by Tosca Lee
“Hey,” she says.
I glance back at that wall as the car pulls away. Some invisible cord between Truly and me is pulling tight, tighter, until I think I might scream.
“Wynter, this is Lauren, the boys’ half sister. She’s sixteen.”
The boys. Half sister. I parse her words as though through a fog until I realize she’s talking about her boys, with whom Jackie and I used to play on weekends—or any other time Mom could shuttle us out of the apartment to Julie’s house, which had everything we did not. Video games. The Cartoon Network. Popsicles and smoke bombs on the Fourth of July—a holiday I haven’t celebrated since the summer they moved away and my world went dark a year before we arrived at the Enclave.
“Lauren was born in Atlanta, where we moved with Ken, her dad, after my divorce. You remember Ken? We’ve been married for fifteen years.”
I can’t help it. I keep hearing what Magnus would say about Lauren’s shorts, the tank top, the hair. About Julie’s divorce and remarriage, Lauren’s birth before that marriage. The charm bracelet dangling from Julie’s wrist as she drives. About the charms themselves.
Tinny music drifts from Lauren’s headphones. I strain to listen, if only to shut Magnus up.
Or is this what it means to be in Hell—having to hear and see Magnus in everything?
“So what’s it like?” Lauren says.
“What’s what like?” I ask.
“Being in a cult.”
“Lauren!” Julie says, glancing in the rearview mirror.
“What? That’s what you called it,” Lauren says.
Julie holds up her hand. “Lauren Zandt. Not another word.”
Cult.
I know the word. Had been warned one of the few times I helped out at the farmers’ market I might hear this worldly lie. That I ought to count the derision of anyone not one of us as a badge of honor. It hadn’t kept my cheeks from burning when I saw the way other teenagers looked at us—as Lauren is now.
I turn in the seat, but when I look back, the walls are gone, swallowed by the horizon.
Several miles later Julie pulls into a diner. There’s a TV on in the corner and the red booths remind me of the times we went to Denny’s when I was little. How we’d stopped there on the drive to Iowa for a “nice” dinner, Mom saying, “Better have a cheeseburger. Who knows when we’ll get one again.” Which I did.
The thought nauseates me now. The smell of the kitchen—all greasy meat and frying potatoes—does, too.
I stare at the laminated menu on the table, but all I see is the last look on Truly’s face.
“Wynter, hon?” Julie says. “What would you like?”
I realize the waitress is there, that everyone’s waiting on me.
“Do you have anything without grain or dairy?” I ask the waitress, noting her pierced nose, the tattoo on her inner wrist. Her pink lipstick.
She squints up at the ceiling. “Pot roast, roasted chicken . . .”
“Or meat?”
“Salad?” She shrugs.
“Salad, please.”
“Hold on. Give us a minute, will you?” Julie says to the waitress. When she’s gone, Julie leans across the table and says, quietly, “Sweetie, you have to eat more than that. You’re skin and bones the way it is.”
“Are you like vegan or something?” Lauren asks.
“Look!” Julie points at the menu. “Soup. How ’bout soup? Right here: black bean and rice.”
But something else has caught my eye. “Can I have some ice cream?” I ask.
“Yes!” Julie says and slaps the menu. “Thank God. All right, we’re ready.” She waves the waitress over. I watch her as she orders; she’s changed. She’s prettier than I remember, the hollows around her eyes gone despite the fact that she used to be heavier. Her hair’s lighter, practically blond. Sunglasses perch on the top of her head and I think, for a minute, that she looks like some kind of movie star.
A beautiful deception . . .
Shut up.
I excuse myself to wash my hands. Inside the bathroom, I hesitate before drying them on a paper towel. And then, when I do, I take a second and then a third. Stuff a fourth in my pocket, just because I can.
I cover my fingers with my sleeve before opening the door.
Over a lunch of chocolate ice cream—I try not to stare at Julie’s grilled cheese—I ask how they got here so fast from Atlanta.
“Oh, we moved back five years ago,” Julie says. “We’re in Naperville now, just a half hour from Chicago.”
“It sucks,” Lauren says.
Julie levels a look at her before turning to me. “So. Tell me about your mom.”
I poke at the ice cream, which is a lot sweeter than I remember. I keep looking around, I don’t know what for. Black-clad Guardians come to drag me back, maybe. Given how sideways this whole thing went, I’m not sure I wouldn’t let them take me.
“She got sick,” I say.
“When was this?”
“I was twelve. So ten years ago, I guess.”
Julie pushes her fries toward me. I take one, nibble the end of it, and then drag it through my melted ice cream like I used to do when I was a kid. And for a minute, I swear I can smell cherry Popsicles and bean burritos.
“What did she have? Did they tell you?”
“They said her spirit was sick from the time she’d spent in the world before we got there.”
Julie puts down her fork with a loud clang and a call on Jesus Christ that is not a prayer.
“Wynter, listen to me. People get sick. Period. It just happens. It’s germs, not the Devil. Or stress. God only knows how much of that she’s endured in her life. Did they even take her to a doctor?”
“I don’t know.”
I remember the morning Mom was missing from service. I asked my dorm warden and then Jaclyn where she was. No one would tell me. I finally went to the administrative office looking for answers—only to be hauled out by a Guardian and marched to Percepta Hall, where I spent the rest of the night in Penitence.
Three days later one of the girls whispered that Mom was back. But I wasn’t allowed to see her.
“Did they treat her with anything at all? Did they even give her the choice?” Julie asks angrily.
You shall not take the sick to the sick to be healed, but they will live among the well and be restored.
Suddenly I’m no longer hungry. “They said I had to pray that she’d confess whatever was keeping her from getting better and search my own heart for sin. That if I did that, I could save her.”
Lauren gapes and Julie closes her eyes for a brief moment before saying, “Honey, you know that’s not possible. Right?”
I nod. I don’t say that I turned myself over to Penitence and fasted there for a week in solitude, combing through each detail of my life until I had written down every possible thing I had ever done wrong—from the time I drew a face on Ara’s doll to the time I rigged it with a bunch of thread I filched from one of the older girls’ tatting baskets and casually told her it looked possessed. After which I’d disappeared around the corner from where it was perched on Ara’s bed to pull the little threads like a demonic puppet master. Ara’s scream had brought both of the girls’ wardens running for the dorm at full speed—until one of them tripped and went sprawling across the floor and cut her chin. The whole thing landed me my first night in Penitence, during which I screamed and kicked the door and had not prayed once, which I also duly noted.
I had confessed that I missed cake with icing, hated learning to can tomatoes, and daydreamed during service about kissing boys, whom I listed in order.
I confessed that I had taught one of the other girls a Bon Jovi song and reenacted scenes from Pinky and the Brain when we were supposed to be cleaning and had covertly farted on Ara’s pillow—numerous times—for making it her mission in life to report any infraction of mine she could ever since the Satanic doll incident.
I don’t say that I declared it all before the six Eld
ers upon my reemergence: twenty-three pages of sins—in deed, thought, or imagined—read with shaking hands and shameful tears. And though I knew it would lose me the friendship of those implicated in the process, I did it, convinced I had completed the work that would save my mother’s life.
I don’t say that the moment I finished, I knew my mother would be healed. That I felt reborn by the experience and fasted an extra day, I was so light and full of gratitude afterward.
I couldn’t wait to see my mother, tell her that she was going to be fine. Which is why I waited so patiently when they told me she was resting. I believed she was recovering her strength.
“So what happened?” Julie asks.
“She died.” Short, insufficient words.
Julie looks away, her chin quivering as Lauren’s eyes dart between us. A few seconds later Julie dabs at her lashes with the crease of her napkin, and then reaches across the table to take my hands.
She hasn’t washed hers in all this time. Not even once.
“Now, you listen to me,” she says. “It isn’t your fault. None of it. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s your mom’s for taking you all to that place—no. Forget I said that. That’s not fair, no matter how much I disagreed with her decision. She didn’t want to go to a shelter and wouldn’t come to Atlanta. She said it was the first place Nate would look, which was probably true. But I kick myself all the time for not just driving up to get you girls and telling her to get her ass in the car.”
Nate.
It’s the first time I’ve heard my father’s name in fifteen years.
“Which reminds me,” Julie says, squeezing my fingers, “I need to tell you something. Your father passed away a couple years ago.”
“How?” I hear myself ask.
“Shot himself in the head.”
Suicide. A damning offense. As though Nate hadn’t committed enough already.
“I wish I could say I’m sorry, but I’m not,” Julie says, her lips set in a tight line. “The minute one of your old neighbors emailed me I tried to get a message to your mom. I was hoping once she knew she’d have the courage to start over on her own. You can imagine my shock when they said she had passed away.”
She lets me go to swipe at an eye, smudging her mascara. “And no one would let me talk to either one of you girls. Said you didn’t want any contact with anyone from your past.” She lets out an angry, ragged breath. “Which I knew wasn’t true!”
But she’s wrong. Two years ago, I wouldn’t have taken that call. Because even though I missed Julie, I still believed. Could still chalk up the inconsistencies around me to my own lack of understanding or misguided nature. Because it was far easier to rationalize what didn’t make sense than accept the truth glaring me in the eye.
And because Jaclyn—and Truly—were all I had left.
“I even consulted an attorney who specializes in this kind of thing,” Julie says. “But of course neither one of you was a minor anymore.”
My head snaps up. “Jackie has a daughter.”
Julie blinks. “She does? How old?”
“Four. Can the lawyer get her out?”
Julie sighs. “Honey, no one’s going to take her from her parents without some proof of endangerment or abuse. Has anyone hurt her? Has she been molested? You know—touched inappropriately?”
But no one would dare harm the daughter of Magnus. I shake my head.
“What’d you do, anyway?” Lauren asks.
“About what?”
“To get kicked out.”
I feel their gazes—Lauren’s, watching me as though I might sprout a second head, Julie’s sharp curiosity primed for outrage.
But I can’t talk about the last four weeks. “I quit believing.”
“Well, thank God you’ve always been able to think for yourself. We’ll just have to pray Jackie comes to her senses. Meanwhile, you’re lucky you got out.”
Lucky. It’s a forbidden word. Am I lucky?
No. I’m free, with no sense of up or down. With no money to my name and everything I own in a plastic bag on the front seat of Julie’s car. Without family, a home, or any idea how to function in the outside world.
Not so lucky then.
The waitress pauses at the booth across from ours, coffeepot forgotten in her hand as she stares at the TV. I follow her gaze to live footage of three people standing on top of a parking garage.
“Turn that up?” she calls to another waitress.
A younger woman in an identical black apron grabs the remote from the counter and punches up the volume until the announcer’s voice reaches our booth.
“. . . in downtown Chicago where a couple and their unidentified nanny have told authorities they’re teaching their children to fly,” the announcer says, clearly baffled. “A truly bizarre and horrifying scene . . .”
“What is wrong with people?” Julie says, shaking her head.
“Probably drugs,” Lauren mutters.
I cannot make sense of anything I’m seeing, even as a family photo flashes across the screen—of the couple on the garage, I assume. They’re smiling and wearing matching white, from the blond mom and darker-skinned, laughing dad to the adolescent girl and younger boy—who’s got his arm around a German shepherd.
All of a sudden, the announcer’s voice raises in pitch. The picture disappears and returns to live feed—just in time to show one of the figures soaring out from the ledge of the garage in a swan dive. Julie gasps and the waitress screams, coffee splashing in the pot as the feed cuts back to the anchor.
“Oh, my God!” Lauren says, yanking her headphones off.
“Excuse me, miss?” Julie says, trying to get the attention of the waitress as a few patrons come over to get a better view of the TV. “Can you turn the channel? My girls don’t need to see this.”
The waitress turns. “Is that what they said? They’re trying to teach their children to fly?”
Behind her, the TV abruptly goes dark—along with all the lights in the restaurant. The waitress glances up, curses, and strides off toward the kitchen.
“What happened?” Lauren says, looking around.
“Who knows,” Julie murmurs, pulling her wallet from her purse. “But we’re leaving.” She plops down some bills on the table.
I slide from the booth, palms sweaty, my fingers cold.
“Does—does stuff like that happen often?” I ask when we’re back inside the car. I can’t not see the image of that swan dive, playing over and over again in my mind.
What kind of world have I returned to?
“The power?” Julie asks, glancing at the screen on her dash as we back out.
“No,” I say. I’ve been accustomed to power outages at the Enclave during storms, though right now the sun is streaming through the window. “The people on the news.”
“More and more, it seems. If it’s not some crazy idiot, it’s a nut job with a gun.”
“Or terrorists,” Lauren volunteers from the back seat.
“Like I said,” Julie says. “Nut job with a gun.”
“Or someone trying to dance in traffic,” Lauren adds.
“What?” I say.
Julie chuffs and rolls her eyes. “Some lunatic decided to moonwalk down highway 59 and got run over. Not by me—thank God—but it happened while I was out buying things for the guesthouse. Shut traffic down for an hour, and of course the car was on empty because someone didn’t fill it up when she used it to drive to a concert”—she glances in the rearview mirror—“and I ran out of gas and had to call AAA . . .”
“I said I’m sorry!” Lauren says.
“And I said you’re not borrowing the car for a week.”
I glance between them. Someone got killed on the highway and, according to all I’ve been taught, is writhing in Hell this very moment . . . and they’re bickering about how inconvenient it was?
But that was horror on their faces back at the diner. Which means this kind of thing can’t be normal.
“W
ait,” I say slowly. “How did you make it to Iowa by noon?”
“That was yesterday, or we wouldn’t have,” Julie says.
“But I only called this morning.” It was the first time I’d dialed a phone in fifteen years, and I hadn’t even known who’d be on the other end of the number written in my file.
Julie glances at me and then back at the road, brows drawn together. “Hon, I got a voicemail three days ago that you were going to need a place to stay for a while.”
“What?” Three days ago I hadn’t even been turned in yet. “From who?”
“Your sister, Jaclyn.”
CHAPTER FOUR
* * *
The new girl was about my age: fifteen, give or take a year. Her bored look and sullen scowl reminded me of Jaclyn when we first arrived.
No, it was worse.
But unlike Jaclyn, who still took in the world from the corners of her eyes, this girl had the distinct air of someone who didn’t care about the judgment of others—whose half-shaved head and heavy makeup seemed to invite it, even, in a way that instantly drew me toward her.
“Want to get some ice cream?” I asked in the living room of the guesthouse, trying not to sound too eager to get out. This was our house, once. Or at least I thought it was going to be. Now I couldn’t look at the braided rugs and doilies without remembering how Mom admired them.
Without feeling the ache of her absence.
The girl turned to look at me with an expression that clearly said, Seriously?
“There’s a new pond in the garden,” I offered. “Sometimes we put our feet in it, in the summer . . .”
It was the middle of January.
“Got any smokes?” she asked. And even though I was the only other one here—Elder Omni had personally taken her dad for a tour of the compound—I wished she hadn’t said it so loudly as I glanced fearfully toward the eye in the corner.
“No, sorry.” Guests were given pretty much free run of the Enclave, not subject to the same rules as the Select. Still, the thought of this girl in the torn black T-shirt sauntering around the Enclave with a cigarette hanging between her lips made me bite back a laugh as I wondered what Ara and her band of disciples would say about that.
