncle calls coffee, a decision I am now regretting. I feel like acid is eating my insides.
Alex is late.
Overhead, the sky is packed tight with enormous black storm clouds. It’s supposed to thunderstorm later, which seems fitting. Beyond the gate, at the end of a short, paved road, the Crypts looms black and imposing. Silhouetted against the dark sky, it looks like something out of a nightmare. A dozen or so tiny windows—like the multiple staring eyes of a spider—are scattered across its stone façade. A short field surrounds the Crypts on this side, enclosed within the gates. I remember it from my childhood as a meadow, but it is actually just a lawn, closely tended and bare in patches. Still, the vivid green of the grass—where the grass is actually managing to assert itself through the dirt—seems out of place. This seems like a place where nothing should flourish or grow, where the sun should never shine: a place on the edge, at the limit, a place completely removed from time and happiness and life.
I guess, technically, it is on the edge, since the Crypts is sitting right on the eastern border, flanked on its rear by the Presumpscot River, and beyond that, the Wilds. The electrified (or not-so-electrified) fence runs directly into one side of the Crypts, and begins again on its other side, the building itself serving as a seamless connective bridge.
“Hey.”
Alex is coming down the sidewalk, his hair whipping up around his head. The wind is definitely chilly today. I should have worn a heavier sweatshirt. Alex looks cold too. He’s keeping his arms folded across his chest. Of course he’s just wearing a thin linen shirt, the official guard uniform he wears at the labs. He has his badge swinging around his neck, too. I haven’t seen him with it since the first day we spoke. He’s even wearing a pair of nice jeans, crisp dark ones with cuffs that aren’t totally ragged and stepped on. This was all part of the plan: to get us both in, he needs to convince the prison administrators that we’re on official business. I take comfort in the fact that he’s still wearing his scuffed-up sneakers with the ink-stained laces, though. Somehow that little familiar detail makes it possible to be here, with him, doing this. It gives me something to focus on and hold on to, a tiny flash of normalcy in a world that has suddenly become unrecognizable.
“Sorry I’m late,” he says. He stops several feet away from me. I can see the concern in his eyes, even if he manages to keep the rest of his face composed. There are guards circulating the yard and standing just beyond the gate. This is no place for us to touch or reveal any kind of familiarity with each other.
“That’s okay.” My voice cracks. I feel like I might have a fever. Ever since Alex and I spoke last night my head has been spinning, and my body has been burning one second and icy the next. I can hardly think. It’s a miracle I was able to get out of the house today. It’s a miracle I’m even wearing pants, a double miracle I remembered to wear shoes.
My mother might be alive. My mother might be alive. That is the single idea in my mind, the one that has supplanted the possibility of all other rational thought.
“Are you ready to do this?” He keeps his voice low and toneless in case the guards will overhear us—but I can detect the note of worry running underneath it.
“I think so,