Gated

by Amy Christine Parker

  “Can we talk about something else?” I ask.

  “Can I ask you just one more thing? Then I promise we can talk about something else? You can even ask me something uncomfortable … like whether I wear boxers or briefs.”

  I can’t help smiling. “You’re assuming that I’m interested in the answer to that question.”

  Cody smiles back. “I’m not assuming anything. I know.”

  I roll my eyes and he laughs.

  “Okay,” he says, “last question. Who decides what you can and can’t have where you live?”

  I frown. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, does that Pioneer guy make all the rules or do you all get a say?”

  “I … I mean we … I guess Pioneer decides, but we put him in charge.” I bite my lip. I feel like I’m walking into a trap.

  “So what happens if you disagree with him?”

  “Hey, I don’t have to answer that one. You said only one question more and then it was my turn,” I remind him. I don’t like where his questions are headed. It’s like he’s trying to say something’s wrong with the way we do things. But how would he know? He doesn’t really know me or Pioneer or any of us. “I mean, maybe we could decide more things on our own, but I’m not sure why it’s so important. Pioneer’s always done right by us … or at least tried.”

  “But what if he’s wrong?”

  I exhale slowly. This is not what I thought we’d be talking about. I’m not sure what exactly I was hoping for … maybe kissing, which goes to show where my head was at when I agreed to this whole thing. “He never is.” I try not to let the creeping doubt that his questions are creating overcome me. This conversation is starting to feel dangerous.

  “Everyone’s wrong sometimes,” Cody says, his eyes watching me a little too closely.

  “Well, he isn’t.”

  His questions are getting under my skin now, simultaneously frustrating and irritating me.

  “How do you know? If he only exposes you to what he wants to, how do you know?” he presses.

  I shrug my shoulders. I want this conversation to end. Now. “We just do. He’s always been honest with us, even when it’s about something unpleasant.”

  “Oh? So you know he’s been in jail before, then?”

  I recoil. “You’re lying. Why would you say that?”

  “You didn’t know, did you? My dad’s been doing some checking. Turns out he beat a man almost to death once. A man he used to work with.”

  I fold my arms and try to look like this bit of information doesn’t shock me. Why didn’t Pioneer tell us this? We have no secrets this big that we’ve kept from him. “Well … that was a long time ago. He’s never done anything like that since I’ve known him.” I push away thoughts of my punishment for sneaking out. I fight the urge to rub the bandage at the back of my neck. That was different. Not the same thing at all. I deserved it. He didn’t want to have to punish us that harshly … did he?

  “Maybe he had a good reason to do it,” I say.

  Cody shakes his head sadly. “He almost killed him. Is there any reason that’s good enough to keep beating a man who isn’t fighting back?”

  I barely have time to process this before he starts talking again. “He was a gas station attendant back then. He dropped out of high school. Never kept a job for more than a year or two. So how does a guy like that end up in charge of twenty-some families? And why would he want to move you all to the middle of nowhere? You have to admit, it looks strange, Lyla.”

  I can’t process all that he’s said. It’s too much. He’s made Pioneer a stranger and I don’t like it. This isn’t the Pioneer that took me in and kept me safe or the man who gave me Indy. This man Cody’s talking about sounds like a monster, and I can’t reconcile my version of Pioneer with his. I need to get out of this room. I need some room to breathe.

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I snap, and my head starts pounding. I don’t feel very good all of a sudden. “I want to go back now.” I stand up so suddenly that I get dizzy again. I lean over to grab the table in front of me and knock over my Coke instead.

  Cody grabs some paper towels from the countertop and starts wiping it up. “I’m sorry. This is not how I wanted this to go at all.” His eyes move up to mine. He gives me a weak smile.

  “Well, that makes two of us,” I say.

  He shakes his head slowly. “It’s just … I like you. A lot, actually. And once you leave here, I probably won’t see you again for a while … if ever.”

  He has no idea how true this statement is. It makes me a little sad all of a sudden and softens my anger.

  “Basically, one guy is making my seeing you impossible and I just don’t get it.” He stands up so that he’s looking down at me. Our bodies are almost touching. “And when my dad told me about his record and that gash on your neck … it worried me. I just feel like you need protecting or something.”

  “The neck thing was my fault,” I say defensively. “I did something I shouldn’t have.”

  “But, see, that doesn’t make me feel any better, especially if it was some kind of punishment or something.”

  “But none of this has anything to do with you. I’m not asking you to look out for me. I’m fine, really. The Community and Pioneer are all I need.” I stare up at him and try to look like I mean what I say. He doesn’t move; he just stays so close that I can feel our body heat mingling between us. Then he inches a little closer. “Why are you here then, Lyla?”

  I open my mouth to speak, but no words come. I want to lean in, touch his lips with my own, feel the rough scruff on his chin with my hand. But I make myself move away. “I’m here because I was in an accident,” I say.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  I bite my lip and work to keep my expression neutral, distant. I can’t let him get any closer to me. I’ve been fooling myself. I shouldn’t spend this time with him, no matter how brief it is. He’s got too many questions that I can’t answer, and so does his dad. I’m only making things worse by being here. “I know what you meant,” I say. “I made a mistake.”

  “I don’t think you believe that, not really,” he says softly. He moves forward. When I try to back away, I bump right into the wall behind me. Cody moves one hand up to my face and gently traces my jawline with his fingers. My skin feels like it’s fizzing. Dozens of tiny goose bumps erupt on my arms. My mistake was thinking that I could just turn off my feelings for him and walk away. I can’t. I like him. Right or wrong. Dangerous or not. His questions—his dad’s—aren’t enough to make it stop.

  He leans in a little closer and his lips touch mine. It’s a quick, barely there kiss, but it’s enough. I smile against his mouth. I never imagined it could feel like this. God help me, but I can almost understand why those girls on the romance books swoon. My knees really do feel weak.

  “I just want to make sure that you’re safe, Lyla,” he whispers.

  He wants to make sure that I’m safe.

  In a few weeks he’ll be dead or dying—and I know it. I’m keeping his future a secret, not allowing him even the smallest chance to survive. Cody doesn’t deserve to die. He’s not evil. I’m sure of it. He’s nothing like the man who took Karen. He deserves to live. I want him to live. How can we be so sure that the Brethren didn’t choose Cody too? Maybe that’s why I’m so drawn to him.

  If what Cody says is true, Pioneer beat a man almost to death and still became the Brethren’s prophet. If he gets a shot at redemption, why can’t Cody or Taylor or any of the other people I’ve met today? So, what do I do?

  It takes me less than a second to decide. “There’s something I need to tell you.…”

  Cody and I sit back down on the sofa. I tell him about the impending reversal in the earth’s rotation, about the Brethren, Pioneer’s visions, all of it. I even explain how Pioneer found my family and how he’s helped us. I want him to see that at his core, Pioneer’s a good man and that we aren’t strange, we’re just survi
ving.

  It’s odd—saying it out loud. I don’t know if I’m making it sound right. Coming from Pioneer, it sounded so much better. I need to make him believe, but he doesn’t look as concerned as I thought he’d be. I try to think of another way to word it so I’ll get a better reaction than this one, but I can’t think of any. If he could only listen to Pioneer, he’d see, he’d understand.

  Cody doesn’t say anything for a long time. I expected him to argue now or maybe to laugh and tell me that I’m crazy. It’s what Pioneer said would happen if we told the Outsiders, but he doesn’t do any of these things. Instead he scoots closer to me and wraps his arms around me. I lean into his chest. “I’m sorry about your sister,” he finally says.

  I look up at his face, examine it cautiously. Does he believe me? And if he does, what do we do now?

  His eyes are dark, unreadable. “So, Pioneer’s the only one who’s had these … visions … of the, um, future?”

  I nod.

  “So how can you be so sure that he’s right?”

  I blow out a breath. And there it is. He doesn’t really believe me. “Because there’s science to back it up … I mean, look at global warming. I think even you have to admit that all of the natural disasters that happened last week are a pretty good indicator.”

  “What disasters?” Cody looks confused.

  “Don’t you listen to the news? The earthquakes in Indonesia and Japan? The hurricane in New Orleans?”

  Cody scratches his head. “Lyla, nothing like that happened last week. The last time there was an earthquake in Indonesia was years ago, same with New Orleans. The Japan one is more recent, but still, even it happened a while ago.… Did he tell you that they just happened?”

  “You have to be mistaken.” I feel my world compressing, the air in the room becoming nonexistent. “These have to be new ones. They just happened last week. I watched it on the news.”

  Cody shakes his head, looks at me with concern. “No, Lyla. They didn’t happen. Not last week. If all of those things happened in one week, we’d all still be talking about it. It’d be all over the news right now. I mean, on the news, did they ever mention what day it was?”

  I try to think back. They must have. Pioneer wouldn’t deliberately show us something years out of date, would he? What would be the point?

  “I can’t remember,” I admit.

  “He showed you old footage, Lyla. It isn’t hard to do. He wants to keep you all in line and scared.” Cody walks to the other side of the room and rummages through a backpack there before pulling out something thin and black with a screen on one side. “He’s lying to all of you … and I can prove it.”

  To me death is not a fearful thing. It’s living that’s cursed.

  —Jim Jones, leader of Peoples Temple

  Fingers curl around mine and I’m vaguely aware of someone standing beside the bed. It must be morning. I barely slept but now I’m reluctant to wake up; my eyes feel crusted over.

  “Wake up, Little Owl.” The voice isn’t my mom’s. It’s Pioneer’s.

  I force my eyes open. It’s his hand on mine. He’s smiling down at me, but his forehead is all creased. I count the lines there—three lines. This probably means that he’s mad but not ballistic. I relax my shoulders and lean back on the pillow again. My accident hasn’t completely sent him over the edge … at least not yet.

  I rub at my face and try not to look at Pioneer again, but I can feel him watching me. Cody spent the better part of our hour together last night showing me Internet clips from the disasters I told him about. Some of the footage was familiar, but the dates the disasters occurred weren’t. It was exactly how Cody said.

  When I got back to my room, Mom wanted to know all about the X-rays and how they went and what the nurses said and did, but I couldn’t answer her. I didn’t even know how to begin to tell her all the things Cody told me. I had no idea where to start. Instead I just kept rubbing my temples and complaining about my head—which wasn’t exactly a diversion. My head was hurting, but so were my stomach and my heart. Eventually she gave up, helped me get into bed, and fell asleep herself.

  I was awake for most of the night, everything I’d seen replaying on a loop in my head. I kept hearing Pioneer’s speech before he showed us the news clips. He seemed as shell-shocked as we were. I still can’t quite believe that he purposely lied. Is it possible that he was somehow duped as well?

  Cody didn’t think so. He wanted to come back today, to bring his dad and see if there might be any way to keep me here at least one more day while they figure things out. I told him to stay away. I need time to think about everything, process it. I need to decide what I really believe. But it looks like my time is already up.

  “Seems you’ve gotten yourself into quite a pickle here, Little Owl,” he says.

  That’s the understatement of the century. I almost laugh—seems to me I’ve been in a pickle since the shooting range. At this point I’m pretty confident that I’m in a whole barrel full.

  “How are you feeling?” he asks when I don’t reply.

  “Like Indy’s galloped across my head a few times,” I say.

  “What exactly happened?”

  I sigh. I’m tired of explaining things to people. First the sheriff, then Cody, and now Pioneer. My thoughts feel disjointed and I can’t focus on any one thing—except for figuring out who exactly I should believe.

  “I just wasn’t watching where I was going, that’s all. It was a very, very stupid accident.”

  Pioneer’s eyes narrow. “And Sheriff Crowley? He stopped by, I hear.”

  “Yes.”

  Pioneer’s face hardens as he leans over me. My parents are behind him, standing close to the bathroom and whispering to one another. They can’t see Pioneer’s face. The abrupt change in his expression chills me, especially now that I know what he’s capable of.

  “This was not the time to be careless, Lyla,” he says in a low voice.

  I swallow and nod.

  “What did he ask you?”

  “He wanted to know exactly how the accident happened.”

  “And?”

  I hesitate a fraction of a second too long. He picks up my hand and holds it in his. Then he squeezes it a little too hard. I bite my lip.

  “He wanted to know if I walked in front of it on purpose,” I say through my teeth. Crying out won’t do me any good. My parents are on Pioneer’s side when it comes to things that put the Community at risk.

  “He what?” Mom’s voice raises an octave at the end. Apparently she’s been listening to us after all. I wonder if she saw him squeezing my hand. “That’s absurd! You didn’t tell me that.”

  Didn’t I? I can’t remember. I thought I did.

  Pioneer ignores my mom’s outburst. “And did you?”

  “Of course not!” I cry.

  “Then why did he ask you that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He had to have given you some reason,” he presses. He squeezes my hand even harder.

  “Ouch,” I say through gritted teeth. “You’re hurting me.”

  “Tell him, Lyla,” Dad warns.

  “He … he saw my neck, you know, the wound there from last week,” I blurt.

  Pioneer’s face pales a little and his eyes catch fire. His forehead creases go from three to five. “And what did you say about it?”

  “I said I had an accident during chores, but he didn’t buy it. He thinks maybe you hurt me.”

  My parents and Pioneer share a look. Then Pioneer rakes a hand through his hair. “Well, we’re all in a pretty pickle now. That man has been trying to figure us out for a while. I suspected it before, but once he came out to visit, I knew for certain. Seems like now he’s ready to come for us, guns blazing. And he won’t quit until he’s torn us apart, of that I’m sure.”

  “So what do we do?” Mom’s lip quivers. She looks younger than me for a moment.

  “We leave here. Now.”

  “But we’re suppo
sed to get her discharge papers. Shouldn’t we stay and sign them so they don’t have another reason to come after us?” Dad asks.

  “You’re not getting what’s happening here,” Pioneer snaps. “That sheriff is coming for me. He’s going to tell people that I’m evil, that I’ve abused your child and everyone else’s. He’ll tell all the world that you’re fools for following me. And he will make them believe it too. They’ll say they are saving you when they come into Mandrodage Meadows, killing whoever fights them in their zeal to do what’s right. He’s determined to split our family up now, no matter how much it costs him or us. Don’t you see? We’re on the brink of war with a doomed man. He’s not going to just let us leave today if he can help it. We have to go prepare the Community for the fight that’s coming. We can’t waste any time. Because until the last days, he has more resources than we do. He can win right now and he knows it.”

  My mom sobs into my dad’s chest.

  Pioneer goes to the shelf where my clothes are neatly folded. He throws them onto the bed. “Put these on quick, girl.”

  I don’t know what to do. Everything’s happening so fast. In the end I do what I’m used to, what I’ve always done when I’m panicked. I obey Pioneer. The room tilts a little as I scramble out of bed with my clothes and rush to the bathroom. We’ll be gone in a few minutes. I won’t see Cody again. I’d thought maybe we might have some time to see each other today. I didn’t say goodbye. Now I won’t get to.

  I shut myself in the bathroom and lean against the door. I try to breathe, but I’m gasping instead. I’m leaving with a man I’m not sure I totally believe anymore. I haven’t been able to tell my parents about the disasters, to show them the real footage or talk to them about the dates. I’m still not sure it’s enough to make them doubt everything he’s said all this time.

  Once I’m dressed, Pioneer and my parents head out into the hall. I follow until I realize that I’ve forgotten my backpack. Once I’m in the room, I realize I forgot something else too. The magazines and book. I consider leaving them, but can’t. Cody brought them for me. It’s all I have of him and I can’t leave them behind. I quickly stuff them into the bottom of my pack and pull my sketchbook and various other items over them to make them harder to spot. I slip the pack over one shoulder and head out into the hallway.