Delirium: The Complete Collection Read Online Free PDF

me—pleased, proud, like I’m a little kid who has managed to fit all the right pegs in all the right holes—that I’ve done a good job.
    I pour myself a glass of water and take a few sips, grateful for the pause. I can feel sweat pricking up under my arms, on my scalp, and at the base of my neck, and I pray to God they can’t see it. I try to keep my eyes locked on the evaluators, but there it is in my peripheral vision, grinning at me: that damn table.
    “Okay now, Lena. We’re going to ask you some questions. We want you to answer honestly. Remember, we’re trying to get to know you as a person .”
    As opposed to what? The question pops into my mind before I can stop it. As an animal?
    I take a deep breath, force myself to nod and smile. “Great.”
    “What are some of your favorite books?”
    “ Love, War, and Interference , by Christopher Malley,” I answer automatically. “ Border , by Philippa Harolde.” It’s no use trying to keep the images away: They are rising now, a flood. That one word keeps scripting itself on my brain, as though it is being seared there. Pain . They wanted to make my mother submit to a fourth procedure. They were coming for her on the night she died, coming to bring her to the labs. But instead she had fled into the dark, winged her way into the air. Instead she had woken me with those words— I love you. Remember. They cannot take it. —which the wind seemed to carry back to me long after she had vanished, repeated on the dry trees, on the leaves coughing and whispering in the cold gray dawn. “And Romeo and Juliet , by William Shakespeare.”
    The evaluators nod, make notes. Romeo and Juliet is required reading in every freshman-year health class.
    “And why is that?” Evaluator Three asks.
    It’s frightening : That’s what I’m supposed to say. It’s a cautionary tale, a warning about the dangers of the old world, before the cure. But my throat seems to have grown swollen and tender. There is no room to squeeze the words out; they are stuck there like the burrs that cling to our clothing when we jog through the farms. And in that moment it’s like I can hear the low growl of the ocean, can hear its distant, insistent murmur, can imagine its weight closing around my mother, water as heavy as stone. And what comes out is: “It’s beautiful.”
    Instantly all four faces jerk up to look at me, like puppets connected to the same string.
    “Beautiful?” Evaluator One wrinkles her nose. There’s a zinging, frigid tension in the air, and I realize I’ve made a big, big mistake.
    The evaluator with the glasses leans forward. “That’s an interesting word to use. Very interesting.” This time when he shows his teeth they remind me of the curved white canines of a dog. “Perhaps you find suffering beautiful? Perhaps you enjoy violence?”
    “No. No, that’s not it.” I’m trying to think straight, but my head is full of the ocean’s wordless roaring. It is growing louder and louder by the second. And now, faintly, it’s as though I can hear screaming as well—like my mother’s scream is reaching me from across the span of a decade. “I just mean . . . there’s something so sad about it. . . .” I’m struggling, floundering, feeling like I’m drowning now, in the white light and the roaring. Sacrifice. I want to say something about sacrifice, but the word doesn’t come.
    “Let’s move on.” Evaluator One, who sounded so sweet when she offered me the water, has lost all pretense of friendliness. She is all business now. “Tell us something simple. Like your favorite color, for example.”
    Part of my brain—the rational, educated part, the logical me part—screams, Blue! Say blue! But this other, older thing inside of me is riding across the waves of sound, surging up with the rising noise. “Gray,” I blurt out.
    “Gray?” Evaluator Four splutters back.
    My heart is spiraling down to my stomach. I know I’ve done it, I’m tanking, can