Gated

by Amy Christine Parker

  Will looks back at me, his face full of words he can’t say across the space between us. Words like I told you so. I know that he’s thinking about target practice again.

  “I am convinced that we have to enter the shelter early,” Pioneer says. “I have adjusted our duties so that if need be, we can enter the Silo as soon as the end of next week. Starting today we will be completing all of the necessary arrangements. I realize that some of you may be scared or uncertain … and of course you should be. I am too.”

  Pioneer takes a moment to give us his warmest smile, the one that seems to attach us to him like a lifeline. Some of the warmth missing only a moment ago is back in his eyes. “We need to remember—now more than ever—what the Brethren have promised us. They know what we are facing. They have sent you—through me—a challenge. Keep to the path. One day soon they will come here to meet us in the flesh. We must be grateful for their care. We must be ready to be what they require, which is a people purified, stripped of our need to be any part of the outside world or like those who live in it—consumers and parasites who take from the planet and from others to feed their own craven desires. Rapists, murderers, molesters, the lot of them.”

  Someone behind me yells out, “Tell it to us straight, Pioneer! Go on!”

  Others clap and laugh out loud. I try to catch the zeal I see in them, to find it in myself, but right now all I feel is fear. My chest is so tight there’s no room to feel anything else.

  “Brothers and sisters, I’m glad you are excited. You should be. I myself am barely able to stay still.” He does a little sideways jig and the laughter and applause increase. “I am so pleased by your conviction. Hold on to it. Keep it tucked in your heart. Don’t let this world or its people mislead you. Not now. Not ever again. Continue to meditate on why we are doing this. We must survive. We are charged with survival. And if surviving means making sacrifices, then so be it. Let the final countdown begin.”

  The whole room goes quiet. Then there’s an explosion of applause and cheers. I suck in a breath as what Pioneer has just said sinks in. We could be underground in less than twelve days. Even knowing what I do about the earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricane, I still want to beg the Brethren for more time, like somehow I can talk them out of ending things. Twelve days isn’t long enough. I find myself pleading under my breath, hoping that somehow they’ll consider listening. I ask for more time, for courage … for a miracle.

  It’s not good for any person to be idle for too long.

  In my experience, too much time to think is a dangerous thing.

  —Pioneer

  School and all other regularly scheduled activities are canceled for the first time ever. Pioneer posts our new schedule of duties for the week on the large board just outside the clubhouse’s front door while we wait inside the meeting room. The duties board is usually comforting to me, a constant reminder that we’re all safe. I like seeing all of our names neatly written in the squares. I’m connected to everyone and they to me by a grid filled with purpose, contained in a world small enough to be mapped out entirely on one wall. But not today. Today the board feels like a countdown calendar, a record of how little time we have left.

  Marie and I are the first to huddle in front of it once Pioneer’s done. Normally we’re each assigned a specific set of chores, like mucking out the horse stalls or working the development’s gardens. Pioneer says it’s vital that we don’t let any Outsiders in if we can help it, so everything that needs to get done to keep the Community running is done by us. But now most of us are assigned to the wood shop, and those who aren’t are responsible for all of the other chores as well as preparing the evening meal.

  “Pioneer told my dad that we have to finish the final furniture pieces on back order,” Marie sighs before she kicks at the wall. “I hate the wood shop.” She jumps off the porch and starts running after Julie to see if she’ll switch duties with her. I can already tell by the way Julie is trying to avoid her that she won’t have much success. I can’t help chuckling under my breath. I take the path toward the wood shop alone.

  Making furniture is our only source of regular income. Other than that, we have only the assets that each family arrived with—which were pretty considerable, I guess, since almost all of us were pretty well-off money-wise before we met Pioneer. Now almost all of that money has been used up in the building and maintaining of Mandrodage Meadows and the Silo. For the past five years, we’ve been making furniture to cover purchasing supplies and running the development.

  We build high-end pieces to sell to the same kind of people some of us once were—the kind who have designers create their living spaces and spare no expense for anything one-of-a-kind and handcrafted. The furniture pieces are mostly reproductions of rare antiques and museum pieces. They cost a lot, so we don’t have to make too many to cover our expenses, but even so it takes a long time to make each piece. Usually only a few of us, those most talented at woodworking, are assigned to the wood shop full-time with Mr. Brennan, who was a woodworker even before he came here, but now everything’s changed and it will take all of us working practically around the clock in shifts to complete the work we have left before we enter the Silo.

  We have fifteen more orders to fill now, which doesn’t seem like a lot except that most of the pieces that were ordered are large, complicated, and ornate. Pioneer has set our deadline for the end of this week, when my family will go to town for the final time. We’ll deliver the furniture and then use the money we earn to buy all of the lastminute things that will complete the Silo’s stockpile. One week to finish fifteen pieces of furniture is crazy, maybe even impossible, but Pioneer feels that we can’t risk having any of our families away from Mandrodage Meadows any closer to the last days than this Saturday and so we have no choice.

  In less than an hour my hands are covered in sawdust and my ears are ringing continuously from all of the electric-saw noise. It was hot before our morning meeting, but now it’s as if the air is on fire. It must be a hundred degrees inside the workshop, what with the sun beating down on the building and the heat from all these working bodies. We have at least ten large fans blowing, but the breeze is no cooler and my shirt feels like a second skin. My entire body is grainy, like the sandpaper in my hand. I adjust my face mask and try to take a breath, but between the heat and the dust, I’m slowly suffocating.

  Marie and I are supposed to be sanding down the carved areas of a couple of dressers with fine-grit sandpaper before they’re taken to be stained. At first we work feverishly, but with the heat as bad as it is, it isn’t long before we’re only dabbing at the carved leaves and roses in front of us. I can barely see out of our safety glasses because they’re so fogged up.

  Then Marie starts leaning over and putting her fogged-up face extra close to mine, breathing like Darth Vader. From the periphery of my vision, she looks like an alien or a giant bug with curly black hair. It makes us both laugh, especially when we face each other and press our noses together, creating doubles of our giant bug heads as our vision blurs.

  Eventually Mr. Whitcomb comes to stand behind us to make sure that we’re doing more working than laughing. I try to ignore Marie’s presence beside me because every time I catch a glimpse of her hair and those glasses, I start up all over again. Mr. Whitcomb taps the back of my head right where my bandage is, and I yelp. I lean over the dresser and try to focus.

  We get a break a little while later when Mrs. Brennan brings large jugs of lemonade and Dixie cups from the kitchen. Marie and I grab two cups apiece and carry them back over to our station to drink them. I put the cool cup to my head for a minute first before I drink. Marie gulps both of hers and then gets up again to get some more.

  Will is on the other side of the room, helping to cut wood into the exact sizes needed for the sides and tops of various dressers and tables. Like most of the men, he has his shirt off. He’s shiny with sweat, gilded with grime. He’s so focused on the spinning saw in front of him and the wood between h
is hands that he never notices me staring. His hair looks almost gray with its thick layer of sawdust. I can’t help wondering if that’s what he’ll look like when he’s truly old. If it is, he’ll definitely still be nice to look at. I’d have to be a fool or blind not to know how cute he is, but it’s strange how I can know this and still not feel anything. It’s kind of like looking at a painting. Sometimes I see one in a book that’s beautiful and the artist’s use of light, color, and texture impresses me, but the painting never makes me forget about the technical reasons why it’s beautiful or makes me feel something deep inside that I can’t put into words. To me, Will is like that, technically perfect but somehow uninspiring. My stomach has never jumped around with him the way it did when I was with Cody. Not in all the time we’ve been around each other.

  Cody.

  I keep trying to get that boy out of my mind, but he keeps creeping back in. And every time he does, I can’t help smiling. I don’t even know him, but still I feel kind of happy just thinking about him and how his smile was slightly lopsided or how his chin was just a little bit scruffy. It was shocking how much I wanted to reach out and touch it that day. But I have to stop this. Will is right there. What would he do if he knew what I was thinking?

  Marie nudges me on her way back to her seat and I can see her eyebrows arch upward, can practically picture the smile beneath her face mask as she looks at me and then Will. I’m still staring in his direction. I didn’t even realize. I nod my head and try to mirror her expression so that she’ll continue to think that I’m lusting after Will the way she does over Brian. I’ve never told anyone—including Marie—that I’m not in love with Will. She’s my closest friend besides him, so maybe I should tell her. I mean, I’ve thought of a dozen different ways to bring up the subject, but I just can’t seem to. I’m not sure why. Maybe I’m afraid she won’t understand or maybe that she’ll feel sorry for me. But I think mostly I’m certain she’ll think something’s wrong with me. I can’t face seeing this in her eyes and knowing that what I’ve suspected is true, that I’m somehow defective and incapable of recognizing love—of feeling anything like it. Ever.

  We work right through lunch. My mom and some of the other members who haven’t been assigned to the workshop bring us sandwiches and drinks eventually, but I can’t really eat. Every time I try to, I feel like I’m eating wood chips instead of egg salad. There must not be any part of me, including my mouth, that isn’t coated in sawdust. I drink about a gallon of water instead. The heat is becoming a physical pressure, multiple pairs of flaming-hot hands compressing my head until I feel like I’m throbbing all over, every bit of my skin fevered and swollen.

  After we eat, we rotate jobs so no one gets too cramped up from the same repetitive motions, and soon I’m in the back of the shop where the biggest fans are, painting furniture with chestnut-colored stain. The air is nowhere near as stuffy, but the smell of the stain starts to stuff up my nose and increases the pressure inside my head until I feel like it might explode. I feel faint and sick to my stomach, but no one else has stopped working. The few times I’ve tried to sit back and relax, Mr. Whitcomb or Mr. Brown has come to stand next to me, eyeballing me until I hunch back over my tabletop and paint. I try to imagine that I’m painting a landscape or the horses out in the pasture, but since my brushstrokes have to be up and down and even, it’s impossible.

  We don’t stop for dinner until it is almost eight o’clock. I’m so tired that I can barely stand up. My hands and wrists ache from all the sanding and painting. My lungs are clogged with dust and raw from stain fumes. I wriggle my arms and stretch. Will and most of the other men are still working. It’s like they’ve made a contest out of the day. They keep checking out what the person next to them is doing. Whoever is still working and not complaining about it must be the manliest. Their circular saws haven’t stopped screaming all day, and even after I go outside and head toward the horse corral, I can still hear them. It makes me want to rip up pieces of my shirt and stick them in my ears so I can have at least a little peace and quiet.

  “There you are. C’mon,” Marie says as she tugs at my arm. Her eyes are rimmed with two identical circles of white where the safety glasses have blocked all of the sawdust. She looks like a bedraggled raccoon in reverse and I have to laugh.

  “I know, bad, right? I refuse to even look in the mirror right now,” she sighs.

  “Where are we going?” All I want to do is go home, stand under a blast of cold water in the shower, and then pass out.

  “Pool.” She grabs my arm.

  “But we’re filthy and I don’t have my suit,” I half complain, half laugh. Marie ignores my protests and pulls me down the path to the pool. It’s noticeably cooler the closer we get to the water. Pretty soon we’re hopping from foot to foot so we can peel off our socks and shoes, and then we hold hands and run across the still-warm cement and jump into the water.

  We let go of each other right before we go under, and then I curl into a ball and sink to the bottom, a burning coal in a bucket of ice water. I imagine my skin sizzling as I sit on the cement. The pool lights are on and I open my eyes and stare up at the surface.

  Marie is floating on her back above me, arms and legs wide, her hair fanned out in all directions. I stay curled up for as long as I can, relishing the quiet and the way time seems to be suspended down here. I look past Marie to the sky. It is quickly fading to black except for right at the edge of my sight line where the last stripes of the pink and orange sunset are lingering. It’s like a beautiful mirage, shimmering as the water moves, precariously close to disappearing.

  I don’t come up until I start to see spots and my lungs threaten to burst. Then I shoot up to the surface of the water, gasping and dizzy. Marie bobs upright and gives me a look that says she thinks I’m crazy before she turns her face back up to the first few evening stars.

  “Do you think if you wish the same wish every time you see the first star each night that it has a chance of coming true?” I ask as I tread water around her.

  “I don’t know.” Her voice is soft and faraway, almost like she’s not really listening to me at all.

  I press my lips together tightly. “Because I’ve been wishing the same wish for forever … so you think maybe I have a chance?”

  “Which is what?” she asks.

  I watch my hands cut through the water. “That we never have to go into the Silo at all.”

  She sucks in a breath.

  “He could be wrong, you know. The world could be just fine. I mean he could be … confused or something, couldn’t he?” The words spill out of me in a rush.

  She looks at me carefully, her eyes glued to mine—not exactly the response I was hoping for. I know I shouldn’t question Pioneer’s visions, his science. Long ago he showed us the proof of the end and it makes sense. All of his visions have come true. The newscasts today are just further proof. And he’s done nothing but good by withdrawing us from a world where people abuse the earth, hurt each other, and try to take what isn’t their own. For me to suggest that he’s somehow not who we think he is is unthinkable. But then, almost as if it has a mind of its own, my hand goes absently to my neck, reminding me that not everything he does feels right.

  “I said that wrong. I just mean that I wish he was wrong, you know? But of course he isn’t, I mean the earthquakes and the hurricane. Obviously he’s right.” I’m babbling and nervous. Does she think I’m crazy or bad—or worse, will she decide to tattle to Pioneer?

  I open my mouth to say something, anything, to distract her from all that I’ve said—to reassure her that I’m not thinking of rebelling or something, but I don’t know exactly what to say. I try to smile at her instead, but I can’t quite get my mouth to turn up. It’s like I’ve become so chilled that my mouth’s frozen.

  Marie turns her face away from me and starts wiggling her fingers in the water just enough to put a little distance between us. “You have to be careful, Lyla. I wouldn’t say any of this to anyone
else, okay? Having some fun, getting into a teensy bit of trouble, that’s one thing, but what you just said … is something else entirely.”

  “You’re right, of course you’re right. I’m just heat-stroked, pay no attention to me,” I say quickly. I arch my back and slide onto the surface and Marie does the same. I stretch out my hand until I can reach hers. I hold on to it and give it a squeeze. Together, we look up at the sky. I keep her hand in mine as we float across the water. But still, I can’t stop myself from silently wishing on the stars and hoping against all odds that somehow it will make a difference.

  Give a child what they wish for most and they’ll put their heart in your hands.

  —Pioneer

  Indy wasn’t at Mandrodage Meadows when we moved there. As soon as the barn, corrals, and stables were built, we had cows and pigs, chickens and turkeys. The horses didn’t arrive until much later.

  It was the day after Christmas the year I turned eight. I can still remember the animal trailers coming up the road and how our usual distrust of Outsider vehicles was absent for once. All of us kids were waiting at the front gate. It seemed barely capable of holding us we were so excited. We were downright bouncy.

  You can’t exactly ride a pig or a cow, at least you’re not supposed to. But a horse … a horse can take you just about anywhere you want to go. They’re special. Different.

  I’d drawn horses for years by then, always secretly hoping that somehow the adults would decide to let us have them. I had dozens of sketches of Arabians, mustangs, and palominos papering my bedroom walls. In my dreams I was always riding, hair whipping in the wind, arms flung open wide.