Delirium - Lauren Oliver [48]
“Heading home?” he repeats disbelievingly. “You can’t go home.”
I’ve always been careful not to let myself give in to feelings of anger or irritation. I can’t afford to at Carol’s house. I owe her too much—and besides, after the few tantrums I threw as a child, I hated the way she looked at me sideways for days, as though analyzing me, measuring me. I knew she was thinking, Just like her mother. But now I give in, let the anger surge. I’m sick of people acting like this world, this other world, is the normal one, while I’m the freak. It’s not fair: like all the rules have suddenly been changed and somebody forgot to tell me.
“I can, and I am.” I turn around and start heading up the hill, figuring he’ll leave me alone. To my surprise, he doesn’t.
“Wait!” He comes bounding up the hill after me.
“What are you doing?” I whirl around to face him—again, surprised by how confident I sound, considering that my heart is rushing, tumbling. Maybe this is the secret to talking to boys—maybe you just have to be angry all the time.
“What do you mean?” We’re both slightly out of breath from hoofing it up the hill, but he still manages a smile. “I just want to talk to you.”
“You’re following me.” I cross my arms, which helps me feel as though I’m closing off the space between us. “You’re following me again.”
There it is. He starts backward, and I get a momentary, sick twinge of pleasure that I’ve surprised him. “Again?” he repeats. I’m glad that for once I’m not the one stuttering, or struggling to find words.
The words fly out: “I think it’s a little bit strange that I go pretty much my whole life without seeing you, and then all of a sudden I start seeing you everywhere.” I hadn’t planned on saying this—it actually hadn’t struck me as strange—but the second the words are out of my mouth I realize they’re true.
I think he’s going to be angry, but to my surprise he tips his head back and laughs, long and loud, moonlight turning the curve of his cheeks and chin and nose silver. I’m so surprised by his reaction I just stand there, staring at him. Finally he looks at me. Even though I still can’t make out his eyes—the moon draws everything starkly, highlighting it in bright, crystalline silver or leaving it in blackness—I have the impression of heat, and light, the same impression I had that day at the labs.
“Maybe you just haven’t been paying attention,” he says quietly, rocking forward slightly on his heels.
I take an unconscious, half-shuffling step backward. I find myself frightened by his closeness; by the fact that even though our bodies are separated by several inches I feel as though we’re touching.
“What—what do you mean?”
“I mean that you’re wrong.” He pauses, watching me, and I struggle to keep my face composed, even though I can feel my left eye straining and fluttering. Hopefully in the darkness he can’t tell. “We’ve seen each other plenty.”
“I would remember if we’d met before.”
“I didn’t say that we’d met.” He doesn’t try to close the new distance between us and I’m grateful, at least, for that. He chews on the corner of a lip—a gesture that makes him look younger. “Let me ask you a question,” he goes on. “How come you don’t run past the Governor anymore?”
Without meaning to I gasp a little. “How do you know about the Governor?”
“I take classes at UP,” he says. University of Portland—I remember now, the afternoon we walked up to see the ocean from the back of the lab complex, hearing bits of his conversation floating back to me on the wind. He did say he was a student. “I worked at the Grind last semester, in Monument Square. I used to see you all the time.”
My mouth opens and shuts. No words come out; my brain goes on lockdown whenever I need it the most. Of course I know the Grind; Hana and I used to run past it two, maybe three times a week, watching the college students float in and out like drifting snowflakes, blowing the steam from the