The Outside

by Laura Bickle

  The glass doors were easy enough. I pried the first set open with my fingers. They gave way under the pressure of my shoulder. I guessed that these were automatically powered doors. The second set was locked, top and bottom, with strong slide bolts.

  And the metal segmented door stood between me and the outside. It extended all across the face of the building. I searched at the bottom of it for a handle, for a way to raise and lower it. It seemed to have rolled out of the ceiling, but was connected to the floor by a metal footer. I searched for a way to release it, crawling on my hands and knees, probing with my fingers, until I found a series of release switches. I tripped them all. Taking a deep breath, I slipped my fingers beneath the metal curtain and lifted.

  The noisy metal wall rolled up like a roman shade. I’d lifted it no more than three feet when I saw several sets of legs before me: human, horse, and wolf.

  And the gray light behind them washed in.

  A smile broke on Alex’s face.

  “Welcome to paradise.”

  ***

  For that brief time in that closed-up store, it was paradise. And more.

  Alex led Horace inside, and Fenrir hesitantly followed in their wake. We closed down all the doors, refastened them.

  Alex grinned as he locked the last set of doors. “I feel like I’m in a military installation.”

  “And that’s good?”

  “Yeah. This is our fortress. Our stronghold against the night.”

  I blew out a breath. I was beginning to feel safe, for the first time in many weeks.

  The first thing to fight was the worry of darkness. Alex brought inside the spark I’d so lovingly ensconced in pine needles in a hollowed-out plastic bottle. The spark seemed very bright after I blew on it. I could see it gleaming in my hands, like an orange star.

  “Here,” Alex said. “Try this.”

  He’d found two pillar candles from a holiday display. They smelled strongly of cloves. I gently poured the fire from my ember to the wicks, blew on them until the breath of life stabilized the fire. The candles burned, dripping wax. They were covered in glitter, but they were perfectly functional for what we needed, which was to explore our surroundings.

  We passed by the cash registers at the mouth of the store. Money was useless in our new world. We crossed to the candle display, unwrapped more candles, and added light there, to mark our surroundings.

  Horace clomped on the marble floors. He nosed past a harvest-themed display of straw bales and scarecrows, reaching up to taste a garland. It was quite lovely, made of corn husks, ears of fancy dried corn, figs, and oranges studded with cloves. I’m sure that someone had worked quite hard to create it, and Horace appreciated the artistic effort involved. He nipped it off as high as he could reach and then bit the head off of one of the scarecrows. The hapless scarecrow head dangled from his mouth, then quickly disappeared.

  Fenrir had vanished as soon as he entered the store. I could hear his claws clicking on the floor from a far distance away.

  The department store was composed of two levels, split by an escalator. At the foot of the escalator stood a nonfunctioning fountain. The first floor was primarily clothing for men and women. It smelled heavily of perfume. I saw more of the gossamer dresses the mannequins wore, organized on hangers. There were different departments for “misses” and “women.” That made no sense to me. Only the young unmarried women wore small sizes and the married women wore the larger ones?

  There were warm, dry coats. I fingered the wool and leather with some envy and desire. I walked past the women’s formal dresses. These must be the ones that English girls wore to go to dances and weddings. The fabrics shimmered with sequins and lace. I let my hand brush the edge of a large white dress advertised for a bride.

  I smiled and shook my head.

  “What’s so funny?” Alex said.

  “A Plain woman wouldn’t ever be married in that. It’s too vain. And shows too much flesh.”

  “What do you wear for weddings?”

  “Each girl makes herself a new dress. It’s usually blue. But very similar to what we wear every other day.”

  “To avoid the sin of pride,” he said.

  “Ja. A marriage is a union of people in the light of God. It hasn’t got much to do with . . .”—I paused to read a tag—“‘a self-bustling train with pickups.’ Whatever that is.” It sounded like a selection of heavy machinery.

  I smoothed the surface of the dress and felt a pang. I wondered if Ginger had worn a dress like this at her wedding. I wished that she were here so I could ask her.

  We passed by the glittering jewelry counter and the cosmetics counter full of inscrutable jars and bottles. I had worn makeup only once, when Ginger had done it for me. When I put it on, I had felt beautiful. Until Elijah told me that my face was dirty and that I should wash it.

  There were some useful things here: perfumed soaps, soft cloths to scrub with, and brushes for hair. And having a watch to tell time might be helpful. I had lost track of which day it was. I hadn’t paused to honor the Sabbath—I honestly had forgotten when it was.

  “Boots!” Alex shouted happily. He was in the men’s department, surrounded by hiking boots.

  I grinned, feeling my cold toes squish against the interiors of my ruined shoes. New boots would be a very good thing.

  We wandered upstairs, which seemed to be the province of domestic and sporting goods. Furniture of all kinds was on display, with beds dressed in the finest linens. I paused before an ornately carved four-poster bed and rubbed my hands over the embroidered velvet coverlet. The pillows were down, and the sheets were something called Egyptian cotton. I tried not to drip wax on them as I knelt down to examine the tags. Four-hundred-dollar sheets.

  “This must be how the rich English live,” I said.

  “This is how English with credit cards live,” he said.

  I frowned. “We only use cash.”

  “That’s smart. Credit cards are a way of getting into a hole, really fast. Getting seduced by luxury goods that will take forever to pay for. It’s like selling your soul to the bank.”

  I stroked the velvet coverlet. Was one’s soul worth a velvet coverlet? Maybe it depended on the soul.

  “Score. Sporting goods!”

  I heard Alex whoop from beyond, and I followed him. He smiled broadly in an aisle surrounded by sleeping bags, tackle boxes, battery-powered lanterns, and camping cookware. “Look!” He swung his arm to the top of the aisle and pointed excitedly: “Tents! Fishing poles!”

  I uttered a prayer of thanksgiving. No more sleeping out in the elements.

  I heard a frustrated whimper. I turned to see that Fenrir had knocked over a box of “gourmet beef jerky for outdoorsmen.” He had a plastic-sealed package between his paws and was shredding at it without much success.

  “Come here.” I knelt, and Fenrir brought his prize to me. I peeled off the plastic and handed the jerky stick to him. He snatched it from my hand and trotted off in happiness.

  I paused beside a display of gourmet foods and chocolates. There were some dried fruits that would be suitable for a horse, once he’d finished stripping the garland downstairs. With a moment’s hesitation, I tore into a bag that said it contained “White Peppermint Snowballs.” I did not regret it. It contained cookies coated with peppermint. They were possibly the single most delicious thing I’d ever eaten. I closed my eyes in sublime happiness.

  When I opened them again, there was a wolf snout in the bag.

  I let him have the bag, then stared up at the display of gourmet crockery that my mother never could have imagined. The tags identified the devices as an electric miniature pie maker, a panini press, an ice cream maker, and a convection oven. Copper-bottomed pieces of cookware hung from a rack, so shiny I could see my reflection in them. They were nothing like the cast iron we used at home. I picked up a five-hundred-dollar pan and promptly dropped it, shocked at the price and how light it felt.

  “What on earth are we goi
ng to do with all of these things?” I muttered in awe.

  “We’re going to party, Bonnet.” Alex came around the corner. He was wearing a ridiculous fur parka, a pair of sunglasses, and a broad grin. He held a volleyball. “We’re going to party like it’s 1999.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  And party we did.

  I felt a momentary stab of guilt at tearing into the luxury goods at the department store. But in the light of our need and the sheer absurdity of the items, that guilt was quickly abandoned.

  Alex and I played volleyball across the escalator. We’d found flashlights in the sporting goods department and something called glow sticks in the children’s toys. The flexible sticks could be fastened as necklaces and bracelets, and I wore three around my neck as I careened crazily after the ball. Alex was a dismal volleyball player. I served it perfectly off the balcony of the second floor and he missed it entirely. It splashed into the dead fountain, startling poor Horace, who had been noisily taking a drink.

  “Damn, Bonnet. You should go pro. Play on the beach.” His face was green in the light of the glow sticks.

  “We play volleyball a good deal back home,” I said. “Often before the Singings, in the summertime, when the youth gather. It’s a good sport for both boys and girls to play together.”

  “You’ve never seen women’s beach volleyball on television, have you?”

  I cocked my head. “No.”

  “Let me show you the uniform.” He disappeared into the women’s department. I wrinkled my forehead. I hadn’t seen any uniforms down there.

  I sat down on a bench in the middle of the floor, next to the fountain. We had dragged something called a “fire bowl” down from the “Outdoor Living” section. It was a large copper bowl that held hideously overpriced wood and scented pinecones that one could burn. It was doing a good job of warming up the space, I had to admit. We’d set a couple more around the store for light and warmth. The mannequins around them seemed to twitch in the turning shadows.

  “Ta-da!” Alex said. He brought forth a garment on a hanger.

  I squinted at it. I guessed from my time surreptitiously leafing through Cosmopolitan magazine that it was a bathing suit. Barely.

  I picked it up and stared at it. It was two pieces. The top fabric, held together with beaded strings, was barely enough to cover the breasts. The bottoms appeared to be similarly engineered. It was bright pink, and cost eighty dollars.

  I raised my eyebrows. “Really?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said enthusiastically. “The ones that the volleyball players wear don’t have the strings, of course. That’s not very aerodynamic to have beaded strings slapping your ass as you hammer the heck out of your opponent. But that’s the gist of it.”

  “No thank you,” I said primly. I knew that he enjoyed teasing me about our cultural differences. I took no offense, but I reserved the right to be fascinated or aghast. Or both.

  “You know what we should do . . .” He scanned the shadowy realm of the department store.

  “What?” I kicked the volleyball across the floor. Fenrir trotted after it and vanished into the men’s section, shedding on thousand-dollar suits.

  “We should have a date. A real date. With dinner and dancing and stuff.”

  I was suddenly unsure. “I, um, can’t dance.”

  But he was on to the idea. “I’ll show you,” he said enthusiastically. “I can find a CD player around here, probably some cheesy elevator music packaged with some potpourri in the gift section.”

  I looked on him dubiously. “A real date?”

  “Yes,” he nodded. “Like real people in a real world that hasn’t gone to hell. With formal clothes and fancy shoes.”

  My gaze slid to the sparkling dresses in the shadows of the misses’ department. I struggled to find an idea like what he was suggesting. “Like . . . like prom?” I had heard that the English high school girls and boys dressed up for formal dances.

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  I frowned. “We don’t really do that. When Plain people are courting . . . it’s not so fancy.” I blushed. That was an assumption that perhaps I shouldn’t make. Courting was serious business in the Plain community. From what I’d observed of the English, dating was casual.

  He touched the back of my hand. “Bonnet, you’ve done a lot of things that Plain folk don’t do. And you’ll probably do a lot more. ”

  I thought of Ginger. I looked away.

  “We don’t have to,” he said. “But I’d encourage you to live just a little. You’ll have plenty of time for all that dire stuff later.”

  I sighed. Perhaps I was taken in by the sparkle of the dresses. Perhaps I had always been enthralled by the idea of Rumspringa. Perhaps I was more than a little seduced by Alex.

  “All right,” I said. “But you have to get Horace’s nose out of the fountain so that I can get a proper bath.”

  He grinned.

  “In privacy.”

  “Okay, okay.” He bent down, took my hand, and kissed it. My heart flip-flopped. “I’ll meet you at the top of the escalator in two hours, eh?”

  I smiled, watching him lead Horace back into the realm of shoes.

  Perhaps this was to be my only fairy-tale evening in the world Outside. But I was determined to make the most of it.

  ***

  Just for one night, I pushed the dark world outside away. I tried to put aside feeling guilty over Ginger, missing my family, and fearing for the future. I tried to imagine what the world might have been like if I’d done as I intended, if I’d gone on Rumspringa and experienced the Outside world under normal conditions. I tried to imagine what it would have been like if Alex and I had met under other circumstances.

  That thought troubled me. We had been thrown together at the end of the world. I don’t know if we would have cared for each other if we had met in a more usual way. There was genuine affection between us. What we had was not the idealized love of English movies, or the bonds of duty that would have been expected of me as a Plain woman. This was . . . something wholly other. And I had no template for how to deal with it.

  But just for tonight, I told myself to take it for what it was. That there may be nothing more. This was the last bit of juice I could squeeze out of the withering apple of the world.

  I bathed in the tepid water of the fountain with a plethora of products from the cosmetics counter, including a body wash that was purported to smell like pomegranates. I had never smelled a pomegranate, but the fragrance was pleasing. I found some shampoo that was supposed to “rehydrate and restructure damaged hair.” It lathered up in a wonderful way. I even indulged in a conditioner in a black bottle that was supposed to be made of “hydrolized keratin protein and fresh acai berry.” It smelled like dessert.

  I toweled off with some extraordinarily plush towels, then slathered a mint and rosemary body cream over my skin. It smelled close enough to real food that Fenrir came by for a sniff. I wrapped the towel around myself. I glanced upstairs, at the sporting goods department. I could hear Alex digging around up there, but I didn’t know what he was up to. As long as he gave me some privacy, I was fine with that.

  I shrugged into a soft robe. Carrying a candle and leaving damp footprints behind me on the marble floor, I began to think about a dress.

  Here I was out of my element. I knew about Plain clothes. I knew how they were constructed, knew exactly what was expected in terms of hemlines and seam allowances and reinforced stitching. These English garments seemed flimsy and needlessly complicated, covered in shiny bits of beads and zippers and buttons.

  And the sizing made no sense to me whatsoever. I’d used store-bought fabric patterns, and I knew exactly what size I was from those measurements. A twelve. I was a slender girl, and a twelve fit me well for modesty’s sake—no clinging. A dress was made to work in. But there was no similarity in these misses’ garments. A size twelve seemed too large.

  I reminded myself that I was not searching for a dress to work in. This
would likely be the only fancy dress I ever had on my body in my life. All that was required was that it cover me decently and that I could sit down and walk in it.

  My fingers trailed over fabrics that were foreign to me—stretchy, sheer, and metallic. I picked up one, then another. Eventually, with an armload of dresses, I ducked into a mirror-lined area called the “fitting room.”

  The first dress made me laugh out loud. It was a dark red and floor-length with no sleeves or straps. It reminded me of my mother’s red velvet cake. It had a curved neckline and some sort of stiff scaffolding inside it, but I simply didn’t have enough bosom to fill it out. I turned my upper body and the dress stayed in place, facing front.

  Next was a metallic turquoise dress that reminded me of fish scales. It was made of a stretchy material that clung tightly to my body. I blinked when I saw myself in it. I looked like a full-grown glamorous woman from a magazine. The neckline was low and left little to the imagination.

  Interesting, I thought. But not at all appropriate.

  I stepped in and out of dresses, trying them on and twirling in the mirror. I had discovered that I was a size four, more or less, based on English sizing. Sometimes a two, sometimes a six. Once, I was startled to see that a dress marked a size zero fit. That seemed to make no sense whatsoever. I flipped through the tags. Some of these gowns cost hundreds of dollars. I was amazed, wondering how much wear an English girl got out of one of these dresses. Could she wear it to more than one prom?

  But this was fun, I secretly admitted to myself. The dresses accumulated in a heap on the floor of the fitting room, and I had to step over them to get to the mirror.

  I even tried on a bridal dress. Against my better judgment.

  I think that I was fascinated because it was white. I’d never worn a white dress. It seemed very shiny and eye-catching. Vain. Prideful. All those things that were against how I’d been raised. When I pulled it on over my head, I got lost for a moment in all that white frothiness and had a moment of panic as I struggled to find the top. I found the opening of it and wriggled through.