It's only another five or ten minutes before Nurse Barrett wakes up, and I make sure I'm curled up on the bed, pretending to be asleep, when she comes out of her office. Her movements sound unsteady, lurching, and I'm reminded of how groggy and disoriented Taffy usually is the morning after taking these pills. I'll have to mimic that when I pretend to wake up.
But I won't be doing that for a while. I don't know how much time I spent in Records, but Nurse Barrett thinks I took one whole pill, which should put me out for four hours. It doesn't have to be exact, but she will definitely notice if I'm up an hour or two before I should be.
I have to play this next part very carefully.
If Nurse Barrett has ever taken those pills before, she will recognise the after-effects of them and know that something is wrong. If that's the case, if she suspects that she has been drugged, then I am the only suspect, the only person in a position to carry this out. And if she thinks that, it is absolutely imperative that I make a good show of being drugged too. That's the only thing that will save me if she is suspicious – she can't think I'm responsible for drugging her if I'm drugged too, right?
If she has never taken the pills, then I'm hoping she'll just think she fell asleep.
She mutters something under her breath, and I can tell that she's close to me. I keep my whole body limp and relaxed, my breathing even, which isn't easy when everything inside me is drawn as tense and tight as a wire.
I half-expect her to say my name or shake my shoulder, testing me to see if I really am asleep, but luck is smiling on me. The nurse's footsteps move away from me, back into her office, and I hear a kettle boiling.
It takes everything I have not to breathe a sigh of relief.
I've got away with it, haven't I?
If Nurse Barrett thinks, even for a second, that she was drugged, she wouldn't be making herself another coffee as if nothing had happened.
Unless she's trying to lull me into a false sense of security?
That's a definite possibility, and so I stay very quiet and very still, concentrating on deep, even breathing, while in my head I try to count off each minute. I don't think I can have spent more than forty minutes in Records, which means I have to pretend to be asleep for at least another three hours.
It's going to be a very long wait.
I lie there for another three and a half hours in the end, deciding it's better to be safe than sorry. Taffy often has trouble getting up in the morning but it's worse if she's taken the pills, so I can assume Nurse Barrett won't think it's strange if I oversleep a bit.
When I get to the last twenty minutes, my skin feels like it's itching with impatience and frustration. Lying here, unable to move, my brain has been frantically churning, going over and over everything I've learned today, as well as endlessly worrying about everything I haven't learned – I never realised that thinking could be so exhausting.
I want to get out of here.
Finally I'm at the last few minutes, then seconds, and I count them off in my head, sternly reminding myself that I have to be careful waking up; I can't just jump out of bed like I haven't taken a strong sleeping pill.
Three . . .
Two . . .
One . . .
I open my eyes.
Nurse Barrett has her back to me, so I make what I hope are some convincing just-waking-up-noises, and she turns to look at me. I search her face for any sign of suspicion, but either she's a very good actress, or I really have got away with this.
"How long was I asleep?" I mumble, blinking groggily.
"A little over four hours, like I said you would," she replies. "How you feel?"
I take a minute to reply, still blinking. "Better," I say at last. "More rested."
"No more dizziness?"
I slowly sit up. "I feel a bit woozy, but maybe that's because I'm hungry?"
"It's possible."
"Do you think I can join the others at dinner?" I ask.
"I don't see why not."
I climb off the table, and pretend to sway just a little.
"You should probably give it another few minutes, just to be sure that the pill has completely worn off," she advises.
I'm desperate to get out of here, but another few minutes won't kill me. So I wait patiently, leaning against the bed, until I think enough time has passed.
"Thank you. You've made me feel so much better," I say.
She gives me a brief smile, but it's obvious she's tired of me being here, and she doesn't raise any objection when I finally leave.
The stolen photo burns a hole in my pocket.
I want to hide it in my room before going to the mess hall, but there's no reason I would be going up there at dinnertime. If a Handler catches me, they'll want to know what I'm doing, and I've had enough of lying and sneaking around for one day.
Part of me is afraid that the photo will have been discovered missing already, and that somehow, someone will have guessed that it was me, but I reason that nobody will have needed to go to that file during my time in the infirmary. I don't know if Nurse Barrett has bothered to take note of my 'relapse', but if she has, and has noticed the photo missing – which she might not have done since it wasn't the first one in there – I suspect I would have woken up surrounded by Handlers.
My friends are all seated together, huddled around the long tables in the mess hall, and they jump up when I come in.
"Are you okay?" Taffy exclaims, grabbing both my hands.
"I'm fine, I just needed some rest," I lie.
"You collapsed," Priya says, her eyes huge in her face.
I shrug. My friends have clearly been worrying about me all afternoon, and my stomach feels all twisted up with guilt, but I didn't really have a choice.
"Nurse Barrett checked me over and she says nothing's wrong. I just didn't sleep well last night and I needed some rest," I say.
"You're not . . ." Taffy glances around and lowers her voice. "You're not pregnant, are you?"
I gape at her. It was bad enough when Nurse Barrett suggested it, but somehow hearing it from Taffy is so much worse.
"No!" I say. "Why would you even think that?"
"I don't know, it's just . . ."
"Just what?"
Her hands flutter in the air. "You've just seemed so much happier lately, brighter. You're all . . . glowy."
"Glowy?" I repeat.
"Pregnant people are supposed to glow," she mumbles.
"Taffy," I say in my firmest voice, "there is not a single chance of me being pregnant. Do you think if I had done anything like that, I would keep it from you?"
"I don't know," she says again. "If you had a secret boyfriend that you didn't want anyone to know about, then I'd understand."
Priya nods beside her.
I'm about to protest this, when reality makes me snap my jaw shut.
Isn't that exactly what's going on?
I don't know if I'd call Roan my boyfriend, but I've never had one before so I'm not entirely sure how it works. We both like each other, and we both really like kissing each other, but . . . does one of us have to ask the other?
I think back over the books I've read and the stories I've heard about the outside, trying to fill in the blanks using other people's experiences, but my mind can't construct a complete picture.
"I don't have a secret boyfriend, Taffy," I say, and the lie tastes bitter in my mouth.
I hate lying to my friends, but what option do I have?
I can't risk anyone finding out about Roan, not even my friends.
And even if I could, I don't actually want to.
Maybe it's selfish, but it feels like Roan and I have our own little world down by the fence, like we've carved out a space that is only ours, and I don't want to bring anyone else into that. If I tell my friends about Roan, they will want to meet him and I don't blame them. But I don't want to share him.
At the same time I can't help longing for a future in which I can share him. Just because I want to keep him all to myself for now, doesn't mean I never want my friends to meet him. I try to picture introducing them to him one day, but I can't conjure it in my head. It slips away like wisps of smoke.
I like the thought of a life away from the CC, a future in which I belong to no one, and I really want to believe that Roan might be able to give that to me – to all of us.
But try as I might, I can't quite see it as a reality yet.