Astray (17 page)

“Sounds like it.” Cody laughs and I do too. I’ve decided dates are awesome.

There’s a restaurant attached to the bowling alley at the far end. We turn in our bowling shoes, then head over there, Cody’s arm still around me and my head resting on his shoulder. The school day and the unpleasantness with Kate feel very far away now, like it all happened weeks ago. There are other students here, ones I recognize from the hallways or some of my classes, but it’s like they don’t realize who I am now that I’m not with the others.

“This place—Bo’s—is my all-time favorite.” Cody looks at the double doors ahead of us. I can’t see inside because the doors have curtains on them—blue ones with a pattern made out of keyhole silhouettes. “Last summer I worked here part-time … that is, until my dad decided he wanted me to work at the station instead.” He doesn’t sound angry exactly, just frustrated. “A few more years and it won’t matter; I’ll be in California and there’s no way I can answer his phones then.”

Cody has always said that he’s heading off to California when he’s done with high school. It’s still a long way off, but this kind of talk makes me wonder where I’ll be when he does. Will I be heading to California too—off to some art school there? Or will I still be living in Culver Creek? I still can’t seem to dream more than a few weeks into the future, because I’m not used to the idea that there’ll be more time than that for me.

When we walk through the door, I understand why Cody likes the restaurant so much. The entire place is wallpapered in movie memorabilia. The booths are oversized, cut into strange shapes, and covered in giant stripes.

“Bo is a huge Tim Burton fan,” Cody says like this explains it. The restaurant seems to be straight out of a dream, or a nightmare, or maybe both. I try to imagine the rest of the Community here and can’t. Anything this different they would definitely see as evil.

“Interesting,” I manage to say. We slide into a booth by the window facing the parking lot. Cody passes me a menu. I’ve never actually eaten at a restaurant, at least not since I was very small. I’ve been staying close to Cody’s house since I moved in, keeping a low profile, so to speak. The sheriff’s gone a lot at dinnertime and the rest of the family seems content with takeout and TV trays on the nights that Cody’s mom doesn’t make dinner. So far I’ve had pizza and pork fried rice and sub sandwiches, but I’ve never ordered anything by myself. Cody’s mom or Cody has done it for me. There are way too many choices here and all of them have weird names. In the end I close my eyes and poke my finger at the middle of the menu where the entrees are listed. I order the one closest to where it lands and then Cody laughs and orders the same thing—a
Big Fish
sandwich with a side of Oompa Loompa onion rings.

“Bo—the guy who runs this place—was the first person around here to really get what I want to do with my
life.” Cody leans over the table and grabs my hand after we’ve ordered. “He let me hang out here a lot on weekends the past few years so I could work on my creature stuff in his back rooms before my mom convinced my dad to let me use the basement. You see that over there? I made that one.” It’s a life-sized model of a pale-looking guy with wild black hair and fingers made of knives, but instead of looking frightening, he looks sad … lonely. He looks the way I felt back in Mandrodage Meadows toward the end, how I feel sometimes even now.

“It’s Edward Scissorhands, one of Burton’s best characters. He kind of reminds me of you, actually,” Cody says like he’s somehow reading my mind. “I mean, you don’t look like him or anything.” His cheeks flush. “What I mean is that he was hidden away from the world for a long time too. And when he finally gets out and discovers it, there’s this great wondering, happy look that he gets sometimes when he discovers something that he loves … and you get it too, like just now when you were bowling.”

“Really?” It’s weird to hear him talk about me this way. And the way he’s looking at me makes me fidget. “So does he ever get used to everything?” I ask, mostly because I feel this overwhelming need to keep the conversation going so I don’t start giggling out of embarrassment. “Edward, I mean?”

“Kind of—I’m not sure if I should tell you—in case we watch it. I’ll spoil it.”

“No, tell me, you won’t spoil it, promise. I’m curious,”
I say. I look over at the Edward statue, at his hands. From the looks of him, he had a much rougher road to go than I do.

“Well, at first he does okay and starts using his scissors to prune people’s bushes and then he starts cutting their hair. But then he makes a couple of mistakes and accidentally hurts someone and people run him out of town and he ends up …” His voice trails off. “Maybe this isn’t a movie you should watch.”

The moment goes from light and fun to serious.

“Is it true that you were friends with Brent before? Before I came along, I mean?” I ask.

Cody’s eyes widen. “Where did you hear that?”

“A woman from your mom’s festival committee said that you and Brent and her son Nathan were friends before I showed up. Is that true?”

He lets out a sigh. “We hung out, but mostly during baseball season. We’ve been on the same teams since elementary school. But I wouldn’t call them my best friends or anything. They can be real tools sometimes. I knew that even before you came along … you just gave me a good excuse to distance myself.”

I pick at my napkin, rip tiny pieces from one corner. “Still, I don’t want my being around to cause problems for you.”

Cody moves from his side of the booth to mine and takes my face in his hands. “Let me worry about that stuff, okay? I like having you around.”

“Maybe, but what happens if more people start to feel the way that Brent and his mom and the others feel? Do you really want a girlfriend who has nightmares all the time and has to go to counseling once a week? Sometimes I miss it—the Community. Because I still don’t belong here, Cody. Not yet, not completely … and maybe not ever. What if I can’t be normal?”

Cody puts his hand under my chin, guides it up gently until I’m looking into his eyes. “I happen to think being normal is highly overrated.” He rubs his thumb along my bottom lip before he bends his head to mine and starts to kiss me—right there in the restaurant in front of all the other customers, as if to prove what he’s just said is true.

We’ve kissed before—lots actually—but no matter how many times we do, my stomach always seems to do somersaults and every nerve in my body goes on high alert. I bring my hand up to his face and pull him closer.

“All right, you two, here’s your check.” Our waiter is standing over us. He drops the check on the table and shoots us a “time to leave” look.

Cody lets me go and the waiter rolls his eyes and heads for the table next to ours. I look out the window while Cody gets his money out and pays. Most of the parking lot is shrouded in shadows, all but the first few cars, which are directly under the neon signs outside. I lean in closer to the glass. My heart stutters. There’s a white van parked in the spot facing the restaurant. There are two people sitting inside. Watching me watch them. Were they there
the whole time we’ve been in the restaurant? Taking pictures for my parents’ creepy photo album? They saw us kissing just now. I back up into Cody, practically knocking him out of the booth.

The van pulls out of its parking space and slowly drives by the window, close enough that I can see Mr. Brown in the passenger seat. Jonathan is driving. Both men stare at me, their eyes hard and accusing.

“
The Brethren expect you to be pure. They are watching always.
” Pioneer’s words fill my head as if the two men have somehow managed to put them there just by staring at me. This shouldn’t matter to me anymore, I’m out of the Community now, but somehow it does, somehow the words still steal away the moment, begin to make it feel wrong.

And just like that, my first date is officially over.

I was brought up in your world. I know very well how depraved it is.

—Pioneer

When we open the door to Cody’s house, the first thing I hear is Pioneer’s voice—for real this time. The sheriff and Cody’s mom are sitting on the sofa in front of the TV, and Pioneer is on the screen. I suck in a breath. He’s completely bald. His head is shiny and pale—smooth. He looks old and harder than before. He’s sitting at a table, his wrists shackled and his arms stretched out in front of him. I can’t help noticing that his hands are pressed together palm to palm like he’s getting ready to pray. Across from him is a man in a suit. I recognize him. He’s the same person that interviewed Julie at the hospital.

“Lyla, Cody.” Cody’s mom attempts to get up from the sofa. The wreath she was working on starts to slide off her lap and she has to sit back down to keep it from falling. “Stan, shut it off.”

“No, it’s okay, leave it,” I say. I look back at the screen and we all go quiet so we can hear what Pioneer will say next.

“Mr. Cross. Thank you for agreeing to speak with us today,” the interviewer begins.

Pioneer’s lips curl into his warmest smile, but now that he’s so thin, it’s not nearly as endearing as it used to be. His skin stretches over his cheekbones, sinks in underneath them, and his teeth seem much too big for his mouth. “I’d prefer it if you’d call me Pioneer. I don’t go by that other name anymore.”

“Okay,
Pioneer
, then.” The interviewer gives him an indulgent half smile. “If we could, I’d like to start by having you tell us what the Community is all about.” He leans forward until his elbows rest on the table, steeples his fingers beneath his chin, and stares at Pioneer. It makes him look concerned. I wonder if he really does care, or if he’s watching the clock while Pioneer talks.
Are Outsiders immune to Pioneer in a way that everyone in the Community isn’t?

“Well, first off, let me say that I am grateful that you gave me an opportunity to tell my side of things. Up until now the police and the government have done all the talking, and I think folks have giant misconceptions about me and my family,” Pioneer says with more country twang to his voice than usual … than ever.

“We built Mandrodage Meadows just after 9/11. I met a fine group of people around that time who were as fearful about the direction that the world seemed to be heading in as I was. Every single one of us was concerned about bringing up our children in a place so rife with violence
and destruction. We wanted to feel safe again. It wasn’t long before we figured out that if we pooled our resources we could make our dreams come true. We could build a place where we could depend on one another, grow our own food, bring our children up in the sort of wholesome atmosphere that didn’t exist at that time—or in this one, for that matter. It’s that simple. I think most people fantasize about doing something similar, but for whatever reason never follow through. I was just lucky enough to find others as committed as I was. I have always felt blessed to have them.”

“But isn’t it true that you yourself don’t have a family? You were an only child.” The interviewer peers at a stack of cards in front of him. “Born to a mom, one Annabelle Cross, who neglected you enough that the authorities were called on multiple occasions? She was a dancer in a gentlemen’s club and left you alone at night? Your father wasn’t around?” He asks his questions in a pleasant, curious voice that contradicts their bluntness.

I didn’t know Pioneer’s mom was like that. Weirdly, I’ve never even considered that he had parents, though obviously he did. He never, ever talked about them, but I never saw it as strange, because none of us talked about the people we left behind when we moved to Mandrodage Meadows. If you weren’t part of the Community, you didn’t exist.

Pioneer tilts his head a bit. He stares at the man for a full minute without answering. He’s smiling, but it’s
forced. I know that look. It’s the one he always got whenever one of us stepped out of line and needed to be punished. I lean forward and hold my breath.

“I don’t have blood relations in the Community, that’s true, but friends can become one’s family over time, can’t they? The people of Mandrodage Meadows are my family, blood or not. Our shared destinies bind us together.” He doesn’t respond to the bit about his mom.

“And did your
family
know that you had a criminal record when they moved out west with you?”

Pioneer’s smile is frozen. He had to know that the interviewer would bring it up. Isn’t it a reporter’s job to get the whole story? But it doesn’t look like he did. It looks like he expected this interview to go in an entirely different direction.

“My record is irrelevant. The truth is we wanted to be alone. We were
content
to be alone. We impacted the towns nearby as little as possible with our presence. Not once in all the years that we lived in Mandrodage Meadows did we take government assistance or sponge off of anyone else. So to have the government, and everyone else for that matter, target us—me—in the manner they have is just … well, terrifying.” He hangs his head a bit, his mouth drooping downward. When he looks up again, his eyes are shimmering with tears.

“But if you are so peaceful, why all the guns? The police report says that following the raid they recovered
over eighty rifles and the materials needed to convert at least a third of those rifles into fully automatic weapons.”

Pioneer’s sad look slips just a little. “The rifles were used mainly for hunting. We were never going to convert them to automatics. We had the necessary permits. You have to understand that twenty families lived out there. Most of those made up of at least four people. We wanted to have at least one gun for every person. This way everyone learns to protect themselves from wild animals and such … and to provide for each other equally. There’s a measure of security that being comfortable handling guns can give a person.”

“So having all of those guns made all of you feel safer?” the interviewer prompts.

Pioneer glares at him. “Every family out there was touched by tragedy in some way. Tragedy perpetrated by someone else, tragedy that could have been avoided if they’d only known how to defend themselves. So yes, feeling safer was part of it. And it should be obvious after what the police and ATF did—taking our children for a time, raiding our homes—that their fears for their safety weren’t unwarranted.”