Beyond the Cabin

  I jogged up the stairs and glanced around. I had to make sure nobody saw me going to the girls’ door. I really didn’t want to have deal with questions and suspicions.

  Standing still and holding my breath, I listened. No sound came from behind the door. I knocked and waited. I heard footsteps. That had to be Mary.

  It was. Mary’s round face appeared in the doorway. She looked worried about something.

  “Hey,” I said, my smile coming easily.

  “Hi,” Mary said. Her skin was a little pale. She didn’t look very happy to see me.

  I wondered what was going on. Her less-than-happy greeting made me forget why I was there. “Uh,” I stammered, “um, oh. I was just wondering if you have any books. I mean different books from the Black Stallion. I’m out.”

  Mary’s eyes lost their focus while she appeared to think. She shook her head, then sucked in her breath.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “I’m fine. No, I don’t have any,” Mary said. She began to turn away and close the door.

  “Are you really okay?” I asked. She looked like something was hurting her.

  “I’m fine!” The door closed hard and she was gone.

  I stood there wondering what was going on. She was definitely not okay; she had looked either really uncomfortable or in pain. Had somebody done something to her?

  I trudged down the stairs. “Sucks.” I’d have to go outside and find something to do. Maybe go to the island. Or if Luke was already on the island, the little raft we used to float across the water wouldn’t be tied to the tiny pier that Mal had built.

  Of course, that wasn’t going to work, since I was still grounded. No. This was a perfect chance to try something I’d come up with a couple days before.

  I turned left and walked through the living room. Aaron wouldn’t expect me, but maybe I could learn a few things while I was there. We never really talked, and we were brothers. Did most brothers act like this? None of the movies I’d seen or books I’d read had really had brothers in them. Were brothers usually more chummy? I mean, I knew from books and stuff, and from going to the YMCA and the library, that most people lived with their families. So most families had a mother and father. But sometimes one of them wasn’t around. But I was pretty sure that most kids called their mother ‘Mom.’

  But the Faith was different. It was like the idea of family was tossed out right after people joined the Faith. I wondered what it would be like to love my mother.

  The door to Aaron’s room was ajar, light seeping into the hallway, so I walked in. The room looked as if a huge computer-eating monster had puked into it. Circuit boards, CPU cases, monitors and fans fought silently and immovably for space on three long, folding tables that lined the walls to the left and right. At the wall across the room from the door was a desk with several overflowing shelves above it. Aaron sat in front of the desk, the glow from the monitor before him spilling onto his face. His fingers tapped slowly on the keyboard as he looked intently at what he was doing.

  You’d think that he spends enough time with computers that he’d be organized like one too. I entered the room, crossing the dark hardwood floor. I had to step over pieces of metal and strange, green squares, to get to Aaron.

  Aaron turned when he heard the floor creak. “What’s up?”

  “Hey.” I stood to Aaron’s right, looking at the computer screen. “What’re you doing?”

  “Huh?” Aaron looked up at me from his seat. “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing,” I said. Had Aaron forgotten how to hold a conversation? Not that I was the best at small talk or anything. “I was just wondering what you did in here all the time.”

  “I work here.”

  “Oh I know,” I shrugged, feeling like an idiot. When had me and Aaron ever had something to talk about? We had exchanged like ten words with each other at Mal’s funeral.

  “So what’s up?” Aaron asked.

  I looked around the room. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been in here. “Nothing, really. That’s the problem. There’s nothing to do.” Something was missing. The last time I’d been in here there had been—“Hey, where’s your bed?”

  “My bed? Oh, Miriam says I have to move up to the boys’ room.”

  “Oh yeah?” I pondered that. “Why?” I turned from the screen to be able to see Aaron’s face.

  Aaron shook his head. “I don’t know. She said I have to. Didn’t you see my stuff on Mal’s old bed?”

  I searched my memory. I’d gotten up, yelled at the twerps, and come down. “Nope.”

  “Yeah, well I have to go up today.”

  “Weird, huh?”

  Aaron shrugged. “I guess.” He ran his fingers through his wiry black hair.

  “I bet it was nice to have your own room,” I said, trying to keep the conversation going. How should I ask him my question? I had to lead up to it, but I couldn’t figure out how to.

  “I guess,” Aaron said. His attention reverted to the computer screen.

  I took in the computer pieces as the silence expanded. “So do you build computers in here, or do they come here to die?”

  Aaron snorted. “No. I take them apart and build them again, usually so they work better.”

  “So you’re a computer god.”

  Judging by the confusion on his face, Aaron clearly had no idea what I was talking about.

  “I mean, you kill them and then resurrect them. Like God,” I said.

  Aaron snorted again. “Hardly. They’re machines. You tell them what you want them to do and they do it.”

  “Like the kids in the Faith. Little obedient machines.” I was on a roll.

  Aaron looked up at me, obviously wondering where all of this was coming from. “Was there something you needed?”

  Oh, so he was too busy to talk to his only surviving brother? Great. I didn’t answer for a few seconds. Maybe some human interaction, for once. I ran out of books and was hoping I hadn’t run out of brothers, I guess. “Nah, I was just wondering what you were always doing in here, especially since you don’t have to do classes.”

  “I’m running the Faith’s websites and keeping track of electronic donations and stuff. Pretty boring really,” Aaron said. He turned to look at the screen again.

  I felt like Aaron had dismissed me. But I still needed to ask him my question. Might as well go for it. “So, hey, I actually had a question for you.”

  Surprise registered on Aaron’s face again. “What’s up?”

  “So I was wondering how people find the Fundamental Faith through the computer. Or do they call so they can get our magazine?” I didn’t want to make him too suspicious, so I clammed up.

  “Yeah, sort of. I mean, there’s the Internet and you can search for pretty much anything on it.” Aaron’s eyebrows came down a little. “Wait a sec. You’ve never actually used a computer before, have you?” The corners of his mouth turned up a little, but I could tell he didn’t want to make me feel bad.

  “Well, sure, at the library, to find books. But that’s just the catalogue,” I said.

  “Okay, so you at least know what a mouse is.”

  I gave him an exasperated look. “Of course I do. I’m not an idiot.”

  “Fine, sorry.”

  I reminded myself to stay focused. “So, but how does that work?” I gestured at the computer he was working with. “I mean, how would somebody find the Faith on the Internet?”

  “Well there are search engines and you have to use some key words to find what you’re looking for.” He watched me, I think waiting for me show him I understood what he was talking about.

  “Okay, like when I search for the Black Stallion on the computer catalogue at the library.” I stole a quick glance at the computer screen. It looked like he was writing a letter or something.

  “Yeah, exactly like that. Except the Internet searches all over the world for your key words. And when the Funders meet people, they give them pamphlets or cards for people to u
se to find us online.”

  I worried that he might start figuring out what I was getting at, so I thought of a stalling question. “How does that work, anyway?”

  Aaron gave me a strange look, glanced at the computer screen, and turned back to me. “What do you mean?”

  I pointed at the screen. “How does that computer find all of that information on the Internet?”

  He laughed. “First of all, that’s not the computer. That’s a monitor.” He pointed under the table. “That down there is the computer.”

  “That box thing?” What was he laughing about? I never got to use the Faith’s computers. Just because he got to use them all the time didn’t make him the smartest person on the planet.

  “Yeah,” he barked another short laugh. “The box thing.”

  “Oh.” Did playing with computers all day make you a big jerk? “So how does it search?”

  “Well, every computer that connects to the Internet has a thing called an IP address, which is like a house address, and the Internet is like the world. So a computer uses its IP address to identify itself to the world, or the Internet. And then it sends packets of information out and uses browsers to search for key words.”

  He lost me at ‘packets,’ but I hid my confusion and nodded. “Cool.” I kept my gaze on the monitor. “So if you wanted to say, like, find the history of Cooperton, is there stuff on the Internet that could help you with that?” Another thought occurred to me. “Or if I wanted to make sure I’d read all the books in a series, could I figure that out?”

  “Sure.” Aaron’s fingers moved fast on the keyboard. I thought back to the only times I’d used a computer—at the library—and wondered if I could ever type that fast. He clicked on one of the results that came up on the monitor and bunch of text and images appeared. He read, “Cooperton was originally settled by the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers.” He looked up at me. “And now you see why I don’t need to do classes.” He tapped the screen softly. “Here’s my school.”

  Envy flashed like a burning out light bulb. At least Aaron had to go to Focus class. “That’s cool.” I did my best to sound innocent and curious. “Can you even find the history of the Faith on there?”

  Aaron dropped his gaze to the keyboard. What was that about? “I’m sure you could.”

  “Huh.” I tried to keep the tension making me sweat out of my voice. I needed to drop it or he would get suspicious. I let the silence stretch. “Well, I guess I’ll let you work.” Was it weird that I felt like I couldn’t trust my own brother?

  “Okay.” Aaron clicked a few times and different stuff appeared on the screen.

  My brother, the lucky computer guy. Who is kind of a computer himself. I headed for the door. This time I forgot to step over Aaron’s shoes and my right foot came down on one of them. I stumbled, catching myself before I could come off as a total idiot. I looked back to see if Aaron had noticed. Apparently not.

  I gave the shoes a kick. Dumb things. They tumbled a few feet and came to a stop. Old things. Man, that heel’s shredded. Shooting one more glance over my shoulder—nope, Aaron hadn’t noticed a thing—I left. Had Aaron gotten suspicious? Did he have any idea of what I was thinking about?

  It didn’t matter. Now I needed to find a time that I could get on that computer when nobody else was around.

  Somebody would be cooking dinner, so I went outside to stay out of sight and think about stuff.

  I dropped back into the porch chair. I needed to get on a computer. I pictured the cabin. And the cabin needed a roof. I stared in the general direction of my unfinished hideaway, not really seeing anything while I thought the problem through. A quiet breeze bent the tops of the trees back and forth, as if they were waving at me.

  I had tossed out the idea of putting logs up there—too heavy and I had no way of doing that by myself—when I realized what I had just seen. I sat up, tingles running down my spine, remembering Aaron’s shoes. The heel of Aaron’s shoe was shot, in fact it was mostly gone. It looked like a dog, maybe Chewie, had used it as a chew toy or something. I imagined the shoes on Aaron’s feet.

  Fixing the image in my mind, I saw what I had missed. The messed up shoe was the left one. Like the footprints of whoever had checked on me that night that I had spent in the cabin.

  No way. Had it been Aaron? Why would Aaron check on me when nobody else would? Why would he go out in the rain to check on me, then never say anything?

  I looked around, letting my senses expand outward. The beggars were back and dinner would be ready pretty soon. I had maybe twenty minutes. Would anybody notice if I left the porch? Come to think of it, who even know that I was grounded? Only Miriam and Abraham? Abraham was counting his loot and Miriam was in her office.

  If I was fast and careful, I could get into the woods without Miriam seeing. Besides, she might have already forgotten about grounding me. Knowing her.

  I crept to the front door and listened, hearing the chatter of the beggars. Nobody would see me. I took off down the porch stairs and across the driveway. Chewie, tied up at his tree, jumped to his feet and wagged, his tongue lolling out of his slobbery mouth. I ignored him, knowing that if I paid him any attention he wouldn’t let me leave for hours.

  The trees swallowed me.

  I circled down toward the pond, angling in the general direction of the cabin. Would the prints still be there? I didn’t think so, but I had to check.

  Arriving at the back of the cabin slightly out of breath, with the day fading quickly, I slowed to a walk and went to the front. I crouched near the entrance of the tiny house. Peering closely, I made out multiple faint footprints. But they were all so jumbled, I couldn’t see anything that stood out. I moved farther from the cabin, trying to recall exactly where I’d seen the footprints that morning.

  I pictured the fresh footprints again, trying to fit Aaron’s shoe into them. I couldn’t be sure, but I also couldn’t imagine that anyone else had one shoe with a messed up heel.

  It had been Aaron. Aaron had checked on me. Mr. Computer. The guy who didn’t even react when Mal had left, and then died a few months later. Why had Aaron never said anything? If he actually cared about me, why didn’t he try harder to talk about things? Why did Aaron spend every second in that computer room?

  Because he was basically weird?

  Whatever he might be, there was obviously more to Aaron than met the eye. As that thought passed through my mind, I remembered that Mal had said almost the same thing on the day he had first left. Mal had told me to give Aaron a break sometimes, too.

  I wondered if I should bring up that night that I had run away. Would Aaron talk about it or would his face go all computer?

  No, it couldn’t go computer, because computers had screens—no, monitors—that showed what they were doing. Aaron would go all Aaron.

  Chapter 25

  Knowing I didn’t have much time, I headed back to the house. At the edge of the woods, I stopped, looked around, and darted out of the cover of the trees and stopped behind Curly. Wait, this was dumb. If nobody else knew I was grounded, acting like this was going to raise suspicions.

  All I needed to do was get to the porch without being noticed, but without acting funny if someone did see me. That way, if someone came looking for me, thinking I’d been gone, I could say I’d been there the entire time.

  I studied the front of the house, starting with the doors and then the windows. I caught my breath when I got to the window at the corner. Mary was standing there, looking right at me. The girls’ room was at the end of the house, so I should have known that window was hers. She looked serious. She knew I was grounded. Would she tell? She seemed like she was mad at me—was it because I’d asked her to help me with my lines? Had she not really wanted to?

  Not knowing what else to do, I waved. She waved back, but her expression stayed the same. I closed my eyes, praying she would keep this quiet, and slipped out from behind Curly, slinking quickly onto the porch. I kept to the railing, ste
pping lightly and hoping for no creaks.

  Wasted hope. The ancient porch creaked like crazy. It was probably the best alarm system a house could have. I darted to one of the two high-backed chairs and dropped into it, my heart hammering, and breathed as quietly as I could. I stretched out and tried to relax as my heart slowed.

  I sat there for a couple minutes, waiting for dinner to be announced. I heard Rachel’s voice ring out upstairs maybe two minutes later. Sweat dripping down my back, I went inside, closing the door behind me. It opened a second later, Luke shoving past me and thumping up the stairs. He smelled like water, trees, and sweat.

  “Luke,” I said. “Dinner.”

  “I know.” He disappeared into our bedroom.

  I crossed the living room.

  “I thought you were grounded,” Saul said. I hadn’t seen him on the couch.

  I turned as he leaned his guitar on the end table. “I am.”

  “Then why were you outside?” The jerk seemed to think talking loudly was a good idea. He was obviously trying to make sure adults heard.

  “None of your business.” Man, I hated him. “And I was on the porch, anyway.”

  “I was out there playing earlier. I didn’t see you.” He stepped toward the dining room, his eyes darting to the adults’ table.

  “Then you’re blind.” I forced myself to clam up, knowing that if I tried to explain more I wouldn’t help. Keep it cool.

  I looked away from him and went to my spot at the kids’ table.

  “No I’m not.” Saul stayed on his feet. “I would have seen you.” His voice got louder. “You weren’t on the porch.”

  This guy needed a punch in the throat. “Sauly. Don’t blame me if you’re blind.” I looked around the table, keeping my breathing even through force of will. Come on. Acceptance step. I had to act totally natural, like Saul was being stupid. Sarah and Rachel sat in their usual spots, giggling at something Sarah had in her hand. “Hey Sarah,” I said, pointedly ignoring the rat standing next to me. “You’re going to get in trouble if anyone sees that toy at the table.”

  Sarah’s eyes widened. Rachel whispered in her ear and Sarah’s hand darted under the table. I could tell she was stuffing whatever it was into her pocket.