by Kris Ripper
The snakes. She forgot about the snakes.
Lisa scrambled out of the bed and shook out the sheet, the blanket, the light coverlet.
No snakes. Right. It was a dream.
She peered at the phone Mother and Dad had bought for her. Half past two a.m. Saturday morning. At the farm she’d still be asleep right now. She should at least be able to sleep here, where no chores awaited her, where no voices called to her. No one watching everything she did.
Sleep, in a bed, in a room of her own, with walls, a door that closed against outsiders. No hope for a warm body nearby, but no fear of one, either. No dread of exclusion.
Lisa tried to go back to bed, but it was almost impossible. It wanted to be a den of snakes now. She could feel the snakes, even though she could see they weren’t there.
Definitely not a good sign.
After an indeterminate amount of time—she was sweating now, stiff as a board, trembling with the chill of cool air on sweaty skin—she got back up.
Her hoodie felt right on her shoulders, hood pulled tight over her head. Yes. This was good. If she were back home—no, not home, back at the farm—she’d pull this on first thing in the morning, every morning. There was always moisture in the air that close to the coast.
For a vivid, horrible moment, she missed it. The coast. Smelling the air in the morning, dawn breaking over fields they worked with their hands. She tried to kill that feeling with every ounce of her energy. No one forced her out; she chose to leave. She couldn’t miss it. Missing it was the worst betrayal.
Lisa had hated gardening before she went to the farm. But she’d been terrible at recruiting on the streets, and by the time she was given farm duty, it was a relief.
“Just be yourself,” Anthony Grace had said, touching her cheek. “You’re so beautiful you glow, Lisa. Be yourself and that’s what will convince them that they want to join us.” He hadn’t known Lisa didn’t exist. That she was a false front. That all her life she’d painted over herself to be whatever other people needed her to be, and now she was nothing at all.
She looked at her phone again, but it was too early to catch the street teams on Twitter. That had been the last time she used a phone so much it felt normal in her hands. Once she’d started working at the farm, she’d turned her phone over to whoever took her place. Of course it hadn’t been her phone. The way her clothes became communal clothes. Sometimes she’d look down and realize she wasn’t wearing a single thing she’d arrived with. Or she’d look over at Abigail and realize she was wearing an entire outfit of Lisa.
It had been a soft joke between them. A silent one. On a bad day they’d switch clothes completely.
There had been bad days. She could remember that now. For so long she’d told herself she just needed more practice finding the good. But no. Some days had been bad.
Even pulling the blinds all the way up didn’t let any light in. Not close enough to dawn yet.
The bed still wanted to be snakes, so Lisa sat in the chair instead.
She’d gone through every inch of the room when she first arrived, every bit of paper, every sticker, every unused stamp, every blank scrapbook. Mother had intended to chronicle something in this room, but Lisa had no idea what. She’d found a box of snapshots high up in the closet, pictures from when she and Singer were young—probably rejects from the hallway—but they were still in their little drugstore envelopes, with the negatives stuck insecurely in the front.
Lisa looked at the pictures, searching for the moment she’d transformed from a child into a pretty picture of the popular girl. Mother had dressed her up, starting when she was a baby. Perfect little dresses, perfect little bonnets and bows. Like a doll.
She shivered and pulled her knees up to her chest. Still too early to see them on Twitter, but she booted up the ancient laptop anyway. She’d found it in the bottom drawer of the desk and still couldn’t imagine what Mother was doing with a hidden computer. Nothing important or she would have brought it with her to Southern California. Maybe it was just old, replaced by something new, but still functional.
Slow. She took deep, steady breaths, waiting for Windows to stabilize enough so she could open a browser.
The farm was not a cult. At least, she’d been sure it wasn’t a cult when she first left. You couldn’t leave a cult, right? She knew she could leave the farm. All she had to do was walk away.
Mother had taken her to three “specialists” in five days, men who wanted to talk about “deprogramming” her like she had an operating system malfunction, like she only needed to be rebooted and everything would be fine. But Lisa had never been fine in the first place. The character she’d played in high school had disintegrated when she landed in college, and then she’d floated, trying to find her true self underneath the tatters of all that pretending. She’d thought Anthony held the key to who she was. It took a while to realize that he made everyone feel that way, as if even a smile from him was enough to make them real.
Now she was nothing at all. Not the popular girl, not the glowing girl, warm in Anthony’s gaze.
Singer remembered the popular girl. So did his boyfriend, and the rest of them. The Derries. They remembered her as the Lisa who blew kisses to her basketball coach and dated boys on the football team. That was the Lisa she’d been, but that Lisa had died years ago.
Died. Dead. Blown away on a slight breeze, insubstantial and featherlight, leaving nothing behind but a husk.
Time for another search. They always turned up the same things, but as long as she wasn’t asleep, she might as well do this.
She typed “praise for anthony grace” into the search engine and waited for the ancient computer to load results.
Very few people named their pasts. The same six hits came up again, and Lisa clicked on the four relevant ones.
She hadn’t known any of these people. In the three years she’d spent on the farm, she’d seen two people leave. She’d turned her back like everyone else as they walked down the long road, never dreaming she’d do the same. She’d pitied both of them.
At least neither of them had a blog.
Still, she found four, four faceless people online who talked about recovering from their time with Anthony Grace as if he was a disease they’d had for a while, then been cured of. As if their recovery had been long and hard, but eventually complete.
Lisa wanted desperately to be cured. To no longer wake up twisted in her snakes, or worse, consumed with desire. So much worse.
“I can still smell his skin. The way I used to salivate for it. Crave him. I’m so ashamed I needed him that much. I can’t tell anyone, not even my therapist, how deeply I needed him, how I thought I’d starve without his smiles.”
Lisa shuddered and skimmed down. Yeah, this was the part she wanted. The author, who called herself Xfamily, talked about getting a job, how hard it was at first, how she didn’t want to leave her house. How she stayed in bed all day because it was the only place that felt safe. Lisa lost herself in reading more stories, and it didn’t matter how ugly they were. She was ugly, too.
Down the hall the baby started to cry, jolting her out of a daze. Not quite asleep, not quite awake. It was such an anomalous sound Lisa thought for a minute Singer and Jake were watching a movie about babies. A very loud movie about babies.
The door to Mother and Dad’s room—now Singer and his boyfriend’s room—opened. The door to Singer’s room—now the baby’s—opened. Low murmurs. Probably both of them. They both got up most of the time.
For a stunning, absurd moment, Lisa imagined herself standing, shifting the side table away from the door, turning the knob, stepping out. She would go to the doorway, ask if they needed anything. The farm had a few younger kids, a few babies. She’d been saying she hated kids her whole life; it had been weird to realize she didn’t. They were fun, in a limited way. Also, they were fun in an unlimited
way, when they got older and could run around. Lisa’s shifts childminding had been some of her favorites.
She hadn’t seen Singer’s baby. She’d been hiding. He’d knocked once to tell her a baby was coming, and again to apologize in advance for any crying.
So like Singer to apologize in advance, a little bit wryly, as if he were offering a stock apology and they both knew she would offer a stock acceptance.
Lisa’s stomach grumbled. She’d snuck out late on the night the baby showed up to make some sandwiches—four, maybe?—and she still had a quarter of a sandwich left, which meant she’d eaten three and three-quarters sandwiches over the last five days. That definitely fell under the header Not Good. She couldn’t go out now. Not with Singer and/or Jake and/or the baby awake.
She kept promising herself she wasn’t going to do this anymore. But she checked the time, and the street teams would be on the move, which meant they’d be on the phones. She unwrapped the quarter sandwich and opened Twitter in her browser.
Carefully, very carefully, she typed “#praiseforanthonygrace” into the search bar.
Just after four a.m. the hits started coming, and she refreshed, and refreshed, and refreshed. Everyone was there. Talking to each other. All three teams were getting ready to hit the streets, one in Santa Monica, one in Pasadena. Her old team was in Long Beach.
@rm_pfag: Gonna be a gorgeous day in LB. #praiseforanthonygrace
@ap_pfag: @rm_pfag Light seen in darkness transcends sight. #praiseforanthonygrace
@rm_pfag: @ap_pfag Also, the weather report calls for sunshine. #praiseforanthonygrace
@dd_pfag: Levity has no place in worship, @rm_pfag @ap_pfag #praiseforanthonygrace
Despite herself, Lisa smiled. She could hear their voices. Ray’s wry, Angel’s willing to be drawn into the joke, Di’s severe. She kept the search tab open and added a new search, typing quickly. #fail_pfag
@rm_pfag: The weather really does call for sun. #fail_pfag
@ap_pfag: Stop making me laugh, she’s staring right at me. #fail_pfag
If she refreshed again, they would be gone, deleted as quickly as they appeared, leaving no trace. (Of course they left a trace—on Twitter’s servers, if nowhere else—but the system had not yet failed the youngest members of the family, the ones who knew the secret, irreverent hashtag, the one you deleted a careful thirty seconds after you’d used it.)
Alone in a room far north, Lisa realized she was crying. A cult? But that implied, what, poisoned Kool-Aid and locked doors? There was no Kool-Aid. There were moments of joy and laughter. And when she’d finally decided to go, no one stopped her. No one spoke to her. No one met her eyes at all. They turned their backs as she walked the long gravel road through the farm, holding nothing in her hands, carrying nothing with her but grief, thick and cloying on her skin.
She hadn’t turned back, no matter how much it hurt. Most of them stopped long before they reached the gate and the roads beyond, stopped and came home, begged forgiveness, made amends. But Lisa’s two legs, strong after all the field work, in shoes worn from walking the streets searching for believers—or those who wanted to believe—kept going until she was outside the gate, on the main road, past the scattered ranch-style homes, as the lot sizes got smaller and smaller until she was inside the city limits.
It was like that old kids’ movie, the one with the alien on the bike. Lisa phone home. She’d called Dad’s cell phone collect. She hadn’t even known collect calls still existed. And he accepted the charges.
Lisa wiped her tears and crumpled up the plastic wrap. She hoped Singer would take his new family out somewhere today. She needed to stock up on supplies. A glance at the bed confirmed that, in near-morning light, it no longer wanted to be snakes.
She curled into her pillows, twisted the sheets around her neck, and fell asleep.
*
Eleven a.m. More people were in the house. Lisa lay in bed with her eyes closed, listening to their voices. The baby gathered “ooh”s and “ahh”s, and she wondered what he thought of it all. Did he really want a bunch of strangers staring at him making noises? Probably not. Though he didn’t seem to cry, so that was good.
Unless he was numb. Lisa ran through her body seeking numb spots. Sometimes she … lost parts. She’d be lying there, flat on her back, and suddenly she no longer had a chest. Or an arm. Sometimes she lost the length of one thigh, or a large patch of her right shoulder. Numbed out, nerves silent, no longer reporting for duty.
When she concentrated very hard she could feel herself fading. She pictured her body flickering, the numbest parts blinking out. She knew she couldn’t actually become invisible, but sometimes it seemed like it might be worth a try.
The realness of this feeling—this flickering—started to feel more like a weight. She forced herself to get out of bed.
Car doors slammed outside. No engines started. She peeked around the edge of her window (far too obvious to pull the shades now), and yes, they were outside. With … Jake’s parents? Was that his brother? Hard to tell them apart from far away. And there was a stroller. Taking a walk?
The baby was black. That was surprising. The brother holding the little black baby was probably Jake, and Singer was dabbing something on the baby’s face. Oh, ha, the baby wasn’t a fan of that. Singer jumped back, but Jake laughed.
God, it was weird to see Singer like that. Part of this huge group of people. He looked even more out of place than his little black baby in a sea of white faces.
Yes. Taking a walk. Okay. Lisa waited until they’d moved beyond the hedges, mentally planning her attack. She’d make six sandwiches this time. And look for fruit. She needed bananas. Bananas would stay good for a few days. Apples would work alone, though if she had her own peanut butter to keep in her room, that would be better.
Singer probably didn’t randomly have extra jars of peanut butter living in his cabinets, but she’d look. That’d be the last thing she did, after making and storing her sandwiches, and trying to track down some fruit that didn’t need the refrigerator. Then she’d turn to the pantry in the hopes of finding doubles. She could eat beans out of the cans, as long as they had pull tabs. Add “spare can opener” to the list of things she’d forage for.
One more check out the front window. No one.
She had to be fast.
Lisa shifted the side table out of the way and opened the door. Bathroom? No. Food first. The bathroom was right across the hall and slightly easier to use when there were people in the house. And she was hungry.
Straight to the kitchen, then. Coffee. She could smell coffee. Coffee would wreck her body after this long, but suddenly she wanted it even more than a sandwich.
There were people in the house.
“We haven’t met. I’m Alice.” The woman in her kitchen—tall, fat, with hair like Shirley Temple—held out her hand. When Lisa didn’t take it, she made it into a wave. “You want coffee? Also, this is Emery.”
Dear god, the man on the other side of the butcher block island was hot. Shiny dark hair cut to his jaw, a little messy, blue eyes, dimples, little soul patch beneath his lip. These people were definitely not Derries.
Emery held up a hand. “Hey. Good to meet you.”
She should probably say something now. She didn’t.
Alice opened one of the cabinets. “Let me get you coffee. It’s the least we can do for being here. But seriously, have you ever taken a walk with Cathy and Joe? They’re hikers. I have some hope they won’t take the stroller too far off-trail, but I couldn’t wrangle a commitment out of them, so I decided to save myself and stay here. This fat girl don’t hike.” As she spoke, she poured. Then she set the mug on the counter near Lisa, but didn’t make her take it.
She had an accent. But it felt shifty. East Coast, definitely, though Lisa couldn’t get more specific.
“Shouldn’t we be building something?�
� The guy’s voice was also underlain with an accent, a little grit between his consonants. “I thought that’s the excuse you gave Mama Bear?”
“We’ll build in a few minutes. Though I think building a plastic playhouse for a kid who can’t even crawl is doing too much.”
Lisa reached for the coffee. The mug was wonderfully hot, too hot, but she gripped it in both hands, trying to suck the heat all the way into her bones.
Steam misted her skin. Coffee. An addictive substance, so no one drank it on the farm. The emphasis on clean living was one of the things she’d been so drawn to in the beginning. Sweet Angel talking about how she’d never felt as high on drugs as she did breathing fresh air and eating homegrown food. Abigail, holding up a squash like she’d conjured it, grinning, more excited to harvest vegetables than Lisa had ever been on Christmas morning.
The first sip scalded her tongue and burned down her throat. Lisa’s eyes watered, so she closed them and took another sip.
“I knew what I was getting into when I moved out here,” Emery was saying.
“That doesn’t mean you should let him take advantage of you.”
“Don’t be dramatic. He’s giving me lousy shifts because I’m the new guy.”
“You should be doing a lot more than inking butterflies on drunk college girls, Em.”
“When you want to do the back piece, babe, you let me know.”
“Soon, I hope. I’d rather not be living off my man and spending my savings on tattoos.”
“Please, your man loves my work. I bet if I asked, he’d buy it for you.”
“Do not ask Carey to buy my ink, Emery. I will knock your ass flat so fast—”
“Okay, okay.”
Their voices misted her like the steam, absorbing through her skin without any conscious effort. The coffee was too bitter and yet it tasted miraculous. She hadn’t missed coffee, not really, but standing in Mother’s kitchen feeling hungover from bad sleep, it felt like time had folded. She was her old self and her new self and the farm had never existed. Maybe she was just here for a visit, to see the new baby. She wouldn’t want to hike either, so she’d stay back with the fat woman whose name she’d already forgotten, and Emery of the glossy black hair.
