Kai groaned humorously. I imagined him leaning back on his couch in tranquil surrender, his neck bent over the edge, the muscles of his throat stretching. I could hear the drone of the radiator through the line, so he was probably dressed lightly or even just in sleep shorts, his arms and chest and stomach bare, touchable—waiting to be touched.
My cheeks grew warm, my forehead damp. I kicked the covers off me and stumbled out of bed again.
“I swear you just like making me worry,” I heard him sigh as I held the phone between my ear and shoulder so I could work the balcony door open.
A ripple of wind whipped into the room, crisp and smelling of chestnuts and rain. With eyes shut, I leaned on the cool metal frame of the sliding door and asked him, “Are you really worried about me, Kai?”
“Of course, I’m worried. I don’t think you realize how out of it you were that night. I’ve never seen anything like it. You were so…”
“What?”
“Scared, I guess.”
“Of the Center?”
He paused once again, and I felt myself become still, unready for the answer. Then a whisper, a secret: “I think you were scared of what you’d find there.”
The wind rose, more fiercely this time, a flurry of sycamore leaves scattering across the balcony. Shivering, I shut the door and crawled back into bed. “Kai?” I asked, keeping my voice low and measured. Another secret. “Do you think it’s possible I came from Outside?”
I couldn’t help the thought. I couldn’t stop any of the absurd scenarios that kept emerging from this dark spot inside my head, a place as remote and unrecognizable as my past. And for some reason all of these scenarios were sinister and life-altering, teetering on the line between terror and truth. The things I wanted to know about myself but couldn’t bear the ugliness of them.
“That’s impossible. You’d have an immigrant’s ID—” Kai began, only for an abrupt yawn of silence to swallow his next words.
“Kai? What is it?”
Tentatively, he continued, “Now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t know anyone who’s come from the Outside. I don’t know anyone who’s left the Inside either.”
With my blood churning in my wrists, I whispered into the phone, “Don’t you think that’s strange?”
This wasn’t fair to him, I knew. He loved the Inside. His whole life, all his happiest memories, his family, his friends, his workwerethe Inside. To answer this question honestly, he had to challenge the very system upon which everything he held dear was built. And yet, I couldn’t help the question. Who else did I have to talk to about this but him?
“I think the structure of our world is a bit rigid,” he finally replied. “But I wouldn’t call it strange. Perhaps the right word is necessary.”
“For our well-being, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“If everything here is so perfect, then why do we have procedures that can delete someone’s memories?” I wondered.
To my surprise, Kai countered, “I don’t think the Inside is perfect. Nowhere can be perfect so long as humans are there. We’re inherently flawed beings. We make mistakes, and sometimes bad things happen. But no matter how often or how severely life falls out of shape, it always manages to regain it. That’s what the Center does, I think. It doesn’t sculpt us into perfection. It just helps us regain the shape of our lives.”
Listening to his thoughts, my own quietened; my heart calmed. I closed my eyes and washed myself clean in the tide of his voice. “You know,” I told him, “talking to you is an exercise in hope.”
I could tell that he was smiling now, although I wasn’t sure how. Sometimes I felt like I knew him better than I knew myself.
“At least it’s not an exercise in tolerance,” he sighed.
“Oh, don’t you worry,” I drawled. “You’re a very tolerable person.”
He laughed under his breath, the sound soft and indulgent. “Yeah, right back at you.”
Yawning, too sleepy to keep my eyes open but not ready to say goodnight just yet, I murmured, “Hey, Kai?”
“Yes, Anya?”
“Thank you for calling.”
“I had to.Youwould have never called.”
