Vision in Silver(18)
“I was just making a little room on the counter!”
“You can’t change the constant things!” Meg screamed.
Merri Lee stared for a long moment. Then she stepped forward and placed her hand over Meg’s. “Calm down. The CDs are back where they belong. Breathe, Meg. Just breathe.”
Breathe. She could breathe. Simple. Routine.
“Will you be okay if I go into the back room and get us some water?” Merri Lee asked.
Meg nodded.
Merri Lee hurried out of the room, then hurried back in carrying a bottle of water and two glasses. After pouring the water, she handed a glass to Meg. They drank, avoiding eye contact, staying silent.
“Okay,” Merri Lee said. “I guess it’s time to ask some questions. You’ve been here four and a half months. Things change in this office every day, and you haven’t freaked out until now. Was the haircut the trigger? The one thing too many? If you can’t tolerate things changing, how have you survived? How do you survive? We need to figure this out.”
“It’s just a bad day,” Meg protested weakly.
“Yeah, a bad day and the shock of the haircut. Emotional overload. I understand that, Meg. I do. Just like I understand experiencing information overload, when you just can’t take in anything else. I even understand being a bit obsessive-compulsive about your things. But you pushed me aside and screamed at me. Which I guess is better than breaking down, because at least you’re still interacting with me. And that’s the point. You’ve done so much, and so much has happened to you in the past few months, and today—today—you reached your limit. But Simon said those other girls are breaking down every day, and they’ve been out of the compound less than a month. What about other girls who want to leave, who want to live outside and are faced with trying to cope?”
“I don’t know how to help them.” Tears stung Meg’s eyes.
“Yes, you do, but what you did to help yourself you did instinctively. Now Meg, the Trailblazer, has to figure out what she did so that we can tell the other girls.”
Brushing away the tears, Meg took another sip of water.
“The constant things can’t change,” Merri Lee prompted. “What makes something a constant thing?” She studied the stack of CDs. “Always five? But not the same five? And always to the right side of the player?”
“Yes.” Meg looked around the room. “I expect things to change in the sorting room because that’s what happens here. That is the function of the room. Things go in and out, but the room stays the same. The table is always in the same place. So is the telephone and the CD player. The pigeonholes in the back wall don’t move.”
“What about when you’re at home?”
“I have a routine. I follow the routine, just like I follow the roads in the Courtyard when I’m making deliveries.”
“And when the routine is disrupted? Like the times when our Quiet Mind class was canceled?”
“I feel . . . uneasy . . . until I decide what to do instead.”
“Constant versus change. A limited tolerance for change within the constants. And feeling stressed when routines are disrupted.”
Meg recalled images of expressions and decided fear was closest to what she saw on Merri’s face. “You know something.”
“I don’t know anything yet. We need to get Mr. Wolfgard’s permission to do a few experiments before I’ll feel easy about telling someone else what I’m thinking. But if I’m right about why the blood prophets on Great Island are having breakdowns, all the cassandra sangue who left captivity are in serious trouble.”