“Amen!” Ursula sang, leaning forward to place her hands on her knees so her cleavage almost overspilled her low-zipped fleece. “Good thing you’re such a featherweight, Gabi.” She added this last with a playful wriggle of her bottom.
Luke hauled Gabi to her feet and wrapped her in a hug. The embrace triggered a sharp pain along her right side, but she forced herself to return it with as much enthusiasm as her bruised body would allow. When Luke finally released her, she assumed an awed expression.
“Wow. That was amazing, you guys! It was like I heard God say, ‘It’s okay, Gabi. I’ve got you,’ and I didn’t have to worry about it anymore. Faith makes everything so easy!”
Luke squeezed Gabi into his side. Clearly mistaking her tears of pain as an upwelling of emotion, he brought his face close to hers. “That’s exactly it, Gabi. You heard his voice calling you, and tomorrow morning, you will give your answer. This next part is going to be so easy for you now.”
Gabi swallowed hard. Despite her training with Mathew, her muscles were still underdeveloped for a girl her age. Her right arm and shoulder pressed in pulsing agony against Luke—why wouldn’t he let her go?—reminding her that whatever strength she had was compromised. She’d be lucky to keep a grip on the sheet with her right hand even before Troy’s body came thudding into it.
“I’m sorry, Gabi,” Troy sputtered, swiping at his runny nose. “I didn’t know you were going to go when you did.”
“It’s okay,” Gabi reassured him, taking the opportunity to step away from Luke. “I’m fine, really.” But Troy saw her wince as Luke handed her a corner of the sheet. No one could fall that hard and not get hurt. If Luke hadn’t joined Gabi on her side of the sheet, leaving the sturdy Ursula to manage the other side, Gabi doubted Troy would have consented to mount the rock at all.
“Come on, buddy,” Luke urged.
“Yeah, you can do it!” Gabi called, feeling like a traitor. She should be telling Troy he didn’t have to do it, that he should come right back down where it was safe so they could eat the decadent late lunch the counselors promised them, after which they would fast until after the Consecration Ceremony the next morning. Luke and Ursula shot Gabi sideways looks, and she wondered which of them was the secret recruiter. There had to be one in every group, or else how could they be sure who was Witness material? The trust fall was a test for the one being caught and the catcher, and Gabi was determined to pass with flying colors.
“God is with you, Troy!” she shouted, trying to match the passion of Ruth’s impromptu sermons. “I can feel him. I can hear God telling me that he will give us the strength to catch you, if you just have faith. Trust is the only way!”
Troy presented his stooped back to them and looked over his shoulder at Gabi, his eyes glued to hers as he said, “On your mark, get set….” Gabi knotted her fists deep into the fabric, twisting it so that it wrapped around her wrists. If Troy was going down, she was going down with him. “Go!” Troy shouted, then turned his face away, spread his arms wide, and plunged toward the ground. Gabi leaned back against Ursula’s counterweight as Troy’s body landed on the sheet. Her arms and shoulders screamed as he made contact, and the agony in her right side caused her vision to go black for an instant. The friction of the sheet burned her skin, but she didn’t let go. Luke and Ursula had lifted one end of the sheet as Troy fell so that the heaviest part of his body, his torso and head, hit the ground last. Troy landed with a light thunk, the backs of his heels and legs hitting first, before Luke and Ursula lowered his upper body down between them. Troy’s eyes were glazed as he patted his body down with shaking hands.
“I’m… I’m fine!” he said, his nose running unchecked. “I made it!”
“You did indeed, my man,” Luke affirmed, helping Troy to sit up and enveloping him in a hug. “That kind of faith can move mountains, bro, and don’t ever forget it!” Gabi shared Troy’s relief. The hushed secrecy of the glade and the small size of their group made her nervous, and she was grateful the challenge had come to an end. She was eager to get back to the lodge, where there was a little more accountability and better odds. Out here, she and Troy were outranked if not outnumbered.
Luke and Ursula drifted over to a cluster of flat rocks, where they began digging through the daypacks they’d brought along with them. “Come on over, you two,” Ursula sang, waving a couple of wrapped packages in the air. Luke was already eating cream-filled chocolate cookie sandwiches two at a time.
“Oh, man,” he groaned. “I’ve been waiting for this since last year. These things are my favorite. Try some!” He extended the package toward Gabi and Troy as they approached while Ursula nibbled at a beige confection that smelled of peanut butter. Troy plucked a cookie from the plastic tray. Gabi hesitated, but only for a moment. If Luke and Ursula were eating them and they came prewrapped, they must be fine. She took four and ate them two at a time, like Luke.
“Where do you put it?” he chuckled, offering Gabi another handful.
“Yeah, that package of cookies is bigger than you are!” Ursula added. Gabi knew they were kidding, but she was tired of being the butt of jokes. She grabbed the cookies from Luke, and a double handful of salty corn chips Ursula produced from her bag. Neither she nor Troy had brought anything to drink, since no one had told them where they were going or for how long. The chips, which were less offensively old than the cookies, made Gabi’s tongue adhere to the roof of her mouth, and she saw Troy licking his pale, parched lips.
As if on cue, Luke pulled four thermoses from his pack and handed one to each of them. Luke’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his tanned throat as he unscrewed the cap from his thermos and chugged half in one lusty gulp.
“My other favorite part,” he said, wiping moisture from his lips with the back of his hand. “Lemonade, with real lemons!” Luke’s thermos was blue, Ursula’s was green, Gabi’s was yellow, and Troy’s was red. There was no way to be sure none of them were contaminated. The liquid in Gabi’s thermos was lemonade all right. The sweet-sour smell of it caused her salivary glands to gush, but there was something else in the scent; something chemical underneath the tang of fresh lemons. She would just have to go thirsty for a bit longer. Surely the Weak Faithers would be heading back to the lodge soon.
Troy copied Luke, tilting his thermos up and drinking straight from the bottle with gusto. Gabi pretended to do the same. If she used the cup, everyone would see she wasn’t really drinking. The sun was directly overhead now, pouring down on their heads like warm oil as the breeze ruffled the empty plastic wrappers strewn around them. To be sitting in such a place, with actual in-the-wild trees and remnants of snow that wasn’t toxic before it hit the ground, was paradise. Gabi hadn’t even known such places existed. When Mathew told her about camp, he’d focused more on the food and new friends than the beautiful setting. With the untouched contours of the landscape undulating beneath her, Gabi felt less alone than she had in her whole life. Going back to Alder, with its bleak, graded tracts of biograss and slushy mud waiting to become dust, would be a difficult adjustment after even a few days of this place.
Troy lounged back, supporting himself on his hands and laughing at some terrible pun Luke made. The boy looked transformed, perhaps from the confidence he’d gained from passing the challenge, or maybe it was the smaller size of the group that put him at ease. Or maybe, Gabi thought—noticing the dreamy cast to the boy’s eyes and the loving way he looked at all of them—maybe it was the lemonade. Gabi joined in their laughter, remembering that she was meant to be high on success and tainted lemonade as well.
Luke brushed off his hands and packed up the trash from their picnic with a protracted sigh. “Well, we should finish this up, folks. I know you just tanked up on cookies, but you do not want to miss what the catering staff have planned for lunch.”
Gabi lurched to her feet, groaning as the movement jostled her right side. Troy was slower getting up, giggling and stumbling as he wobbled upright. The boy was definitely drugged, but why b
other doping them up when they were about to go eat more of the altered food in the lodge?
As though he’d read her mind, Luke furnished the answer. “There’s just one more challenge,” he said, nodding at Ursula, who unzipped the front pocket of her pack and pulled out a flat, black box. “Then we can get the heck out of here and go get some grub. It’s going to be good times and smooth sailing after this.”
Gabi’s heart plummeted, but Troy actually looked happy about this latest development. More likely, he was feeling happy about everything in general.
“Who wants to be go first?” Ursula asked, her pupils dilating with excitement as she handed the box to Luke.
“To do what?” Troy asked, blinking at it.
“There are two roles,” Luke explained. “You only have to do the exercise once, so you don’t have to switch when you’re done.” Then he opened the box. Troy frowned, squinting at the object inside without recognition, but Gabi identified it instantly. It was much older than any of the ones Mathew had pointed out to her in the back issues of Mission Possible that his friend, Kenny Ames, snuck out of the recycling bin in his dad’s study. Burton Ames was a high-ranking Apostle and one of Mathew’s heroes. Kenny had no such aspirations, being a rather fey boy with artistic leanings, but he was happy to supply his friend with the discarded magazines.
Mission Possible contained heroic accounts of Witness work, with glossy photos of teams setting up aid centers and conducting services for grateful Tribal refugees. The back pages of the magazine hawked the highest quality equipment and supplies for Witnesses. Each team member was issued the basics, but most Witnesses elected to upgrade in exchange for a portion of their pay rations. Even with state-of-the-art gear, Witnessing was dangerous work. Only the Apostles could buy guns directly, though. Under every image of a pistol, hunting rifle, or semiautomatic weapon was small print stating that every customer must provide an Apostolic passcode at the time of purchase.
Kenny’s dad had a gun. More than one, actually, but Mathew had only ever seen the old revolver Burton Ames kept in his bedside table in a hollowed-out book of psalms. Mathew had shown Gabi its likeness in the back pages of Mission Possible, and it was enough like the one in the black box before her that the sight of it set off alarm bells in Gabi’s head. The menace radiating from those magazine images and the weapon in Luke’s black box screamed one truth. Guns were for killing.
“What do you want us to do?” Gabi asked, knowing that whatever it was, she had to find a way to take the worst of it. Troy had obviously never seen a gun or what it was capable of. In his altered state, he would agree to just about anything, with absolutely no sense of the consequences. At Luke’s encouragement, Troy lifted the gun out of the box and ran his hands over it clumsily.
“Careful, buddy,” Luke cautioned. “That’s not a toy. Do you know what a gun is?” Troy jerked as though electrocuted and dropped it with a yelp. He may not have known the gun by look, but he knew it by name. The four of them leaped back, falling flat to the ground and covering their heads, but the gun only landed on the rocks with a harmless clatter.
“Jesus!” Ursula shrieked, then clapped a hand over her mouth and shot a horrified look at Luke.
“S-s-sorry,” Troy stuttered, wiping his hands on his pants as though to rid himself of the imprint of cold metal. Color seeped back into Luke’s face as he bent to pick up the gun.
“To answer your question, Gabi,” Luke said quietly, laying the gun across his palm with a reverence she found ghoulish. “There is one bullet in this gun. I will spin the chamber, then hand the gun to one of you. That person will place the barrel—that’s this part”—Luke pointed to the hollow metal tube extending from the handle—“to your partner’s head, like so.” He raised the gun and nestled the barrel of it against Ursula’s temple. As he did so, Ursula folded her hands in prayer and closed her eyes, her face a study in calm surrender. “You will each say, ‘Thy will be done,’ to signify that you are placing yourselves in God’s hands, and then whichever one of you is holding the gun will pull the trigger.”
Gabi waited for Luke to crack a smile or for a peal of giggles from Ursula, signaling that this was all, as it must be, a really bad joke. But their faces were fixed and solemn. Luke raised the gun and spun the chamber. “Thy will be done,” he said, lifting his eyes to the sky, then lowering them to Gabi and Troy in pointed expectation. An ammonia smell filled the glade as a wet stain spread across the crotch of Troy’s pants. The boy’s eyes were spilling liquid down his face, but he didn’t take notice of that, or the urine soaking his pants. He had gone away, Gabi saw, ushered by the drugged lemonade and the bleak horror of the moment. Gabi wanted to scream for help and run all the way back to Alder, but it wouldn’t do any good. All camp activities had to be approved by the council in a lengthy, bureaucratic process Mathew griped about during his years as a counselor. Luke couldn’t have gotten ahold of that gun without a high-ranking official pulling the strings. She and Troy were exactly where Unitas wanted them to be.
Gabi closed the distance between her and Luke and took the gun. It was heavier than it looked and scarred along the handle. This gun had stories, none of which Gabi wanted to hear. She wrapped her fingers around the barrel, careful to keep it aiming toward the ground, and offered the handle to Troy. “Here,” she said. “Take it.”
Beyond doing more than following orders, Troy accepted the gun. His fingers brushed Gabi’s as she released the barrel, transmitting a chill up her arm. She turned her body away from him to present her profile, which gave her an unobstructed view of the forest as Troy raised the gun to her head. The blunt, hollow circle of the barrel tip nudged her temple.
“No fear, buddy,” Luke soothed. “You’re both in God’s hands. If you have faith, no harm can come to you.”
“Trust in him, brother,” Ursula added, her voice a bad imitation of Ruth’s hypnotic croon.
“I’m so sorry,” Troy slurred to Gabi.
“It’s okay, Troy,” Gabi whispered back, then folded her hands in front of her heart and closed her eyes, wondering if they would ever open again. She believed in God, but Gabi knew God didn’t always let people live. The world, as little as she’d seen of it, was more complicated than death being only for bad guys. But she trusted that stepping in front of the gun was the right thing to do. If Troy died, it would be like killing a small child. He was completely powerless in his drugged state. If she refused to participate, Troy might get paired with someone who wouldn’t be so eager to stand on her side of the gun. Hopefully the drugs would cloud the memory for Troy, easing his burden of guilt if the single bullet was destined for her. The gun pressed a fraction harder into her temple, and she felt Troy’s loud exhale on the side of her neck as she spoke the words “Thy will be done.”
“Thy will be done,” he repeated in a hollow voice. Then he pulled the trigger.
Chapter TWELVE
NO ONE had much of an appetite, though the food was arrayed along all four walls of the lodge in mind-blowing abundance: figs stuffed with goat cheese and wrapped in thick slabs of bacon, puff pastries full of melted brie and honey mustard wearing necklaces of sliced green apples, and warm, crusty bread. Bubbling pots of fondue sat on a carving table groaning under the weight of juicy roasts, golden-brown turkeys, and salvers of fish, which competed with casseroles and a rainbow of fresh salads. One entire wall was devoted to desserts, with a burbling chocolate fountain as a centerpiece. Piles of moist almond cake smeared with lemon glaze, fluffy piles of meringue, fruit tumbling into vats of fresh whipped cream, and more pies than anyone knew existed threatened to slide off the table in a massive avalanche of sugar.
The counselors stood back, waiting for the campers to dive in, but something about almost dying had taken a toll on their appetites.
“Look at ’em,” Marnie hissed. “Bet they didn’t count on this when they decided to test their little Russian roulette exercise on us.”
After the deafening click of the empty chamber broke th
e spell in the glade, all the starch went out of Gabi and she sank to her knees. Her legs had been reluctant to support her ever since. Luke had to help her back to the lodge, pouring praise and admiration into her ear as his body cradled hers.
“That was so beautiful,” he enthused. “I’ve never seen anything like it. You were like Joan of Arc! Ruth is going to be thrilled, especially after your little blip this morning with the purification. She has high hopes for you, Gabi.”
“Me?” Why would Ruth care about someone like her?
“Sam Lowell’s daughter? Officiating your consecration is a big deal, Gabi. A major coup!” Of course it wasn’t Gabi Ruth was interested in, but Gabi hurt too much to care. Luke’s insistence on replaying the entire afternoon as they trailed Ursula and Troy back to the lodge caused the headache triggered by her fall to worsen. When Marnie marched up to them as they stepped into the hall, wrapped Gabi’s free arm around her shoulder and wrenched her out of Luke’s grasp with a snarl, Gabi didn’t mind the assault to her injured side. Anything for a little peace. She melted into Marnie’s comforting strength and allowed the girl to half carry her to a quiet corner.
The lodge looked like an awkward middle school dance, with shell-shocked campers clustered at one end and agitated counselors at the other. The campers’ voices were subdued as they cast suspicious looks toward the counselors. The haze of good feeling and fellowship induced by the lemonade had been banished by the final traumatizing moments of the challenge. The teens stood in wary packs, though not in their usual formations. Many of the cliques had selected the same obstacle, and the experience of having a close friend point a gun to one’s head had cooled loyalties. They now eyed each other with wary suspicion, seeking new companions or the safety of solitude instead. Even Bradley looked a little off, though he sat close to Geoff and the thick-necked boy he’d chosen to replace Noel as his second lieutenant.
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