Leaving Fishers (19 page)

“Would you like something to eat?” she asked Kayla.

Kayla turned with a jerk, as if she’d forgotten
Dorry. “Oh, no, thanks,” she said. “Party food is just so fattening, you know?”

Dorry started to say something about her own struggles with food—how she’d love a plate of chips and dip right now! But at the last minute, she remembered she didn’t matter, only Kayla did.

“But you’re so thin,” she said, trying to sound more admiring than jealous. “Why do you worry?”

“So I stay this way,” she said. “My dad says butterflies eat more than I do.”

Brad laughed. “So you live on air?”

“Could be,” Kayla said with a giggle.

Dorry wanted to puke. She wanted to talk to anybody else but this bratty, self-centered, skinny freshman. She looked around. All around the room were similar clusters of four or five people, just like there’d been at every Fishers event she’d gone to. She knew now that they were all set up, designed by whoever planned everything—was it Pastor Jim? Above the music, she could hear people laughing. It all sounded forced. Had she really been fooled before?

“Angela?” she asked. “Can I talk to you? Privately?” Everybody’s head jerked toward her. Angela glared, then instantly smoothed her face into a smile when Kayla looked her way.

“Dorry, you don’t really need to do that right now, do you?” Angela gave Dorry a little kick, a
reminder that private talks would hardly help save Kayla’s soul.

“Yes,” Dorry said stubbornly. “I do.”

Angela gave a shrug. “No offense, everyone, but—”

“Go ahead,” Lisa said.

Kayla looked puzzled. Brad distracted her by slipping his hands over her eyes and joking, “Hey, if they don’t want to see us, we don’t want to see them, either.”

Angela and Dorry went around the corner from the bathroom, to the place where Dorry had heard Angela arguing with Lara at Dorry’s first party.

“This had better be good,” Angela fumed as soon as they were hidden. “Because, otherwise, you really screwed up. Your next sin number is going to be through the ceiling.”

Dorry felt trapped in the tiny alcove. She steeled herself to meet Angela’s anger, for once not sorting out which of her thoughts were from the Devil and which were acceptable.

“This is all fake,” she said. “Why should I pretend to like Kayla when I really hate her? We know the truth. Why don’t we just tell her about Jesus and God and needing to be saved?”

Angela exploded. “That’s all you wanted to say?”

Looking down, Dorry nodded.

“Don’t you remember what you were like when we first met you?” Angela asked. “Every time we mentioned God or Jesus, you’d stiffen up, like you were afraid we were a cult and we were going to send you to the airport in a robe to sell flowers. The Devil makes it hard to convert people. It’s work. It’s like—you have to butter people up before they’re ready to be cooked.”

“You mean caught,” Dorry said. “Fishers catch people.” She hardly knew what she was saying. She was tired. She was hungry because she’d practically stopped eating so Angela would believe she didn’t love food more than God.

“Whatever,” Angela said. She took Dorry’s arm. “Just remember. You’re not in charge here. When you’re evangelizing, you listen to me and the lead evangelizer—in this case, Lisa. And you obey. Got it?”

Frightened, Dorry nodded.

“Good,” Angela let go of Dorry’s arm, practically pushing her away. “Now get back to work.”

Dorry was nice to Kayla the rest of the evening.

At ten, Kayla and the other non-Fishers left and everyone lined up to greet a vanload of new Fishers coming for baptism. Dorry moved in a daze, smiling and hugging each new person as they moved through the receiving line.

“Welcome,” she said, over and over again. She watched as each one was baptized, and she congratulated them on the way out. She hoped she smiled widely enough, looked delighted enough. She was one gear rotating again and again in a whole factory turning out new Fishers.

She didn’t think at all.

Chapter

Twenty-one

IT WAS CHRISTMAS VACATION BEFORE Dorry knew it. Between Fishers events and semester exams, she was living on two or three hours of sleep a night. She stopped baby-sitting for two weeks because the Garringers were in Florida, and though she missed the kids immensely, she didn’t gain any spare time. Angela gave her extra discipling sessions instead. She ate nothing but rice cakes for an entire week to atone for messing up her E-Team assignment with Kayla. She did no Christmas shopping. Even though the stores were infinitely better in Indianapolis, she figured she could wait to shop in Bryden. She and her parents were to be there for an entire week. She alternated between dreading the trip and longing for it like she’d longed for nothing before in her life.

“Why don’t you stay here with me?” Angela asked at their last discipling session before Dorry was to leave. They were at a Burger King after school—the same Burger King Dorry had gone to with Lara all those months ago. This time, Dorry bought Angela’s food, because, as a Level Two,
Dorry was supposed to be serving others. Angela had a chicken salad. Dorry had a cup of water, because she was fasting to make up for falling asleep during her prayers the night before. The smell of French fries was driving her crazy.

“What?” she said.

“Why don’t you stay here with me over Christmas?” Angela asked again, as patiently as if Dorry were a particularly stupid child who couldn’t be expected to remember a simple question for longer than one minute. “Remember how much temptation you faced last time you went to Ohio. And think how much Fishers work we could get done.”

Dorry felt a flicker of hope. How easy. She could stay with Angela. Angela expected her to act like a Fisher. She wouldn’t ask rude questions or stare at her like she might break into rabid prayer at any moment. Angela would help her follow her commandments, not dump candied yams on her plate when she was supposed to fast.

But a small part of her—a part she now usually labeled as tainted by the Devil—called out forcefully,
No!
She had to escape from Angela, if only for a week. She wanted to sleep late and skip praying altogether and eat all her mother’s best foods: pancakes floating in pools of maple syrup, Christmas cookies by the dozens, thick
slices of the Christmas ham. Of course, she’d never be able to do that. She’d have to call Angela every day. She’d have to face Angela when she got back.

“Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me stay here,” she said dully. She waited for Angela to quote Matthew 11:35, “I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother.” And yet, reading the Bible on her own, Dorry had also found Ephesians 6:1, “Children, obey your parents . . .” Would Dorry dare to mention that? Of course not. She had to remember: Angela was the one who could tell her which part of the Bible to follow when.

But Angela only shrugged. “If Fishers isn’t important to you, I can’t make you change,” she said. “You’ll just have to explain it to God on Judgment Day.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want to stay,” Dorry said. “It’s my parents.”

Angela shrugged again. Coupled with her most disappointed look, the shrug might as well have spoken: I’ve worked hard to save you, but if you don’t care enough to do God’s will, it’s not my fault.

After a second, Dorry asked timidly, “Are there any . . . Do you have any commandments for me while I’m away?”

Angela took a dainty bite of the salad balanced on her plastic fork. She chewed and swallowed. “You should know what you need to do. Frankly, Dorry, I’m concerned about your soul. You should be a Level Three by now, and discipling your own new Fisher. But your sin numbers are much too high and your virtuous acts are shockingly rare.”

“But I try to be a good Fisher,” Dorry said.

“Have you converted a single new person?”

“No.”

Angela waved her hand as if to say, “There you have it.”

Dorry couldn’t stifle a yawn. Angela didn’t comment on that, but her raised eyebrows said everything. “No extra commandments for Christmas,” Angela said, and stabbed a piece of chicken in her salad.

Dorry watched Angela eating for a full minute before the words registered. “Nothing about food? I don’t have to save anyone?” Dorry squinted, puzzled. “This isn’t a test or anything, is it?”

Angela put down her fork. “See, Dorry, there’s your problem. All you’re concerned about is yourself, whether you’re going to pass a test or not, what you get to eat, how you rank. And that, ‘I don’t have to save anyone?’ question. If you
really were a good Fisher, you would want to save everyone. You wouldn’t wait for me to command you to do things. You should be telling me, ‘I’m going to do my best to convert two or three people back in Ohio. I’m going to set up Bible Studies. I’m going to hold prayer groups. I’m going to make a difference. I’m going to turn that place into a community of Fishers.’ But no, you just ask, ‘I don’t have to save anyone?’” Angela’s imitation was cruel and uncannily accurate. She leaned forward and peered into Dorry’s eyes. “All I can do is pray for you. And you should pray for your own soul, too. Frankly, sometimes I wonder if you’re really saved.”

Suddenly, Dorry hated Angela. The hatred was like a nuclear reaction inside Dorry’s gut. A meltdown. She wanted to take Angela’s plastic fork and stab it right in her heart. She wanted to slap her. She wanted to kick her, over and over and over again. Dorry was evil, filled with evil. She wanted to kill Angela. It took every ounce of her self-control to make herself bow her head and mumble meekly, “I’ll pray.”

But she didn’t. She went to Bryden and she slept sixteen hours straight the first night, after sleeping the entire trip. She ignored her family, only vaguely noticing their worried looks and worried questions. She barely spoke more than a
word at a time—even “Yes,” “No,” and “Unh” seemed to require much too much energy. The second day they were home, the day before Christmas, she was sitting zombielike in front of the TV when she suddenly realized her mother was leaning into her face, her nose practically touching Dorry’s, and screaming, “Answer me—do you want to go Christmas shopping?”

“You don’t have to yell,” Dorry said, with great effort and what she hoped was great dignity.

“I didn’t, the first five times,” her mother said.

Dorry went and trudged through K-Mart and bought whatever her mother told her to.

The second night she was home, Christmas Eve, Dorry stood in the bathroom, fingering the ring Angela had given her. It was too loose on her hand, now that she’d begun losing weight. It rubbed back and forth. It felt like it was burning her skin.

I could flush it down the toilet, Dorry thought. I could tell Angela I lost it. She took it off. Her hand felt light and free. She held the ring over the toilet. It sparkled. She lowered it closer and closer to the water. She dropped it. It floated slowly down, gleaming against the porcelain. She touched the toilet handle. She could get rid of the ring and drop out of Fishers and go back to being herself. She pictured the shiny ring disappearing
in a swirl of flushing water. It would end in sewage and muck, its shine hidden forever.

And she would go to hell for rejecting God.

Shaking, Dorry reached into the cold water and picked up the ring. She slid it on the ring finger of her left hand. She held on to the sink because her legs were quaking too much to support her.

Someone knocked at the door. “Ready to go to the Christmas Eve service?” her mother called.

“I can’t,” Dorry said.

“But you’re so religious now—”

“I’m sick.” She opened the door and let her mother see that her skin was clammy, her breathing rough, her hair sweat soaked and plastered to her face.

Dorry hid in her room until the rest of the family was gone. Then she sneaked downstairs and sat in front of the Christmas tree. She stared at it until her eyes lost focus and the lights all blurred into one another. What was wrong with her? What had happened to the joy and peace and love she’d felt as a new Fisher? Everything she thought and did now was evil. Staying home from church was evil. But going would have been evil, too, because it was the wrong church, one full of hypocrites who cared nothing about God.