He never told us that he took the hatchet to his father, but I always thought it went without saying.
I stared out that window all night until the noises of dinner and bedtime quieted and I knew everyone in the house was asleep. I didn’t think I’d ever get free from that room. The times I snuck out to visit Jude, it was past walls made of thin fabric and through unlocked doors. Jude and I had never planned for something like this.
When I figured it out, I gasped out loud. I sprang up from my pallet and ripped the plastic sheeting from the window, slowly, so the staples popped out one by one. A blast of cold air swept into the room. The window had been built into the roof, and I could only just curl my fingertips over the bottom edge. I pulled myself up and hung there, legs flailing, until I could hoist myself out.
I stood on the roof for a moment, taking in the ugly loop of the Community before me. All of our houses were on the same courtyard which, at that time of year, was just a circle of frozen mud. Anyone could look out their front door and see me perched, birdlike, on the roof, but I paused for a moment. I’m not certain why, still. I think it was with an understanding that I was leaving home for good. I watched my breath rise in front of me, listening to the frozen, creaking music the trees made with their bodies, and filling my lungs fully for what felt like the first time.
I crouched and stretched one leg down the side of the roof, searching for a foothold on the dry shingles. I let go of the roofline and pressed my palms flat, edging down the sheer surface as quietly as I could. I was almost to the roof edge when I lost my footing. I scudded down on my boots and backside and landed hard on my spine, the breath knocked out of me.
The sound of bootsteps on the frozen ground.
I turned over. Barely ten feet away, Deacon Karl stood with a circle of glowing orange between his lips. Cigarettes were banned, so I didn’t recognize it at first, not until a drift of ash fell to the frozen ground. Something passed between us, and I knew he understood exactly what I planned to do.
He took one step toward me. Then I ran.
Chapter 24
“What stopped you from running away before?” Dr. Wilson asks. He looks up from his notes.
I lean back against the cinder-block wall behind my bunk, the Post-it on my affirmation wall a yellow blur in my periphery. He doesn’t realize what a big, uncomfortable question that is, or maybe he does because he has that crinkled look in his eyes like he knows the answer without asking.
“Fear,” I say finally.
“Fear?” he asks.
I shake my head. “No, not fear. The opposite, really. There was a feeling in the Community, like we could never be hurt. Not in the ways that counted. Our veins, our sinews were made of God-stuff. Even with everything that happened, I still felt untouchable. Like bad couldn’t really reach me.”
“But it was different after the Prophet said he’d marry you.”
I nod. “Everything was.”
? ? ?
I sprang up from the ground, my knees crackling, my ribs and back still feeling like they’d only recently collided with the earth, and started sprinting into the woods to the sounds of Deacon Karl huffing after me.
“ESCAPEE!” he shouted. “ESCAPEE!”
I was flying into the forest, but I could already hear the footfalls of deacons punish the hard mud behind me. It sounded like a thousand rushing legs, though I knew it couldn’t be more than ten men, and some of them were ancient. But some were spry and young and very capable of outrunning me.
I had the advantage of having taken this path countless times. The deacons crashed through the trees, but I felt swift and lean and gleeful still, for engineering this escape. I could feel heartbeats in each of my fingertips, blood buzzing inside my body, urging me on.
My feet fumbled over a root when I realized where I was leading them, straight to Jude’s house. I lost a step or two while I pieced together a different place I could hide.
I cut to the right and tracked my way to the tree house. If I could scale the larch quickly, they wouldn’t spot me. Hopefully they’d keep running around the forest all night, never looking up.
I could hear their voices faintly behind me when the tree reared up in the distance, indistinguishable from the others, all its characteristic yellow fallen away. When I got close, I launched myself onto a limb and straddled it, upside down.
Their footsteps charged closer. I couldn’t risk catching their eyes by scuttling to a higher limb, so I held my breath and hoped they wouldn’t look up. The night was moonless and black, and I was high enough to be concealed by branches.
Below, I heard the crunch of running feet over dead, frozen brush. Their footfalls slowed, then stopped.
“She went down the mountain,” one of the deacons sputtered. “Toward town, I’m sure of it.”
“We’re better off waiting till light,” another said. “I can’t see nothing in this pitch.”