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The Adjustment
I CAN’T REMEMBER THE LAST time I cried.
It’s an odd thought to have in the middle of English class, but for years the threat of being taken, against our will, to a facility for memory manipulation had terrified all of us. Any moment of weakness, one show of emotion, and we could have been flagged as unstable. Once flagged, we would have been handed over to The Program, where the doctors would steal our memories, our experiences, and our lives—all in the name of their false cure. I barely escaped that fate.
But it turns out that although The Program no longer exists, its effect is long lasting.
I stare ahead in class at the whiteboard, the words there blurring together. Around me, pencils scratch against notebook pages and the movement of other bodies mimics learning. I sit still and apart from all of them.
I’d gotten used to small classes, some with as few as twelve students. But now we’re pushing thirty in here. Former patients of The Program have been flooding in—wide eyed and confused. I mostly feel bad for them. They’ve been erased, some only partially.
Months ago, when The Program was shut down, there was no follow-up therapy offered to its patients. Many were sent uncompleted, uncured, to Sumpter High, a private school just for those who were treated: a school filled with broken people. Returners were left to their own devices, and some didn’t make it. Some didn’t want to.
But as the criminal trials carried on in the media, The Program decimated and supporting politicians questioned and shamed, Sumpter was shut down. One senator filed an injunction to ban returners from our district, citing the possibility of another suicide outbreak. As a result, students were left for weeks with nowhere to go—abandoned by their government. But that asshole politician got voted out of office, so returners have come back to the lives they had before The Program. Now that their lives have been thoroughly ruined by The Program.
Even now, former patients still occasionally freak out. Break down. Crack up. To them, The Program is forever.
I glance around at the other students in my class, some dressed in black, dark and dramatic. Others even wear Program yellow ironically. Some say their emotions are heightened now that we’re suddenly allowed to “feel” again—built-up angst and anger getting release. Lust and love intertwining so that no one knows the difference anymore. Everything is about now. Everything is about living.
But not me. It’s like I’ve forgotten how to feel—always set to numb. I wonder how many others are just mimicking what they think is sadness. What they think is joy. What if The Program took away our ability to feel by making us hide it for so long? What if none of us is real?
I shouldn’t sit here feeling sorry for myself, though. Not when there are those worse off. I look sideways at Alecia Partridge, watch as she flinches—a post-Program twitch she hasn’t lost. She occasionally murmurs to herself during class, but the rest of us pretend not to notice. Alecia talks to the ghosts of her past—a friend who died during the epidemic. A friend who was only partially erased from her memory and is, therefore, familiar enough to still be in her present.
Alecia laughs under her breath, brushing her knotted brown hair behind her ear. “Yes,” she whispers to no one. “Yes, I know.” She looks back down at her notebook and continues to work. She does this at least once a week. This is her normal—and by extension, ours.
I swallow hard and turn away, reminded that returners are still considered unstable, even if the purpose of sending them to The Program in the first place was to make them stable.
“I’d ask to copy your notes,” Nathan says in his scratchy voice from the desk behind me, “but you’re obviously going to fail this test.”
I turn my face toward him, keeping my eyes on the floor so as not to draw attention from our teacher. “Bet my F will be higher than your F,” I say.
Nathan laughs, low in his throat. “No fucking way,” he says. “I’ll take that bet.”
“Done,” I say, and look toward the front. I’m almost ready to write down a line or two from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30. I get as far as picking up my pencil before the classroom door opens.
There’s a flash of white fabric, and I immediately imagine crisp white jackets and blank expressions. I imagine silence and dripping fear. Although handlers have been out of our lives for months, I still have nightmares about them. And so I hold my breath until my eyes can adjust.
A guy steps into class wearing the same stupid clothing most of the returners do: a stiff button-down shirt, khaki pants, belt—like he’s on his way to become our new math teacher. Most returners have had their clothing replaced, and it takes a while for them to figure out their style again.
And maybe it’s because of that, or maybe I don’t recognize his newly buzzed hair, but Nathan reacts to his presence before I do.
“He’s back,” Nathan murmurs, putting his hand on my shoulder. But I feel a million miles outside of my body, and his touch is just a breeze past my soul. My pencil falls from between my fingers and drops on the floor, before rolling under my desk.
I stare at the guy in the front of the classroom, my mouth agape, my heart racing. Guilt smacks me, scolding me for not recognizing him immediately. Several students look in my direction, anticipating a reaction. They’re curious, maybe. Horrified?
“Wonderful,” the teacher says, barely hiding her annoyance. “I see they still aren’t worried about class size.” She pauses. “Welcome back, Weston,” she adds, softening her voice. “There’s one last seat.” Miss Soto motions toward an empty desk near the front.
Wes watches her for a moment like he’s trying to figure out if he knows her, but then he turns and starts down the aisle. He sits two rows away from me. After a moment of silence, Miss Soto goes back to teaching, and the other students go back to pretending to learn.
Nathan’s hand is still on my shoulder, attempting comfort, but I lean forward and out of his reach. I stare at the back of Wes’s head, willing him to see me. Begging him to turn around.
As if he can sense me, Weston puts his chin on his shoulder and covertly turns. When he finds me, when his dark eyes lock on mine, tears I didn’t know had welled up spill onto my cheeks.
And I smile.
Weston Ambrose is the love of my life, and I don’t mean “the like,” I don’t mean “the obsession.” We were together for two years, until the day men in white coats showed up at his kitchen door. Although handlers would occasionally take people from school, it was more common for them to come straight to the house. Most patients were turned in by someone they knew. Turned in by their parents.
Of course, parents didn’t know the truth of what was happening in The Program—the lasting effect it would have. The paranoia that became the curse rather than the cure to an epidemic.
Wes’s parents turned him in. The handlers arrived and pulled Wes from his home as I fought, holding on to his shirt until it tore at the collar. Until a handler physically removed me from the house.
And when Wes was gone, stolen away, his mother came and sat next to me on the curb. It was the first time I cried in public. The only time until now. Mrs. Ambrose held me tightly and let me sob into the shoulder of her blouse, and when I was done, she kissed the top of my head and told me never to come back. Fair or not, she blamed me for her son’s condition.
She called them. She called The Program on her son. I’ll never forgive her for that.
I blamed myself, too. I replayed the last few months of us over and over, trying to figure out what I could have done differently. Trying to take responsibility for his actions. Most of that time was a blur, really. But eventually, with therapy, I accepted that it wasn’t my fault.
My love for Wes is pure, forever. And so I waited for this moment. I waited for him to come back.
But Wes doesn’t return my smile, and instead he turns around and opens his notebook. He jots down what I assume are notes from the board.
My skin is on fire, waiting for him to look back. When the bell rings, Weston gets up and walks out without even a backward glimpse.
I sit still and watch after him. There is a sympathetic glance or two in my direction from other students; even Alecia nods at me like she understands how I feel. Truth is, people have wondered about my stability for a while, and I’m sure that if The Program didn’t end when it did, the handlers would have come for me next.
“Tatum?” Nathan calls, his voice always set to a quiet hush that gives every word an extra layer of depth, like he’s confiding in you.
I don’t turn immediately, and I hear his chair scrape against the linoleum floor before he crouches down next to my seat. I turn to him, feeling my bottom lip jut out.
Nathan’s eyebrows pull together as he looks me over, like I’m the most pathetic creature on all of Earth. He leans in and puts his forehead against my arm and whispers, “I’m sorry.”
