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that Grace isn't stupid, or slow: There's nothing wrong with her at all. I'm the only one who has ever heard her speak. One night after she'd come to sleep in my bed I woke up in the very early morning, the nighttime shadows ebbing off our walls. She was sobbing quietly into the pillow next to me, pronouncing the same word over and over, stuffing her mouth with blankets so I could barely hear her: "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy." As though she was trying to chew her way around it; as though it was choking her in her sleep. I'd put my arms around her and squeezed, and after what felt like hours she exhausted herself on the word and fell back to sleep, the tension in her body slowly relaxing, her face hot and bloated from the tears.

    That's the real reason she doesn't speak. All the rest of her words are crowded out by that single, looming one, a word still echoing in the dark corners of her memory. Mommy.

    I know. I remember.

    I sit up and watch the light strengthen on the walls, listen for the sounds of the seagulls outside, take a drink from the glass of water next to my bed. Today is June 2. Ninety-four days.

    I wish, for Grace, the cure could come sooner. I comfort myself by thinking that someday she will have the procedure too. Someday she will be saved, and the past and all its pain will be rendered as smoothly palatable as the food we spoon to our babies.

    Someday we will all be saved. By the time I drag myself down to breakfast--feeling as though someone is grinding sand into both of my eyes--the official story about the incident at the labs has been released. Carol keeps our small TV on low while she makes breakfast, and the murmur of the newscasters' voices almost puts me back to sleep. "Yesterday a truck full of cattle intended for the slaughterhouse was mixed up with a shipment of pharmaceuticals, resulting in the hilarious and unprecedented chaos you see on your screen." Cue: nurses squealing, swatting at lowing cows with clipboards.

    This doesn't make any sense, but as long as no one mentions the Invalids, everyone's happy. We're not supposed to know about them. They're not even supposed to exist; supposedly, all the people who live in the Wilds were destroyed over fifty years ago, during the blitz.

    Fifty years ago the government closed the borders of the United States. The border is guarded constantly by military personnel. No one can get in. No one goes out. Every sanctioned and approved community must also be contained within a border--that's the law--and all travel between communities requires official written consent of the municipal government, to be obtained six months in advance. This is for our own protection. Safety, Sanctity, Community: That is our country's motto.

    For the most part, the government has been successful. We haven't seen a war since the border was closed, and there is hardly any crime, except for the occasional incident of vandalism or petty theft. There is no more hatred in the United States, at least among the cured. Only sporadic cases of detachment--but every medical procedure carries a certain risk.

    But so far, the government has failed to rid the country of the Invalids, and it is the single blemish on the administration, and the system in general. So we don't talk about them. We pretend that the Wilds-- and the people who live there--don't even exist. It's rare to hear the word even spoken, except when a suspected sympathizer disappears, or when a young diseased couple is found to have vanished together before a cure can be administered.

    One piece of really good news is this: All of yesterday's evaluations have been invalidated. All of us will receive a new evaluation date, which means I get a second chance. This time I swear I'm not going to screw it up. I feel completely idiotic about my meltdown at the labs. Sitting at the breakfast table, with everything looking so clean and bright and normal--the chipped blue mugs full of coffee, the erratic beeping of the microwave (one of