I glanced up at my plastic roof again. With the branch acting as a tent pole, the rain water still landed on the tarp, but now it ran off without having a chance to bleed through.
I pulled another shirt out of my backpack and folded myself into it, doing my best to not get it wet. I’d forgotten my jacket. What hadn’t I left behind? A little bit of planning might have helped.
Cracking a big yawn, I wondered again what time it was. I figured that I’d been sleeping for an hour or two. People had to be wondering where I’d gone, maybe even looking for me by now. Good. And the rain was going to work in my favor; nobody would want to go out and search for me.
Fine by me.
Maybe they were grilling all the other kids. Maybe they had Mary on a chair right now and were asking her when she had last seen me. I wondered if she would break, then realized that they had no reason to grill Mary any harder than anyone else. Nobody had suspected Mal and Esther, and there was no way anybody knew about me and Mary.
Oh for heaven’s sake. Me and Mary? She’s thirteen! Okay, almost fourteen. Besides, we’d said maybe ten words to each other and my imagination was already having a field day. Our ages didn’t matter; I was being stupid. I laughed at myself. All those dumb dramatic poses and they probably flew right over her head. I wondered what she would say if I told her that I had a soundtrack going through my head for most of the important events in my life. She’d probably giggle and ask me what I was talking about.
I stretched a foot out into the falling rain, watching the drops hit and splatter off the hard rubber insignia on the side. I switched off the flashlight and let the faint light carried from the sky by the raindrops provide my illumination. Sometimes I thought I must be the weirdest person around, which was saying something in the Fundamental Faith. Seriously. What kind of a moron would have soundtracks running in his head?
I sat there, letting my thoughts wander. I remembered the day Mal had hatched the plan for this cabin. Then I realized I hadn’t had one of my Mal visions in a little while. Thinking about it, I realized that the last vision I had was probably the night that Esther left. Except for the dreams, of course. I wondered what Aaron would say if I told him about Mal and Esther.
“Doesn’t compute,” I said aloud. “He’d brush it off and keep fooling around with his machines.”
Sleep poked at the back of my eyelids. I turned on the flashlight again, shining it around the rough walls of the cabin. Here and there I could see dribbles of mud finding their way down the rounded logs.
I inspected my peaked roof again. Still working fine. I wanted to read some more, but the book might get wet. Instead, I put my backpack behind my head and leaned into the corner. Shifting my shoulders to find a somewhat less knotty area of the logs, I tried to find a comfortable position. If I slept, the rain would pass faster and I could get going when I woke up.
The thought that I might not be able to sleep because of hunger occurred to me. I’ll figure it out.
I shifted my shoulders again, using my head to adjust the position of my pack and hugging myself tightly to keep my body’s heat in. I could almost taste the evergreen smell of the fir trees around me. The rain drummed steadily on my tarp roof and in the woods around me, sounding like thousands of tiny wet horses running like crazy. An image of a big black horse and his trusted boy running on the surf of an island flashed through my mind.
* * *
I swam out of sleep into a world of stiff joints and slightly damp clothes. Cotton coated my teeth. I swallowed a few times, running my tongue around to get some saliva flowing. As I focused on the world around me, I remembered how I’d spent the night. How had I gone from leaning in the corner to lying down on the ground? If this corner hadn’t been higher than the middle of the cabin, I might have woken up in mud.
The rain had stopped sometime during the night. The sun was already peeking through the tree branches.
I had to get moving.
I pushed to my feet, a huge yawn cracking my head open for as I brushed dirt from my clothes. I shivered and stomped my feet, flapping my arms against my body. A plan would have been good before I took off. Maybe a plan that included a jacket.
I grabbed my backpack. My shoes squelched a little in the wet earth as I headed to the roughly cut door. I slipped my arms through the straps of my pack and walked through the clearing, seeing my footprints from the night before.
No. Wait a minute. I stopped and looked closer. These footprints went in two directions. I stepped back toward the cabin and saw that the prints stopped right outside the door. Then, bending close, I clearly saw that the footprints went back in the direction they had come. And they weren’t from my shoes; the heel of the left shoe of this person had a strange shape in it. Like a chunk had been cut out of it.
I straightened and whipped my eyes around the clearing, tingles sliding down my back. Somebody had come to the cabin. Were they still around?
“Anybody here?” My voice sounded flat in the tall, leafless trees. “Hello?”
Nobody answered.
Confused, I bent down again. Had somebody come to the cabin during the night, looked in, and then left? I peered closer, trying to read the footprints more. The edges and lines were a little soft, like they had been rained on. Maybe the rain had stopped soon after the person had come and gone?
But who? Who else knows about this place? A terrible, wonderful thought came to me. What if Mal’s not dead? What if he’s hiding out in the woods? Could this have been him? A lump filled my throat and my heart pounded. Was it possible?
No. No way. Mal wouldn’t have done that. And Esther would have known. And Mal would have come in and said something if he had seen me in the cabin overnight. No, if Mal was looking in on me, he was doing it from somewhere else.
I wondered if that somewhere else allowed Mal to see and hear me. I wondered what Mal would think about what had happened last night. In that moment, remembering my blind fury, I felt bad for yelling at David. I had lost my temper way too much. Mal never shouted. I’d only seen him lose his temper that morning when he’d announced he was leaving. Mal would never have treated David that way.
I needed to try not to get so mad so easily. I would do it to honor Mal.
So it wasn’t Mal who had come to the cabin.
It had been somebody else. Mary?
I shook my head, laughing at myself. Stupid. The feet were way too big for little Mary. Plus, she didn’t even know about the cabin. I stood in the clearing, facing the general direction of the house. I wondered if whoever had come out here was watching me now. I turned in a slow circle, studying the gaps between the trees. Nobody.
Who had come out here during the night?
I shook off the chill of fear that ran through me and left the clearing, avoiding the soggiest patches on the ground. Whoever had come out her was long gone now. As I walked through the forest toward the highway that couldn’t be that far away, I watched for any other sign of somebody else. I saw nothing.
Twenty minutes of dodging trees and brush, and jumping a tiny creek, later, I knew I wasn’t lost, but I felt like I might be soon if I didn’t get my bearings. I knew that the Pike lay somewhere in this general direction. Whenever we went to the library, or came back, I was pretty sure we circled this big patch of woods before turning onto the small road that led to our driveway.
But shouldn’t I be there by now?
My stomach grumbled, squeezing like a convulsing hand. I walked faster. Maybe someone in Cooperton would give me something to eat. Or I might be able to find that bakery we’d once gone to in order to pick up some day-old bread.
I kept walking, stopping regularly to listen. Each time I stopped, I felt like my mouth got drier and my stomach squeezed tighter. Maybe I should have gotten a drink at that creek.
Another ten minutes later, I leaned on a tree and held still, praying I would hear a car on the Pike, somewhere nearby. My hand felt jittery on the rough bark of the fir tree. If I didn’t get something t
o eat or drink soon—
I let the thought go. I needed to keep moving.
A sound came to me through the trees, like a long, harsh sigh. A car. On a road. Within a couple of minutes I could finally see the long strip of gray running east/west, and the occasional car.
By the time I made it to the road, the sun hung at least a hand’s length above the woody horizon. Seven o’clock? I had no way of knowing.
What if a car stopped and someone asked me what I was doing? I’d figure it out. I turned right and headed toward Cooperton, keeping to the edge of the gray asphalt. I walked fast, wanting to put as much distance between the Faith and me as possible. Before long, I heard a car coming up behind me. I glanced back. I didn’t see the car yet, so I ducked off the road and crouched behind some trees.
A small white car flashed by. I waited and listened. I didn’t hear anything, so I got back to the road and broke into a jog. Questions kept surfacing in my mind, about how I was going to eat and where I would end up and how I could stay off the radar. I pushed them all away. For now, I needed to get off this road and find a place to hole up in Cooperton.
I came to a length of the Pike that had a guardrail on both sides and hurried across it. As I approached the end of the guardrail, I heard another car coming. My chest tightened. Nowhere to go! I leapt the guardrail, falling maybe six feet and landing on a sloping bank and twisting my right ankle. Grabbing at the pain, I clenched my mouth closed to keep myself from shouting. Stupid! Lances of fire stabbed from my foot up through my leg bone.
I staggered to my feet and groped my way up the bank. At the top, I looked both ways. No cars. I leaned on the guardrail and worked my right foot in circles.
It felt like a small rabid creature was biting my ankle with every step for the first hundred feet or so. This is going well. I pushed myself forward. Try not to break a leg next. Slowly the twinges faded to a throbbing ache. I rounded a gentle bend, limping, and saw the first couple of driveways that marked the edge of Cooperton. I pictured the first intersection, where I would turn left, and then left again, to get to the bakery.
My stomach rumbled and I forced myself to go faster.
“Hey there.”
Alarm shot tingles up and down my spine. I spun, stumbling as the new movement made my ankle complain painfully. Across the Pike, set back from the road, stood a large house. A man in the front yard, whom I hadn’t seen through a thin row of trees, stood at his property line. He was looking right at me.
I swallowed. Great. I forced a smile. “Hi.” I turned to keep walking.
“Where you headed?”
I glanced around. Focus. Remember Focus class. I willed my body to relax and turned back to him. Keep it simple. “School. Missed the bus.”
The man looked at his watch. “The bus? You sure you missed it?” He cocked his head, his brow drawing down. “It’s only 7:20.”
I swore to myself. “Really?” I forced a totally fake laugh. “My watch is broken.” I kept going. “Still, might as well walk the rest of the way.”
“Everything okay?”
Just keep walking. He’ll give up. “Sure,” I said, tossing the word over my shoulder. He sounded genuinely concerned, but that wouldn’t do me any good. I couldn’t ask him to help me run away.
As I continued down the road, I felt like I was gearing up to flinch if the guy kept talking. Luckily, he didn’t say anything else and I didn’t dare look back to see if he’d lost interest or if he was watching me.
I needed to get out of sight. But if he was still watching me, he would definitely be suspicious of a kid that ducked into the woods and he might call the cops.
No, I needed to act natural for now. Once I was in Cooperton, I could hide behind houses and sneak to the bakery. Maybe they would have left some day-old bread out where it might not have gotten wet. And I could maybe go to a gas station and get water in the bathroom. Plus, if the bakery didn’t have anything I could eat, I could probably slip something into a pocket at a gas station.
If I got caught, though, that would be the end of it. Would jail be better than the Faith?
I didn’t get a chance to think about the answer to that question. As I cut across Broad Street and into a parking lot, aiming for the small shopping center that had the bakery, I heard tires screech and saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I flinched, stumbling on my hurt ankle.
A police car jammed to a stop in front of me. The passenger window was open and a lady cop leaned toward me, most of her obscured by shadow. “Joshua Kerr? Stop there, please.”
Chapter 14
A second passed. My heart glued itself to the inside of my chest.
Nope.
I took off, darting toward the shopping center. If I could get into one of the stores, I could hide. The cop shouted after me.
My ankle gave out before I’d taken three steps. As I hit the parking lot, skinning my hands, I wondered how they’d found me so fast. It must have been that guy. And if Miriam had already called the cops about me taking off, it wouldn’t have been hard to figure out who the kid wandering down the Pike was.
I tried to get to my feet, but the lady cop had me by the arm and was bending over me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Just let me go.”
She pulled me to my feet. “I’m sorry, Joshua, I can’t do that.”
“I’m not Joshua Kerr,” I said. “I’m going to school.”
She smiled at that. “Nice try, kid. We got your description from your mom.”
I tugged my arm free. “My what? I don’t have a mother.”
She almost took a step back, surprise on her face. “What? What are you talking about?”
“I don’t have a mother. Whoever talked to you isn’t my mother.” What am I doing? This isn’t going to do any good. I thought fast. Was it possible I could explain things and be taken away from the Faith? Would the cops decide that the Faith was doing terrible things to me and the other kids and arrest Miriam and the other adults?
What if I could convince this police lady that the Faith was doing awful things? What would she do to me then? Would she make me go back?
“Joshua,” the lady cop said. “Don’t be ridiculous. Your mom, Miriam, called us last night, saying you had left the property and might try to run away.”
“I told you I don’t have a mother.”
“She talked about how the last few months have been tough on you, what with your brother dying.” The cop tried to guide me to her car. “Your parents are worried about you.”
I planted my feet, my ankle almost giving out again.
“He didn’t just die, he was killed,” I said. “And Miriam might have given birth to me, although that would require her to be human, but she’s not my mother.” I stared the cop down. “And I really don’t have parents. None of us do. I’ve never even used that word.”
The cop focused in on my face, obviously confused. She opened the passenger door of her car and surprised me by sitting in the seat, turned toward me. “What do you mean by that? None of you has a mother?” Her expression softened a little. “None of who?”
I felt the energy go out of my body, as if a bunch of tension had dissolved. I wanted to curl up on my bed and sleep the rest of my life away. “None of any of us. They don’t care about us. I don’t even know why they had us.”
“Joshua,” the cop said. She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “Help me understand what’s going on.”
“Why? You can’t do anything about it.” I wished she could. In the minute that this cop had been in my life, she’d already shown more concern for me than Miriam had in my entire almost fifteen years.
The temptation to make stuff up hit me again. But I had no idea where I would end up if I did that. Would I end up in an orphanage or something?
Which was kind of like the Faith, anyway.
What if the cops found out I was lying? Could they put me in jail for that? Jail had to be worse than the Faith, and having Miriam get a hold of me
after making up stuff like that—even worse.
“I don’t know,” the cop said. I looked at the tag on her uniform. L. Ambler. Officer L. Ambler. “Maybe I can help.”
“You can’t. They don’t break any laws, at least that I know of.” I glared at her. “You tell me. Is it against the law to not give a damn about your kids? How about hypocrisy and manipulation? Is that against the law? Are you gonna arrest them?” I didn’t feel like standing anymore. I dropped to the pavement and crossed my legs in front of me.
“Well, I can’t be sure about any of that.” Ambler leaned back again. She studied my face and seemed to be pondering something. “Why don’t you tell me more? You look like you could use something to eat.”
My stomach rolled at that, my throat suddenly bone dry. “Uh.. okay.”
She stood and offered me a hand. “Here. Let’s get you cleaned up a bit and get some food in you. Then I’ll call it in.”
Then she would take me back.
Maybe the asphalt would open and swallow me. Or maybe I would stick to it, glued permanently. Of course, then I’d have to take my pants off to get loose. The image almost made me smile. How great would it be to arrive back at the Faith without my pants?
Stupid. It would look stupid.
I took her hand and pulled myself up, limping to her car. I tried to imagine how much trouble I was going to be in.
Dread settled into my chest like a sap covered rock. My stomach growled again. Maybe I could do something while we ate, find some way to convince this lady to not take me back.
“What’s wrong? Why are you limping?”
“I twisted my ankle back on the Pike,” I said.
“Let me look at it.” Officer Ambler crouched as I sat in the front passenger seat. She pushed up my pant leg and rolled down my sock. “Muddy shoes. Been walking through some puddles?”
Beyond the Cabin Page 11