She nods. “I think so, but I don’t know how long it lasts. The last two residents were guys, so I wasn’t in their dorm. I just heard about it.”
They’re talking about me like I’m not here, and I don’t really feel like I’m here. It’s like I’m in the future recollecting this conversation, and some bits are clear, but most are fuzzy.
“What happened to your lip?” I ask Juda. His beautiful smile is marred by a cut in the left corner.
He says quietly, “I need to talk to you alone.”
“Mary can hear whatever you have to say.” Hands still quivering, I don’t want her to go anywhere.
Juda smiles at Mary. “You’ve always seemed really nice, Mary. No offense, but this is a very private matter.”
“No offense taken,” she says.
“She stays!” I say.
He rubs his head, aggravated. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Ummm.” I concentrate, but it makes my temples ache.
“You know who I am?” he says nervously.
“Of course,” I say, grinning stupidly.
He grins back, stroking my arm. “What about Silas?” he says. “And the Dixons?”
I nod slowly. “I was living with the Dixons. Why was I living with the Dixons?”
“That’s not important right now,” he says. “You remember Silas?”
I picture a boy with blond hair and a nice smile. “Yes.”
“Good,” he says, looking at Mary with relief.
“Do you remember talking with me and Silas? We had a very important conversation and you were supposed to do something very important for us.”
Mary’s eyebrows go up. “What did you make her do? She probably got caught, and that’s why she’s acting like a piece of broccoli.”
“Shhhh,” he tells her, agitated. In a gentler voice, he tells me, “Mary could be right. You may have been caught doing something for Silas, me, and you. Can you remember? It’s how I got this fat lip.”
“Just tell her what it was!” insists Mary, agitated herself.
“As soon as you leave us alone, I will!” says Juda.
“Stop,” I say. “You’re both hurting my eyeballs.” My headache seems to have buried itself deep inside my eye sockets, and the more they talk, the more it hurts.
“I’m staying here,” Mary tells me, hands on hips. “He’s haranguing you when you need rest.”
He exhales loudly. “I appreciate that you’re looking out for her. I want nothing more than for her to be able to rest.”
“But?” Mary says.
He scratches his head and rubs the back of his neck. He’s at the end of his rope with her. “If we’re ever going to get out of this place, we need her to remember meeting with Kalyb.”
“Get out? Like . . . ?”
“Break out,” Juda says, defeated.
Mary’s eyes grow wide, and she grabs my arm. “Mina, you have to listen to Juda. Where did you go yesterday? What happened?” She shakes me a little.
“Take it easy,” Juda says, pulling Mary’s hand away.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m really sorry.” Looking at their expressions, I suspect I should feel regretful or sad, but I have no idea how I’ve disappointed them.
“Don’t be sorry,” Juda tells me. “It’s not your fault.”
“What was she supposed to do?” Mary says, keyed up. “What’s your escape plan?”
“I’m not going to talk about it,” Juda says.
“Oh no. You’ve told me this much, so tell me the rest,” she says. When he doesn’t answer, she says, “I already know you’re planning to make a break for it, so I have enough to tell Solomon, which I won’t do if you tell me everything.”
“Nyek,” Juda says. “Why won’t anyone just let me see my mother? Why does everyone have to blackmail and bribe?”
“Because you’re in Hell and the only currency is immorality,” she says matter-of-factly.
His face screws up in pain.
His mother. He needs to see her.
Mary touches his wrist. “Sorry for being such a wheedle. You don’t have to tell me. Just please . . .” Now she’s the one who looks pained. “Please think about taking me with you. I’d like to get out of here while I’m still a teenager, you know?”
He nods. “I get it.”
“Thanks,” she says. They both turn to me. Sighing, Mary says, “Now what to do about her.”
Twenty-Eight
“StickFoot. Did you find the StickFoot?”
This is the only question anyone cares about.
And I don’t know the answer.
Juda, Mary, Silas, and I sit huddled in a corner of the community room pretending to play some card game called “Beat the Queen.” Silas found us shortly after we entered the room. He was very sweet about how sickly I was and at first insisted I go back to bed. I told him I was fine and that I only wanted to recover my memory.
It’s the truth. Losing time is terrifying. What could have happened to me during the last twenty-four hours? The list of answers is too horrifying to contemplate.
Silas says that the last time he saw me Kalyb had caught me without my backpack (Juda had started a fight with some guy named Jeffrey to get Kalyb out of his office, but Kalyb returned a little too soon.)
The moment is a big white nothing.
“I’m really sorry, everyone.” And I am. I’m letting them down in the worst way.
“Quit apologizing!” Mary says. “Let’s think this through. If Kalyb and Solomon caught you with the StickFoot, then Solomon would have kept you in the courtyard until you confessed why you stole it. Maybe you wouldn’t tell him, and that’s why he took you to the fryer.”
“Good point,” says Silas. “The important questions are whether or not she found the StickFoot and whether or not Solomon has it now.”
I put my head down on the table. How can I remember?
“What does StickFoot look like, Silas?” Juda asks.
“It’s, uh, in a small black can. You spray it on.”
I look up. “You put some on!” I say, delighted.
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s a story for another time. It wasn’t here.”
My head goes back down.
“I think we should reconvene another time,” says Mary. “She’s getting tired.”
“I know,” Juda says. “It’s just that . . .” His voice is full of guilt. “The panels open again tonight. If we don’t have the StickFoot, then none of us are going anywhere for another two weeks.”
Mary has told me to stop apologizing, but what else can I do but say I’m sorry? I want to hug Juda, to tell him it will all be okay, but I don’t know that it will.
“Do you remember about Ma?” he asks, and I can tell he feels terrible asking.
Seeing Rose lying in a hospital bed, I say, “I’ll do everything I can to help you get to her.”
“Thank you, love,” he says.
My body grows warm at the word “love,” and I know that nothing is more important than getting Juda out of this strange, horrible place.
“Are you too tired to keep going?” he asks.
“I’m okay,” I say, “but are you sure I can’t take this backpack off? It really hurts,” I say, shifting my weight for the hundredth time.
“We’re positive,” says Silas.
“If you take it off, Solomon will just put another rock in it,” says Mary.
“That would be really bad,” I say. “It would destroy everything.”
“Destroy your back?” says Mary, looking confused.
“No,” I say. “More.”
“Wait. It will destroy everything how?” Mary asks.
The memory is so faint, like the sound of whispering on the other side of a wall. I rub my temples. “I don’t know . . . I just . . . feel strongly that Solomon shouldn’t put a rock in my backpack.”
“We’ve all worn the backpack, and I’m sure we all felt the same way,” says Silas, who looks like he
’s also getting tired.
“The rocks suck hard,” Mary says. “but people don’t really feel like they ‘destroy everything.’”
My thoughts are going white again. “I think I should lie down.”
“I’ll take you,” says Juda, putting down his cards.
“Let me see your backpack,” says Mary.
“You said I couldn’t take it off,” I tell her, annoyed at the contradiction.
“You’re right,” she says, standing. “Come to the ladies’ room.” She waves to the boys. “Don’t leave without us.”
She leads me to a bathroom down the hall. Once inside, she checks all the stalls, and when she’s sure we’re alone, she turns me around and unzips the backpack.
“Thank the good Lord almighty above,” she whispers.
“What is it?” I ask.
She shows me the StickFoot in her hand. “You must have shoved it in here to hide it from Kalyb. Smart.”
A brief flash of bins and lightbulbs flutters by.
“Should we take it and go? We don’t have to go back to the boys, you know,” she says.
I stare at her open-mouthed, trying to figure out what to say, when she says, “I’m kidding. We’ll never escape if I have to rely on your frizzled brain.”
I give as much of a smile as I can manage.
“Let’s go tell them that Operation Rooftop is a go.”
Twenty-Nine
I wish I could match everyone’s enthusiasm about finding the StickFoot, but I still feel like a different person, like the real me is stuck in a bubble that no one has figured out how to pop yet.
We have a little over twelve hours until the panel doors open in the kitchen. Silas and Juda explain the plan to me carefully over and over until they’re sure I understand.
Thank God they told Mary, too. She’s my pillar of strength right now, and I can’t imagine going without her.
She and I sit alone in our session room. She’s made it her mission to return me to myself by tonight. I’ve had two cold showers and a cup of hot coffee, but I still have a mind full of cobwebs.
“Mina Clark,” she says, “who are your mom and dad?”
“Marga and Zai Clark.”
“Any siblings?”
“Dekker Clark.”
“His age?”
I have to think. “Seventeen.”
“Great. Where were you born?”
“Manhattan.”
“How did you meet Juda?” she says, a twinkle in her eye. She’s asking this one out of her own curiosity.
“He rescued me from a mob.”
“Really?” she says, eyes widening. “What happened?”
“There was a woman and she, uh, was being accused of cheating on her husband. The crowd attacked her, and Juda saved me from being trampled.”
“Wow,” she says, shifting in her chair.
I can’t remember much from the last week, but my memory of Delia getting hit with that first rock stings like a new paper cut.
“Juda is really cute,” Mary says. “He’s so different-looking.”
“Um,” I say. “When you say different, do you mean ‘not white?’”
She laughs. “I didn’t mean it that way, but maybe.”
I have a flash of standing on a stage with thousands of faces staring up at me. “All the Unbound look exactly the same. It creeps me out.”
“How do people look in Manhattan?”
“Like people. Brown, white, tan, black, whatever.”
Mary sighs. “I think the Unbound used to be like that.”
“What happened?”
She shrugs. “I’m in here because I’m fat. Silas is here because he’s gay. I think the Unbound have a pretty strict definition of what ‘made in God’s image’ is.”
My mouth drops in horror. “Are you saying they got rid of people who—”
“No! I mean that people who didn’t feel welcome migrated west.”
Is that a flicker of uncertainty in her eye? “And only white people felt welcome?”
“No one ever says it out loud like that. The Book of Glory tells us to welcome all of God’s children. But let’s just say it’s probably not a coincidence that Juda got locked in here and your brother didn’t.”
I turn away from her, disgusted. What’s the point of “letting in the light” if you only bestow it upon selected people?
“There’s this one black family, the Merediths, who Ram loves to mention and point out during his sermons,” she says. “like they’re his best friends, and if they’ve stayed in Kingsboro then we must be really inclusive.” She rolls her eyes.
“People are such hypocrites.”
“You’re telling me. I heard Kalyb keeps a bottle of whiskey in his office.”
This seems vaguely familiar. “If we escape, promise me you’ll get out of Kingboro,” I tell her.
“Are you kidding?” she says. “If we escape, I’ll carry you on my back across New York.”
I smile. It’s really nice to have Mary to explain things. “Why did I make everyone so mad with the Prom thing?” Silas told us the details of what I did.
Mary raises an eyebrow. “You mocked the Ascension.” On the word “Ascension” her hands make a dramatic circle above her head.
“What’s the Ascension?”
“Something I wish I could forget. Basically, one day the Savior will return, and all of his chosen people will float into Heaven to sit at his side. If you’re full of sin and depravity like us, you’re left on earth to rot and burn for eternity. It’s fun stuff.”
“How did I mock that?” I ask, confused.
“You told children you had seen people floating into the sky! And then they told their parents. And then everyone at Prom thought it was the day, and they got so excited that most of them probably peed their pants.”
“So they want to die?” I ask, confused.
“It’s not death, it’s uh . . . How do I explain? You know when you’re a kid and you have fantasies about the best day ever with cake and chocolate and tons of friends and unicorns to ride and a castle to live in with a boy named Sean?”
I don’t, but I nod anyway.
“The Unbound feel that when they get to Heaven, it will be like that. Every day will be their fantasy life, with their favorite food and favorite people, even the ones who have died. They can have whatever huge house they want and look however they want.”
“When will the Ascension happen?” I ask, amazed at the idea.
She throws up her hands in dismay. “Ram keeps promising it’s soon, which is annoying, because what does ‘soon’ mean? Ten years or ten minutes?” She calms. “He . . . uh, says the delay involves your people.”
“It does?” I ask, surprised.
“How do I say this without being rude . . . ? We believe in a Savior, and most folks think your Uncle Ruho is the anti-Savior, and as long as he’s around, our Savior won’t be showing his face.”
“Why do you care about Uncle Ruho?” I ask.
“He claims to have divine blood, to be a descendent of God, right?” After I agree, she says, “Yeah. That’s not benny with the Unbound—majorly blasphemous—and even worse, Ram thinks his claim is postponing our beloved Ascension.”
This whole story is so bizarre. Would it make more sense if my brain were functioning normally? I rearrange myself in the chair. The backpack forces me to sit on the very edge, which is tricky. Mary and I are alone, but she’s firm about me keeping it on. “So you don’t believe in the Ascension?” I ask.
“I did when I was little, and it was great. If there was anything I didn’t like about life, I could just tell myself that the Ascension was about to happen, and that everything would change. But then day after day, year after year, it didn’t happen. And at some point, I decided, this might be it, kid.”
“And did you feel sadder or happier about your life?”
“Ya know, I think I felt happier, but my parents sure didn’t. They would get seriously angry if I even jok
ed about the Ascension not happening. My older brother is totally perfect in their eyes, but I’m . . . well, they think I’ll be beautiful in heaven.”
“But you’re beautiful now!” I say.
“Whatever,” she says. “Solomon and my family beg to differ.”
“Who cares what they think?”
“I wouldn’t. Except for this.” She raises her khaki top, revealing a leather belt around her waist that is at least three notches too tight. The skin around the belt is inflamed with sores.
My hand flies to my mouth.
“I told you I didn’t get a backpack,” she says with a wry smile that breaks my heart.
“Oh, Mary,” I say, reaching out to her.
“No,” she says, flinching. “I don’t like touching.”
I don’t blame her. It must be excruciating when someone touches her.
“How long have you—?”
“Six months,” she says. “Please don’t tell anyone.”
“No. Of course not.” This is the first time I’ve seen her embarrassed. “You have nothing to be ashamed of, Mary. Solomon is the one who should be ashamed.”
“Believe me, I spend a lot of my free time coming up with exactly the right kind of revenge,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “But we’re supposed to be talking about you.” She gives me a little sideways grin. “That was a pretty clear conversation we just had, right?”
I smile, too. It was. “You think I can be ready for tonight?”
“The most important thing is going to be moving quickly and clearing your mind. Your memory won’t actually be a big deal.”
We had a hard time deciding who should keep the StickFoot until it was time. Any of us could be caught and have to undergo the same mind scramble as me. We voted and finally decided on Juda, since he has the most urgent need to get out of here. I was touched that Silas and Mary both agreed, even though this is all Silas’ plan.
We meet the boys before dinner to practice omming. We feel safe in the session room, reasoning that if Kalyb walks in we can say we are practicing his relaxation technique. Silas leads us through several loops using numbers. The idea is to count and to think of nothing but numbers. He suggests counting backward since it takes more concentration. I try it, and he’s right. We do it over and over until we have to go to dinner.
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