45
AGNES
God’s mysteries will frustrate you, terrify you. Let other people be your rock. They all must face the mystery, too.
—AGNES, EARLY WRITINGS
Zeke’s blood sugar rose and fell, too quickly, all night. By morning he’d breached 400, a shocking high, and Matilda was terribly eager to get him up and moving. Without insulin, only exercise could lower his blood glucose.
“Why don’t you two walk ahead while we pack,” Matilda chirped with suspicious brightness. “Then you can test him again. Okay?”
“I’m not a baby.” Zeke clung to Benny like the orange cat was his only friend in the world. “You can’t talk about me like I’m not here.”
Matilda and Agnes exchanged anguished looks. Crankiness had become a familiar signal of high blood sugar over the years. Losing the ability to treat him with a swift and simple shot felt like losing a hand.
“Drink some water.” Agnes pushed her canteen on him.
“No. I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Deep breaths.” She rubbed his back in circles. “You’ll feel better once we start walking.”
If they were lucky, they’d reach Mercy by foot in three days. And maybe the hospital was what God meant, when He told her to return to Zion?
Mercy and Zion weren’t quite synonyms, but they were close.
Agnes checked her own pack. Without insulin, her few supplies were more meaningful than ever. There was the ketone test, Matilda’s extra meter, and a spare set of batteries. Extra test strips. Extra syringes, too—though they were useless without medicine.
“Come on, Zeke,” she prompted him.
“I want to wait for Max.”
“Sorry.” Agnes fought to conceal her frustration. “But we can’t.”
She grabbed Zeke’s hand and tugged him along. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught quick movement: a hawk, winging in the distance.
Fear seized her.
What if it was infected?
Despite Matilda’s warning, she stepped into the prayer space, letting it billow like a quilt over the yellow-orange desert.
“Your hand is warm,” Zeke said.
He was right, and unease twisted in her belly. Hurriedly, she scanned the desert, letting her power wander like curious fingers over its lunar surface.
There were red creatures in the distance—in the prayer space, she could hear them like screams. She sensed infected lizards, pronghorns, hawks, and foxes, but all far away, for now. The desert looked empty to the naked eye, but in reality, it bristled with infection.
With sweat dripping into her eyes, she sensed no urgent threats. Still, they shouldn’t wander too far from Matilda and her rifle.
With relief, she shut the prayer space down, letting it dim and cool and die.
After they’d walked a while, she knelt to prick Zeke’s finger again.
390. He was lowering, thank God.
“You’re angry I dropped my insulin,” Zeke said sullenly. “You’re all mad at me. Right?”
She blinked. “Why would we be mad at you?”
He kicked a pebble with his shoe. “I’m too much trouble.”
“Zeke—”
His eyes sparkled, overbright. “God loves you, and that’s why He gave you superpowers. But He hates me, Agnes. That’s why He made me sick. I know I was supposed to die a long time ago. I prayed as hard as I could—but God never took my diabetes away.”
“Stop.” Agnes felt ill. She’d had no idea how deeply these thoughts coiled inside him. “Ezekiel, I need you to listen. God isn’t simple, like the Prophet led you to believe. He’s large and unknowable and complex.” She swallowed. “If God gave you your diabetes—and I’m only saying, if—He didn’t do it to hurt you.”
Zeke cocked his head. “Then, why?”
“The same reason He gave me my superpower, as you call it. He gave you your struggle to make you more you. More than that, we’ll never understand.”
He mulled it over under the white eye of the sun.
“Agnes,” he said at last. “Am I going to die?”
“You’re going to feel very sick,” she said gravely, knowing these were some of the most important words she’d ever spoken. “But you’ll keep walking, because you have to, and because I believe in you. And in three days, you’ll have insulin again.”
The others had caught up with them. Seeing Max, Zeke’s face split into a smile. He adjusted Benny on his shoulders and went to walk beside his favorite Outsider.
Agnes looked at Danny. She yearned to bury her face in his neck. But of course, that would hardly be appropriate now.
He smiled at her. “Did you two have a good talk?”
“Yes.” She sucked in a breath. “But I’m afraid.”
Surreptitiously, Danny took her hand. “We don’t have far to go, now.”
Three days would bring them to Mercy.
God willing, it would be Zion.
46
BETH
If Petra taught us anything, let it be this: Inside our worst nightmares burns an ember of redemption.
—AGNES, EARLY WRITINGS
Inside the trailer were the scattered remnants of Beth’s broken life: toys, sofa, table, Ezekiel’s crucifix night-light—all covered in silvery dust. In the kitchen, the refrigerator hunched dark and silent in its corner. Cory opened it, then covered his nose.
“Je-sus. That’s some rot.”
He tossed spoiled meat into the garbage. Beth hurried to help him, vaguely embarrassed by her poor little impoverished trailer. Cory, of the wealthy Jamesons, had never seen it before. But she tripped over Sam’s toy truck, crushing the plastic beneath her boot.
With her hands braced against the dust-silky kitchen tile, she struggled hard against her rising tears—and against something else. Something darker.
In the church, her grief for her family had been theoretical, a mist of memories and dreams. In her trailer, sorrow was real. Even for Father, whose spare belt lay coiled in a corner, she felt immense sadness.
And Beth had always so hated sadness. It caused her to tighten, contract—and the tightening gave way to an ugly, self-protective fear. She couldn’t stand this trailer or the memories that clogged it. She’d rather peel her own skin off than spend another moment here.
Light filtered thinly through shuttered trailer windows. Beth went to the pullout sofa where she’d slept with Agnes. Their bed looked too small now. Cramped and sad. She dug furiously for her diary but wasn’t surprised, really, to find it gone. Cory came to stand beside her, still nervously rubbing his thigh.
“Agnes took my diary,” she said numbly.
“Why?”
“I guess she thinks I’m done for.”
“Did she always underestimate you?”
“What do you know about it?” She spun on him. “You couldn’t pick her out of a crowd.”
He raised his hands placatingly.
“Do you know I considered asking her to run away with me months ago?” She glowered at their rumpled sheets. “But I never asked, because I was afraid she’d say no. I was a coward.”
“You wanted to run? Just the two of you?”
“I wanted the kids to come, too. Ezekiel, Sam, the twins.”
“You never thought of asking me?” She heard the hurt in his voice, so raw and clear.
Beth flushed, because the truth was, she’d never even considered asking Cory to run with her. She’d just assumed he was too faithful.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I didn’t know you that well.”
“No?” He sounded so miserable she couldn’t look at him. “I thought I knew you.”
She swallowed hard, then drove her hands back under the mattress.
Searching, digging.
And there, in the diary’s place, was the note she’d always known—in dreams, anyway—that Agnes would’ve left, just in case.
Her pulse leapt into her wrists as she held it up to the dying light. Dust motes t
wirled and spun.
Dear Beth,
Have a cell phone. Long story. Phone number is 555-9801.
Love, A
Agnes’s Sunday school cursive looked uncharacteristically messy, evidence of her hurry, her frantic fear. Beth looked towards the bedroom where Father kept the dangerous things.
Like rifles.
Mad mothers.
The phone.
Only Father ever used the landline. He’d call Mr. Hearn asking about odd jobs, or what he should bring to the Easter potluck, or where he could get a cheap price on a used truck.
“No one’s paid any bills this month,” Cory worried aloud. “What if—”
But Beth was already hurrying into the bedroom, rehearsing what she’d say to her sister while adrenaline coursed through her veins.
Agnes, you’ve got to come home. I think you can save them, the twins, Mother, Sam.… If you’ll only come back, you can save them all.
She picked up the black receiver. It felt slick and frightful. Forbidden. The dial tone moaned balefully into her ear.
What if Agnes didn’t answer?
What if she’d already made a new life on the Outside and refused to jeopardize it by returning to this cursed place?
I sure wouldn’t, if I were in her shoes.
Beth’s nose was runny. She swiped at it with her forearm and stared at her mother’s ratty curtains. Broken shards of secular music were still stuffed beneath the record player, like the jagged pieces of a broken heart.
“Beth? Beth, can you dial?”
She gasped, strangling on the canned trailer air. Then she banged at the buttons, clumsily hitting all the wrong numbers. Her fingers felt thick, useless. She couldn’t do this obvious and simple thing—dial her sister’s number.
She couldn’t.
Cory put a hand on her shoulder. “Agnes will come back, you’ll see. Then everything will be all right.”
“Do you really believe that?”
His eyes looked older. In these last weeks, he’d changed.
What about her? Had she changed, too?
In the woods, I almost let him die, she thought sickly. What kind of person would do that?
Deep in her soul, she worried she was still that same horrible, unworthy person. She’d done good, looking after Cory. But what if that was just varnish over the same old paint? What if she didn’t deserve Agnes, or her blessing, either?
“There’s no point calling.” Despair choked her. “No point at all.”
“Beth,” Cory said. “She’s your sister. Have faith.”
With the tip of her index finger, she punched the numbers, then held the slick receiver to her ear. Cory pressed his stubbled face to hers, listening as the phone rang.
Come on, Agnes, I don’t know how much time the kids have left.
And rang.
Come on, Agnes!
And rang.
47
AGNES
You can blame God for the red tragedy, but will that bring you any closer to understanding?
—AGNES, EARLY WRITINGS
In the dead of afternoon, Agnes’s phone buzzed urgently in her dress pocket. After a five-mile walk through suffocating heat, they’d pitched their tents to get a break from the blistering sun. Agnes rested beside Zeke, but she couldn’t sleep.
His blood glucose: 529.
That afternoon, she’d begun to see misery in his eyes, a canyon-deep exhaustion. It was pitiful, watching him try to hide his pain. She knew all his tells.
Though walking would improve his blood sugar, Max had carried him piggyback for the last two miles, because he’d begun to stumble.
But Agnes wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t.
By now, she understood enough about the workings of fear to know that she couldn’t afford to open the door to it, not even a crack. Once fear got a toehold, it would rip the door off its hinges.
Buzz… buzz…
Puzzled, she frowned. How could she be getting a phone call? Everyone she knew in the world was already here.
For a moment, silence. Maybe she’d imagined it?
Buzzing sounded again. She was getting a phone call.
She struggled to her feet. Her ankles felt like someone had beaten them with a lead pipe, and Danny’d had to yank her boots off her road-thickened feet.
And the heat. Agnes had lived in it all her life, but she’d never suffered in it. Never been exposed to it hour after dauntless hour. Every inch of her skin hurt. She felt like a soft, fragile, white-bellied creature that some devil had scrubbed with sandpaper.
Fully awake now, she scrambled in her pocket for the phone. If the racket woke Ezekiel, who so badly needed rest, she’d scream.
She didn’t recognize the number; but then, Danny’s or Matilda’s were the only numbers she would recognize.
She thumbed the screen. “Hello?”
Garbled static.
“Is anybody there?”
Buried in that white noise, a small, panicked speaker. A woman? A girl?
Though it was impossible, she thought it might be—
Her phone went dead. A hunk of cold metal pressed against her ear.
She slipped out of the tent and into the blazing sun, heading for the camping stove and the white plastic cords.
“Hey.” Jazz was watching for creatures, the rifle in her lap. “What’s up?”
“I have to charge this, but my hand—”
“Here.” Jazz took the phone from her bandaged grip. “I’ll do it.”
Agnes sat shakily. The phone blinked, drinking power.
“Agnes.” Jazz spoke out of the blue. “I have to know. Is the prayer space really God?”
Startled, Agnes looked into her syrup-colored eyes. She sensed some hidden danger here. The idea of preaching like the Prophet preached—in ignorance—turned her stomach sour. But could there be any harm in telling what she truly believed?
“I believe the prayer space is God.”
Tears spilled down Jazz’s cheeks. “Does that mean—” Her eyes turned hungry. “Is my family in heaven, Agnes? Are they?”
Her skin crawled, but wasn’t the question inevitable? Eventually, someone was going to ask her to explain mysteries beyond her ken, and she had to make a choice: between giving comfort and telling the truth.
For a long, tightrope walk of a moment, Agnes wanted to give comfort. Wanted to tell her yes, the family you love is in heaven, waiting for you. She knew it for fact. But she couldn’t, because the God of the prayer space always demanded truth.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know.”
Jazz’s eyes hardened. “What? Aren’t you a prophet, or something?”
Agnes felt sick. “Please don’t look at me like that. I can’t be—that sort of prophet.”
“What sort?”
“The kind who claims to have all the answers. In my experience, they’re liars.”
“But that’s the whole thing with you, isn’t it?” Jazz said bitingly. “You don’t have any experience—in the real world—but still you get more answers than the rest of us.”
Back at the library, Agnes never would have guessed she’d one day be fighting with sweet Jasmine. But then, the road, so unforgiving and hard, was like another world.
“Jazz, I know you’re frightened—”
Agnes’s phone flicked on, and for some reason, she pictured her sister. Beth. Could it have been her voice on the phone?
Agnes leapt up, ignoring the forsaken look on Jazz’s face. She unhooked the phone and dialed the mysterious number back.
The call trilled only once before she heard a firm, final click. Then a woman’s voice spoke smoothly into her ear.
“Your service provider regrets to inform you that as a result of the ongoing emergency, cell service will be discontinued indefinitely. For more information, tune into your local broadcast. Goodbye.”
The unfamiliar Outsider words numbed her. “There’s a problem with my phone.”
Jazz smiled tightly. “Didn’t c
harge?”
“I was trying to call someone—” Yes, and who was it? “And a recorded voice cut in.”
Jazz’s smile curdled. She went to the tents, rustling, calling. Soon everyone was up from their nap, except for Zeke. Danny’s eyes were bleary. Max chewed a toothpick. Matilda sat on a log, rubbing her bare, swollen feet.
“It finally happened,” Jazz told them. “Cell service blacked out.”
Agnes still didn’t understand what that meant, but phones leapt like magic into the Outsiders’ hands. They were all trying to make calls, tapping away at their screens.
Matilda put hers on speaker, and Agnes heard the same recorded message.
Her friends unraveled.
“It could be temporary,” Danny insisted.
“Like hell.” Max paced the campground. “This is it. The end of the goddamn world!”
“Hey.” Matilda clapped her hands, schoolteacherly. “This doesn’t change anything. We’ll reach Mercy soon. Then we’ll be safe.”
Return to Zion.
But Agnes didn’t like the glazed shock in the Outsiders’ faces. They needed these devices—their very working presence helped them keep a kind of faith.
“It won’t last forever,” Danny was saying. “Once the outbreak is over—”
Jazz turned to him, eyes raw. “When will it be over? It’s already been forever, so when? My family and friends are dead. We’re traveling with a girl who’s some kind of saint and bad things still keep happening to us. What did we do to deserve this?” She’d reached a breaking point. “How much more suffering are we supposed to take?”
“Jazz,” Agnes said. “You’ll wake Zeke.”
Jazz whirled on Agnes. “This is your fault. Everything that’s happened since you came. I wish we’d never met you. I wish you’d never come!”
Max jerked as if to restrain her, but in the end no one moved.
Agnes blinked, feeling lost. Could this really be the same girl who’d welcomed her so warmly when she first arrived? The girl who raised butterflies and wove a satin ribbon into her braid?
Without thinking, Agnes slipped into the prayer space. She heard the baleful buzz of Jazz’s fear. The Outsider girl felt abandoned, forsaken, afraid. She didn’t mean to be hurtful. She just needed something to believe in.
Agnes at the End of the World Page 25