by P. D. Cacek
Eva watched Jessie put the book down and take the water.
“I’ll be okay,” he said, holding out his empty hand. “It takes a few minutes.”
Her husband nodded and shook a single orange pill onto Jessie’s palm, then stepped back and watched until the pill was taken and washed down.
“Okay. See you in the morning.” He took the empty glass and left the room.
“He’s never been much of a conversationalist,” Eva said and picked the book up from the mattress where Jessie had put it when he took the water and pill. “Why don’t you go use the facilities and I’ll just wait here until you get back.”
He looked at her as he stood up and left the room and for a moment Eva forgot it wasn’t her son – except for the eyes and the lack of an argument.
Curtis wouldn’t have just done what she asked; he’d have asked why.
She missed that.
Eva had the book back in the bookcase and the sheets folded down by the time she heard the hall toilet flush. He was dragging his feet and yawning when he came back into the room, the green eyes that weren’t her son’s already half-closed.
She didn’t have to tell him to get into bed.
“I’ll give you my Amazon password in the morning and you can order some new books and…whatever else you need. Within reason.”
The corners of Curtis’s mouth turned up. It looked so unnatural, but at least the eyes were closed all the way.
“’Kay, thanks.”
“See you in the morning,” Eva said as she shut the door, but he was already asleep.
“Good night, Curtis. Welcome home.”
August
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sunday
Arvada, Colorado
It had taken almost three weeks, but as Jess looked out over the congregation he knew all his efforts and the bureaucratic hoop-jumping had been worth it.
It had been hard, though, so very hard to stand at the lectern each and every Sunday before this one and force himself to begin his sermon as he always had, with benedictions and a welcoming speech that spoke of community and loyalty and what it meant to belong to a fellowship of truth.
But his wait was over.
Jess took a deep breath. Today a new world began.
“What will it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”
The words had burned themselves into his mind for three weeks, but now they were free, now the spark was lit. He met as many eyes as he could.
“‘What will it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’ Do you know? Then I’ll tell you…nothing. His profit, his reward is nothing. How can a man think there would be a profit in exchange for his immortal soul? How could he expect anything good to come after he has bartered away God’s gift in exchange for things?”
A few of the congregation nodded, a few others frowned, but they all listened.
Jess pointed to the words inscribed on the arch above him.
“The Way, The Truth, The One Life. Those are more than words, more than a proverb, but let me say them so they’ll be more meaningful. One Way. One Truth. One Life.” Jess heard the puzzled mutters from the congregation and ignored them. “Bear with me, friends, and listen. One Way – there is only one that leads us to God. One Truth – that we are created, body and soul, in his image. One Life – period.
“This is how it has been since man first stepped out of the primordial shadows and gazed up into the sky. Our souls are our own. Say it with me, our souls are our own.”
“Our souls are our own.”
“One body, one soul.”
“One body, one soul.”
“So then how may a man – any man – think he has the right to forfeit it? For profit? What profit could a man possibly think is worth his soul?”
The congregation sat silent, waiting for him to tell them.
Jess gripped the sides of the lectern as if he needed to feel the polished wood against his flesh. He didn’t, but saw his motion imitated as members of the congregation clasped their hands in front of them.
“Is there nothing a man would forfeit his soul for?” Jess paused just long enough for the congregation to wonder. “What about a child? Would any of us not forfeit our souls for our children?” Mutters and nods. “But what about someone else’s child? Would you forfeit your soul for another man’s child?”
They couldn’t answer that, but Jess hadn’t expected them to.
“What if the child came like a thief in the night and took what wasn’t theirs? What if the child was an imposter?
“No!”
The roar seemed to reverberate longer inside Jess’s head than it had within the walls of the church.
“No, of course you wouldn’t, but a man and woman have done that very thing. They have turned their backs on those words –” Jess pointed again to the words above him, “– as they have turned their back on us. They have forfeited their souls to gain nothing but the imposter that wears the body of their dead daughter.”
It didn’t take long for the congregation to figure out who Jess was talking about. Gasps and whispers, low and angry, filled the church, rising to the arched ceiling and creeping into every corner. They only needed him to say the names.
He obliged.
“Richard and Laura Wingate have turned their backs on us and renounced not only our beliefs but our mission, our fundamental rights as True Borns. When their daughter lay dying, we prayed with them for Carly’s safe passage into death, one in body and soul.”
“One body, one soul.”
“But they lied. When Carly died, instead of turning their backs on the thing that stole her body, they accepted it. Still accept it and guard and protect it as if it were their own child when it is nothing but an imitation, an imposter. They forfeited their souls and gained nothing.”
Jess stopped because the shouting from the congregation had overwhelmed the abilities of the lectern’s microphone to rise above it. He let it continue for only a few seconds before raising his hands for silence.
“But that’s not the worst of it, my friends. They came here to this church, the three of them, and tried to tell me that we’re wrong…that the Travelers, the Imposters are just like us. They wanted me to believe that…here…under those words. One Way. One Truth. One Life.”
Many of the congregation were on their feet, but all were shouting condemnations. Only Abigail sat quiet and still, her eyes never leaving his face.
There was only one way of getting them back. Jess leaned closer to the microphone.
“One body! One soul!”
“One body! One soul!”
“‘What will it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?’ Nothing. And nothing is what the Wingates deserve. Let us pray!”
* * *
New Hope, Pennsylvania
Millie opened her eyes as the dawn breeze fluttered against the sheer bedroom curtain and the first warbles and tweets of the robins and thrushes drifted into her room.
It was her favorite time of day, the most peaceable, before anything happened. Twilight was a good time too, when the colors started to bleed away, but night always followed and sometimes her mind would fret and wander like a ghost come back to haunt the place it died.
Dawn was a start, not an end…a whole brand-new day full of possibilities. Her mama had always told her that and Millie still believed it to be true.
Throwing back the thin sheet, Millie sat up and slid her feet into slippers even though the room already felt hot and sticky. In the before time she’d gone barefoot so much the bottoms of her feet were like leather; her now time body was much more delicate.
Stretching, Millie walked to the window and pushed the curtain aside. She wasn’t the o
nly resident who kept a window open at night. Muggy heat of summer or the sharp bite of winter, an open window meant a quick escape if you needed it.
’Course being that her room was on the third floor meant she’d take a pretty steep tumble, but she’d never had to find out in the two years she’d lived at the school.
Millie knocked twice on the wooden windowsill for luck as a flash of movement below caught her eye. A mama deer and two near-full-grown fawns raced along the stone path below, heading for the woods at the end of the property, as a bobbing blue-white light followed.
If she’d seen something like that in the before time she would have screamed, but it was the now time and Millie knew it was just someone out for a morning run. Running was good exercise, they said, but Millie had done more than enough of it to last both lifetimes.
When her neighbor’s alarm went off, muted by the wall between them but still loud enough for her to hear, Millie slipped on a robe, grabbed her towel and toiletry bag from the coatrack next to the door and left her room, heading for the communal privy and shower room at the end of the hall.
She wanted to be showered and dressed and sitting in her seat – second row, fourth chair, left-hand side – well before the seven a.m. service so she could watch the sun come streaming in through the stained-glass windows.
Dawn was always a special time, but Sunday dawns were a blessing.
* * *
Phoenixville, Pennsylvania
Jessie opened one eye. Closed it. Opened both and stared at the multifunction clock next to the bed until his brain woke up enough to remember what all the various colors meant.
White: Time: 6:30amToo early.
Green: Temp: 72°FAlready?
Blue: Humidity: 63%I hate Pennsylvania.
Orange: Day/Date: SUNDAY/8-15
Jessie watched 6:30 become 6:31.
Once, in a different life, Sunday mornings meant a six a.m. race to the bathroom to see who got to shower while the smell of coffee and toasted English muffins – “The girls have to eat something.” – and their dad’s “hurry up or we’ll be late” shouts drifted up from the kitchen.
They were never late; they couldn’t be…service couldn’t start without them. Even after their mother died, the three of them were always early.
Jessie wondered if they still were now that there was only the two of them.
6:32
The Steinars weren’t churchgoers and hadn’t asked Jessie about it, so he hadn’t said anything. Jessica Faith had been a true believer as well as a True Born; Jessie No Middle Name, not so much.
6:33
Jessie closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
And woke to the smell of coffee and the Mrs.’ voice.
“Jessie? Are you awake?”
9:05
“Yeah. I’m up.”
“Good. I’m making bacon and waffles, your favorite.”
Jessie kicked the covers off and sat up. The Mrs. had started the whole ‘favorite’ thing a few days after he arrived – favorite foods, favorite games, favorite clothes, favorite scientific theory – as if…as if she thought Jessie was still her son and not a complete stranger wearing his skin. It had bothered him at first, her thinking that, but time and meds helped.
He was an Imposter and imposters took what they got and liked it.
What else could they do? Besides, bacon and waffles sounded good and he was hungry.
“Jessie?” At least she called him by his name.
“I’m up…I’m up.”
It took less time to get ready now that he had a bathroom all to himself.
Fifteen minutes later, clean, combed and dressed in shorts and one of the Champion logo T-shirts he’d ordered online, Jessie was greeted with a smile from the Mrs. and a quick glance from the Mr. If he had to be honest, he preferred the Mr. over the Mrs.
Mr. Steinar might have accepted the situation, but he didn’t want Jessie there any more than Jessie wanted to be there.
Not that Jessie had limitless options to choose from. He could live with the Steinars and make Curtis’s favorites his own or he could spend the rest of his stolen life inside a mental hospital.
“Smells great,” Jessie said as he took his place at the kitchen table. “My favorites.”
There was a small orange pill waiting for him on his placemat.
Jessie popped it into his mouth and washed it down with three large gulps of pulp-free orange juice. At least he and the dead boy genius shared that favorite.
It was only after Jessie put down the glass that the Mr. nodded and the Mrs. slid a golden-brown waffle onto the empty plate. The bacon was on a smaller plate to the side.
Jessie slathered on butter and drizzled maple syrup as the Steinars went about their usual morning routine – ignoring him and each other. The Mr. read the paper between bites while Mrs. Steinar ate at the counter and tidied up.
Not big talkers, the Steinars.
Jessie yawned, using his napkin to cover his mouth and wipe the drop of syrup off his bottom lip. The syrup was dark enough to cover the stain left behind by the little orange pill as he wiped it off and slipped it into the pocket of his shorts.
Jessie had stopped taking the pills a week after he became part of the family and, as far as he could tell, not taking them hadn’t had any negative effects. Of course, he still acted like there was a cloud inside his head and they, Mr. more than Mrs., still watched him like a hawk every time he took a pill.
Not that it mattered. Jessie had become an expert at dietary sleight of hand by the time Jessica Faith was six. She’d learned to slide the mushiest pea or slimiest piece of eggplant into the space between her upper lip and gum, finish dinner, ask for and receive dessert. Then, when no one was watching, the offending morsel would be spit into the trash or toilet.
Not that the little orange pill would receive the same fate. After breakfast it would join the others he’d collected.
Millie might not be right, especially if the cloud inside his head became a gale-force hurricane. This time he might not come back.
Jessie took another bite.
And so began another Sunday.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Wednesday
Phoenixville, Pennsylvania / 6:30 p.m.
It had been another Stellar Steinar Supper. Chinese food. All of Curtis’s favorites from Curtis’s favorite takeout place: wonton soup, pork-fried rice, and sweet-and-sour chicken. Almost as good as Red Lantern in Arvada…which was Jessie’s favorite.
He burped. Ah, wonton.
The Mrs. had said something about going out for water ice, once dinner had settled, a philosophy that was very different from the snatch-n-grabs on game nights where he…or rather Jessica Faith…would be lucky to swallow the last mouthful on the way to the pitcher’s mound or the hurry-ups before a U.C.U.A. meeting.
Jessie set down his fork. No chopsticks; Curtis didn’t like them.
“Are you finished, Jessie?”
“Yes. It was great. Thanks.”
“I’m so glad you enjoyed it.”
Jessie burped again. Geeze, what did this place put into its wontons? “Excuse me.”
The Mrs. smiled.
“The same thing always happened with Curtis.” Jessie looked down at the empty bowl. Well, that explained it. “Let me know when you’re ready for water ice. Unless you’d rather have something else.”
“No, water ice sounds good. Isn’t it time for my pill?”
“I’ll get it,” the Mr. said and got up from the table. They had two bottles, one upstairs and one downstairs, but Jessie didn’t know where and looking for them would have been next to impossible. Unless he was in his room or the bathroom, the Mrs. always found plausible reasons for being close by. Do you need anything, Jessie? Can I get you something to eat, Jessie? Why aren’t you in you
r room, Jessie?
It would have been easier if Jessie had found either one of the bottles, but as he discovered, you can’t always have everything in this life. Or even the next.
The Mr. popped off the plastic childproof top as he came back into the dining room.
“There you go,” he said, tapping an orange pill into Jessie’s hand. “You have enough water?”
Jessie nodded and popped the pill into his mouth, shoved it into its hiding place behind his upper lip and reached for his water glass. He took three long swallows for show and put the glass back on the table. The Mr. walked away.
“Well, why don’t you go upstairs and rest a bit. I’ll call you when we’re ready to go.” Jessie watched her eyes shift off his face to the window behind him. “We don’t have to rush. They stay open until nine.”
In an hour or two or three, the long Pennsylvania twilight would have darkened into night and it’d be safer to leave the house. The Steinars and Jessie agreed on one thing; even if they didn’t know it, none of them was comfortable about him being out in public.
Fortunately, according to the Mrs., Curtis hadn’t been a big fan of leaving the house, although he would, on occasion, demand to go out for water ice or computer parts or wherever a genius went and the neighbors, especially Mrs. Ramos, noticed. It was also fortunate that most people had better things to do after dinner besides watching a tall, gangly kid get into the back of the family car.
Jessie carried his plate and water glass into the kitchen, even though he’d been told Curtis never bothered with menial things like that, and went upstairs.
He burped again – ah, fried rice this time – as he shut the bedroom door. No lock, but he knew neither the Mr. nor Mrs. would enter without knocking first. Curtis didn’t like to be interrupted.
Good ol’ Curtis.
Jessie spit the pill into his hand as he crossed the room to the bookcase. Years of living in close quarters with a twin sister had given Jessie an edge when it came to hiding things. Unlike Abbie’s attempts at concealment, which ran to the standard hiding under the mattress (fake diary) or on the topmost shelf of her closet (second fake diary) or wrapped in a pair of panties in the back of her underwear drawer (real diary), Jessica Faith had always hid things in plain sight.