Gabi went to the kitchen to scrape together a snack out of the fruit leather, peanut butter packets, and stale crackers left over from her Consecration Camp stash. When she came back to her room juggling a plate and two glasses of reconstituted milk, Marnie was sitting on the bed, looking at a piece of paper. When she heard the door open, she turned away from Gabi and shoved it into a pocket.
“What’s that?” Gabi asked. Was Marnie blushing?
“None of your business.”
Gabi walked over and handed Marnie one of the glasses. “Oh, come on. Who am I going to tell? You’re the only friend I’ve ever had who isn’t a relative.” Gabi folded a leg underneath her and joined Marnie on the bed, gulping her milk and looking pointedly at Marnie’s pocket. “Let’s see it,” she insisted. “A secret for a secret, okay?”
“Oh, yeah, what secrets could you possibly have?” Marnie scoffed. “Did you skip your prayers last night?” This was Gabi’s least favorite part of being friends with Marnie. Sometimes she seemed to forget that Gabi was on her side.
“Fine, forget it,” Gabi said, unable to hide her hurt. “Why don’t we just knock off? I think I’m all set with being insulted for the day.”
Marnie definitely did color this time and set her glass of milk on the bedside table before extracting the paper from her pocket. “Sorry,” she said. “Old habits die hard. It’s just a stupid letter, anyway.”
“From whom?”
“Beth.” She said it so softly, Gabi barely heard.
“Beth? Why is she writing to you?” Gabi was shocked to note the unpleasant twinge of what she assumed was jealousy in her belly. She’d never been jealous of anyone before, but she couldn’t deny that Beth and Marnie’s connection, and the way Marnie had looked at Beth at camp bothered her.
“She asked for my address when we said goodbye on Sunday,” Marnie said, smoothing out the wrinkled paper. “She gave me hers too and said she wanted to keep in touch and hang out sometime.”
Gabi stifled another surge of jealousy. Beth was way more worldly and interesting than she was. If it came down to a choice of who to hang out with, Marnie would certainly choose Beth. Who wouldn’t? “Have you written her back?”
“A lot of people stay in touch with their mentors, Gabi, it’s no big deal. Didn’t you and Luke exchange contact info?” They did, but Gabi had no intention of getting in touch with him. He was probably only interested in hanging out with the great Brother Lowell, anyway.
“Gabi, do you remember what that prissy little idiot Natalie said about me during the purity circle back at camp?” Marnie asked, still fiddling with the letter.
“About you leaving during services?”
“No. About me liking girls.” Marnie’s voice was strained, as if she were struggling to the top of her fiftieth push-up. Gabi nodded.
“So do you know what that means?” Marnie’s knuckles whitened as she clenched the letter in her fist, ruining the work she’d done flattening it.
“Not really.” It was Gabi’s turn to blush. Her ignorance was just further proof of how naïve she was compared to other girls her age. The youth prayer circle leader would sometimes read the passage about Sodom and Gomorrah and talk in veiled terms about a perversion of God’s plan, but the vague references just made it all more confusing.
“Well, it’s true. I do like girls.”
“Okay. So do I. They’re way less unpredictable than boys, except for you.”
“That’s not what I mean. I mean….” Marnie searched the room, as though the rest of her sentence might be hiding in the pages of one of Gabi’s books. “Do you remember how you felt when Luke was holding you close and looking into your eyes like you were the only person on earth?”
Despite Gabi’s acquired immunity to Luke’s charms, the memory of how she had responded to him during the Consecration Ceremony was still very much with her, though it paled in comparison to the confusing reaction she’d had to seeing Marnie unclothed before her “purity bath.” Drug-induced or no, a part of Gabi had woken up during camp that she hadn’t known existed, and it had no interest in going back to sleep.
“So that’s how I feel about girls that I like,” Marnie continued. “Not about you, obviously. No offense. I know you’re not into that.”
Gabi’s thoughts were in chaos. Marnie liked girls the way Gabi had sort of liked Luke for a second? Was it anything like the way Gabi felt about Marnie? Like she wanted to be with her all the time and not share her with anyone? Like she wanted their parting hugs to last way longer than they did? Marnie had made a point of saying she didn’t like Gabi like that, but would she if she knew the kind of feelings Gabi had about her? Marnie held her breath, a question in her eyes.
“I think I get it. You like girls,” Gabi said, eager to reassure her friend. “But isn’t that lonely? I don’t know anyone else like that, and it’s totally against doctrine. Wouldn’t it be easier if you just liked guys?” She was asking as much for herself as for Marnie. Had this world, this possibility, been there all the time?
Marnie laughed harshly. “Yes, Lowell, it is lonely, but not because no one is like me. Lots of people are, they’re just too afraid to admit it. This isn’t something a person can change just by wanting to. Unitas treats people like me like we don’t even exist. Like it’s something that only happens in the Tribes. Man, the look on your face right now is priceless.”
“But what does this have to do with Beth? Is she like that too? But she’s a counselor! She went on a Witness trip last year!”
Marnie returned the crushed letter to her pocket and shook her head. “She likes girls. That’s obvious to anyone with half a brain, no offense, but she would never admit it, even though that is for sure why she got matched up with me at camp. Ruth isn’t as dumb as she looks.”
“What does Ruth have to do with it?” Gabi asked, her voice trembling at the realization that there might be yet another way in which she was an outcast.
“That day after the gun challenge, when Beth and I were back at the lodge? I think she was trying to convert me or something. It was weird, like she was a double agent.”
“But you’re already baptized,” Gabi protested. “All transfers are. You don’t need to be converted.”
“I’m talking about converting me to someone who wants to be with guys. To be a fraud, like she is.”
“So why are you still talking to her?” Gabi exclaimed, realizing what a vulnerable position Marnie was in, especially if she was exchanging letters with Beth. There was no such thing as private correspondence in the fellowship. All phone lines were tapped, and all letters were read by Homefront Safety analysts to insure that passcodes weren’t leaked to the Tribes. The council believed that total surveillance was the only way for Unitas to protect God’s people. “Be careful, okay?” Gabi pleaded. “With the letters, I mean. Don’t say anything that might alert the analysts. Anything suspicious goes straight to the council.”
“Relax, Lowell, they aren’t love letters.” Gabi swallowed a relieved sigh, feeling helpless to understand what it all meant, for Marnie and for her. “Beth and I are just having a spirited discussion, in very vague terms, about what God intended with the whole Adam-and-Eve thing. Beth’s pretty brainwashed, but she doesn’t shut me down. It’s nothing you wouldn’t hear in a youth group debate.”
“We never debate stuff like that in youth group, Marnie, which you would know if you ever went. Just be careful.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Marnie said. “I know all about playing dead. If it meant a better chance of getting myself through this exam and out of Alder, I’d borrow Ruth’s wedding dress and show up at Luke’s house shouting, ‘I do!’” Gabi sputtered a laugh into her glass of milk. “Okay, Lowell, time to pay up. A secret for a secret, remember?”
Gabi had completely forgotten the hasty bargain she’d made, but it only took a moment for her to decide which of her secrets she could safely share. She’d been dying to show the whale photo to someone, though she would have
to be careful not to let Marnie look too closely lest she decipher Gram’s message. That would bring Marnie dangerously close to the one thing Gabi couldn’t tell anyone until she was away from Alder. She worked her hand under her mattress, withdrew the creased sheet of paper, then unfolded it gently, taking care to keep as much of the border bearing Gram’s handwriting concealed as possible as she held it up. Marnie reached for it, but Gabi snatched the paper away.
“It’s really delicate. I’d rather hold it myself.”
“Whatever you say, weirdo.” Marnie leaned in close, squinting at the photo of the dissected flipper. “Huh. For a second there I thought you were going to show me something good.”
“Forget it,” Gabi said, thoroughly crushed as she refolded the paper.
“No, wait!” Marnie said, laying a hand on Gabi’s arm. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know what it is. Tell me, I’m really interested.” Marnie put on a schoolgirl face and folded her hands demurely in her lap. Gabi softened at the comical display and relented.
“Okay, well, I wasn’t lying during the purity ceremony when I said I snuck out of services, but it wasn’t to meet a boy. I broke into the Correction Facility using a passcard I stole from my dad.”
“No shiiiiit!” Marnie exclaimed, obviously impressed. “You really stole your dad’s passcard? Why? And why the Corrections Facility? Why not sneak into dry storage and eat yourself silly if you were going to bust into someplace?”
“Look around you,” Gabi said. “These books have been my whole life, and more than half of what’s in them is hidden under black ink. I got tired of not knowing things just because someone else decided I shouldn’t.” Marnie grinned, placing a hand on Gabi’s knee. The solid warmth of her touch raised gooseflesh on Gabi’s arms. What was happening to her?
“Way to go, Lowell. That’s awesome. Seriously, I don’t even bother with books since I came to Alder. Reading what’s left in them feels worse than not reading at all.” This explained why Marnie was barely passing her classes. The fact she’d managed to pass without reading any of her assignments was a testament to her intelligence and her determination to do whatever it took to get out of Alder, values intact. “So? What’s with the flipper? Why was that the thing you took?”
“I didn’t mean to take anything,” Gabi explained. “I wanted more time with it, but I was worried Mathew or my dad would notice me missing from the service if I stayed too long, so I tore it out.”
“You’ve got to help me out here, Lowell,” Marnie said, squinting at the photo again. “What’s so amazing about a flipper? I’m not a science geek like you, no offense.”
“Look at the bones, Marnie. It has fingers, and other dissections show vestigial hind limbs that resemble feet!”
“Vestigial like leftover?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, okay. Cool.”
“Not just cool,” Gabi said, on fire all over again with the thrill of her discovery. “The uncorrected book I took this from and the others in the facility all say the same thing. Vestigial structures are present because they once served a function. It’s like how the doctrine says that God doesn’t make mistakes.”
“So that means…,” Marnie began, still lost.
“That means the whales that died out thirty years ago, the kind whose flipper you see here, had ancestors that once walked on land!”
“Wait, so… wait,” Marnie said slowly. “This sounds like evolution. Is that what you’re talking about, Lowell? Old Science?”
“Yes!” Gabi cried. “I’m talking about how mammals, which is what humans are too, adapt and change over time because of changes in their environment. If you want to talk about the whole Adam-and-Eve thing, talk about that. What are the chances that God just zapped two vulnerable, naked, fully formed humans onto a chaotic planet? Wouldn’t he at least have started with something that had better odds of survival?”
“Makes sense,” Marnie agreed. “I never thought about it all that much. What the fellowship teaches all sounds like bullshit to me.” Gabi waved the paper in front of Marnie’s face.
“You should pay attention, Marnie. This isn’t just about evolution. The doctrine teaches that we are supposed to adhere to its literal teachings—that it was humanity’s failure to do so that brought on the Wrath. According to Unitas the Wrath was a divine strategy to disrupt life on earth so that humanity would be forced to unite under one faith in order to survive.”
“Which means that the story of Adam and Eve has to be an actual fact, or the whole thing falls apart,” Marnie added, finally sensing where Gabi was going with her diatribe.
“And evolution, and converting the Tribes,” Gabi said, “and girls who like girls being damned, and just about everything else that helps Unitas keep control.”
“They have to do that,” Marnie said, bouncing on the bed in her growing fervor. “They have to say the doctrine is literal in order to control people. They create laws people can’t break by telling them the laws are the only things keeping them alive!”
“But it’s not totally literal, and people know that,” Gabi argued. “I mean there are some things that are in the old doctrine that Unitas definitely doesn’t follow, like how to dress and what to eat and stuff like that.”
“That’s because they pick the parts they know they can get people on board with,” Marnie exclaimed, practically shouting now. “That’s what new doctrine is for, to shape the old doctrine into something people will go along with while still giving Unitas enough leverage to control them. Oh my God, this makes so much sense! I love science!”
“Marnie,” Gabi said in a quiet voice. “When you were in our team circle during the Consecration Ceremony, I saw you translating for Beth. Was that real?”
Marnie shook her head vigorously. “No. I just recited some passages I remembered and kept my voice low so no one could hear if I messed up. What about you? You seemed pretty into it.”
Gabi’s body tingled to recall the wave of ecstasy that had overtaken her when she opened her mouth to speak. “Something happened,” she began. “I don’t know what it was, but I wasn’t fully in control. I think there was definitely something in that sacramental wine.”
“Oh, no doubt,” Marnie agreed. “My mouth tasted like an old gym sock afterward. But wait, you’re saying you think you did get a message?”
Gabi shrugged. “Words came out. I don’t know what they were, but I know that when Peter stepped up and started translating for me, it didn’t sound right. He was basically just doing what you were doing by quoting doctrine, but it didn’t match what was coming out of me. Does that make sense?”
“Totally,” Marnie said.
Gabi shivered as she contemplated the implications. “Marnie, what if they’re all faking it? What if Sam’s faking it, and my brother and Messenger Nystrom and the whole thing is one big lie? What if….” Gabi drew a shaky breath. “What if God doesn’t even exist?”
The two girls stared at each other. Gabi had spoken a question that neither would have dared voice had they worked their way toward it alone. Even for Marnie, who had suffered cruelly at the hands of those who used God as a weapon, the possibility that God didn’t exist had never entered her mind. Gabi knew this, because when she’d asked Marnie about the filigreed cross dangling on a leather cord around her neck, Marnie responded that the cross was a gift from her mother. It served as a reminder that the all-loving God of her parents was real. If there were no God, then their deaths had been for nothing. If there were no God, then no one was watching over her, guiding her and accepting her for exactly who she was.
For Gabi, speaking those words had been like stepping off the rock in the glade all over again. Her faith in Unitas had been permanently altered by what she’d witnessed on D Wing. She no longer believed that the council knew best or that every bit of doctrine was unvarnished truth from God’s mouth to the Messenger’s ear. If Messengers could lie about the message and Translators about its meaning, then wasn’t everything else fiction too?
Gabi had lost Gram. She’d lost the man she thought was her father. She even feared that one day, because of his loyalty to the doctrine and his blind worship of Sam, she might lose Mathew too. But she was not ready to lose God, at least not yet. She was not prepared to be that alone.
The girls parted in charged silence, Marnie to go sneak a cigarette despite her promise to Gabi she would quit, and Gabi to work the kinks out of her plan for getting to the testing center. Neither could think of anything more to say on the subject of God that wouldn’t rattle them both just when they needed to remain steady and focused. Perhaps someday when they had both escaped Alder, they could revisit the topic without it feeling like lightning might strike or the ground swallow them whole. But today was not that day.
Chapter FOURTEEN
GABI SPENT days weighing her options for how to get to the testing center on the far outskirts of Alder. She could attempt to hitch a ride with one of the incoming shuttles bringing recruits from other branches. There were only four main roads leading into and out of Alder from each of the four cardinal directions, and each one was guarded by a toll and checkpoint. From the checkpoints all incoming vehicles were required to go on to the central transportation hub and register their intended route. Gabi could wait at the hub, then stow away on a shuttle from there to the testing center, but it wasn’t a foolproof plan.
How could she be certain when the shuttles would arrive at the hub? There was no way to find out, though she’d considered trying to get a letter to Jordan in Spruce to ask him about his itinerary. She couldn’t do that, of course. A question about transportation schedules in written correspondence, even if it was between two teenagers, would alert the Homefront Safety analysts. Also, how was she supposed to get on one of the shuttles without the drivers or chaperones noticing? She could come up with a story about her dad’s car having broken down and needing a lift, but that would give rise to an entirely different problem. Gabi had the enrollment form, given to each camper by their mentor, which proved that she’d been recruited to take the Witness exam. The problem was, her name and address were emblazoned across the top. Gabriela Lowell, 42 Cambium Terrace, Alder Branch. The drivers and chaperones might not know her, but everyone in the fellowship knew Sam and that he had only one child taking the exam this year. Mathew had been profiled in the bulletin as one of the year’s most promising recruits. The annual profile was a way of rallying community support for the Witness teams by putting a personal face to their work. The fact the face happened to belong to the handsome son of a well-loved councilmember was a public-relations dream.
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