“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean it.”
But of course he did.
• • •
The adults left soon after, but not before imposing the dark promise of further discussion and a reminder that no one was to leave the compound without permission. Arman understood full well that “no one” meant him. He mumbled agreement but could tell the trainers still weren’t happy with him. That was a feeling he hated, but he didn’t know how to make them happy. Telling the truth wasn’t the answer. They wanted a truth he knew was a lie: that he knew where Beau was. That something had happened between them that meant Arman would be foolish enough to come back to the compound and make up some outlandish story about suicide and head wounds and vanishing vans.
Or desperate enough.
Arman lay on his cot and rolled away from his roommates. His head hurt more than ever.
Kira crouched beside him.
“Arman,” she whispered. “Why didn’t you tell us what happened? You talked to both Dale and me, and you didn’t tell us anything.”
“So?”
“So . . . don’t you see how it looks?”
“No, Kira. Why don’t you tell me how it looks?”
“It looks bad,” she said. “It looks really bad.”
He rolled back over to face her. “Well, what am I supposed to do? Do you think I like this? First I’m told I’m crazy. That I hit my head and made everything up. Then I’m told that I . . . I don’t even know!”
“Well, I don’t know what you think. Because you don’t say anything about yourself. Ever. But I do know that you need to come clean about whatever it is you did—”
Arman sat up. “I didn’t do anything! Stop saying that!”
“Don’t yell at her,” Dale growled from across the cabin.
“I’m not yelling! She’s pissing me off!”
Kira got to her feet. Stared down at Arman with her arms crossed. “I knew you shouldn’t have come here. I didn’t want you to. I even told Dale what you were like back home.”
“Oh yeah? What am I like?”
“You’re always ruining shit because you don’t know how to be normal! It’s annoying. Some of us want to be here, you know. If you don’t, then go. But don’t make us all miserable just because you are.”
It felt like a rash had broken out all over his body. “You don’t know the kind of things that go on around here, Kira. I mean it. You don’t. Not everyone’s like Beau. Some of these people, they just want your money.”
She scoffed. “So you’re the expert? You know better than me, when I’m the one who’s actually been following this program while you’ve been running around doing God knows what and taking pain pills?”
He flared. “A doctor gave me those pills!”
“I bet.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Kira lifted her chin. “I know you didn’t pay to be here, not like the rest of us. So maybe you don’t get to lecture me.”
“He didn’t pay?” Dale asked.
“No, he didn’t.” Kira turned around. “That woman trainer told me she looked at the books and he was the only one who hadn’t paid. She wanted to know if I knew why, so I told her he must’ve lied his way in here somehow. That’s he’s no better than his felon father.”
“Don’t say that!” That was it. Arman was on his feet, ready to charge.
Dale leapt across the cabin. Grabbed on to him by the shirt collar. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Nothing!”
“You’re acting crazy, you know that? Like really crazy.”
Arman squirmed. “I’m not like my dad! She needs to take that back!”
“I’m not taking anything back,” Kira said.
“Look,” Dale told him. “I don’t care about your dad. I don’t care about any of this. You just need to calm down.”
Arman wrenched himself free from Dale’s grip. Sat back on his cot with his heart pounding. “I am calm.”
“Good.”
“I’m going to sleep now.”
Dale nodded. “That’s good, too, Arman. You do that.”
28
WHEN ARMAN OPENED HIS EYES the next morning, the first thing on his mind was the cook. And he wasn’t thinking about whether he’d knocked her up or contracted herpes or if he’d be lucky enough to get another shot at trying to do both. No, he was thinking about the fact that he hadn’t told her about Beau. That he hadn’t told her anything. Now that other people knew Beau was missing, it meant she might find out, too. If Arman didn’t tell her what he knew first, there was no predicting what she might make of it.
Or of him.
The coil of dread squeezing his rib cage got Arman to haul ass out of bed and make his way down to the dining hall in a hurry. He managed to leave before Dale and Kira were even awake, for which he was grateful. He was in no mood to continue their argument from the night before.
Walking through the meadow beneath a foggy sky, Arman went over what he might say to the cook and how he might say it. He just needed to sneak a quick moment of privacy with her, before all hell broke loose. Before everyone started looking at him the way Kira and the trainers had looked at him last night—like he was guilty.
Like he’d done something bad.
Breakfast was served outside. Food and drink were laid out on tables located at the main dining hall entrance. While this arrangement was preferable to sitting with strangers, it also kept Arman from slinking into the kitchen from the garden. With everyone standing around, he’d be in plain view.
So much for privacy.
He took two sweet rolls and a cup of juice and lingered on the edge of the crowd. He ate quickly and swallowed his Paxil and Adderall when no one was looking. Scanning the group with what he hoped was discretion, Arman strained to spot the river-pebble-eye guy. But he didn’t. He was about to start walking through the crowd, to search more, when he was stopped by the old man he’d sat with at dinner the night before.
“Oh, hey,” he said, because the old man had grabbed his arm, sloshing his juice onto the ground. The guy was stronger than he looked.
“I know you,” the man said.
Arman smiled. “Yes, you do. We talked last night.”
“We did?”
“We talked about love-shyness. You told me not to throw up around girls.”
The man made a face. All that wrinkled skin. “That’s not it. I recognize you from back home.”
“Back home in Oakland?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I’m not from Oakland.”
“You got arrested recently, didn’t you? That’s where I know you from. You were in jail.”
“Wait, what?” Arman stared at him. “In jail? No, I wasn’t. I’ve never been arrested.”
The old man made a clucking sound. “Oh, I never forget a face, son. You were charged with . . . oh, now, let’s see. What was it again?”
“Nothing. I wasn’t charged with anything because it wasn’t me. I’m only seventeen. And I’ve never done anything wrong.” This was a lie, of course, but no one needed to know that but him.
“A pyramid scheme!” The old man pointed right at Arman with glee, pleased to have solved the mystery. At the victorious sound of his voice, people around them turned to look. “That was it, wasn’t it? You were running it out of Emeryville. Something to do with self-hypnosis tapes, am I right? Or was it something else? Drugs charges, maybe?”
“No.” Arman yanked his arm free. Took a flustered step backward. People were still staring. They weren’t looking away. “I never did anything like that. I swear.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure,” Arman insisted, although his body was starting to do its sweating thing. He lowered his voice to a hiss. “That w
asn’t me. You’re talking about my father.”
“Your father?”
“Yeah.”
There was no flicker of recognition in the old man’s rheumy eyes. He simply shrugged. Wandered off.
Left alone, Arman glanced around like a caged beast. It was like being up on the mountain again, standing in a circle of so many staring eyes. All that watching. Judging. Holding him under scrutiny he couldn’t begin to read.
Are they looking at me like that because of my dad?
Or do they know about Beau?
• • •
A bell rang, a soft chiming. The signal to head into the meeting hall, apparently. The group watching Arman turned and walked away without further incident. No one said a word.
He trailed after them but felt sour. Bitter, really. Arman’s Before Life wasn’t meant to have followed him here. It was the last thing he wanted to deal with. Back at school he’d lived in constant fear that people would find out what kind of person his dad was. A junkie. A deadbeat. A college burnout who, after being handed every advantage in life, couldn’t keep a job or stay sober and instead used his earnest face and sweet voice to hustle drugs and smooth-talk old ladies and college students into giving him money they couldn’t afford in exchange for promises that had no hope of coming true. Lying was his father’s one true gift, it turned out, elevated by the art of delusion. How could he live with himself otherwise?
Inside the dome, everyone sat cross-legged on the floor. Arman braced himself for some sort of meditation or guided exercise like they’d been asked to do at Vespers the night before. Instead they were broken into smaller groups and put to work. Real physical labor. Dr. Gary mumbled something about the importance of “maintaining a standard of health in every dimension of vitality,” but Arman was skeptical. Getting people to chop firewood and pick weeds in the garden seemed more like a ploy to get basic chores done than a genuine step toward self-actualization.
Then again, some of the groups were given more rigorous assignments: shoring up the fence perimeter on the eastern side of the property, cleaning the cannon, and taking inventory of all the canned goods and seeds that were in underground storage. Arman’s own group, which unfortunately included Dale, got the worst job of all: They were directed to dig out four six-foot deep cylindrical holes at the top of the sun-scorched hill overlooking the gravel drive so that the concrete footings for a “Surveillance and Communications Tower” could be poured.
So maybe this was about more than basic chores.
As he pushed a wheelbarrow filled with work gloves and shovels from the toolshed, Arman spotted Mari standing on the walkway outside the dome. She hadn’t been in there when the work assignments were handed out, which was strange. At the moment, she looked lost. Or confused. Something. Either way, he made sure to duck his head as he passed by her. The last thing he wanted was to make eye contact.
At the worksite, Arman did as he was told. Pounding the clay dirt with a pickax couldn’t be good for his concussion, but he didn’t complain. No one around him seemed to know anything about Beau, and he intended to keep it that way. Arman swung helplessly at the hard-packed earth, which refused to make a dent under his efforts.
Dale, as usual, couldn’t keep his mouth shut.
“What did you say we’re doing this for?” he growled after they’d been working for almost an hour. He leaned on his shovel with gloved hands, and his face, streaked with sweat and dirt, wore an unmistakable fuck-this-shit expression.
The leader of the group gave him a flat look. “I told you. We’re building a structure. These holes are going to be for the support posts, and Gary wants you to dig them. So go on and dig already.”
“Yeah, but you called it a ‘Surveillance Tower’ before.”
“Surveillance and Communication.”
“So who’s being surveilled?”
“Who says it’s a who?”
“What?”
“That’s exactly right. Maybe it’s a what. Not a who.”
“Jesus. Well, then what’s being watched?”
The man shrugged. “Don’t know. Maybe fires.”
“Fires? Are you kidding me?”
“That’s right.”
Dale looked around. “Anyone else buying this shit?”
No one said anything.
Dale shook his head in disgust.
Went back to digging.
29
ARMAN MANAGED TO GET AWAY as the sun broke through the clouds. He begged off by saying he had to use the restroom.
The group leader appeared unimpressed. “You can’t find a tree, kid?”
“Nope.” Arman scampered off, heading up the meadow trail toward the circle of cabins and the A-framed bathroom. He hid in one of the stalls for a while, in part because he really did have to go, but also so nobody could accuse him of lying about his whereabouts. The appearance of honesty, his dad always told him, was far more important than the truth.
There were two places the cook could be. Seeing as the kitchen was the more difficult location to access, Arman visited her cabin first. He went up the same way he had last night—by cutting through the woods and hiking around the research building. But Arman froze as he passed beneath the building’s stone pilings.
He heard voices.
They were coming from outside the building’s front entrance. Flattening his back against the cement wall so that he stayed in shadows, Arman peeked around the corner. He strained to see who it was or hear what they were saying, but they were too far away. The voices faded as the group walked inside, leaving only the faint clodding of the human herd. Arman thought he caught a flash of long braids as they left, lit by the late-morning sun.
Then they were gone.
• • •
Arman didn’t have to knock on the cook’s window to find her. She was already outside, sitting by herself on the cabin’s rickety front porch, reading a book. Arman’s breath caught at the sight. The essence of summer—she sat beneath a wall of climbing ivy, and her bare legs stuck straight out, twisting in the milky sunshine as she stared down at the book’s pages, lost in a world only she could know.
She looked up then, and she saw him. Only she wasn’t scared this time. She didn’t jump or yell or back away. Instead their eyes met and her lips did that twitching thing. Not a smile, exactly. But not not one, either.
Oh God.
“No one saw me come up here,” he said thickly.
“Good.” She set her book aside.
Arman shuffled closer to where she sat but remained standing. There was so much he needed to say, but he was having trouble thinking. It was overwhelming. Her presence. Her closeness. Her everything.
He stared at her thighs. That felt safest.
“You left last night,” she said.
“I know.”
“Why?”
Arman shrugged. He felt awkward all of a sudden and sort of horrible about it. Was there a right answer to her question? If there was, it’s not like he would ever say it. Besides, that wasn’t what he’d come to talk about.
“How’s your head?” she asked.
“Better, I guess.”
“I’m worried about Beau.”
This was a startling statement. Arman stared at her. “Why?”
“He hasn’t gotten in touch since he left yesterday. And he usually does.” The cook reached up, took Arman by the hand, and pulled him down next to her. “I tried asking those assholes about it. But they wouldn’t tell me anything.”
“What assholes?”
“You know, the trainers. I’ve decided to stop being scared of them, by the way. They can’t tell me what to do. I know Beau won’t let them get rid of me, so I don’t care if they like me.” She raised her chin. “Which they don’t.”
“Oh,” Arman said weakly. “Well, that’s kind of what I wa
nted to talk to you about. I didn’t want you to hear it from anyone else. Especially them.”
She cocked her head. “Hear what?”
“That Beau’s missing.”
“Huh?”
“Mari said he didn’t get where he was going yesterday. I guess she heard from the person he was supposed to meet in San Francisco. And see, there was this thing that happened yesterday, when I left here. I don’t totally understand it, and I thought maybe it was because I hit my head. That’s what Gary said. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”
She held his hand tighter. “Tell me what, Arman?”
“That I saw him yesterday. After I left.”
“You saw Beau?”
Arman nodded. “I ran into him while I was walking down to the highway. He was going to give me a ride. But when I got in the van to go with him, he’d cut himself. With a knife. Really bad. There was blood . . . everywhere. I thought he was dead. I really did, and I drove up here with him, but by the time I found help, the van was gone.”
“What do you mean gone?”
“I mean, it was just gone. Vanished. With Beau in it. There was no trace it’d ever been here in the first place. It didn’t make sense. It still doesn’t. And my head was bleeding, see? I didn’t know how I’d hurt it, so everyone told me I was just confused. That the things I remembered couldn’t be true and that I didn’t really know what had happened.”
The cook blinked. Then took a deep breath. “Who told you this?”
“Them! The trainers. Gary and Mari and that woman.”
“They told you you were confused?”
“Yes.”
“And they’re the ones who said Beau didn’t get where he was supposed to go?”
Arman nodded.
The cook said nothing. She sat there in silence, with her cheeks flushed and her jaw clenched. She sat that way for so long that Arman started to get worried.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“No.” She jerked her head toward him. Her eyes were hot and her cheeks wet. “I’m not okay. Not at all. I’m going to fucking kill them.”
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