My Life with the Liars

by Caela Carter

  It’s one click. It’s so easy. I’m so glad I learned how to do this in Computer Class on the compound.

  Print.

  VROOM! I jump.

  The machine next to the computer sputters to life and clanks and shakes and clunks and makes so many noises. I’m sure I’m about to be caught by Louis or Charita or Curiosity in her ugly bodily form. I sit on the folding chair with my flashlight pointed to the stairs as if were a weapon that could protect me.

  But nothing can protect me. I’m in Darkness. Even this flashlight might be a lie. Somehow.

  The room falls back into silence, and I reach under and pull the paper into my hands.

  Directions: Current Location (55 Apple Ct., Plainsville, AZ) to the Children Inside the Light Compound

  The map is hot in my hands, the promises in this piece of paper running back and forth between my palms and fingers.

  When I hit the little X above the map, the old screen appears.

  Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia: The Children Inside the Light

  Official Website: The Children Inside the Light

  The Tragic History of the Children Inside the Light

  The Children Inside the Light—I Was Brainwashed

  The Children Inside the Light: Be a Part of Our Movement

  All of these articles are probably lies, just like the one I read earlier.

  Still, before I can help it, words come skipping into my brain uninvited.

  Encyclopedia (n.): a book or set of books containing articles on various topics, usually in alphabetical arrangement, covering all branches of knowledge or, less commonly, all aspects of one subject

  Tragic (adj.): extremely mournful, melancholy, or pathetic

  Movement (n.): abundance of events or incidents

  Others I can’t find in there: Website. Brainwashed.

  Even though I’m sitting in a bright room, I shine the flashlight over my head again, trying to banish Curiosity, to drown her. She has her hair wrapped all around my body now. She has her fingers in my mouth.

  What do these things mean? How is our history tragic? And that word—brainwashed—it’s so ugly, even without any meaning. Hair is for washing. And bodies and clothes. Not brains.

  Since I can’t beat Curiosity down, I go to Google the way Charita showed me. I’ll distract myself with things I’m allowed to know. Words.

  Daughter.

  Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia pops up saying, “A daughter is a female offspring; a girl, woman, or female animal in relation to her parents.”

  I am daughter.

  Parents. The Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia says, “A parent is a caretaker in the offspring of their own species.”

  Offspring: “In biology, offspring is the product of reproduction of a new organism produced by one or more parents.”

  By then I’m dizzy and tired and foggy and I don’t care anymore. It’s impossible to learn a new word, I decide, until you know all of the words. And you can’t know all of the words until you learn new words.

  Maybe that’s how Mother God made Darkness so confusing.

  But none of it matters anyway: tomorrow, when it’s not nighttime anymore, I’ll ask Charita and Louis to take me back to the Light.

  And if they don’t, I found my way.

  Eighteen

  I’M SITTING AT MY WINDOW STARING at the foggy gray outside again. My eyelids are heavy. They refused to close all night once I returned from the printer. My tongue is swollen from craving pomegranate tea. My eyes have been open for too many minutes and hours in the eight days I’ve been here.

  Today is my last day as a child. I’m nothing but tired.

  Maybe that’s a part of how Mother God is punishing me.

  I picture Father Prophet out the window, coming up the road.

  “Tomorrow,” I tell him. I whisper so close to the glass it makes streaks across my reflected face. “By tomorrow, I’ll be back.” This time, I know it’s true. Today, I know I’ll ask.

  Even though I’m still dirty: Turtle is on my lap.

  “Tomorrow,” I repeat.

  “Tomorrow is your birthday!” a small voice says behind me.

  I whip my head around. Elsie stands in my doorway, balanced on her left foot. How much did she hear? What did I say out loud?

  “Can I come in and play with you and Turtle?”

  The noise plays in my head. The one from last night’s dinner. The one I made. It came from me, my laugh. But it also kind of came from Elsie.

  The laugh from dinner last night can’t be mine because I can’t have anything because I belong to someone else. But how can that laugh belong to Father when it started so deep inside of me?

  Elsie has come into the room without me answering. She takes Turtle from my lap and climbs on to me herself, resting her back against my front. “What gifts did you ask for on your birthday, sis?” she says.

  Sis is me. Short for sister. A nickname for a nickname. Another thing I’ll never understand.

  She twists to look at me, her freckles tickling the sides of my lips like sand stuck to my feet after a shower.

  “I didn’t,” I say. I keep my mouth from smiling.

  “Did you get presents for your last birthday?” she asks.

  She yawns. I try not to like her warm body settling into mine. I try not to find that yawn adorable.

  “Yes,” I say. “Well, one.”

  “Only one?” she asks. “What was it?”

  I close my eyes, remembering. “It was a square, a perfect cube, wrapped in purple paper. I got to open it in Chapel, in front of everyone.”

  “What was in it?” Elsie asks. She yawns again. She probably isn’t paying attention. I keep talking.

  “Under the purple paper, there was a white box.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And when I opened it, there was so much inside.” My voice is hushed as I remember the glory of the moment. My heart had stopped. My eyes had gone wide. It was as if the box had contained her Light itself.

  “Really?” Elsie turns around on my lap so that her knees are pressed into my hips. “Like toys? Books? Colored pencils?” She’s fascinated. I should stop talking.

  “A tomato. A big, big red one. A block of cheese. An apple and an orange. And . . . a chocolate bar.” I’d stared at the box, then at Father, looking from his eyes back to my treasures over and over again. Father’s smile was kind. I was sure I would never be hungry again. I had eaten the apple that day after our oatmeal dinner, and a few bites of the cheese. I had asked the Cooks to save the rest. And then . . . what happened to it? How did I forget it until now?

  “That’s it?” Elsie cries. “No ice cream? No toys? No cake?” She’s screaming.

  I shrug.

  Something twists like a snake in my brain.

  When I get home tomorrow, will they give me a gift? What if it’s only fruit and cheese? How will I look at it with the same joy I did last year? How will I ever find joy again in oatmeal and apple slices . . .

  I think I’m starting to figure out how these things in Darkness can be lies . . .

  “Well, you are going to love your birthday tomorrow,” Elsie says. She turns back around and talks to Father out the window, even though I know she can’t see him like I do. “Mom and Dad are the only parents I know who let us eat birthday cake for breakfast!”

  I sigh.

  “And wait till you get your presents! Even if you didn’t ask for any, they will be so much better than a tomato! You don’t have to wait till your birthday for a tomato, silly. You can have one anytime you want.” I feel her giggles moving through her shirt against my stomach.

  No. No. I won’t be able to have a tomato anytime I want. No matter where I am.

  After tomorrow I’ll be stuck.

  If they have me still in Darkness after I’m thirteen, if they rob me of my chance to ever be a full part of the Light, everything will stop—the food and the niceness and the strawberry shampoo and Turtle and all of the lies I wasn’t supp
osed to be loving.

  They used the food and the choices and the colors and the hugs and the softness to get me hooked, addicted. But if I get caught here forever, it will all stop. If I wake up here the day after my birthday, there won’t be any food or colors or soft clothes to wear at night. There will only be stinging, burning darkness. And Louis and Charita will laugh and laugh at how stupid I was to let them trick me.

  They’ll laugh at me for being hungry. For being lonely. For being stuck.

  That’s how I’ll learn to love oatmeal again. That’s how I’ll learn to love Inside. Because after tomorrow all of the choices out here would stop anyway.

  Relief is ice in my veins. I’ve finally figured out the puzzle. They almost tricked me, but they didn’t. And now I’ll leave.

  “Know what else?” Elsie asks.

  “What?” My brain is still chewing on this new realization. I’m hardly hearing her voice or my own.

  “We get to have cake after dinner too. Twice in one day. And everyone will sing to you and you’ll blow out the candles and—”

  “It’s a lie, Elsie. It’s all lies.”

  She freezes and twists to look up at me again. I’m not sure why I said it. I even said her name out loud. I’m not sure how I got so careless with my words. I used to count them. I used to worry about how much of myself, how much of my Light, I was leaving here in Darkness, how dim I would be when I get back.

  The longer I’m here, the worse I get.

  But it suddenly matters to me that this little girl knows the truth. If I can figure out how to take her with me, Father will forgive me more quickly. And if she’s a part of the Light, I’ll be allowed to love her like I’m starting to anyway.

  “No,” Elsie says quietly. “There’s cake. We already bought the ingredients at the grocery store. I’m not lying. I promise.”

  Her lip trembles.

  “I know,” I say. “It’s not you lying. It’s the cake.”

  “Cakes don’t even talk,” she says.

  “I won’t be here tomorrow anyway,” I blurt.

  Elsie grips the chair at the sides of my legs. I feel all of her little muscles go tight.

  “You don’t have to be scared,” I recite. Even though she does. She lives in Darkness. “It’s time for me to go home. You can come with me.”

  “Where?” Elsie asks.

  “You can come back with me. Back where I came from. You can be at my ceremony like you said you would, remember? You still want to come, right?”

  Elsie is still nervous on my lap but she stays quiet, thinking. Finally she twists back to look at me again. “Just for your ceremony? Just for your birthday?” she says.

  I don’t know how to answer. I choose my words carefully. “My ceremony is tomorrow. It’s my thirteenth birthday. I want to celebrate it with . . . old . . . friends. And you.”

  Elsie takes a deep breath and nods. “What about Mommy and Daddy?”

  “Nope,” I say. “Just with my sister.”

  Elsie smiles. She loves the word sister.

  I try not to think about the fact that I used it to trick her. I try not to think about the fact that I had to use the word my.

  “Then after the ceremony you’ll take me back home?” she says.

  And I try not to think about the fact that I’m a Liar too, now, when I nod.

  “OK,” she says. “OK. I’ll come to your birthday party, Zylynn.”

  I don’t bother to correct her that it’s not a party. It’s a ceremony. I can’t tell her all the things I should, all the things I will know how to say after I spend the next seven years training to Gather.

  “Don’t tell Louis and Charita, OK? Don’t tell anyone. Let this be our sister secret.”

  “’K,” Elsie says. She scoots off my lap and starts playing with Turtle on the bed.

  I look back out the window. The gray is gone. It’s bright out. It’s bright in my brain too. I understand now. The food, the colors, the soft words: they were more than lies. They were the punishment itself. I’ll get home. Either today or tomorrow I’ll finally get back to the Light. I’ll be Inside, safe, when I turn thirteen and I’ll stand in that Chapel and make the lights go on. But the Hungry Days will hurt so much worse after nine straight days of food. Wearing white day in and day out will be so boring it’s painful. No hugs no smiles no nicknames no shampoo no turtles no playing no sister . . . nothing that is mine. It will hurt.

  But not forever.

  One thing I’ve learned from watching kid after kid join the Light: you only miss the Darkness until you forget it. And you always forget.

  “Junior, take your brother and sister outside,” Charita says after she collects our lunch plates. “Zylynn, Dad took a half day today. Louis. He’s almost home. We’d like to chat with you for a few minutes if that’s OK.”

  “Daddy’s home?” Jakey squeals. “Already?”

  “No fair!” Junior shouts. “Why just Zylynn?”

  “Birthday stuff,” Charita says. “Don’t worry, you’ll all get cake.”

  I almost don’t hear them squeal. I feel Father’s hand pressing gently on my shoulder. It’s time.

  We sit in the living room. I’m on the couch, my legs pulled into my chest so that Charita and Louis won’t be able to see my heart beating through my shirt. The yellow one, like the sun in winter. Turtle is hiding in its folds. Five lunch strawberries settle cool into my stomach beneath him. I try to believe that I’m holding on to all of my favorite Outside things so that it will hurt even more when I let them go tomorrow. I try to believe I ate those strawberries to punish myself.

  Charita is on the chair across from me tapping her foot on the floor and checking her watch every few seconds or minutes. It’s weird how they have so little to do each day out here and yet they look at the time more and more.

  Between us there’s nothing but the coffee table and the ZYLYNN book.

  Louis comes through the door and gives Charita a kiss on her lips and right in front of my eyes. The strawberries climb up the insides of my belly. He reaches out his palm like he’s going to pat my head but I burrow myself further into the pillows and he falls heavily into the chair next to Charita.

  “How are we today, Zylynn?” he asks.

  Scared.

  Father’s fingers tighten on my shoulder, inch toward my neck.

  I’ll ask. Today. In this room. I promise.

  The fingers stay on my skin, but they relax.

  “Do you know why your dad would take a day off, Zylynn?”

  I don’t move. It’s the wrong question.

  “It’s OK,” Louis says. Those soft words wiggle into my ears and poke the Curiosity monster at the pit of my guts. “She wants to keep calling me Louis. That’s OK.”

  I don’t want to call you anything. I don’t want to ever see you again.

  “At home we do everything the same every day,” I say.

  Charita nods. “Do you want to tell us anything else about the Inside?” she asks.

  I shake my head. All of my organs shake with it.

  Make them ask the right question, Father. Make them.

  “You know . . . ,” Louis says, “you may have seen something in these photos or on Google that’s difficult for you to understand. We thought you might want to read some articles or to look at the book together.”

  “It’s good for you to hear about the place you come from. It’s good for you to hear things from more people than just us,” Charita says. “That’s why we’ve left some things around for you to read and look at.”

  I knew they left those things for me on purpose!

  Curiosity is all the way inside me, filling me up, twisting my guts together. Her tippy-toes balance on my hips, her breath spreads against the back of my throat. The book. It’s full of so many questions. I’m full of so many questions. The answers are in front of me, sealed behind four silent lips. Staring me down. Daring me to ask.

  If I ask the one question I should, I’ll never get the rest of
the answers.

  “I thought we were going to talk about my birthday,” I say. “It’s tomorrow.” Even though they already know. Liars always know the truth, sometimes more truth than I know about myself.

  Louis sighs.

  Charita pats his hand. “OK,” she says. “What kind of cake? White or chocolate?”

  My eyes widen. I’ve caught her in a lie. Finally. “Elsie says you already bought the ingredients.”

  Charita laughs.

  Louis rubs his eyes.

  “That little secret-squealer!” Charita says. “We did. We bought both kinds of cake mix.”

  The lies are a relief. They wash Curiosity back down.

  “White cake.”

  I answer all of her lying questions.

  Pink icing.

  Cookie dough ice cream.

  Yellow flip-flops. Pink shorts. A new toy so Turtle can have a friend.

  The lies pile on top of the ZYLYNN book in the middle of the table and Louis and Charita think I don’t notice. They think I’m stupid. After all these days they still think I’m stupid.

  If I were still here tomorrow, I’d be stuck. There wouldn’t be cake and ice cream and colors and toys. There would only be Darkness.

  Louis’s head is still down, his palm going back and forth against the base of his neck.

  Finally Charita says, “And how would you like to celebrate? We can do whatever you like. It’s your day.”

  Louis nods.

  I stare at them wide-eyed and try to force the words from where they sleep in my chest. I’ve got them. She said we could do whatever I want. I want to go home. They’ll either have to take me back Inside or they’ll have to admit they’re Liars. Either way, I win.

  I’m not sure, then, why it feels like my heart is trembling.

  “Do you have any ideas?” Charita says. “How do you want to celebrate thirteen?”

  My eyes fall to my lap. Speak. Speak. Speak.

  I don’t look up. “My ceremony.”

  Louis’s hand freezes on the side of his neck. Charita’s teeth clack shut.

  It’s silent for minutes or hours. I look at them, finally.

  “What’s that?” Charita says.

  Louis stares at me, his green eyes scratching into mine. “No.”