That night Raven builds a fire and places Blue next to it. Even though Blues skin is burning, she shivers so hard that her teeth knock together. The rest of us move around the fire as quietly as possible; we are shadows in the smoke. I fall asleep outside, next to Raven, who stays awake to rake the fire and make sure Blue stays warm.
In the middle of the night, I wake up to the muffled sounds of crying. Raven is kneeling over Blue. My stomach caves, and I am filled with terror; I have never seen Raven cry before. Im afraid to speak, to breathe, to move. I know that she must think everyone is asleep. She would never allow herself to cry otherwise.
But I cant stay silent, either. I rustle loudly in my sleeping bag, and just like that the crying stops. I sit up.
Is she? I whisper. I cant say the last word. Dead.
Raven shakes her head. Shes not breathing very well.
At least shes breathing, I say. A long silence stretches between us. Im desperate to fix this. I know, somehow, that if we lose Blue we lose a piece of Raven, too. And we need Raven, especially now that Tack is gone. Shell get better, I say, to comfort her. Im sure shell be okay.
Raven turns to me. The fire catches her eyes, makes them glow like an animals. No, she says simply. No, she wont.
Her voice is so full of certainty, I cant contradict her. For a moment, Raven doesnt say anything else. Then she says, Do you know why I named her Blue?
The question surprises me. I thought you named her for her eyes.
Raven turns back toward the fire, hugging her knees. I lived in Yarmouth, close to a border fence. A poor area. Nobody else wanted to live so close to the Wilds. Bad luck, you know.
A shiver snakes through me, and I suddenly feel very alert. Raven has never spoken of her life before the Wilds. She has always repeated that there is no such thing. No before.
I was like everybody else, really. Just accepted what people told me and didnt think too much about it. Only cureds go to heaven. Patrols are for my own protection. The uncured are dirty; they turn into animals. The disease rots you from inside. Stability is godliness and happiness. She shrugs, as though shaking off the memory of who she was. Except that I wasnt happy. I didnt understand why. I didnt understand why I couldnt be like everybody else.
I think of Hana, spinning around once in her room, arms wide, saying, You think this is it? This is all there is?
The summer I turned fourteen, they started new construction by the fence. They were projects, really, for the poorest families in Yarmouth: the badly matched ones, or families whose reputations had been ruined because of dissent, or even rumors of ityou know what its like. During the day, I used to play around the construction site. A bunch of us did. Of course, we had to be careful to stay separate, the boys and the girls. There was a line that divided us: Everything east of the waterline was ours, everything west of it was theirs. She laughs softly. It seems like a dream now. But at the time it seemed like the most normal thing in the world.
There was nothing to compare it to, I say, and Raven shoots me a quick glance, nodding sharply.
Then there was a week of rain. Construction came to a standstill, and nobody wanted to explore the site. I didnt mind the rain. I didnt like to be at home very much. My dad was Theres a hitch in her voice, and she breaks off. He wasnt totally right after the procedure. It didnt work correctly. There was disruption of the mood-regulating temporal lobes. Thats what they called it. He was mostly okay, like everybody else. But every so often he flew into rages For a while she stares at the fire, silent. My mom helped us cover the bruises, put on makeup and stuff. We couldnt tell anyone. We didnt want too many people knowing that my dads cure hadnt worked properly. People get hysterical; he could have been fired. My mom said people would make things difficult. So instead we hid it. Long sleeves in summertime. Lots of sick days. Lots of lies, toofalling down, bumping my head, hitting the door frame.
I have never imagined Raven as any younger than she is now. But I can see the wiry girl with the same fierce mouth, rubbing concealer over the bruises on her arms, shoulders, and face. Im sorry, I say. The words seem flimsy, ridiculous.
Raven clears her throat and squares her shoulders. It doesnt matter, she says quickly. She breaks a long, skinny twig into quarters and feeds it, one piece at a time, into the fire. I wonder whether she has forgotten about the original course of conversationabout Blues namebut then she starts speaking again.
That weekthe week of the rainwas one of my dads bad times. So I went out to the site a lot. One day, I was just picking around one of the foundations. It was all cinder block and pits; hardly any of the building had actually gotten done. And then I saw this little box. A shoe box. She sucks in a breath, and even in the dark I see her tense.
The rest of her story comes out in a rush: Someone must have left it there, wedged in the space underneath a part of the foundation. Except the rain was so bad it had caused a miniature mudslide. The box had rolled out into the open. I dont know why I decided to look inside. It was filthy. I thought I might find a pair of shoes, maybe some jewelry.
I know, now, where the story is going. I am walking toward the muddy box alongside her; I am lifting the water-warped cover. The horror and disgust is a mud too: It is rising, black and choking, inside of me.
Ravens voice drops to a whisper. She was wrapped in a blanket. A blue blanket with yellow lambs on it. She wasnt breathing. II thought she was dead. She was she was blue. Her skin, her nails, her lips, her fingers. Her fingers were so small.
The mud is in my throat. I cant breathe.
I dont know what made me try to revive her. I think I must have gone a little crazy. I was working as a junior lifeguard that summer, so Id been certified in CPR. Id never had to do it, though. And she was so tinyprobably a week, maybe two weeks old. But it worked. Ill never forget how I felt when she took a breath, and all that color came rushing into her skin. It was like the whole world had split open. And everything Id felt was missingall that feeling and colorall of it came to me with her first breath. I called her Blue so I would always remember that moment, and so I would never regret.
Abruptly, Raven stops speaking. She reaches down and readjusts Blues sleeping bag. The light from the fire is a low, red glow, and I can see that Blue is pale. Her forehead is beaded with sweat, and her breath comes slowly, raspingly. I am filled with a blind fury, undirected and overwhelming.
Raven isnt finished with her story. I didnt even go home. I just took her and ran. I knew I couldnt keep her in Yarmouth. You cant keep secrets like that for long. It was hard enough to cover up the bruises. And I knew she must be illegalsome unmatched girl, some unmatched guy. A deliria baby. You know what they say. Deliria babies are contaminated. They grow up twisted, crippled, crazy. She would probably be taken and killed. She wouldnt even be buried. Theyd be worried about the spread of disease. Shed be burned, and packed up with the waste. Raven takes another twig and throws it in the fire. It flares momentarily, a hot white tongue of flame. Id heard rumors about a portion in the fence that was unfortified. We used to tell stories about the Invalids coming in and out, feasting on peoples brains. Just the kind of shit you talk as a kid. Im not sure whether I still believed it or not. But I took my chance on the fence. It took me forever to figure out a way over with Blue. In the end I had to use the blanket as a sling. And the rain was a good thing. The guards and the regulators were staying inside. I made it over without any trouble. I didnt know where I was going or what I would do once I crossed. I didnt say good-bye to either of my parents. I didnt do anything but run. She looks at me sideways. But I guess that was enough. And I guess you know about that too.
Yeah, I croak out. Theres a shredding pain in my throat. I could cry at any second. Instead, I dig my nails, as hard as I can, into my thighs, trying to break the skin beneath the fabric of my jeans.
Blue murmurs something indecipherable and tosses in her sleep. The rasping in her throat has gotten worse. Every breath brings a horrible grating noise, and the watery echoes of fluid. Raven bends forward and brushes the sweat-damp strands of hair from Blues forehead. Shes burning up, Raven says.
Ill get some water. Im desperate to do something, anything, to help.
It wont make any difference, Raven says quietly.
But I need to move, so I go anyway. I pick my way through the frosty dark toward the stream, which is covered with a layer of thin ice, all webbed with fissures and cracks. The moon is high and full and reflects the silver surface and the dark flowing water underneath. I break through the ice with the bottom of a tin pail, gasping when the water flows over my fingers and into the bucket.
Raven and I dont sleep that night. We take turns with a towel, icing Blues forehead, until her breathing slows and the rasping eases. Eventually she stops fidgeting and lies quiet and docile under our hands. We take turns with the towel until dawn breaks in the sky, a blush rose, liquid and pale, even though by that time, Blue has not taken a breath for hours.
Julian and I move through stifling darkness. We go slowly, painstakingly, even though both of us are desperate to run. But we cant risk the noise or a flashlight. Even though were moving through what must be a vast network of tunnels, I feel just like a rat in a box. Im not very steady on my feet. The darkness is full of whirling, swirling shapes, and I have to keep my left hand on the slick tunnel wall, which is coated with moisture and skittering insects.
And rats. Rats chittering from corners; rats scampering across the tracks, nails going tick, tick, tick against the stone.
I dont know how long we walk. Impossible to tell, with no change in sound or texture, no way of knowing whether we are moving east or west or going around endlessly in circles. Sometimes we move alongside old railway tracks. These must have been the tunnels for the underground trains. Despite my exhaustion and nerves, I cant help but feel amazed at the idea of all these twisting, labyrinthine spaces filled with barreling machines, and people thundering along freely in the dark.
Other times the tunnels are flowing with watersometimes a bare trickle, sometimes a few feet of foul-smelling, litter-cluttered liquid, probably backed up from one of the sewer systems. That means we cant be too far from a city.
Im stumbling more and more. It has been days since Ive eaten anything substantial, and my neck throbs painfully, where the Scavenger broke the skin with his knife. Increasingly, Julian has to reach out and steady me. Finally he keeps a hand on my back, piloting me forward. Im grateful for the contact. It makes the agony of walking, and silence, and straining for the sound of Scavengers through the echoes and the drips, more bearable.