Thinking Straight

by Robin Reardon

  Nod.

  He busies himself with something, not looking at me. Still very quiet, he says, “Please remember that if anything has happened that jeopardizes the circle, you shouldn’t come. Has it?” I shake my head. “Okay, then. But you won’t be able to speak. If anyone asks you tomorrow if you spoke at any time, you need to be able to say no and not lie. Do you understand?”

  I’m getting a little tired of people asking me if I understand things I don’t like. But there’s nothing for it. So I nod again. And he leaves.

  At least I’m not forbidden access to the circle. And maybe he’ll let me write out for him what happened. There’s hope. Meanwhile, though, my meeting with Harnett made me miss break period for the laundry room. Did Will come back? Did Nate give him my message? Did I miss a chance to know that he was near me? I can’t even ask! I’m angrier than ever now.

  Charles is not waiting for me for lunch. He doesn’t know yet about the SafeZone. But I miss him. I’m standing alone, tray in hand and looking for the least conspicuous landing spot, when Nate appears next to me. “Come on,” he says, and I follow him.

  We sit at a table where Dawn and some kid I don’t know are already settled. Nate says, “Dave Ivy, this is Taylor Adams. Taylor, Dave is in the same prayer group as John McAndrews.”

  This puts me on my guard immediately, but one look at his face—the wry grin and the tiny nod—makes me like Dave. He’s saying, silently, “Yeah. Lucky me.”

  Dawn sees my sticker. She nearly whispers, “Holy moly, Taylor! What’s going on? Sorry; I know you can’t tell me. But—Nate, what happened?”

  “Don’t know yet.” He looks around casually, but I know he’s making sure he won’t be overheard. “We’ll give him a chance to explain tonight.”

  I look quickly at Dave and he winks at me. And suddenly I’m breathing easier. These are my people. The people Jesus sent me to. It’ll be all right.

  Or so I thought. Suddenly John McAndrews is hovering over us. The first thought I have is that he’s suspected there was something going on between all of us at the table. Maybe he even suspects about the circle? Did I do something to give it away? I’ll never forgive myself if I’ve…

  “Taylor, here you are. Listen, I need an extra pair of hands in the kitchen this afternoon, and Mrs. Harnett and I thought you might enjoy a change of scenery.”

  What’s he saying? Is he pulling me out of the laundry room? Away from Nate? Away from where I can watch for Will at break?

  The panic must show on my face. He laughs and says, “Don’t look so alarmed! You might actually enjoy it. Just come to the kitchen whenever you’ve finished your lunch. It’ll be a nice break for you.” He smiles, nods at the others and then at Nate, says, “Brother Nate,” and walks off.

  I throw a pleading look at Nate, but he just gives me this wobbly smile. “He’s right, actually. You might enjoy it. And it’s just for the afternoon.” I’m thinking how to ask, without speaking and without letting on even to Dave and Dawn about Will, how I’ll be able to stand not seeing Will if he shows up. Maybe Nate gets it. He adds, “Don’t worry; if you miss anything monumental, I’ll be sure to fill you in.”

  It’s not enough, but it will have to do. Needless to say, I’m in a foul mood when I darken the doorway to the kitchen.

  Actually, kitchen detail is kind of fun. It’s true I was worried, and I had my doubts, with John McAndrews as supervisor. But he does nothing the whole time I’m there that makes me feel like he’s suspicious, or like he’s watching me in any particular way. And I have to admit, the place wouldn’t have been the same without him. He teases everyone he thinks can handle it and is gentle with kids who seem more fragile.

  I get teased. My first time in here and he’s got me peeling onions. The paid staff take care of all the cooking, but there are kids doing the prep work. Now, I never had to peel onions before, and I gotta tell ya, I don’t like it. The onion juice makes my eyes ache and sting and water like crazy, and when John sees this, it looks like he might be about to laugh—though I can barely see him through the watery fountains of my eyes. But he gets all solemn, takes the knife away from me and sets it down, and then drapes an arm around my shoulders.

  “Brother Taylor, I am troubled in my heart to see you in so much distress! Now, I know you can’t talk today. Let’s see if the others can help.” And he steers me out into the middle of the floor. I’m thinking, What now? Then he says, “Brothers and sisters, as you can see, brother Taylor is deeply troubled. But because he’s in SafeZone, he can’t tell me what the problem is. Can anyone help?”

  Someone calls out, “He really wanted to do garlic, but he’s too loving to take it away from me!”

  A girl’s voice says, “He asked me to accompany him to the luau next Friday, but I turned him down.” Everyone laughs at that one, and I don’t know whether to giggle or not.

  A guy says, “He just had a visit with Reverend Bartle!”

  By now, the room is in hysterics. Even John is fighting laughter. I can imagine why they all think the Bartle comment is so funny, but I don’t. I really don’t. And evidently, someone near me doesn’t either. I can’t see very well, but I hear some boy’s voice say, “Reverend Bartle gives me the creeps. He’s so gross, always touching me.” I know what he means; the guy gives me the creeps, too.

  I start to wipe the water off my face, but John grabs my hands, trying to speak, but he’s laughing for real now. Finally he almost squeaks out, “Taylor, no! If you wipe your eyes with oniony hands it’ll only get worse!”

  The girl who mentioned the luau comes over, still giggling, and takes my hand in hers. “Maybe I won’t go to the luau with you, but I’ll take you to the sink.” And she leads me over there, turns on the cold water, and washes my face with a wet paper towel. Then she rubs my fingers against the stainless steel sink and takes some detergent and squirts it on my hands.

  “Here,” she says, “wash your hands off. Be sure you get under the nails.”

  “Okay, everybody,” John calls out, a chuckle still in his voice, “I think that’s done it for brother Taylor. Let’s all get back to our chores, or dinner won’t be ready on time.” Then he comes over to me. “All set?” I nod. “Great. ’Cause you’ve still got several more onions to do!” He laughs again as he walks away, and I guess I have no choice but to go back to them.

  But before I leave the sink, my rescuer says, “I’m Reva. And if you take care not to dig too deeply into the onion while you’re peeling it, you might be able to keep from getting so much of the juice into the air. And onto your face. Rubbing your fingers on the steel sink helps, too. By the way,” she lowers her voice, “I would go to the luau with you if you decide to ask me.”

  I do a double take. Her smile says she’s not kidding.

  Somehow it feels different being in SafeZone this time. I can’t figure out if it’s because I know I can handle it if I have to, or if it’s that I’m in the circle now and the Harnetts of the world can do only so much to me as long as I don’t actually mutiny.

  But I do feel weird leaving at four o’clock with the few who are in SafeZone; most of the new kids got here over the weekend and they’re in laundry room, anyway. Only the kids who are in SafeZone again for some reason (whether they understand it or not!) are still wearing yellow. So I’m feeling almost jaded as I make my way back to my room to write my third MI—an opus I haven’t a clue about in terms of what I can put into it. Oh, and I’m anxious, because I don’t know whether Will showed up today.

  Jaded leaves real fast. Anxious doesn’t. As soon as I’m in the room, all bets are off. The place has been tossed.

  Okay, tossed is a little dramatic. But it’s obvious a search has taken place here. All my clothes, and all of Charles’s as well, are stacked in piles on the bureau tops. We didn’t have much in our desks—not allowed to, really—but what we had on the surfaces is now stacked neatly in identical piles: Bible just so; ruled pad just so; pen just so; tissues, lamp, and so on. I pull open my top
drawer, where I’d kept my diminishing pile of those folders I’m to put my MIs into. Since I’ve submitted two, there were two left; Harnett had given me enough for one week. Now there are six folders. I slam the drawer shut and look frantically around the room, feeling watched.

  The beds have been remade. At least, mine has; it’s too neat. They must have gone through the bedclothes, under the mattress—maybe even inside the pillowcase, which I would have thought would be safe. Charles’s bed, of course, is always neat, so it’s harder to tell, but everything else of his was looked-through.

  Holy shit. Nate had been right! Thank you, Jesus, for making me take his warning seriously! OMG, if they’d ever found that article from Will, and his note…Even my Bible wouldn’t have been safe. Is nothing sacred?

  It doesn’t take long for me to go from a mood of thanksgiving to one of outrage. How dare they do this? I mean, are body-cavity searches next? Just you wait until I see you again, Harnett. Just you wait until I can talk.

  I sit down at my desk and turn to look around the room once more. I wonder if Charles knows, and if this has happened to him before. Or if it’s happened to Nate. Wait—is there any chance someone knew there might be something to look for? Could Nate have done this to test me, to see if I did what he said?

  Stop it, Taylor. Don’t get paranoid. Then a voice in my head says, Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

  Stop it! I rub my face and try to calm down. What would Will do?

  I close my eyes and picture him. He’s laughing. And he tells me, “They really can’t look inside your head, you know, Ty. And by the way, the trash has been taken, and they won’t come for it again until tomorrow. In case there might be anything you’d want to throw away that might be, I don’t know, damp?”

  I’m smiling before I even know it. Grabbing a handful of tissues, I step behind the door, where I really can’t be seen from the hall. I lean my hands against the wall and pretend Will is imprisoned there. We kiss. And kiss. And pretty soon I need those tissues.

  So, head cleared (as it were), I sit at my desk to do my MI. First, the damp tissues go into one of my drawers this time until I can take them to the bathroom. I sit there quietly for a few minutes, eyes closed, picturing the green-ink message I’d been forced to destroy, the one that still exists in my mind. I can call it up whenever I want. And I want it now.

  When Charles appears at the door to our room before dinner, I’m at my desk. At first, from where he’s standing, all he sees is the sticker on my shirt. He leans on the doorjamb. “Taylor, what happened? No—sorry. No, don’t write, Taylor!”

  I tear a sheet off the pad so that only the hard desktop is under it and no one could see an impression of what I write: “It’s okay. I know they take these pages. I’ll destroy this one.” I hold that up for him to read and then write again. “Evidently I was too full of myself last night. I’m being humbled. My boldness is being harnessed. Some such sh—.”

  The look on his face tells me he understands what’s happened, and maybe also that he doesn’t like it.

  Feeling boldly unharnessed, I add, “I’m not feeling very humbled. And look at the room.”

  He’s been so intent on my altered state that he hasn’t taken in the state of the room. His eyes go from the piles on my bureau to the ones on his, and then he wheels toward his desk. I’m watching to see if maybe they were after something of his, but it’s hard to tell. He puts a hand to his forehead for a second, like he’s trying to remember something, and then he sits down hard on his desk chair. He’s relaxed again, so I have to assume there was nothing.

  “Wow. You know, I’ve heard about this happening to some of the residents, but it’s never been done to my room before.”

  I write, “It must be me.” And suddenly I know it must be me. And it must have something to do with John McAndrews. He’s the one who’d pulled me out of Laundry and into Kitchen where he could keep an eye on me!

  Charles says, “Was there, um, do you think they found anything you didn’t want them to?” I shake my head; I don’t know where to begin about John. Charles’s voice is thoughtful as he adds, “It’s interesting that there was no attempt made to leave things the way they were. They want us to know they were here.”

  In the kaleidoscope of moods I’ve had since seeing this, that thought hasn’t occurred to me. We contemplate the room silently for a few seconds. The message I see is that they’re not afraid of us, but we’d better be afraid of them. And if that’s it, they’ve picked on the wrong impenitent.

  Just before we leave the room, I grab my used tissues and stuff them into a pocket, and I crumple in one hand the page I’ve been writing on. Charles follows me to the bathroom but stays outside, I guess so he won’t witness what I’m doing with the paper, and I manage to wet the page while pretending to wash my hands, and then I flush the tatters of it, and the tissues, down the toilet. And I wash my hands again, just in case.

  Dinner feels weird. We sit alone off to the side to avoid having to explain to anyone. At Fellowship, Charles sticks with me. He barely talks to anyone else, and together we spend a lot of time watching the room from the corner, moving away if it looks like someone might be headed toward us. His loyalty to me is really something. I’d never have expected it.

  Nate finds us at some point. “Hope you enjoyed Kitchen, Taylor. Believe me, you missed nothing in the laundry room today!” He claps Charles on the shoulder and wanders off again.

  Whew. No Will today. Otherwise I’d have had to murder John.

  Prayer Meeting is surreal. Charles and I select chairs in as inconspicuous a place as we can find. He doesn’t volunteer anything the whole time, so we just watch the show. Tonight it’s Monica, who’s falling apart about how ungodly her life has been, what with her tendency to steal things. All kinds of things, evidently. At first I think how weird it is that she’d do this, confess to the group so willingly and make a scene, but then it occurs to me that stealing is probably a way to get attention that she has some control over. Note to self: be aware of your pockets if she’s anywhere nearby. As she finishes, there’s one of those group hugs. Charles and I stand so we won’t be the only kids who don’t, but we don’t get into the hug, we don’t cry, we don’t even smile. I just want this stupid thing to be over so I can find a quiet way to follow Nate to the laundry room for the circle meeting. But Harnett keeps looking at me, and I do my best to look humbled rather than outraged; not sure how well I do.

  Not well enough, it seems. Because toward the end of the meeting, even though we’ve already had our participatory drama for the night, she stands up and calls my name.

  “Taylor Adams. Please stand.”

  Charles is trying not to look at me, I can tell. I can also tell that he’s worried.

  “Brothers and sisters, as you can see, brother Taylor is in SafeZone once again. I bring your attention to him not to embarrass him, but to enlighten all of you about the reason.” I hold my chin up and look right at her. “Brother Taylor has a great deal of potential. One day he will be capable of bringing great glory to God. But first he is learning humility.” She pauses, and looks around the room. “Does anyone have any advice for him on this score?”

  There’s a bit of a lull as we wait to see who will cast the first stone. Last year in school we read a story called “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson about this community of people who select one member to die every so often, and everyone else hurls stones at them until they’re dead.

  I’m going to disappoint them. I’m not going to die.

  Maybe it’s too bold of me, considering what I’m supposed to be learning, but I look around the room, offering myself as a target. I settle my gaze on Marie. And sure enough, resistance is beyond her. Saints above, forgive me; I’ve tempted her. She stands. Take your best shot, sister.

  “Jesus warns us against assuming that the place of honor should be ours. We should take the lowest place.”

  I’m thinking, Is that t
he worst you can do? when, true to form, Nate goes next, not quite but almost coming to my rescue. “Brother Taylor, humility is always advised. Jesus is our best example. If you’re humble, you couldn’t ask for better company.”

  Well, I think to myself as I bow my head, I’m not sure I’m up to the example of Jesus—after all, he was humbled to death, and didn’t I just refuse to die?—but I could learn a thing or two from Nate. He always manages to walk that line between caving in to the Harnetts of this world and remaining true to God.

  Then the room is quiet. I glance up at Harnett, who’s looking around at everyone. When there are no volunteers, she tries prodding. “Anyone else? This is an important lesson for all of us to learn. Is there no other advice for brother Taylor?”

  Silence. As I look around the room again, I see a variety of expressions. Some eyes fall rather than meet mine, but other faces have tiny smiles, almost secret ones. For me, not against me. Dawn isn’t smiling, but she looks defiant. It’s almost like she’s saying, “I’ll be damned if I’ll humiliate brother Taylor.”

  I’m just starting to get high on the idea that no one wants to drag me through the mud. And then, to my horror, Charles stands.

  “The book of James tells us humility can come from wisdom. When brother Taylor begins to use his wisdom in humility, he will be a formidable soldier for God.”

  I’m still blinking at him as he sits down again. This may not be having quite the effect Harnett wanted. It’s praising with faint damnation. Then something occurs to me, and I turn to face her.

  She’s not doing this just to humiliate me. She’s doing this to test the others, too. Who will stand? Who will say what? Who understands the lesson I’m supposed to be learning? Her eyes and mine lock, and there’s this electric shock of recognition. She knows I get it. She knows that I know what she’s doing.

  She smiles, and it’s a real smile. I almost want to smile back. But I don’t quite do it.