Gated (11 page)

We’re excused from dinner with the rest of the Community that night. We have to eat our dinners alone in our rooms. I can’t stomach the food, even though it’
s my favorite stew. My body hurts everywhere. I ease my way onto my bed and stare out the window at the sky. The stars are clear and bright above the trees, twinkling portals. Are the Brethren up there watching me now? When they finally travel here after we’ve survived the end, will they say I’m worthy to be with them or leave me here alone, a survivor of humanity but an outcast of its successor?

Pioneer sets the Community siren off—four short bursts just after we’ve woken up the next day. It’s a call to gather in the clubhouse. There’s some kind of important news to share.

I grab some aspirin on my way out of the house and walk toward the clubhouse with my parents. I have to alternate squishing my eyes shut to keep out as much of the harsh sunlight as I can and opening them so I can still manage to not fall on my face. I can’t help yawning over and over. It makes my neck and back tense up—which is painful to the point of unbearable. Yesterday’s punishment didn’t stop out in the corral; it followed me home. It still feels like the wood beam is on my shoulders, weighing me down.

I’m tired because I didn’t sleep well last night. Every time I closed my eyes, I was back outside and running for the Silo— ne I didnonly this time I was being chased by the rest of the Community. They were trying to drive me in the
opposite direction, away from the shelter. I kept startling awake, breathless and panicked.

The air is already hot and heavy with humidity. I regret wearing my hair down to cover my bandage now. It feels like a heavy wool rug on my back. I wave limply at Marie as she leaves her family so she can walk with me.

Her hair and face both look smooth and neat, like the weather and our recent punishment have had little to no effect on her appearance whatsoever. The speed of her steps is the only thing that suggests that she’s still hurting as much as I am. They’re slow and measured.

I watch her get closer. She’s wearing the exact same purple-T-shirt-and-white-shorts combo that I am, but she manages to make it look sexy—even coupled with her white bandages—whereas I just manage to look rumpled. I don’t care, though. She tries harder to look nice than I will ever want to. She earns her sexy.

Wearing the same thing as someone else happens a lot in the Community, since we buy all of our clothes in bulk and each of us has the same limited choices to pick from each day. There will be at least five to six other girls dressed to match us this morning. It doesn’t really bother me, but I can tell by the way that Marie has tied off her shirt around her waist and carefully shredded the hemline of her shorts that it bothers her. She almost always alters her clothes to make them original creations. Once she even used beets from the garden to dye one of her shirts just so it wouldn’t look like anyone else’s.

Marie grabs my arm and pulls my ear to her lips. “Come to my house today after chores, okay? I have something I want to show you.”

“What is it?”

I have to work to sound interested. My neck is still shrieking at me. It feels swollen and my muscles have tightened up, making it difficult to turn my head. All I want to do is stay still, lie down, and wait for the pain to stop. And this heat isn’t helping. The sweat on my shoulders stings and makes me fidget—making my desperately wished-for stillness impossible. I’m tired and hot and in pain—not to mention worried about what Pioneer has planned for us now. He’d hinted that things were going to change today, and I can’t imagine that those changes will be good ones. I can only hope that it won’t mean more chores, because my head is starting to feel like it’s wrapped in a hot, wet towel filled with spiky nails. I swallow the pair of aspirin that I’ve been carrying and hope that they start to work on my headache soon. My throat is so dry that they stick halfway down and I have to work to swallow them.

“Can’t tell you now, not with all the parentals around,” she murmurs, and turns to wave to my parents, who are watching us. “Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton.”

“It’s not something that’s gonna get us into trouble, is it? I mean, after yesterday …,” I begin.

Marie laughs—a light, breezy giggle. “You worry too much. It’ll be fine, just meet me, all right?”

I look back at my parents and then move in a little closer to her. “No, I won’t. One punishment is plenty, Marie. I’m not risking another one and you shouldn’t either.” Her refusal to acknowledge what happened in the corral is freaking me out a little.

I give her my best stern look, the one I learned from Pioneer. If she’s goin s#x2ut g to try to pretend that everything’s cool, then I’m going to try even harder to remind her that it isn’t.

Marie likes to put unpleasantness behind her as quickly as possible, always has, but especially after her brother, Drew, and his Intended, Kelly, decided to leave the Community last year. Pioneer said that as far as we were all concerned, Drew and Kelly didn’t exist anymore, just like all the other family members everyone in the Community left behind when they came here—only worse because they knew the truth and turned their backs on it on purpose. To Pioneer, they were no better than traitors. But Marie pretended that they were on a special supply run that we weren’t supposed to know about or something. Of course she knew that that really wasn’t true, but she pretended it was anyway. Maybe so we wouldn’t ask her about it or maybe so she could keep seeing her brother as one of the chosen or something. And it looks like she’s trying to do it again now.

I get why she does it, which makes me the best person to try and call her on it. I know how tempting it is to try to pretend things aren’t what they are. I used to do it all the
time after my sister disappeared. But it never brought her back. After a while, the pretending gets too hard, changes you in a way you can’t change back. I only have to look at my mom to know that that’s true.

Marie stares at me and her lips quiver a little. “I’m not trying to get punished again. If we had any time left at all, I’d wait. Swear. But, Lyla, the end is getting really close now. If last night’s false alarm did anything, it was to remind me of that.” She looks past me at my parents, who are now starting to look suspicious. “I need to check some things out before … and what I’m planning isn’t a big deal, really. Not like sneaking out. I just want us to hang out and have a little fun. Right here, safe and sound, behind the gates. Talk and stuff with the other girls. Try to just forget about this.” She points at her back. “It’ll be fun. Come on. Don’t tell me you don’t want to at least a little.”

“Well, I don’t,” I say, and not too kindly. But when I see how disappointed she is, I cave. It’s impossible to deny her. Maybe because she’s the same as me, an only child by default now, a sister in misery, our bond forged out of an all-too-similar pain. I want to get past all of the bad memories too. The only difference is that I don’t want to deny them altogether.

I nod at her and she goes to hug me, but I wince and then so does she and we end up just smiling at each other instead. Then she spots Heather and Julie and quickly turns away from me before I have a chance to say anything
more. Her black ponytail swings back and forth as she trots over to the other girls and begins whispering in their ears. Looks like it’ll be a party, whatever it is.

I push out my bottom lip and blow air at my bangs to try to cool off my forehead, but they’re already hopelessly plastered to my head and won’t budge. I can only hope that whatever Marie has planned includes a trip to the pool, because after the past twenty-four hours, I am more than ready to cool off.

On the outside, the clubhouse mirrors our homes, with its wood-and-stone front and deep porch. Inside, there’s a banquet space for when we come together for holidays and special occasions, and beyond it is the meeting room. Mom says it reminds her of a conference room, the kind found in most hotels, but somehow I doubt that any of those rooms have pictures of natural disasters and their aftermath papering the walls. To me it s Tomehow 019;s more like a shrine to pain, a reminder of how fragile our world really is.

One of these pictures is of a tiny girl dressed in pajamas holding a filthy stuffed animal in the middle of the rubble that once was her house. It calls to me every time I’m in here. I’m unable to look away from it now as we wait for Pioneer to arrive. I think it’s something about the girl’s face that attracts me the most. She has this look of bewilderment mixed with defiance, like she’s daring the tornado that crushed her world to come back again. I’ve always wondered why she isn’t crying. She has nothing
except a bedraggled bear—and yet there’s an eerie calmness in her expression. I want to be like this girl when the end finally comes—mad or brave, not cowering in fear.

Pioneer enters the room flanked by Mr. Whitcomb and Mr. Brown, his two constant companions at meetings and most of the rest of the time too. They were the first ones to sign their families up for the Community and have always been the most supportive of Pioneer’s plans. They’re both quieter than usual. They motion us over to the rows of metal chairs set up to face the front of the room church-style. The room is buzzing with the drone of a dozen conversations. No one seems to know what’s going on.

Pioneer watches us take our seats. He looks awful. His face is drawn. Lack of sleep has deflated it. Still, he stands ramrod straight in front of us, eyes glittering. “I trust you have all had time to reflect,” he begins.

I watch as all the adults bob their heads up and down in agreement, each one looking a little bit more embarrassed than the last. More than a few people look over at Will, Brian, Marie, and me. I nod along with the others, anxious to put my best foot forward. I’ve decided that I will try to do whatever is expected of me from now on. I don’t want to be the cause of worry for my parents or Pioneer or Will anymore. Even though yesterday wasn’t the end of our time above ground, it has to be the end of my pining for it. I can’t keep wishing for things that I’ll never have.

“I have been up all night trying to determine how best
to serve you, how best to help you protect your families,” Pioneer says.

I’ve heard that Pioneer spends
most
nights pacing the halls of the clubhouse, where his private rooms are. I’ve always felt a little sorry for him. Being our leader and having no family to share the hardships of the job with has to be lonely, especially when he’s puzzling things out. He says that his burden is too great and a family is not his destiny. But right now I’m kind of glad he doesn’t have anyone. I’m not done being mad at him for yesterday just yet.

“I struggled last night, brothers and sisters. I found myself looking for a sign or a message from the Brethren—anything at all that could tell me the right way to lead you. They graced me with a vision and that vision helped show me the way.” Pioneer hesitates and more than half of the room leans forward.

We’re always curious about Pioneer’s visions. He’s our prophet, so they reveal the last days and many of them seem to confirm what Pioneer’s scientific research suggests about what they’ll be like. None of us want to miss whatever’s next, because it’s bound to be important. I wipe my palms on my shorts to dry them.

“In my vision the Brethren appeared in the sky. They told me that the time has come. The world is already starting to experience the pains of change. I saw a great flood, the water high enough to cover who s to comele towns, and a great shaking of the earth. When I woke, I began searching for
news from the outside. I searched for anything that might tell me what I could already feel in my bones. And I found what I was looking for. There are very clear signs that the earth is shifting its rotation. The end has already begun.”

Pioneer nods to Mr. Whitcomb, who’s been standing in the back of the room and now starts fiddling with the electronic equipment there as his wife dims the lights. Pioneer switches on the two televisions in the front two corners of the room. We only use them when Pioneer has some news like this from the outside world to show us, or on Friday nights, when we’re allowed to watch a movie he approves of. At first there’s just a blue screen, but then it’s interrupted by a flurry of sound and movement.

“What you are about to see happened just three days ago,” Pioneer says.

My stomach flips over and I grip both sides of the chair as Pioneer steps away from the front of the room and sits down. We’ve only watched newscasts a handful of times. Pioneer says that we don’t need to keep up with the outside world. He says that most of what’s on television is lies and junk—time-wasting distractions to keep us from our daily tasks at best and a way to keep us too attached to an evil and dying world at worst. He’s the only member of the Community with access to a television on a regular basis, and he only watches it when he’s looking for some sign that the end is coming or that the outside world has
realized
that it’s coming. It’s just another of the many burdens
he’s willingly taken on for us. Whatever this is is bigger than big.