Chapters 1-2 Summary

Delirium is set in Portland, Maine, in a future or alternate world, sixty-four years after love has been declared a disease in the U.S. Seventeen-year-old Lena, an orphan whose mother supposedly committed suicide, is approaching her eighteenth birthday when she will have the mandatory procedure to stop her from falling in love, and be assigned a mate.

As Chapter 1 begins, Lena is anxiously awaiting the procedure, which her sister Rachel had nine years ago. In ninety-five days it will be Lena's eighteenth birthday, September 3, and she will have the procedure and be cured of love. Then she will be happy and safe, her Aunt Carol tells her.

Some people resist the procedure. One girl broke free at the last moment and jumped off the laboratory roof. TV stations broadcast her dead face as a caution against the dangers of the...