My Life with the Liars

by Caela Carter

  I sigh against Louis’s back. “They never stop you from going out. Only going in,” I say.

  It’s another thing that doesn’t make sense, I realize. Why should coming to the Light be scarier than leaving it? Why should entering Inside be more dangerous than going away from it?

  Nothing in my life has made sense. How is that something I never noticed before?

  Still, as we cross that gate, as the dogs lie there unmoving, I’m crying. It’s my home. I’m going to miss it, even though I’m not sure if I should.

  In the van, Uncle Alan sits in the driver’s seat and Louis sits next to him. I’m on the bench behind them with my legs sprawled across it. My feet are red and swollen like I got stung by a wasp on my ankles and heels and big toes.

  We’re parked on a stretch of land a few yards from the compound entrance.

  “Oh no!” I say. Uncle Alan and Louis both spin their heads around.

  “What?” Louis asks.

  “I forgot my shoes and socks!”

  Louis laughs. “Don’t worry about that,” he says. “We’ll buy you new sneakers.”

  He’s lying. I can’t help but think he’s lying.

  Then Uncle Alan unzips something. He says, “What did you say you’ve had to eat all day? A tomato and some cheese?”

  “And an orange and a chocolate bar,” I say.

  Louis chuckles but I can tell it’s not a real laugh. It’s the kind of laugh I made Inside: he put it there on purpose. “Here,” he says. He reaches a hand back to me. In it is a turkey sandwich on brown bread with lettuce and tomato and mayonnaise peeking out the sides. “Eat. Your body is desperate for protein. Once you eat that, there are a bunch of strawberries in this cooler.”

  It’s in my hands and then it’s in my mouth and it’s real. Not a lie.

  “There will still be food?” I say.

  Uncle Alan starts the car. Louis turns to look at me.

  “Even now that I’m thirteen there will still be food in Darkness?”

  Louis reaches a hand toward my knee but when I flinch he leaves it hanging there, a broken tree branch off the back of his seat. “Zylynn,” he says. “I promise you. You will never have another Hungry Day again.”

  And I know, this time I know—maybe Mother God tells me or maybe there’s a little piece of me that belongs only to me that somehow knows—he’s telling the truth.

  My eyes are spilling over. My home is disappearing out the back window. My stomach is getting fuller and fuller and it will never be empty again.

  I don’t know how to thank him. I don’t know if I should thank him.

  I reach out and brush a finger against that hanging hand. And he smiles.

  “I’m supposed to protect you, you know,” he says. “I’m your dad.”

  Louis takes his phone out of his pocket when we pull onto the street with Charita and Elsie and Junior and Jakey and Louis’s house at the end of it. My house at the end of it.

  “We’ll be there in under a minute, babe,” I hear him say.

  He’s talking to Charita.

  I feel stronger now with bottle after bottle of water and a sandwich and strawberries in my belly. Strong enough to wonder. Curiosity perches softly on my shoulder. I let her stay.

  How did Louis and Thesmerelda end up Inside in the first place? Why is Thesmerelda still there if there’s food out here and the Darkness doesn’t burn you like Father said it would? Why did Father . . . lie?

  I watch the houses fly by the window so much faster than they did this morning. I won’t sit still in the chair in the Pink Stripes Room anymore. I won’t sit at my window anymore. I won’t watch this street and force Father to come walking up it searching for me. He’s not coming. I’m staying here. In Darkness.

  Except it’s only dark at night. Like now. And the dark isn’t even hurting me.

  Uncle Alan drives into the driveway.

  Louis turns to look at me. “I’m so sorry, Zylynn. I never should have left you there,” he says. Then he takes a deep breath. “A long time ago, I used to live Inside too,” he says.

  “I know,” I say.

  “Oh!” Louis says. “You figured that out?”

  I nod.

  “Look, I should have taken you with me. Back when I first left, I should have kept you with me. My head was still all screwed up and I thought leaving you with your mother the best thing to do. Plus, it wasn’t as bad back then, eight years ago. But . . . we had Hungry Days.”

  “Is that why you left?”

  He sighs. “I’ll tell you the whole story sometime. But now let’s get inside.”

  “No,” I say. There must have been more strength than I thought hiding in the layers of that turkey sandwich. “Now. Tell me now.”

  This is the story, the real story, of where I come from. And I need to hear it. To know it. To repeat it in my brain until it makes sense.

  Uncle Alan turns to me now too. “Zylynn, we have—”

  I cut him off. “Please tell me. Now. Please. I have to know now.” I swallow hard. Then I add, “Dad.”

  Louis/Dad looks at Uncle Alan and he sighs and nods and gets out of his van and goes in the house. Louis/Dad gets out of the car like he did that first night and this time I know he’s only coming to my door. He opens it. “Scoot over,” he says.

  He sits next to me on the bench in the middle of Uncle Alan’s van and I watch letters dance in his eyes and I breathe and I sip water and I wait because I know he’ll tell me and I know he’s not lying now.

  “Your mother and I were young and in love and stupid,” he starts.

  I gasp. I thought I was the only one who worried about being stupid.

  “This isn’t going to be easy for you to understand, OK? Because you grew up really differently from anyone I know. So listen, get the bits of it you can, OK, sweetie? I will tell you this story as many times as I need to year after year until you understand it all.”

  I nod. Year after year. He’s going to be with me year after year.

  “I was young. Older than you, but not much. Nineteen. And I met your mother.”

  “Thesmerelda,” I whisper.

  Louis’s green eyes go big. “You figured it out,” he says slowly. “I mean they said you would but . . .”

  We pause for a second before he goes on.

  “We were instantly a pair, Tessie and me. That’s what we called her before we went and joined the Children Inside. We both hated everything about the way we’d been raised. We hated the world. For no good reason, really. It’s not like we were particularly damaged or anything. No. Your uncle doesn’t understand this. Your stepmother either. But it could happen to anyone. Anyone.”

  I don’t know what he’s talking about but I think I get the part where I’m supposed to pick up what I can for now, so I nod.

  “Jim had some things to say. Some things about greed and violence and how to fight it. Some things that made me listen. Tessie too.”

  “Jim?” I ask.

  Louis/Dad laughs. “You call him Father Prophet. His Outside name—his real name—is Jim.”

  “Jim?” I’m smiling too for some reason. Not a little pinch-y smile, but a huge one that threatens to tear my cheeks in order to get big enough. A smile made of relief. He’s not nearly so big and scary and powerful as I thought. His name is only Jim.

  My name is more powerful than his.

  “Anyway, we liked what he had to say about abandoning belongings and going after the truth.”

  “And the Light,” I add.

  Louis/Dad shakes his head. “The Light stuff came later. The Hungry Days came later. That horrible drugged tea came later too.”

  The smile dies on my face and rots. “The tea had drugs in it?” I ask. My eyes are wide.

  Louis/Dad nods. “To make you sleep. It took so long for me to figure it out.”

  I chew my cheek. “I drank it every night,” I whisper.

  Louis/Dad deflates. “I’m so sorry, Zylynn. I’m so sorry.”

  I shake m
y head. “Keep going.”

  “By the time he started the really kooky stuff, I went along with it. We’d given him all of our money. We’d moved Inside. We lived together then, though. None of this keeping the men and women apart except for one week every few months. None of this using the women as Gatherers. None of these rules about how you can’t choose to love one particular woman—or even your own particular child for God’s sake—differently than all the rest of the people. All that started after I left. And there weren’t as many lightbulbs and there weren’t as many Hungry Days, I’m certain.” He sighs. “Anyway, after we were there awhile, you were born.”

  “Where was Charita?” I ask.

  Louis/Dad tilts his head at me. “I didn’t know her yet, sweetie. I didn’t know her until after I left.”

  “You’ve known me longer? Than Charita?”

  Dad/Louis takes my chin in his palm. His touch is so much softer than Father’s. Than Jim’s. “Zylynn, baby, I’ve known you and I’ve loved you since the second you were born. When I lived on the compound, we lived like a family. You and your mother and me. Mom and Dad and baby. We loved each other. We took care of each other. We talked and hugged and laughed every day. That’s what families—moms and dads and daughters and sons and brothers and sisters—are supposed to do.”

  “Like you and Charita and Junior and Elsie and Jakey,” I say. “You’re a family.”

  “And you,” Dad/Louis says, blinking a lot to keep the tears from getting past his eyelashes. “And you. You’re also our daughter and sister. You were always missing and now you’re not.”

  We freeze like that for a second. It’s not until Dad/Louis’s hand gets wet that I realize I’m crying too.

  “Anyway,” he says. “I knew I had to get out of there. But your mother still loved it so much. She was so happy with giving everything up to be a part of the Movement. I was being suffocated by it while she was lit on fire. I didn’t want to take that from her.”

  He gulps.

  “And she . . . she was more important to you than I was. Back then. She was . . . so good. With you, I mean. You were on her hip all day and all night. You were laughing and singing and . . . God, what happened?”

  Now he’s crying way past his eyelashes.

  I think about her. Thesmerelda.

  “She sits in the corner,” I say.

  Louis stops crying to squint at me. “What?”

  “Thesmerelda. Now. She sits in a corner.” I pause before I try the words on my tongue. “My mother.”

  Louis leans toward me. “How do you know that?”

  “I saw her tonight. At Fath—Jim’s house,” I say.

  Dad/Louis’s eyes are so big I’m sure they’re going to pop out of his head and splat right into my forehead. “You went to his house? Tonight?”

  I nod. “He always said so much about drugs. Father. Jim. Drugs are everywhere on the Outside causing darkness. And guns. And violence. And greed.”

  “I know,” Louis says.

  “But I saw some of those things tonight. In Father Prophet’s living room.”

  “Oh, Zylynn,” Dad/Louis says. “I’m so sorry. It’s going to take a long time for you to fully heal, but you’re safe now, I promise.”

  “Will she always sit in that corner?” I ask.

  He sighs. “I don’t know,” he says. “I hope that eventually people will see the truth behind Jim and the compound and shut it down. Or that maybe your mother will take enough nights off from the tea to figure it out and leave. I hope so. But I don’t know when that will happen. I don’t know if it will.”

  I nod.

  “What did she say? What did he say?” Dad/Louis asks.

  “She—” Except I can’t say anything. I can’t admit that she let me go. I can’t explain that her words, weak and stringy and quiet, were enough. I can’t promise I saw her eyes happy I was escaping because I only really saw them with my imagination, but I knew they were there. So instead I tell Dad/Louis about what Jim said. It’s not as awful to remember when I get to call him Jim.

  At the end Dad/Louis says, “He was lying, Zylynn. He was always lying. I can’t believe I let him take over all of our lives.”

  “What?”

  He sighs. “This is so hard to explain and it’s late but I’ll try. I won, OK? About a year ago, the Inside doctor—you called him Brother Tomlinkin—he ran away from the compound and spread the truth about what was happening there to every news outlet he could find. He’s a hero, that man. It woke me up. I went to court. It killed me to do it, but I sued your mother for full custody of you. And I won. That means that until you’re an adult—eighteen, not thirteen—I’m in charge of you. I have to keep you fed and safe and protected and, yes, loved. That’s the job of a mother and a father and I’m so sorry your mother isn’t up to it, OK? But you’ve got a father here. A dad, not a prophet. And I’m going to do my best.”

  There are so many tears falling from the four eyes in the car I’m sure we’ll drown in them before we go in the house.

  “So he couldn’t let you stay,” Dad/Louis says. “Jim was forbidden from letting you stay. He made you believe you’d messed up only because the courts, the government, they have more power than one silly little guy who calls himself a prophet and they said you can’t go back there. They said it would be best for you to stay here with me and Charita.”

  There are so many things here. Some I get. Some make no sense. But Curiosity is off my shoulder. She’s lying at my feet, ready to wake up when I have more energy. Ready to feed me questions all day or week or year until Dad/Louis and Charita have answered them all.

  For now, I only have one more question. “Does Thesmerelda have to be my only mother?”

  Dad/Louis squints. “You can still think of God as your Mother if you want.”

  My head is shaking. Tears are flying off my face right and left and left and right. “No, no, no,” I say. “I mean . . . can Charita be my mother too?”

  Louis reaches for me and this time I let him hug me. This time his arms feel safe. “Let’s go ask her, OK?” he says.

  Dad/Louis keeps his hand on my shoulder we walk up the sidewalk toward the front door of their house. My house. Our house.

  I’m OK with his palm on me; I’m OK with him leading me forward. I’m OK.

  I’m not sure if I trust him because I trust him or only because I don’t have any other choice. I’m not sure if I should trust him. I’m not sure if Mother God would want me to trust him. I’m not sure if Mother God is real anymore.

  The tears are almost back by the time we climb the front steps.

  “Hey?” he says. He tugs on my arm until I’m facing him. “This is a lot of serious stuff, huh?” he says.

  I nod.

  “And you and me, kid, we need each other. We’re the people who learned the truth. We’re the people who made it out of there.”

  He winks.

  I smile.

  “We’ll figure it out together, OK?”

  I nod.

  “But sometimes we need to forget the serious stuff and just have a little bit of fun, OK?”

  Fun. I look at my bare feet. My brain spins until it lands on a picture of Jaycia. She’s so clear in my imagination. Laughing in her bed after telling that skeleton joke. Throwing her head back so her translucent blond hair reached toward her pillow. Fun.

  She made it out too. She can be my friend in Darkness. Or whatever this is.

  Except I have to call her Janice now. She’s Janice.

  “And Zylynn?” Louis says.

  I look up at his eyes again. Just like mine. “Yeah?” I say.

  He smiles, a big one. “Happy birthday.”

  I’m smiling too as we step into the dark house, just like we did ten days ago. Except as soon as my foot hits the floor, the lights go on, like I stepped on a light switch.

  “SURPRISE!” Three little voices shout it.

  I look up to see Elsie and Jakey and Junior and Uncle Alan and Charita all sitting aro
und the coffee table with the HAPPY BIRTHDAY ZYLYNN banner hanging over their heads and a pink cake glowing with candles lighting up the underside of all of their faces.

  I’m smiling.

  They’re singing.

  “Happy birthday, dear Zylynn, happy birthday to you.”

  By the time they stop singing, Elsie is wound around my leg. “You came back!” she squeals. “You came back!”

  I want to tell her of course I did. I was always going to come back. But I know when I left this morning, I was planning to come back so that I could take her with me. I want to think I never would have done that, but I would have. I want to think I would never throw a rock at a kid because he ate extra oatmeal. I want to think I never would drink a cup of tea with drugs in it. But I did. Maybe Louis rescued me from my own brain.

  I will never have to do those things again.

  I do something I’ve never done before. I lift Elsie up and plop her on my hip, just like Charita does.

  “We missed you,” Junior says.

  “Mommy and Daddy let us get up in the middle of the night just to sing to you and eat cake!” Elsie’s fingers are in my hair now. “Because it’s your birthday, right, sis?”

  My smile is so big my cheeks ache and I almost can’t get the words out.

  “I’m thirteen,” I say.

  Junior comes up and puts a hand on my shoulder. “Where were you today?”

  Then Charita is there, with Jakey on her hip and her arms around all of us. Louis puts his arms around her and then he is on the outside of the hug and everybody in the house is squishing together in his arms and it feels so good I think my smile might break my face in half.

  Click. Click. Click. Uncle Alan and the camera circle us: more pages for my book.

  “But where were you?” Junior says again, his words smushed in the middle of the biggest hug ever.

  “It doesn’t matter where she went, sweetie. She’s right where she should be,” Charita says.

  The hug gets extra tight, and then it’s gone. Only Elsie still on my hip.

  We all freeze like that, staring and smiling, until Jakey shouts, “Give me cake!”