Delirium - Lauren Oliver [8]
“Follow me.” The nurse gestures down one of the hallways, and I follow the neat tick-tock of her heels down the linoleum. The halls are blindingly bright. The butterflies are working their way up from my stomach into my head, making me feel dizzy, and I try to calm myself by imagining the ocean outside, its ragged breathing, the seagulls turning pinwheels in the sky.
It will be over soon, I tell myself. It will be over soon and then you’ll go home, and you’ll never have to think about the evaluation again.
The hallway seems to go on forever. Up ahead a door opens and shuts, and a moment later, as we turn a corner, a girl brushes past us. Her face is red and she’s obviously been crying. She must be done with her evaluation already. I recognize her, vaguely, as one of the first girls admitted.
I can’t help but feel sorry for her. Evaluations typically last anywhere from half an hour to two hours, but it’s common wisdom that the longer the evaluators keep you, the better you’re doing. Of course, that isn’t always true. Two years ago Marcy Davies was famously in and out of the lab in forty-five minutes, and she scored a perfect ten. And last year Corey Winde scored an all-time record for longest evaluation—three and a half hours—and still received only a three. There’s a system behind the evaluations, obviously, but there’s always a degree of randomness to them too. Sometimes it seems the whole process is designed to be as intimidating and confusing as possible.
I have a sudden fantasy of running through these clean, sterile hallways, kicking in all the doors. Then, immediately, I feel guilty. This is the worst of all possible times to be having doubts about the evaluations, and I mentally curse Hana. This is her fault, for saying those things to me outside. You can’t be happy unless you’re unhappy sometimes. A limited choice. We get to choose from the people who have been chosen for us.
I’m glad the choice is made for us. I’m glad I don’t have to choose—but more than that, I’m glad I don’t have to make someone else choose me. It would be okay for Hana, of course, if things were still the way they were in the old days. Hana, with her golden, halo hair, and bright gray eyes, and perfect straight teeth, and her laugh that makes everyone in a two-mile radius whip around and look at her and laugh too. Even clumsiness looks good on Hana; it makes you want to reach out a hand to help her or scoop up her books. When I trip on my own feet or spill coffee down the front of my shirt, people look away. You can almost see them thinking, What a mess. And whenever I’m around strangers my mind goes fuzzy and damp and gray, like streets starting to thaw after a hard snow—unlike Hana, who always knows just what to say.
No guy in his right mind would ever choose me when there are people like Hana in the world: It would be like settling for a stale cookie when what you really want is a big bowl of ice cream, whipped cream and cherries and chocolate sprinkles included. So I’ll be happy to receive my neat, printed sheet of “Approved Matches.” At least it means I’ll end up with somebody. It won’t matter if nobody ever thinks I’m pretty (although sometimes I wish, just for a second, that somebody would). It wouldn’t matter if I had one eye.
“In here.” The nurse stops, finally, outside a door that looks identical to all the others. “You can leave your clothing and things in the antechamber. Please put on the gown that is provided for you, with the opening to the back. Feel free