Delirium (Delirium, #1)

by Lauren Oliver

The most dangerous sicknesses are those that make us believe we are well.

In school we learned that in the old days, the dark days, people didn’t realize how deadly a disease love was. For a long time they even viewed it as a good thing, something to be celebrated and pursued. Of course that’s one of the reasons it’s so dangerous: It affects your mind so that you cannot think clearly, or make rational decisions about your own well-being.

Instead people back then named other diseases—stress, heart disease, anxiety, depression, hypertension, insomnia, bipolar disorder—never realizing that these were, in fact, only symptoms that in the majority of cases could be traced back to the effects of amor deliria nervosa.

It still moves around us with invisible, sweeping tentacles, choking us. I’ve seen countless uncureds dragged to their procedures, so racked and ravaged by love that they would rather tear their eyes out, or try to impale themselves on the barbed-wire fences outside of the laboratories, than be without it.

They say that in the old days, love drove people to madness. That’s bad enough. The Book of Shhh also tells stories of those who died because of love lost or never found, which is what terrifies me the most.

The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don’t.

That’s one of the downsides of the procedure; in the absence of deliria nervosa, some people find parenting distasteful.

Hearts are fragile things. That’s why you have to be so careful.

I don’t like makeup, have never been interested in clothes or lip gloss. My best friend, Hana, thinks I’m crazy, but of course she would. She’s absolutely gorgeous—

I’m not ugly, but I’m not pretty, either. Everything is in-between. I have eyes that aren’t green or brown, but a muddle. I’m not thin, but I’m not fat, either.

“Blue is my favorite color. Or green.” Black is too morbid; red will set them on edge; pink is too juvenile; orange is freakish.

I’m interested in photography because I like the way it captures and preserves a single moment of time.

She was always different from other people—more outspoken, more independent, more fearless. It’s one of the reasons I first wanted to be her friend.

“You can’t be really happy unless you’re unhappy sometimes.

I’m glad I don’t have to make someone else choose me.

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.

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.

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).

I love you. Remember. They cannot take it.

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?

“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.

“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.”

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.

“Not gray, exactly. Right before the sun rises there’s a moment when the whole sky goes this pale nothing color—not really gray but sort of, or sort of white, and I’ve always really liked it because it reminds me of waiting for something good to happen.”

People in the Wilds don’t see love as a disease, and they don’t believe in the cure. They think it’s a kind of cruelty.

The cows are dressed up as us, the people being evaluated. Like we’re all a bunch of herd animals.

Someday we will all be saved.

Her face has always reminded me of a doll’s. Even when she’s talking, even when she’s irritated or happy or confused, her expression stays weirdly immobile.

her dreams are full of dishes, stacks and stacks of them climbing toward the sky, and sometimes she climbs them, lip to lip, hauling herself up into the clouds, trying to reach the top of the stack. But it never ends; it stretches on into infinity.

It’s so strange how life works: You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it’s taking forever to come. Then it happens and it’s over and all you want to do is curl back up in that moment before things changed.

“Don’t be an idiot. If it was on the news, it definitely isn’t true.

I’ve never been comfortable with my body like Hana and some of the other girls at St. Anne’s, never gotten over the awkward feeling that I’ve been fitted together just a little wrong in some very key places.

I’ve been sketched by an amateur artist: If you don’t look too closely, it’s all right, but start focusing and all the smudges and mistakes become really obvious.

I’ve learned to get really good at this—say one thing when I’m thinking about something else, act like I’m listening when I’m not, pretend to be calm and happy when really I’m freaking out.

You have to learn that people are always listening.

Sometimes I feel as though there are two me’s, one coasting directly on top of the other: the superficial me, who nods when she’s supposed to nod and says what she’s supposed to say, and some other, deeper part, the part that worries and dreams and says “Gray.”

sometimes it feels as though I’m two whole different people and I could rip apart at any second.

Every so often people make mistakes; it’s biological, a result of the same kind of chemical and hormonal imbalances that occasionally lead to Unnaturalism, to boys being attracted to boys and girls to girls. These impulses, too, will be resolved by the cure.

There are a few reasons why the scientists won’t let anyone under the age of eighteen have the procedure, but the biggest one is that it just doesn’t seem to work as well for people younger than that, and in the worst cases it’s been known to cause all kind of crazy problems.

Amor deliria nervosa. The deadliest of all deadly things.”

It’s always like this on miles two and three, like all the stress and anxiety and irritation and fear get transformed into little needling points of physical pain, and you can’t breathe or imagine going farther or think anything but: I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. And then, just as suddenly, it’s gone. All the pain lifts away, the cramp vanishes, the fist eases off my chest, and I can breathe easily. Instantly a feeling of total happiness bubbles up inside of me: the solid feeling of the ground underneath me, the simplicity of the movement, rocketing off my heels, pushing forward in time and space, total freedom and release.

Another side effect of the cure: People often change their habits afterward, lose interest in their former hobbies and things that had given them pleasure.

Everything is silent and very still—frozen, almost, the way things are in a dream, or just before a major thunderstorm.

I’m sure to him I was only a blurry, in-between face, easy to forget. Not pretty. Not ugly, either. Just plain, like a thousand other faces you would see on the street.

think this is my favorite way to see the ocean. Middle of the afternoon, sunny and bright. It’s just like a photograph.

I prefer the ocean when it’s gray. Or not really gray. A pale, in-between color. It reminds me of waiting for something good to happen.”

Mama, Mama, help me get home I’m out in the woods, I am out on my own. I found me a werewolf, a nasty old mutt It showed me its teeth and went straight for my gut. Mama, Mama, help me get home I’m out in the woods, I am out on my own. I was stopped by a vampire, a rotting old wreck It showed me its teeth, and went straight for my neck. Mama, Mama, put me to bed I won’t make it home, I’m already half-dead. I met an Invalid, and fell for his art He showed me his smile, and went straight for my heart.

It’s rare for my aunt and uncle to look at each other like that, a wordless glance, full of meaning. Most of the time their interactions are limited to the usual thing—my uncle tells stories about work, my aunt tells stories about the neighbors. What’s for dinner? There’s a leak in the roof. Blah blah blah.

The one good thing about being kind of shy is that nobody bugs you when you want to be left alone.

the sun—curved over the dip of the horizon like a solid gold archway—lets out its final winking rays of light, shattering the darkness of the water, turning everything white for a fraction of a second, and then falls away, sinking, dragging the pink and the red and the purple out of the sky with it, all the color bleeding away instantly and leaving only dark.