Astray (27 page)

It goes on and on like this. I have no idea how long we chant, but eventually my voice feels hoarse. I look up once to find that somewhere along the way Mrs. Brown was replaced by Mrs. Sturdges, Julie’s mom. I never even felt Mrs. Brown’s hand slip from mine.

At some point Julie’s dad brings in a space heater and cranks it up to high. Soon it’s hot in the tiny room. The heat seems to weigh down the air, makes breathing in and out without coughing or gasping harder and harder. I want to stop, but every time I shift in place or begin to stutter my words, the others support my elbows, and chant louder.

They begin to walk me around the room, circling so
tightly that I begin to feel dizzy and ill. Still, we chant and walk, chant and walk. I can’t open my eyes at all anymore because the dizziness is overwhelming. Eventually I feel Mr. Brown’s calloused palm slip away and be replaced by another. It must be later in the day now. Shadows and bursts of weak sunlight flash across the insides of my lids, making the dizziness worse. I sag against whoever’s holding on to me now, stumble every few feet as we make our way around the room again. I need to stop. I’m so thirsty and I want to lie down. I need to be able to take a moment to think, but they just keep moving me around the room.

It’s dark now. I open my eyes to candlelight and nothing more. I can’t see much of the room at all. “Believe the words you’re saying, Lyla. Don’t just speak them. Let go, let go, let go.” Mr. Brown is back.
Maybe he didn’t leave in the first place like I thought?
I feel confused. My head is pounding.

I start the chant again, but my throat hurts so much. I need to stop. I want to stop. They won’t let me. I start to
beg them. “Please no more, no more. I need to sit down. I don’t feel well.”

“You’ll feel better once you let go. That sick feeling, all the disorientation? It’s the Outsiders’ lies polluting your system. We need to purge it.”

I’m so tired. It feels like forever since I’ve slept. I lick my lips, but even my tongue feels dry. I’m so thirsty. I would give just about anything to get a drink. I croak out the words and they sound brittle and whisper-soft. I try again, my face crumpling with the effort. The hands holding me up tighten on my elbows, and my arms throb. “I am a blank page.…” My throat closes up and hot tears roll down my cheeks. “What you tell us is the truth. What you command we will obey. Show us the way.” I start to cry.

“Good. That’s it, that’s it!” one of my helpers yells excitedly, and I have a little hope that they’ll let me stop soon. I don’t know what I’ve done exactly to convince them that I’m recentering the right way, so I just throw myself into it, give the last of my energy up and shout the words, tears streaming down my face. “Show me the way!”

“Once more,” they demand in unison, and I say it again with them.

I feel the desperation building in me. I’m so thirsty.

“Thatta girl,” Mr. Brown says soothingly. “Your mind is clearing, can you feel it?”

I want to stop more than anything and the only way for that to happen is if I agree with what he says. “Yes. Yes!”

“Then I think you’re ready to hear the truth and accept it,” Mr. Brown says.

I have no idea what he means, but I’m so happy to be able to stop walking, to be able to stop chanting, that I don’t care. I just want to rest.

They help me to the floor so that I’m sitting with my back against the barn wall. To my left the rusty shears make a clattering sound against the wall as I cross my legs and rest my head against the rough, scorched boards there.

Mr. Brown hands me a mug with some cold water in it. I guzzle it down and ask for another.

“Not just yet,” he says, but not unkindly. “Let’s give that a bit to settle in your system first.”

He leaves the room and so do the others. For the first time in hours—maybe almost a day—I’m alone. I rest my head on the wall. I’m still so dizzy. It seems to be getting worse now instead of better. And my eyes. Every time I try to focus on something, I see a halo around it. The room seems to dip and roll under me, making me feel like I’m floating on top of the ocean. I don’t like it, but I can’t think
of a way to make it better. Should I lie down? My brain feels sluggish. I don’t feel right. It’s not just the chanting, it’s something else. Fatigue, maybe?

Mr. Brown comes back in and crouches down beside me. I feel his thumb press my eyelid, move it up. He studies my eyes. “It’s working,” he says.

“What’s working?” I try to say, but I’m not sure that I actually say it. I start to laugh. Nothing’s funny and yet I can’t stop giggling.

“Feel better, Lyla?” Mr. Brown is smiling.

“You didn’t give her too much?” Mrs. Brown looms over me. Her chin shakes as she talks and I laugh harder. I never realized how funny she looked before.

I start to drift. It’s like my brain’s on pause and I can see and hear, but none of it makes any sense. I don’t know what’s happening. They’re still talking at me, making me walk. Then somehow Pioneer’s there—or he’s on a TV screen—I’m not sure which.

I can hear his voice. Over and over he says the same things. He talks about Marie and how she died. Over and over and over again. At first it doesn’t sound right, not like how I remember, but then it’s like the more times he tells me what happened, the more I can see it the way he says it happened. I thought that he killed her, but now when I try to remember I see her pulling the knife across her own neck. I see Pioneer crying over her, trying to stop the bleeding with his hand. I start to cry.

I was convinced that Pioneer was a criminal, that he killed Marie, and that the sheriff was the good guy, that Cody really loved me. But now I have no idea what to believe anymore. And I’m tired, so, so tired of trying desperately to figure it all out. I can feel myself wanting to let go of it all.

“You want to believe me because deep down you know it’s true. No matter who you meet or where you roam, you are one of us. It’ll never feel right anywhere else. You’re mine, Little Owl. You will always be mine.” Pioneer says it over and over and over again.

Things start to fade around me, go black, and still I can hear him. “Mine, you’re mine.…”

Someone nudges me in my side with their boot and I come to. My head hurts. There’s a TV in the corner of the room and Pioneer’s on it. He’s preaching about the Brethren. I rub my eyes.

“Come on,” Mr. Brown says.

I stand up, my legs all loose and rubbery. I keep hiccupping, letting out a sob with each one. I’ve cried so much that my eyes feel sand-blasted and raw. Mr. Brown holds my arm to keep me from falling over. I’m so hungry and sick and thirsty. I look around, try to figure out what time it is, how long I’ve been in the barn, but my eyes are still so blurry and it hurts to focus. Mr. Brown leads me to another room, the one that was locked when I came into the barn before. There’s nothing in it. It doesn’t
seem right, but I don’t remember why. Jonathan’s standing in the corner. He’s holding a gun in his good hand. I struggle to pull free of Mr. Brown, but he holds me tight. I don’t understand what’s happening. Are they going to shoot me?

Mr. Brown makes me lie on the ground. I keep looking over at Jonathan and the gun. The ground is hard and cold and itchy with hay. Mrs. Brown comes in carrying two tall orange buckets. She sets them down and then goes back into the hall and gets two more. She makes trip after trip and all the time Jonathan stays in the corner, cocks and uncocks his gun.

“Wh-wh-what’s happening?” I whisper.

Mr. Brown walks over to the buckets. He picks up one and then stands over me with it. Drops of water fall on my chest and neck, slide over my chin.

“You’ve been bad, Lyla. You betrayed us. You aren’t worthy to be in the Community anymore.”

I’m confused. I thought he believed me. I thought that Pioneer told him to take me back.

“But you can be. If you show that you’re worthy.”

“H-h-how?” I ask.

“By taking your punishment and recommitting yourself to Pioneer.”

Jonathan leaves the corner and drops to his knees beside me. He holds the gun to my head, slides the end of it against my temple until it nestles into the space just above my cheekbone. I start to whimper, I can’t help it.
I don’t want to die. He pulls the trigger and there’s an empty clicking sound. I sob and my whole body shudders.

“There are bullets in the gun, Lyla. The only reason you didn’t die right then is because the Brethren jammed it. They want you to believe again. Can you do that? Can you believe?”

I’m crying so hard that I can’t answer. Jonathan holds the gun up to my temple again. I let out a wail. “I believe, I believe. Please, I believe.”

“It’s not enough. You have to accept your punishment, to understand why it is necessary, Lyla.” Mr. Brown is still looming over me, the bucket swaying slightly in his hand.

That wasn’t it?
I start to shake; my body is practically convulsing it’s trembling so hard. “Accept it, Lyla.” Mr. Brown nods at Jonathan and he cocks the gun again.

I pull in a breath. “I was wrong. I should be punished.” I want to scream for help, but it won’t do any good. No one’s coming to save me, not this time.

Jonathan puts the gun down and grabs my head. I can feel his bandages on my cheek, soft and smelling of medicine. He holds my head straight so he can look into my eyes. “Little Owl, huh? I wonder if your neck would snap as easily as that barn owl’s.” Some very distant part of my brain cries out at his confession. He was the one in the tree outside Taylor’s room. At least I think that’s what he said. I blink hard and stare into his eyes, blue like Pioneer’s and Will’s. It
was
him. He killed the owl, and now he’s going to kill me.

“That’s enough!” Mr. Brown yells. “Hold her down.” He tips the bucket. Water pours over my nose and mouth and eyes. I sputter and accidentally breathe in. I strain upward trying to get out of the bucket’s path, but Jonathan is holding my head, keeping me down. Water floods my lungs and I cough, but this lets more water in. The water keeps coming and coming. I can’t breathe. They’re drowning me with a bucket of water. I try to stop coughing, to hold my breath, but it’s hard because all my body wants to do is get rid of the water in my lungs. Then suddenly the bucket’s empty. I gasp and cough and retch. Water pours from my mouth onto the floor.

Mr. Brown waits until I stop coughing and then he grabs another bucket. Over and over he makes me agree that I need punishment, all the while telling me that I deserve it, that it’s the only way for me to cleanse myself of my sins. I thought I could do this, fake my way back into the Community, but I was wrong. I feel like the rational part of my brain is floating away on a current of well water that tastes like dirt and iron.

After the fifth bucket of water, I not only think that I’m going to die, I’m starting to hope for it.

Mr. Brown sits down on the floor beside me, pulls out a cell phone, and puts it to my ear.

“Little Owl,” Pioneer says softly.

I can’t answer. I’m crying too hard.

“Do you want me to tell them to stop?” he says.

“Yes.”

“All you have to do is say the words.”

I don’t have to ask him what the words are. I know.

“I’m yours,” I say, and I mean it. I can’t fight him, not like this. It’s too hard. I’m not strong enough—maybe I never was.

“Yes, you are. Don’t ever forget it again.”

Mr. Brown moves the phone from my ear. I close my eyes. Relief washes over me. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I say over and over again. I can’t make myself stop. I’m practically babbling, I’m so wrung out and exhausted.

“Welcome back, sister,” Mr. Brown says. He scoops me up into his arms and carries me into the other room. The heater is still on high, but it feels good now that I’m wet and shivering. Clean clothes are sitting neatly folded on the metal chair, and Mrs. Brown is waiting beside it. She helps me into the chair and gives me a mug of hot tea to sip on while she towels off my face and arms. She kisses my forehead and smooths wet strands of hair away from my face. She helps me with the clothes because I’m too weak to dress myself, and then together we walk into the main part of the barn, where for the second time since I showed up, everyone in the Community is gathered. They clap and cheer when they see me. I don’t know how to feel about this. I look at Mr. Brown for some clue because I want him to tell me how to feel. I don’t want to be wrong and end up back in that room with him and Jonathan. He smiles and so I smile too. My parents rush forward
first, gathering me to them and practically carrying me the rest of the way into the room. I’m still crying. You would think I wouldn’t have any tears left, but they keep coursing down my cheeks. The folding chair from the back is brought out and placed in front of the group. My parents guide me to it. Will, Heather, and Julie surround it. They smile as I sink into the seat. My stomach flutters a little.
What’s going on now?
My head sags against my chest.
No more. I can’t take any more
.

Mr. Brown comes to stand beside me. In one hand he’s carrying the rusty shears from the other room.