Malorie

But a madman at ease is safer than a sane woman unsettled.

Despite the behavior by some that she considered unfathomably dangerous only fourteen days ago, she also gets it. People in the new world fall into two categories: safe and unsafe. But who’s to say which lives the better, fuller life?

She remembers yelling, so much yelling, so much saying 'no no no, Tom, NO!' But if you tell someone "no" enough times, they start thinking "yes", just to hear something else, just to hear a different word, they start thinking YES.

And Tom and Olympia both have pondered aloud, in their own ways, the worth of a life in which the only aim is to keep living

Whoever you meet, whoever we encounter, you have to remember that they’ve experienced loss. Whether it was their parents, their kids, their friends…they’ve lost someone to the new world. And you need to keep that in mind when they talk to you, when they sound like they don’t trust you, when they eye you like you’re the danger.

I was waiting for a literal message, I think. Waiting for a knock at the door, someone to come tell us it was over. It’s the ultimate fantasy for those of us from the old world, isn’t it? Word that the whole nightmare has come to an end?

But if you tell someone no enough times, they start thinking yes, just to hear something else, just to hear a different word, they start thinking yes.

You're caught." She said. "No better off than I am, but you don't deserve to watch me fail. You showed up uninvited and you took everything from us. You stole our sisters, our parents, our kids. You took the sky, the view, you took day and night. A look across the street. A glance out a window. You've taken a view, every view, and with that, perspective. Who do you think you are, coming here, taking, then siting silent, watching me go mad? I hope you're hurt. I hope you're stuck in here. I hope you get taken from you what you've taken from us. How can I be a mother in this world, your world? How am I supposed to feel, ever, in a world where my kids are allowed to look. They don't know me. My kids. They know a weathered, paranoid woman who cringes at every suggestion they make. They know a woman who says no so many more times than she says yes. A thousand times no. A hundred thousand times no. They know a woman who tells them what they're doing is wrong, every day, all night. I was different before you. My kids will never know that person. I'll never know that person again.

Because Tom has been looking for a reason to leave this cabin since the moment she said they wouldn’t be leaving it anymore. Because Tom is at that damnable age where he believes he must resist every f*cking thing his mother tells him.

He reads on: 'In every corner of this community, somebody is attempting something new. For this, they've had their share of tragedies.' Tom nods. Of course they have. They had to have. That's how invention works. Failures are guaranteed. Doesn't Malorie understand that? Doesn't she get that you can wear a blindfold your entire life, but all you're doing is perpetuating the lie that you cannot see?

A horror she’s long expected has arrived.

I’m fine,” Malorie yells. “I’m fucking fine.

The whole world, it seems, is crazy. And everybody within it is only a gradation.

The teens know the rules, but of course that doesn’t mean the teens follow them.

She wants to believe in Fate, wants to believe there is a reason for everything. That they were supposed to leave now. That no time has been lost. That a bigger purpose will be revealed in the end. But Malorie doesn't think this way p.

from your skin proved how active your third eye was. How liable you were to feel things that aren’t of this world.

Even someone who appears kindhearted might glance out a window. Even someone abrasive might never. The old constructs of good and bad have long been replaced with safe and unsafe. Are you a safe person? She thinks she is. She knows she is.

Tom the man died that day. The namesake of her son.

[...] feels gratitude, to the pages, for teaching him, already, that while it's okay to be scared, you've got to push back while you tremble.