Astray (16 page)

Cody exhales. “I was weirdly nervous just now,” he admits, and I put my hand over his and squeeze it. He leans over and gives me a quick peck on the cheek, right there in front of everyone. I fight the urge to look over my shoulder for Will and the others. This would be the moment that they would choose to reenter the cafeteria. It’s almost enough to make me put some distance between Cody and me like I usually do, but no, I won’t let the Community or Pioneer ruin this. Right now, this moment, I choose to be a normal girl—one with friends, a date, and maybe even a boyfriend. They can’t keep me from any of it, not anymore. I lean up and kiss Cody right back.

Lust will turn her head, but fear will bring her home.

—Pioneer

I have no idea what people do on a date. My only frame of reference is the dates in the movies that Pioneer showed us. I wonder what Cody and I will do, how I’m supposed to look, what we’ll talk about. You’d think it wouldn’t seem like a big deal, since I’ve lived with him for a couple of months now, but something about the formality of it, the scheduling, makes me jittery.

I’m sitting on the edge of the sofa in the Crowleys’ family room, freshly showered and primped and stuffed into Taylor’s idea of the perfect date outfit: tight jeans, high-heeled boots, and a V-necked top that she said “showed off my assets.” Cody’s still in his room getting ready. Taylor went in to help him a little while ago. I can’t help wondering what kind of primping she’s putting him through and I start to laugh, but then feel weird because there’s no one nearby to laugh with. I can hear Cody’s mom in the other room chatting with the ladies on her festival committee. They’re busy making wreaths to put up on all the lampposts downtown. The waiting is driving me nuts. If I get
any more nervous, I think I might explode when Cody finally comes downstairs, so I wander into the dining room to join them.

“Lyla, honey, you look so pretty!” Cody’s mom says when I walk in. The other ladies look up.

I smile at them and most of them smile back, but there’s one who just purses her lips and pointedly looks away, rummages through the pile of bows at the center of the table. It takes me a minute to recognize her. She was one of the parents with Mrs. Dickerson at school on my first day. I didn’t realize that Cody’s mom was friends with her, but Culver Creek isn’t exactly a huge town, so maybe it’s not that out of the ordinary. Does she know how this woman feels about me?

I start to back out of the room, but then Cody’s mom puts her arm around me. “Want to help out while you wait? We could use an extra pair of hands. Knowing Taylor, Cody could be stuck upstairs for a while.”

I want to say no, but I don’t get the chance. One of the other ladies pushes a wreath into my hands and another slides a set of ornaments and wire across the table until they’re directly in front of me. I watch them for a moment and then pick up an ornament and start securing it to the wreath with the wire. The room smells like cinnamon sticks and fake evergreen, but still, it feels festive and after a few minutes I’ve almost forgotten to be nervous about my upcoming date. I start humming along with the Christmas music.

“You know the song?” one of the ladies asks. She sounds surprised.

“ ‘White Christmas’? Yeah, we play it every year.” It’s only after I say this that I realize that this year we won’t. This year I will spend Christmas outside of the Community. My stomach sinks a little. “Christmas is my favorite time of year. Pioneer …” I trail off for a second when his name flies out of my mouth, but when Cody’s mom gives me an encouraging look I continue. “We would each get a special gift and sit around the fireplace singing carols and toasting marshmallows.” For a moment the memory is so strong that if I close my eyes I might almost believe that I’m there. Every person in the Community had a stocking hung at the clubhouse and we would spend the whole month of December making sure that each one was filled to the top before Christmas Day. We’d make most of the stuffers—things like hand-knitted scarves and carved wooden keepsake boxes. I’ve always looked forward to seeing what Will or Marie or my parents put in my stocking. As much as I want to be free of the Community, there are all these little things that keep popping into my head when I least expect it, reminding me of all that I’m giving up. As bad as the last few months were, most of my time in Mandrodage Meadows was good.

“I thought you believed in aliens, not Jesus,” Pursed-Lips Lady says. “Christmas is a Christian holiday.

“Really, Kate, that’s not necessary,” one of the other ladies says under her breath.

Kate ignores her, looks at me. “Well? Do you believe in aliens or not?”

I’m so shocked by how angry she seems with me over the idea that I—that we—celebrate Christmas that I don’t know what to say. I guess I don’t believe in the Brethren, but when I try to say this it feels wrong. I left Pioneer, and by default the Brethren too, but this doesn’t mean that I’ve figured out for sure how I feel about them. How do you suddenly stop believing something you’ve believed your whole life?

Kate looks at Cody’s mom when I don’t answer. “You see, she’s still one of them. I can’t believe you took her into your home, Nora. For all you know, she’s spying on you and Stan both. Gathering information for that Pioneer for his trial … or worse. Those people don’t just decide one day to leave. I saw a show once. They need years of counseling to get free, and even then most of them return to their cults. She’s brainwashed, mark my words, and you’re putting your whole family in danger by taking her in.”

“Enough!” Cody’s mom snaps. “Kate, if you can’t keep this nonsense to yourself,
you’ll
be the one I kick out.”

Kate reels backward as if Cody’s mom just slapped her. “Well, I was hoping I could make you see clearly, but obviously when it comes to this girl you’re as foolish as your son. Did you know that he won’t even hang out with Brent and my Nathan anymore? They’ve been friends since they were four, but this girl comes along and the both of you
take up with her, no questions asked, and the rest of us are supposed to what? Just go along with it?”

Cody was friends with Brent, the boy who pulled the fire alarm at school? He never mentioned it in all the times we talked about his friends. My stomach turns over. I’ve been so wrapped up in how much I’ve been through, how much I lost to be here with Cody, that I never stopped to think about what our relationship has cost him.

“The boys say that they walk around school humming and holding hands. One of them almost attacked Brent during a fire drill.”

“No, that’s not true,” I say. But she talks right over me.

“They’re dangerous. All of them. Have you forgotten already that Robert and Lyle almost died when her people shot them during the raid? How can you take her in, knowing that she was part of that?” She doesn’t wait for an answer before she starts gathering up her coat and purse. She heads for the door, but then stops, turns around, and points her finger at me.

“You don’t fool me, girl. If it was up to me and a lot of other people, you and your whole bunch would be banned from this town.”

“What’s going on?” The sheriff is leaning against the doorframe, frowning at Kate. She pushes past him without answering and throws open the door, letting a cold blast of air inside. Bows and ornaments skitter across the table and fall onto the floor.

“We’re watching you,” Kate says to me. “You tell your people that. We won’t let any of you hurt this town.”

In spite of how upsetting her speech just was, I almost let out a hysterical laugh. Here we were afraid of them all that time, and now it looks as if they’re just as afraid of us!

The sheriff shuts the door behind Kate, and the other ladies get busy gathering the fallen ornaments and bows.

“Don’t let her bother you, honey,” the lady closest to me says as she sits back down. “She doesn’t speak for all of us.
We’re
glad you’re here. We know you don’t belong to that group anymore.”

I smile at her, but I can’t help wondering how many other people she does speak for and if her understanding is only reserved for me, not the Community.

“Ahem.” Taylor clears her throat dramatically. “Lyla? Ready for your date?”

Cody edges into the room and comes to stand next to Taylor. His hands are tucked behind him and his face is beet red.

“What’re you hiding back there?” I ask.

Cody sighs heavily and brings his hand up. He’s holding the strangest bouquet that I have ever seen. It’s made out of socks. They’re rolled up and taped into rosettes and attached to green pipe-cleaner stems. There’s a giant red velvety bow tied around them to keep it together. Cody pushes them at me. He looks ready to run from the room.

“Taylor’s idea,” he mumbles.

“Heck yes, it was my idea! I even Googled how to make
it for you.” Taylor steps into the room and holds her phone out, takes a picture. “Ha! They turned out better than I thought they would.”

I look from her to Cody to the sock bouquet. I don’t get it and apparently none of the other ladies do either. We’re all just staring, openmouthed.

“The socks are a clue to where my little bro’s taking you,” Taylor says impatiently. “Oh, for the love of—you’re going bowling.” She takes a step backward and pulls her arm behind her, then swings it forward.

I nod and pretend to know what she’s doing, but it still doesn’t make any sense. The other women start grinning so wide that I have to fight not to laugh.

“You have to borrow special shoes there, so you need socks.” Taylor shakes her head sadly. “My best ideas are always wasted on people who can’t possibly appreciate them. I would
die
if a guy did something creative like this for me.”

“Seriously. You’d die for a sock bouquet?” the sheriff asks, one eyebrow arched.

“Maybe,” Taylor says, and then she’s blushing as hard as Cody is. After a moment she starts to crack up laughing. “Okay, maybe it’s a little weird.”

I smile at her and then at Cody. “It’s a very cool idea, you guys, thanks.”

How long have they been planning this?
At lunch Cody made it seem like a casual thing, spur of the moment. But he must have had the socks before today. I’m a little
surprised that Taylor helped him, but then again, she did something similar when Cody and I first met. She arranged a special meeting for us at the hospital while I was there before the raid. I guess technically that could be considered our actual first date, which would make this one a second date, but I’m still counting this date as the first. I was part of the Community back then.

Taylor, her mom, and the other ladies in the room all have their phones out now. They hold them up in near-perfect unison and start snapping our picture, and despite what happened with Kate just a few minutes before, I start to feel excited, nervous all over again.

I’m about to go on a date. For real
.

“Ready?” Cody asks. He puts his hand on my back and starts pushing me toward the door.

“As I’ll ever be,” I say.

The bowling alley is a rambling one-story building completely covered in neon signs. The biggest one says
BALLS AND PINS
over the front door, glowing a sickly green. It’s noisy and dark inside and smells of frying oil and beer. Cody gets us these really awful shoes and then shows me how to toss a heavy ball down this long aisle so I can try to knock down a bunch of pins. It takes a few tries before I get the hang of it, but once I do, I like it. A lot. And I’m good at it too, which is a total surprise.

“How can you be better than me in less than half an
hour?” Cody shakes his head as he looks at the scoreboard above us. Music blares in the background. He’s shouting so I can hear him.

“Because I’m awesome. But you knew that already,” I joke as I bring the ball up by my face and take the three steps forward to the edge of the lane. I throw the ball and it rockets down the lane, straight through the center. All but two pins fall down. I look over my shoulder at Cody and grin. All at once I feel strange.

Light.

Confident.

Blissed out
.

I can’t remember feeling this way before, even in Mandrodage Meadows. My happiness there seems muted compared to this. This is happy times ten. Pioneer’s not watching and neither is the Community. I feel free.

“You are definitely awesome.” Cody comes up behind me and pulls me into his arms, kisses the top of my head before he leans over and grabs his bowling ball. “But the game’s not over yet.”

He throws the ball. It rolls down the lane, lists to the left halfway down, and drops into the gutter half a second before it reaches the pins. He hangs his head and groans.

“Ha! I think it might be now,” I giggle. I do a silly little dance, so unlike me, but then again so is being better at something than the person I’m with.

Cody takes his ball and faces the lane one last time. He has no chance of winning now. I have one more turn, but
he doesn’t. He looks up at me just as he reaches the edge of the lane. “I’m not going to win, but I say we place a bet on this throw.”

“What are the stakes?” I ask, grinning.

“If I get a spare, you have to go with me to the Winter Festival.”

“And if you don’t?”

“You have to go with me to the Winter Festival,” he says, his lips curling up on one side in the most adorable way.

“Um, sounds like you win either way.” I don’t mention that really I’m the one who’s winning. I’ve wanted him to officially ask me ever since his mom mentioned it the first time. Manning the skating rink together didn’t count. I wanted it to be a date the way tonight is. And now it will be.

Cody chuckles. “Hey, I have to win
something
tonight.”

“Okay, you have yourself a bet.”

Cody doesn’t get a spare. I take my last turn and end up guttering the ball twice because Cody keeps trying to distract me by jumping up behind me and tickling my waist.

“Hungry?” Cody asks when the game’s over. He puts his arm around my shoulders and steers me away from our lane. “I hope so, ’cause I’m starving.”

“I could eat,” I say casually—just as my stomach lets out an enormous growl.