The crown of the head: like the color of leaves in autumn, burning, burning.

Alex.

I can't help it: I let out a little cry of excitement.

Outside the bedroom door, there's a thumping sound, like something banging against the wall. I hear Uncle William mutter, "s.h.i.t."

Alex pulls into the narrow alley that separates our property-a strip of gra.s.s, really, a single, anemic tree, and a waist-high chain-link fence-from the next. I wave at him frantically. He cuts the engine of the motorcycle, turning his face upward, toward the house. It's still very dark, so I'm not sure he can see me.

I risk calling his name softly, into the yard. "Alex!"

He swivels his head toward my voice, a grin splitting his face, spreading his arms as though to say, You knew I would come, didn't you? You knew I would come, didn't you? It reminds me of how he looked the first time I ever saw him on the balcony in the labs, all twinkle and flash, like a star winking through the darkness just for me. It reminds me of how he looked the first time I ever saw him on the balcony in the labs, all twinkle and flash, like a star winking through the darkness just for me.

And in that second I'm so filled with love it's as though my body transforms into a single blazing beam of light, shooting up, up, up, beyond the room and walls and city: as though everything has dropped away behind us, and Alex and I are alone in the air, and totally free.

Then the door to my bedroom flies open and William starts yelling.

Suddenly the house is noise and light, footsteps and shouting. Uncle William is just standing in the doorway, shouting for Carol, and it's like in one of those scary movies when a sleeping beast is woken, except now the house is the beast. Feet pound up the stairs-the regulators, I think-and at the end of the hall Carol flies out of her bedroom, her nightgown flapping behind her like a cape, mouth twisted open into one long, indecipherable shout.

I shove against the screen as hard as I can, but it's stuck. Below me Alex is screaming something too, but I can't make it out over the motorcycle engine, roaring to life again.

"Stop her!" Carol is yelling, and William comes to life, unfreezing, lunging into the room. Pain burns my shoulder as I shove against the screen again, feel it strain outward for a second and then resist. No time, no time, no time. Any second now William will grab me and it will all be over.

Then Gracie yells, "Wait!"

Everyone freezes just for a second. It is the first and only time Gracie has ever spoken aloud to them. William trips over himself and stares at his granddaughter, slack-jawed. Carol freezes in the doorway, and behind her, Jenny rubs her eyes as though convinced she is dreaming. Even the regulators-both of them-pause at the top of the stairs.

That second is all I need. I give another shove and the screen shudders and pops outward, clattering onto the street. And before I can think about what I'm doing, or the two-story drop to the street below, I'm swinging out of the window and letting go, the air sweeping me up like an embrace so for a moment my heart sings again and I think, I'm flying I'm flying.

Then I'm hitting the ground with such force that my legs give way and the air gets knocked out of me in a rush. My left ankle twists and wrenching pain goes through my whole body. I skid forward on my hands and knees, rolling against the fence. Above me the shouting has started up again, and a moment later the front door of the house bursts open and two men spill out onto the porch.

"Lena!" That's Alex's voice. I look up. He's leaning over the chain-link fence, extending his hand. I fling one arm upward and he grabs me by the elbow, half dragging me over the fence; a bit of it catches on my tank top, tearing the fabric, nicking my skin. There's no time to be scared. On the porch there is an explosion of static. One regulator is shouting into his walkie-talkie. The other one is loading a gun. Strangely, in the middle of all the chaos, I have the stupidest thought: I didn't know that regulators were allowed to carry guns I didn't know that regulators were allowed to carry guns.

"Come on!" Alex yells. I scrabble onto the motorcycle behind him, wrapping my arms tightly around his waist.

The first bullet ricochets off the fence directly to our right. The second one pings off the sidewalk.

"Go!" I scream, and Alex guns it just as a third bullet whips by us, so close I can feel the air vibrating in its wake.

We jet forward to the end of the alley. Alex cuts the wheel, hard, to the right, so we spin out onto the street, tipping over so far my hair grazes the pavement. My stomach does a huge somersault and I think, It's over It's over, but miraculously the motorcycle rights itself and then we're speeding forward down the dark street, while the sounds of shouting and the explosions of gunfire recede behind us.

The quiet doesn't last, though. As we turn onto Congress, I hear the wail of sirens, growing louder and louder, a scream. I want to tell Alex to go faster, but my heart is pounding so hard I can't speak the words. Besides, my voice would only be lost in the furious whipping of the wind around us, and I know he's going as fast as he can. The buildings on either side of us are a blur, gray and shapeless, like a ma.s.s of melted metal. Never has the city looked so foreign to me, so awful and deformed. The sirens are so loud that the noise is like a thin blade, vibrating furiously through me. Lights begin to flicker on in the buildings around us as people are roused from sleep. The horizon is touched with red: The sun is rising, a rusty color, the color of old blood, and I'm so filled with fear it is an agony, a shredding feeling, worse than any nightmare I've ever had.

Then, out of nowhere, two squad cars materialize at the end of the street, blocking our progress. Regulators and police-dozens of them, all heads and arms and screaming mouths-pour out onto the street. Voices boom, amplified, distorted through radios and bullhorns.

"Freeze! Freeze! Freeze or we shoot!"

"Hold on!" Alex yells, and I can feel his muscles tensing underneath me. At the last second he jerks the bars to the left and we skid sideways into another narrow alley, clipping the brick wall. I scream as my right leg gets crushed against the wall. Skin grates off my shin as we slide for several seconds along the exterior of the building before Alex once again gets control of the bike and we shoot forward. As soon as we burst out the other end of the alley there are two more patrol cars swerving behind us.

We're going so fast my arms are shaking as I try to hold on, and right then I have a momentary flash of calm and clarity and I realize that we'll never make it. Both of us will die today, gunned down or smashed up or exploded in some terrible moment of fire and twisted metal, and when they go to bury us we'll be so melted together and entwined they won't be able to separate the bodies; pieces of him will go with me, and pieces of me will go with him. Weirdly, the thought doesn't even upset me. I'm almost ready to give in and give up, ready to draw my last breath while pressed up to his back, feeling his ribs and lungs and chest move with mine for the last time.

But Alex obviously isn't ready to give up. He cuts down the narrowest alley he can find, and two of the cars following us come to a skidding halt, smashing each other as they try to follow and blocking the entrance so the other cars are forced to stop as well. Horns blare. The sharp stink of smoke and burning rubber makes my eyes water for a second, but then we're out again, bursting forward onto Franklin Arterial.

More sirens now, from a distance: reinforcements are on their way.

But the cove appears ahead of us, unfolding-calm and flat and gray, like gla.s.s or metal. The sky smolders at its edges, a growing fire of pinks and yellows. Alex turns onto Marginal Way, and my teeth clatter together as we b.u.mp over the old pitted pavement, my stomach yo-yoing every time we jolt over another pothole. We're getting close. The sirens whine louder, like a drove of hornets. If we can just get to the border before more squad cars arrive... If we can somehow make it past the guards, if we can scale the fence...

Then, like an enormous insect taking flight, a helicopter wings up ahead of us, lights zigzagging along the darkened road, the whirring of its propeller deafening, beating the air to waves, to shreds.

A voice cannons out: "I order you, in the name of the government of the United States of America, to freeze and surrender!"

Tufts of long, sun-bleached gra.s.s appear on our right: We've made it to the cove. Alex yanks the bike off the road and onto the gra.s.s, and we go, half gunning, half sliding, down into the marshes, cutting a diagonal toward the border. Mud splatters up into my mouth and eyes, choking me, and I cough into Alex's back, feeling him heave against me. The sun is a half circle now, like an eyelid partially opened.

Tukey's Bridge looms to our right, black, skeletal in the half darkness. Ahead of us, the lights in the guard huts are still illuminated. Even from this distance they look so peaceful, just like hanging paper lanterns, like something fragile and easily dismantled. Beyond them are the fence; the fringe of trees; safety. So close. If we only had time... Time...

Something pops; an explosion in the darkness; the mud jumps upward in an arc. They're shooting again, from the helicopter.

"Freeze, dismount, and put your hands on your head!"

The patrol cars have arrived on the road that encircles the cove. More and more cars screech to a halt, and police begin to pour down the gra.s.s toward the marshland-hundreds of them, more than I've ever seen at one time, dark and inhuman-looking, like a swarm of c.o.c.kroaches.

We're up again now, in the short strip of gra.s.s that separates the water from the old torn-up road and the guard huts, weaving around a tangle of bushes so quickly, the branches sting as they slap against my skin.

And then, just like that, Alex stops. I slam up against him, biting down hard on my tongue, taste blood in my mouth. Above us the light from the helicopter wavers a little, trying to locate us, then fixes us in its beam. Alex raises his arms above his head and climbs off the motorcycle, turning to face me. In the solid white light his expression is unreadable, as though he's been transformed, in that second, to stone.

"What are you doing?" I scream, over the noise of the propellers and the shouting and the sirens and beneath it all, the constant, everlasting groaning of the water as the tide slurps back into the cove-always there, always sweeping everything away, wearing everything to dust. "We can still make it!"

"Listen to me." He doesn't seem to be shouting, but somehow I can still hear him. It's like he's speaking directly into my ear even though he's still standing there, arms raised. "When I tell you to go, you're going to go. You've got to drive this thing, okay?"

"What? I can't-"

"Citizen 914-238-619-3216. Dismount and put your hands above your head. If you do not dismount immediately, we will be forced to shoot."

"Lena." The way he says my name makes me shut up. "They've electrified the fence. It's powered on."

"How do you know?"

"Just listen listen to me." Desperation and terror creep into Alex's voice. "When I say go, you drive. And when I say jump, you jump. You'll be able to get over the fence, but you'll have thirty seconds before the power comes back online, a minute, tops. You have to climb as fast as you can. And then you run, okay?" to me." Desperation and terror creep into Alex's voice. "When I say go, you drive. And when I say jump, you jump. You'll be able to get over the fence, but you'll have thirty seconds before the power comes back online, a minute, tops. You have to climb as fast as you can. And then you run, okay?"

My whole body goes ice-cold. "Me? What about you?"

Alex's expression doesn't change. "I'll be right behind you," he says.

"We're giving you ten seconds... nine... eight..."

"Alex-" Icy fingers are reaching up from my stomach.

Alex smiles for just one second-the briefest flicker of a smile, like we're already safe, like he's leaning in to brush my hair from my eyes or kiss my cheek. "I promise I'll be right behind you." His expression hardens again. "But you have to swear you won't look back. Not even for a second. Okay?"

"Six... five..."

"Alex, I can't-"

"Swear, Lena."

"Three... two..."

"Okay," I say, almost choking on the word. Tears are blurring my vision. No chance. We have no chance. "I swear."

"One."

At that second explosions start lighting up around us, bursts of sound and fire. At the same time Alex screams, "Go!" and I lean forward and twist the throttle like I saw him do. I feel his arms wrap around me at the last second, so strong they might have carried me off the bike if I weren't gripping the handlebars so tightly.

More gunfire. Alex cries out and releases one arm from around my chest. I look back and see him cradling his right arm. We b.u.mp up onto the old road, and there is a line of guards waiting to greet us, rifles pointed. They're all screaming, but I can't even hear them: All I can hear is the rushing, rushing of the wind and the hum of electricity coursing through the fence, just like Alex said. All I can see are the trees in the Wilds, just turning green in the morning light, all those broad, flat leaves like hands reaching for us.

The guards are so close now, I can see individual faces, make out individual expressions: yellow teeth on one, a large wart on the nose of another. But still I don't stop. We plunge through them on our bike and they scatter, fall back and jump apart so they don't get mowed down.

The fence looms above us: fifteen feet, ten feet, five feet. I think, We're going to die We're going to die.

Then Alex's voice, clear and forceful and, incredibly, calm, so I'm not sure if I hear him or only imagine him speaking the words into my ear. Jump. Now. With me. Jump. Now. With me.

I let go of the handlebars and roll to one side as the bike skids forward into the fence. Pain goes through every single part of my body-my bone is being ripped from my muscle, my muscle is being ripped from my skin-as I tumble across jagged rocks, spitting up dust, coughing, struggling to breathe. For a whole second the world goes black.

Then everything is color and explosion and fire. The bike hits the fence and a tremendous, rolling boom echoes through the air. Fire shoots into the air, enormous tongues licking up toward the ever-lightening sky. For a moment, the fence gives a high, shrill whine and then goes dead again, silent. No doubt the surge shorted it momentarily.

This is my chance to climb, just like Alex said.

Somehow I find the strength to drag myself to the fence on my hands and knees, dry-heaving, vomiting dust. I hear shouting behind me, but it all sounds distant, like under-water noise. I limp to the fence and haul myself upward, inch by inch. I'm going as fast as I can but it feels like I'm crawling, barely making progress. Alex must be behind me because I hear him shouting, "Go, Lena! Go!" I focus on his voice: It's the only thing that keeps me going up. Somehow-miraculously-I reach the top of the fence, and then I step over the loops of barbed wire like Alex taught me, and then I tip over the other side and let myself drop twenty feet to the ground, hitting the gra.s.s hard, half-unconscious now and incapable of feeling any more pain. Just a few more feet and I'll be sucked into the Wilds; I'll be beyond its impenetrable shield of interlocking trees and growth and shade. I wait for Alex to hit next.

But he doesn't.

That's when I do the thing I swore I wouldn't do. Suddenly all my strength is back, fueled by panic. I scramble to my feet as the fence begins to hum again.

And I look back.

Alex is still standing on the other side of the fence, beyond a flickering wall of smoke and fire. He hasn't moved a single inch since we both jumped off the bike, hasn't tried to.

Strangely, in that moment I think back to what I answered all those months ago, at my first evaluation, when I was asked about Romeo and Juliet Romeo and Juliet and could only think to say and could only think to say beautiful beautiful. I'd wanted to explain; I'd wanted to say something about sacrifice.

Alex's T-shirt is red, and for a second I think it's a trick of the light, but then I realize he's drenched, soaked in blood: blood seeping across his chest, like the stain seeping up the sky, bringing another day to the world. Behind him is that insect army of men, all of them running toward him at once, guns drawn. The guards are coming too, reaching for him from both sides as though they are going to tear him apart, straight down the middle. The helicopter has him fixed in its spotlight. He is standing white and still and frozen in its beam, and I don't think I have ever, in my life, seen anything more beautiful than him.

He is looking at me through the smoke, across the fence. He never takes his eyes off me. His hair is a crown of leaves, of thorns, of flames. His eyes are blazing with light, more light than all the lights in every city in the whole world, more light than we could ever invent if we had ten thousand billion years.

And then he opens his mouth and his mouth forms one last word.

The word is: Run Run.

After that the insect men fall on him. He is taken up by all their snapping, ravaging arms and mouths like an animal being set upon by vultures, enfolded in all their darkness.

I run for I don't know how long. Hours, maybe, or days.

Alex told me to run. And so I run.

You have to understand. I am no one special. I am just a single girl. I am five feet two inches tall and I am in-between in every way.

But I have a secret. You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find a way to fly above them. You can try to pin me down with a hundred thousand arms, but I will find a way to resist. And there are many of us out there, more than you think. People who refuse to stop believing. People who refuse to come to earth. People who love in a world without walls, people who love into hate, into refusal, against hope, and without fear.

I love you. Remember. They cannot take it.

Acknowledgments.

To my wonderfully patient and attentive editor, Rosemary Brosnan, who is part mentor, part taskmaster, part therapist, and all friend.

To Elyse Marshall, publicist extraordinaire, for the immensity of her support.

To the best agent in the world, Stephen Barbara, for putting up with me (I don't know how you do it).

To everyone at Foundry Literary + Media, in particular Hannah Gordon and Stephanie Abou.

To Deirdre Fulton, for letting me stay for an entire summer while researching this book.

To Arabica Coffee House in Portland, Maine, for the deliciousness of your coffee and toast and the proliferation of your electrical outlets.

To Allison Jones, for her enthusiasm, advocacy, and general loveliness, and for single-handedly hand-selling Before I Fall Before I Fall to the entirety of Williamsburg, Virginia. to the entirety of Williamsburg, Virginia.

To my aunt Sandy, for years of constant love and support.

To all of my lovely blogger friends and fans, for making what I do worthwhile.

To my family, as always, for loving me.

And to my friends, of course, for being like family.

About the Author.

LAUREN OLIVER is the author of BEFORE I FALL, which ALA is the author of BEFORE I FALL, which ALA Booklist Booklist called a "compelling book with a powerful message that should not be missed." A graduate of the University of Chicago and the MFA program at New York University, Lauren is now a full-time writer and lives in Brooklyn, New York. DELIRIUM is her second novel. You can visit her online at www.laurenoliverbooks.com. called a "compelling book with a powerful message that should not be missed." A graduate of the University of Chicago and the MFA program at New York University, Lauren is now a full-time writer and lives in Brooklyn, New York. DELIRIUM is her second novel. You can visit her online at www.laurenoliverbooks.com.