He explained how his father was tearing through the house like a madman and he had run away, like he always did when his father lost control. I could tell he was afraid, but not for the immediate future. Not for that night. He was afraid for the rest of his life. That it would always be like this, living in that cabin with his father going slowly decrepit from homemade alcohol, getting meaner. I knew because it was the same fear I felt every day. Fear of being stuck in a place forever.
I walked with Jude to our tree house. We held hands and didn’t speak. I felt like he must’ve been able to hear my heartbeat in my palm. When we were inside, I guided his shaking hand to the front of my dress where he fumbled to undo the row of buttons, hundreds of little blue buttons. I stepped out of the dress, and it sat up, stiff, almost like a person, the shape of a good Kevinian girl.
The thought crossed my mind that Jude and I were doing something completely original, something no one had ever done before. It never occurred to me that this was the same thing girls waited under the covers for on their wedding nights, the thing the old men did with their wives to make children. This couldn’t be the same. This was as far removed from that world as was possible to get.
The moon was broad and huge above me, cutting a path through the forest as I walked back to the Community. I didn’t worry that my buttons were done up crooked, that my hair was unbraided beneath my bonnet, because my body was humming with light, filled with a quaking that stretched to my fingertips. My heart thudded in my chest like it’d suddenly changed form, like it’d become something much sturdier that made a different kind of tick, and I realized this was the first time I ever felt meaningful. Like I might have something big and real and important inside of me that couldn’t be killed. If it’s possible to have a soul, mine was steel-plated and invincible that night, and I think that’s what love does, makes you strong. Makes you think nothing can bring you down.
It’s the only kind of lie that I’d be happy to live with.
Chapter 41
The buzz of the unlocking door startles me out of the memory. I jerk up and open my eyes, taking a moment to remember where I am, the cushioned ground, the never-ending fluorescent sky.
In the doorway is the silhouette of a man. For a moment, in my haze, I think it’s Jude, but the man takes a few steps into the room in his shined shoes, places a stool on the ground, and I can see it’s Dr. Wilson. He smiles as though nothing had ever happened.
“Let’s talk about prophecies,” he says.
“What the hell?” I ask groggily. “You were gone for weeks.”
“So? We didn’t have a schedule.”
“But I didn’t think you were coming back,” I say. “Mrs. New said some case manager was deciding if you’d still be my counselor.”
“Did she?” he asks, eyes scanning his yellow notepad. “How interesting.”
“So you’re still my counselor?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“What have you been doing all this time?” I ask.
“Research.”
“Researching what?”
“What I said. Prophecies.”
From his bag, he extracts a book. Its cover is a large piece of purple construction paper folded over a half ream of computer paper and stitched down the side with twine.
“The Book of Prophecies,” I whisper, a little leftover reverence in my voice.
He flips through it, revealing paragraphs of the Prophet’s even printing. It smells of pine, like everything in the Community did, and a strange feeling fills my stomach. I know the Prophet is dead, but looking at this book, it feels like he could’ve just stepped into the room.
“Where’d you find this?” I ask.
“It was bagged up with a lot of evidence from the wreckage of the Prophet’s house. No one’s had time to go through it all, and it’s unpleasant work. Just box after box of charred wood mixed with pieces of broken cutlery and twisted chunks of metal. I found this in a steel money box along with about five thousand dollars and some bottle caps from the sixties.”
“I never read it,” I say. “I couldn’t read back then.”
“How’s your reading now?”
I shrug. “All right.”
He holds the book to me. “Want to?”
“I can?”
“No one to stop us.”
He flips through the pages. “You’ll recognize this one,” he says. I take it between my stumps.
Thus Saith the Lord unto My acolyte the Prophet Kevin. It is My Will and commandment that ye set right true Order in My Kingdom. That the marriages of the Sainted male, Mighty and Strong, be plural and many with womankind to bring about the proliferation of My Servants. For I wish My work to continue rapidly and plentifully and without interruption. For this I shall greatly bless thee and multiply the seed of him who enacts My Will, for I am powerful and control all things. So Saith the Lord thy God. Even so Amen.
I stare at it, the revelation that set it up for men to marry multiple wives. It looks so flimsy now.
“You remember it?” he asks.
“Yes.” The Prophet read it to us a dozen times, but seeing it written here in his own handwriting—black ballpoint ink, straight-backed letters—is a different country entirely. A different world. I can read it for myself now. The Prophet wouldn’t recognize me anymore.