“Why would I do that?”
“I think the question you should be asking is why wouldn’t you do that. Like I said, everything you have comes from me. Your future is in my hands. Who else is going to pay for college, support you until you get a degree, find you a decent first job?”
I cross my arms and stare at him, struggling to keep my voice steady. Fighting the volcano. “No, Dad. My future’s in my own hands now. I don’t want your money. I don’t want your help. And I’m not going to help you. Now, are you going to keep me prisoner, or am I free to go?”
“You realize what you’re saying? If you walk now, that’s the end of you and me.”
“‘You and me’ have been over for a long time.” I open the door and am immediately blocked by my father’s men.
“Let him go,” Dad says. They step aside to let me pass.
I touch my fingers to the burning slap mark on my cheek and, without looking back, I leave my father to go to Juneau.
49
JUNEAU
DAD AND I ARE USHERED INTO THE TROPHY room. The guard instructs us to sit down at a table in one corner. He moves a chair so that he has a direct view of us and sits down, setting his gun across his knees.
I speak in a low voice, but it doesn’t matter. The guard isn’t paying attention. “What’s going on?” I ask.
“Miles came to us and told us he had turned off the electric fences. He got your friend Tallie to drive somewhere nearby so that she could ferry people from the ranch to Roswell. All of the kids and some of the parents went with her, and the rest of the clan is waiting in the woods for a sign from us.”
“A sign for what?” I ask.
“For attack. We came here to rescue Badger. We were ready to try negotiation or flat-out escape. But if it takes an armed attack to save him, our people are ready and waiting. Once Badger’s safe, our only goal is to flee this place with the least casualties possible.”
I nod, one strategy after another forming in my mind. Dad catches my eye. “He’s a good one, Juneau.”
“Who?” I ask, confused by the abrupt change of subject.
“Miles. That boy shows signs of being a true leader,” he says. “Might not know anything about nature. Or fighting”—Dad smiles at a memory, probably something ridiculous Miles did on the way here—“but he’s got a good heart. And he cares about you—enough to come here and stand by your side. That says a lot.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I say, grateful for his opinion. For his approval.
Dad watches me with a look of sadness and resignation. Like he knows things aren’t ever going to be the same. “Dad?” I ask.
“Yes, Junebug.”
“Whit told me that our ability to Read the Yara comes from the Amrit—that it widens our brains’ sensory receptors.”
Dad nods. “Your mother and I discovered that during the drug’s testing phase.”
“So it has nothing to do with our closeness to the Yara and Gaia?” I ask, trying to hide the note of pain in my voice.
“Is that what Whit said?” my father asks.
“He said that the Yara and Gaia are only metaphors, but by encouraging our faith in them, he made the clan stronger. He also told me that my Conjuring is just a result of having a stronger batch of Amrit than everyone else.”
“Do you think that’s true?” my father asks.
My face melts, and a tear runs down my cheek. I wipe it angrily away. “I don’t know what to think anymore. You and the elders lied to us. We were brainwashed.” Dad raises a finger, but I cut him off. “And don’t tell me that you did it for the good of the clan. I understand that, but it still doesn’t make it right. Nothing will make up for the fact that I grew up in a world of lies.”
My father nods sadly. “I know. But as for what you’re going to believe from now on, that’s up to you. You can believe like Whit does . . . that the Yara, Gaia, Reading, your Conjuring . . . that it all comes down to science. Or you can choose to believe that there is more to it than meets the eye.”
“What do you believe?” I challenge.
“I believe that Amrit returns us to a state we were meant to be in. A state that humankind was in at the beginning of time. Communing with nature, living long, disease-free lives. It is only over the ages, and with our misuse of the earth that our brains’ sensory receptors have narrowed and we lost communion with the Yara. And humankind has suffered the consequences through disease and premature aging. There were men in the Old Testament who were recorded as living for several hundreds of years.”
Dad rubs his hand over his head as he considers what to say. “I think that the notion of Gaia had disappeared, but we recovered it. Science doesn’t get in the way of that. Science and belief go hand in hand as far as I’m concerned. But it doesn’t matter what I think,” he concludes. “You have to decide for yourself.”