Escape from Eden (27 page)

“Let’s move on with this,” Thaddeus said. “The Reverend has decided to join us once the procedure has begun.”

“The Reverend?” Doc Gladstone asked with an unsteady pitch to his voice. He inclined his head toward Thaddeus, who still eyed the medical journals with a certain curiosity. “He rarely attends these sessions.”

“This is a special circumstance.” His slipped a book from the shelf and traced his fingers over the spine as if it were the handle of a knife. “Mia, I take it the doctor has explained what will be happening?”

I nodded. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say. Was I to admit that I knew he would be suggesting new memories through the medication?

“Very well. Doctor, please administer the medication.”

Doc Gladstone approached the exam table with a stunted gait, perhaps realizing he hadn’t told me what to say when Thaddeus arrived. With his back to Thaddeus, he said, “Now, Mia, as we discussed, this medication will relax you and help you remember what happened to you. Why you ended up in the jungle.” His dark brown eyes widened a fraction.

So that was it. I was supposed to think the medication would help me regain my memories, when really, through Thaddeus’s suggestions, it would wash them away like a wave eroding footsteps in the sand.

Again, I nodded, deciding that remaining mute was my best defense. The needle went into my arm with a sharp stab. I looked away as the clear liquid shot into my arm, deep under the skin. Almost immediately, I felt a wave of dizziness and swayed on the table.

“Easy there,” Doc Gladstone said, grabbing my shoulder. “Just lie here for a moment.”

As if I could do much else. The edges of the room became unfocused, prism-like colors moving in a twisting rainbow. I felt as if my body melted into the examination table beneath me, shoulders slouching, head listing to the side. Frantic thoughts raced through my brain: Is this the real drug?

“Can you hear me, Mia?” Doc Gladstone asked.

Of course I could. I could hear everything. In fact, despite how my body sagged, I could think clearly as well. I gave Doc Gladstone a weak dip of my chin to acknowledge I heard what he was saying.

Thaddeus slid the book he’d been holding back between the other white spines with a push of his index finger. He came over and sat on the stool next to the exam table. I tried to keep my eyes focused on the ceiling.

His voice was soothing, quiet. “The other night, you went to Prayer Circle. You devoted yourself to prayer, to readings from the Bible, to the Reverend’s own teachings. You remember this, yes Mia?”

“Yes.”

“Then, you stayed late, not wanting the evening to end. It was a joyful occasion. The Reverend complied, allowing you, Gabriel, and Juanita to continue on in silent meditation all night long.”

At the mention of Juanita’s name, I forced myself to remain still, face placid.

“The next morning,” Thaddeus said, “the three of you, so enlightened by the experience, dedicated your time at the Reverend’s cottage to packing boxes of food and necessities for the needy in the nearby villages.”

“That was nice of us,” I said, unable to keep from mocking the ridiculous scenario.

There was a pause. Suspicion perhaps? Dread swept over me.

Then he said, “Yes, it was. So nice, in fact, that you delivered the boxes of supplies yourselves and stayed to help the families. Understand?”

“Yes,” I replied automatically.

“Very well.”

There was another long pause. I listened for movement, for whispering, but the only sound was the sharp cawing of the birds outside.

“Juanita and Gabriel,” Thaddeus said with volume that jolted me from my concentration, “remained behind in one of the villages outside San Sebastian.”

Even under the influence of the drug, my lips twitched with anger, but I said, “Yes. Stayed behind.”

The door creaked, breaking the intensity of my rage, as the Reverend entered the room.

“Good afternoon, Mia,” he said pleasantly. He wore a long blue shirt, crisp and dry, over long khaki-colored pants. His red beard had recently been trimmed, close to his face, making him appear younger, friendlier.

“Good afternoon,” I slurred.

“Ah, regaining your memories, I see,” he said.

I tried to nod, but my body felt so sluggish.

“Thaddeus,” the Reverend said, slightly turning his large torso toward Thaddeus. “We’ve had another development.” He smiled at me. “A joyous development.”

Immediately, my thoughts went to Juanita. Was she out of danger, returning from the hospital here to Edenton? I wanted to jump off the exam table and find her, let her know I didn’t mean to abandon her, didn’t want to, but I didn’t have much choice.

“Grizz,” the Reverend called.

Grizz shouldered his way through the door, dragging someone behind him. When he deposited Gabriel on the floor, my heart beat furiously, despite the calming drug pulsing through my system. With shocked awe, I whispered his name.

The Reverend smiled down at him. “We’re so pleased to have you back here, son.”

Gabriel, dressed in the same torn and dirtied clothes he wore the night we’d escaped Las Casitas, tilted his head up to glare at the Reverend. He looked very tired; the exhaustion, though, exaggerated the fierceness of his features. I couldn’t rip my gaze away from his face, both surprised by his presence here and fascinated by his beauty, like the time he’d approached me in the kitchen, his first night in Edenton. But I knew my fascination was like being fascinated by a sharp piece of glittering, broken glass.

Finally, Gabriel spoke. When he did so, he looked directly at me as I lay still on the exam table. “I’d say I’m pleased to be back, Reverend, but the reality is I’m only here because I make terrible choices.”

With the help of Nurse Ivy, whom I could barely look at without confronting her for what she’d done to me at Las Casitas, I was taken to Doc Gladstone’s office to recover–but not before planting the microphone from my pocket in a lip below the exam table as the others turned their attention to Gabriel.

Two hours later, I’d made it back to my cottage on my own. A few members of the Flock nodded at me as I walked by, staring at me with curiosity lighting their eyes, but no one said anything to me, no one asked any questions.

Because it was early evening, the girls in my cottage were at dinner prep. I splayed out on my bunk, noting the hardness of the mattress, and hoped I could keep up my acting and lies. The network was going to invade to save their loved ones. That was certain. How many people would die in the process, though, was what tugged at my soul.

I slid off the bed and made my way to the bathroom. With the tips of my fingers, I lifted the edge of the mirror over the sink. It came away easily. I slipped my hand in to find my sketchbook wedged between the mirror and the wall. I carefully took it out and wiped my fingerprints from the corner of the glass.

I sat back on my bunk. My nubby pencil was still shoved between the pages. I looked at my drawing of Gabriel—mocked by Bridgette–and quickly flipped to the next page. One of the last pages left. An image remained on the flip side, one I’d drawn when I first got to Edenton: a crude, ten-year-old’s drawing of Papa.

I began sketching out a map of Edenton, from memory. Although I understood the system of tunnels Doc Gladstone had explained, I couldn’t figure out where everything was off the top of my head. When I finished, I ripped the map out and stuck it in my pocket, then lay back on the bed, my body still aching from the chase the other night.

“Hi there,” I heard and looked up to see Aliyah coming through the cottage’s front door. Around her head she wore a sweat-soaked black handkerchief, a streak of powdery flour over her forehead. “You’re back,” she said with no enthusiasm or disappointment.

“I am,” I said, placing my head back on the pillow.

Aliyah walked toward her trunk, located on the other side of my headboard, and opened it. “So,” she said. “How was your first Prayer Circle? Sounds like you guys really …” she paused, “… helped out some needy folks.”

“Yeah,” I said, throwing my arm over my eyes. “We helped.”

She riffled through some things in her trunk. “You must be exhausted,” she said. “I know how draining Prayer Circle can be, with all the chanting and … touching.”

I lifted my arm from my eyes. “Touching?”

“You know,” she said quickly. “Hugging and stuff.”

I sat up and looked at her. “Hugging?”

She closed the lid to her trunk without looking at me. In her hand she twisted another handkerchief, this one red. When her eyes finally met mine, they glistened. “Your Prayer Circle didn’t have any … hugging?”

I shot out of bed and faced her. It took everything in me to keep from grasping her arms and shaking her. “You know.”

She remained silent. She wrapped the handkerchief tighter around her hand, the tips of her fingers paling.

“You remember, don’t you? You remember what happened during your first Prayer Circle.”

Aliyah turned away from me, flipping the red handkerchief over her shoulder and untying the black one from around her head. She snapped it out on the trashcan and a poof of powder burst into the air. Then she dropped the black kerchief on her trunk. As close as we were in that quiet room, I could barely hear her voice. “I remember.”

“So do I,” I said.

Relief washed over her features, her dark eyes flooding. “Oh good!” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. It’s not good—that you remember like I do—but good that you told me. I’ve been so lonely keeping this secret.”

I hugged her. “You’re not alone,” I whispered.

The fabric on my shoulder grew wet with her tears. I willed myself to cry, so she wasn’t crying alone. Crying alone amplified the loneliness. But tears wouldn’t come. Her chest heaved in another sob. I wrapped my arms tighter around her. And we stood there, holding each other until outside the windows twilight fell and the sounds of the nocturnal jungle droned through the slatted glass.

* * *

Avoiding Mama, who’d been informed that I’d returned from my “mission with the poor,” I went to the kitchen with Aliyah for after-dinner cleanup. I wasn’t ready to face Mama. Lambert had said that each time he’d spent with my mother was like the first time for her, because the drugs she’d been given kept her from remembering any of their former encounters. But how she acted when I received my invitation to Prayer Circle, saying over and over again that I was so young, made me think she must have remembered what had happened at Las Casitas. So young. But I was too young, I suppose, to be told the truth.

The kitchen smelled of bleach, and a lingering scent of roasted meat. Piles of compost remained in the bins, stacked by the back door, ready to be taken to the heap. Aliyah went right to work disinfecting the wooden cutting boards.

“Look who’s back!” Bridgette’s voice screeched in the metallic space. “So enlightened at Prayer Circle that the light of the Lord speared your heart and drove you to help the needy, huh?”

I grabbed a rag from the pile on the counter. “Go away.”

“Oh, not feeling Christ’s love this evening?” Bridgette asked. She stood by the special provisions pantry, apron spotless, her hair pulled back from her face so tightly her eyebrows appeared raised in surprise.

Dina stood behind her, piling plates into the dishwasher. Her apron, by contrast, was covered with muck and stained with dark, bile-colored splotches.

“What did you guys make for dinner?” I asked trying to sound casual. My attention kept snapping to the special provisions pantry.

Dina smiled cautiously. “I made greens with bacon and pepper.”

“Too much pepper,” Bridgette said under her breath. “You missed dinner, Mia, because you had your other plans to help the poor. Unfortunately, we don’t have anything left over for you.”

She hung her hand on her hip and tilted her head, waiting for a response. I didn’t give her one.

“You’re too good now to address me, Mia?” Bridgette sneered. “Your mission with the poor must have robbed you of your humility.”

Instead of downplaying my fake mission with the poor, I decided on a different tactic. I was feeling just that shallow, and exhausted.

“To be honest, Bridgette, it was an enlightening experience. The Reverend was so proud of our selfless actions, he’s asked me to oversee a program to help the poorer villages. I’m sure you’ll be more than happy to dedicate your time?” I took a spray bottle and misted disinfectant onto a dirtied counter. “That means, of course, you’d have to work for me. Because, you know, I’d be in charge.”

Her mouth stretched in a fixed grimace, as if she were a monkey bearing its teeth in threat. “Of course.”

She twisted away quickly, and something glinted on her wrist. A yellow spiraled plastic bracelet circled her wrist, and from a silver chain dangled the key to the special provisions pantry. My heart sped up. Why did she have it? Why would Agatha entrust her with it?

“Oh,” she said in an offhand tone. Her back was turned to me. “You’ll be interested to know that, while you were away on your special assignment for the Reverend, Agatha gave me the position of kitchen manager.”

Hence, the key.

“Congratulations.” I squirted another spray of cleaner and wiped down another section of the counter with a sweeping arm movement.

“So, you can stop doing what you’re doing, Mia, and take the compost to the heap.”

I swung around, spray nozzle aimed at her like a gun. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. Now move along before it starts to stink in here.” She batted her eyelashes. “I’m in charge, remember? Agatha wouldn’t want to hear you’re not cooperating.”

I glanced at Aliyah. She looked back at me and nodded once. I heaved a sigh and dropped the bottle and paper towel on the counter. I didn’t need to cause trouble, although I wanted to smack Bridgette in the head.

Outside, there was a sinister silence. The birds, usually cawing and calling, had quieted. Their sounds were still there, but it seemed as if they’d been dampened, as if I were listening to them through a wall. I looked into the sky and saw the clouds hanging swollen and dark, iron gray. Yellow flashes of lightning, followed by more silence, meant a storm somewhere in the distance was rolling toward Edenton.