Delirium - Lauren Oliver [41]
Outside, I hesitate on the front stoop. The fireworks stopped an hour ago—I heard the last stuttering explosions, like distant gunfire, just as I was getting ready for bed—and now the streets are strangely silent, and totally empty. It’s a little after eleven o’clock. Some cureds must be lingering at the Eastern Prom. Everyone else is home by now. Not a single light is burning on the street. All the streetlamps were disabled years ago, except in the richest parts of Portland, and they look to me like blinded eyes. Thank God the moon is so bright.
I strain to detect the sounds of passing patrols or groups of regulators—I almost hope I do, because then I’ll have to go back inside, to my bed, to safety, and already the panic is starting to drill through me again. But everything is perfectly still and quiet, almost like it’s frozen. Everything rational, right, and good is screaming for me to turn around and go upstairs, but some stubborn inner center keeps me moving forward.
I go down the walk and unchain my bike from the gate.
My bike rattles a little bit, particularly when you first start pedaling, so I walk it a ways down the street. The wheels tick reassuringly over the pavement. I’ve never been out this late on my own in my life. I’ve never broken curfew. But alongside the fear—which is always there, of course, that constant crushing weight—is a small, flickering feeling of excitement that works its way up and underneath the fear, pushing it back some. Like, It’s okay, I’m all right, I can do this. I’m just a girl—an in-between girl, five-two, nothing special—but I can do this, and all the curfews and the patrols in the world aren’t stopping me. It’s amazing how much comfort this thought gives me. It’s amazing how it breaks up the fear, like a tiny candle lit in the middle of the night, lighting up the shapes of things, burning away the dark.
When I reach the end of my street I hop up on my bike, feeling the gears shudder into place. The breeze feels good as I start pedaling, careful not to go too quickly, staying alert in case there are regulators nearby. Fortunately, Stroudwater, and Roaring Brook Farms, are in the exact opposite direction from the Fourth of July celebrations at Eastern Prom. Once I get to the broad swath of farmland that surrounds Portland like a belt, I should be okay. The farms and slaughterhouses rarely get patrolled. But first I have to make it through the West End, where rich people like Hana live, through Libbytown, and over the Fore River at the Congress Street Bridge. Thankfully, each street I turn down is empty.
Stroudwater is a good thirty minutes away, even if I’m biking quickly. As I get off-peninsula—moving away from the buildings and businesses of downtown Portland and onto the more suburban mainland—the houses get smaller and farther apart, set back on weedy, patchy yards. This isn’t rural Portland yet, but there are signs of the countryside creeping in: plants poking up through half-rotted porches, an owl hooting mournfully in the dark, a black scythe of bats cutting suddenly across the sky. Almost all these houses have cars in front of them—just like the richer houses in West End—but these have obviously been salvaged from the junkyards. They’re mounted on cinder blocks and covered in rust. I pass one that has a tree growing straight through its sunroof, like the car has just dropped out of the sky and been impaled there, and another one, hood open, missing its engine. As I go past, a cat startles up out of its black cavity, meowing, blinking at me.
After I cross the Fore River the houses fall away altogether, and it’s just field after field and farm after farm, with names like MeadowLane and Sheepsbay and Willow Creek, which make them sound