“Hey, Kyra.”
I started at the voice. “Aaah!” Then, “What?” And finally, “Sheesh almighty.”
Joshua Johnson walked up beside me.
“Oh!” I said, and touched the front of my dress.
“Oh,” he said.
My face colored.
“That’s rude to mimic me like that,” I said. I marched forward over the sidewalk, embarrassed. The smell of the desert kicked up from a slight breeze that blew in from the west.
Joshua laughed. “I’m sorry, Kyra,” he said, hurrying beside me.
I refused to look at him. Instead, I kept my eyes forward and headed across the parking lot around the Temple, feeling a little angry but more horrified and even more pleased that Joshua had surprised me.
“Where you going?” he asked.
With my head, I gestured at the Fellowship Hall.
“Why? There’s no Youth Meeting tonight.”
I stopped, planted one hand on my hip the way Mother Claire does when she’s especially unhappy, and said, flapping the book at him, “To practice piano, if you must know.” Oh, you are so so so cute, I thought. So cute! Ahhh!
Joshua nodded, then shaded his eyes against the setting sun. “Can I come along and listen?”
My heart thumped. He was so pretty to look at, with his brown hair all golden in the setting sun, I didn’t know what to do. The only boys I’d been around were my own brothers. And now here was Joshua Johnson.
“What do I care?” I said. But I did care. I did. There was Joshua with those warm-looking eyes of his and that cute face and Look how tall he is, I thought, way taller than me, and he looks so good in that plaid shirt and those blue jeans.
Don’t look at those blue jeans.
You looked at his blue jeans.
I reached for the Fellowship Hall door, but Joshua caught it first and opened it for me. He motioned for me to go ahead.
I did with a flounce, but my foot caught on nothing and I stumbled forward.
Just get to the piano without falling and breaking a bone, I thought. Just make it to the piano.
I could hear some boys playing basketball in the gym, could hear the squeak of their tennis shoes on the floor and the echoey pounding of the ball.
“You look pretty today, Kyra,” Joshua said. He opened another door for me and we stood in the near darkness of the Assembly Room.
I looked toward the piano. Just make it there, I thought. He is so cute. So cute.
“Want me to catch the lights?” he said.
“If you’d like,” I said. I sat down at the piano, my legs shaking so I wasn’t sure I could work the pedals.
The fluorescent lights overhead flickered on and a low buzz filled the room.
Joshua pulled a seat up near the piano bench.
I flipped open Beethoven. Why, I was so nervous my eyes couldn’t make out even one note at first. My fingers trembled and for a moment I wasn’t sure if I could even feel them. It was like I was numb. I ran through scales once.
“That was good, Kyra,” Joshua said. And then he grinned.
A little laugh slipped from me. “I’m just warming up.”
“Play something,” he said.
At first my fingers wouldn’t work. Then, as I played Beethoven, I almost forgot Joshua was sitting right there.
Almost.
Oh, all right. I snuck quick peeks at him the whole time we were together.
And every time, he was looking right back at me.
“You’re good,” he said when I’d finished my practice. He nodded toward the piano.
“I know it,” I said. I wasn’t being stuck up. That’s a sin, to think you’re better at something than another person. But the fact is, I know I’m better than any of The Chosen Ones so I wasn’t being a braggart.
Joshua raised his eyebrows. “And modest,” he said.
I shrugged and my brain all on its own thought, I cannot believe someone like you is talking with me. You smell so good.
“It takes a lot of work to succeed at this,” I said. “A lot of practice. And I want to be good.” I waved my hand over the piano, then turned back to the score. Leaning in close to the music, I made marks on the page. Here, here, and here I needed more intensity. Here, I needed less dynamics.
“I want to learn.” Joshua stood and moved right next to me. He hit the low E note. The sound thumped in the room.
“Sister Georgia teaches,” I said, not even glancing at him, my heart thumping like that low note. “Talk to her. Tell your mother. I’m sure she has time for you.”
“My mother?” Joshua asked.
“Of course your mother,” I said. I was grinning now. “And Sister Georgia.”
“But I want to learn from you,” Joshua said. He stood behind me now. I could feel his knees in my back. Bony and warm.
Sun broke through the stained-glass window, coloring the air. I could smell the wood oil used to polish the piano. Could hear the boys playing basketball a room over, calling to one another.
His hand rested on my shoulder and my body was flooded with unexpected happiness.
“What?” I should run, run, get away from this sin. Get away. But the bigger part of me wanted to relax into Joshua.
“You’re good. You said so yourself. Think you could teach me?”
His hand. His knees. My confused state. I wanted to turn around and hug him. Where were these thoughts coming from?
“Maybe. Maybe, I can.” I’m not sure how I got the words out. “I gotta go.” I pushed the bench back and struggled to make my legs work. Joshua and I walked across the room. His hands were shoved in his pockets.
“Now, Kyra,” he said. We were at the door getting ready to walk into what seemed to me the real world. “What will you charge for lessons?” His face was just a few inches from mine.
I couldn’t find my voice. Then I said, “I’m not sure. What do you think is fair?”
Our faces were so close I could feel his breath on my lips.
“I’ll figure it out,” he said at last.
A CHILLING BREEZE blows across the desert. All around me life has settled in for the night.
I drag an old chair, one I have used at this window, close to the trailer.
I know he sleeps in this room with three other boys. I’ve never gone to him unless we have planned it first, so he’s awake. Usually Joshua comes to my place. Or leaves me a message under a rock in my garden and we meet in the dark near the Temple.
But I have to talk to him. I have to.
“Joshua,” I say, whispering through the screen that smells of dust. “Joshua.”
My voice is so low, I’m sure he cannot hear it. And I’m shaking. All over shaking. My shin hurts.
“Joshua,” I say, his name louder this time and it sounds like thunder. Good grief! Whisper or scream? Choose one, Kyra.
Somebody in the room moves, I can hear them.
“Joshie,” someone says. Maybe it’s Bryant? The voice is young, not more than two or three. “Joshie, somebody wants you outside.” There’s a pause and then, “I’m scared.”
I should leap down from this chair and take off running, but what worse can happen to me than already has—already will? What can be worse than Uncle Hyrum as my husband? So I wait, still.
“Don’t be scared,” Joshua says and his voice fills my shaking stomach with relief. “I’m right here.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. He’s said those very words to me.
THE NEXT DAY AFTER JOSHUA stood so close to me and asked for piano lessons, I found Father. He was coming in from the alfalfa fields, sweaty from the sun and hard work.
“Father,” I said before I lost my nerve, “Joshua Johnson wants to learn how to play the piano. May I teach him?” I couldn’t quite look my father in the eye. So I stared at the mark his hat left in his hair when he took it off and wiped his face dry.
He considered. “Joshua Johnson?” he said. “Where?”
“In the Fellowship Hall. On the old Kaw
ai.”
My father, so trusting, who had no idea I had been a moment away from a kiss, nodded and said, “Take Emily with you. Make sure your own music’s done. And your chores.”
“Yes sir,” I said. Had he noticed my pink face? Did he see me blushing?
So I took Emily. She sang the simple notes Joshua played, her voice always right on key. Her voice like a butterfly, fluttering in the air above our heads.
BUT. Here is another secret. Another sin. Because I am not allowed to be with Joshua. I am not allowed to feel this way. Tingly when he looks at me. Weak when his hand is near mine. And the worst part—I couldn’t help but wonder how it would be to kiss him.
And when we did kiss, it was all my fault.
Emily in the corner with her baby doll.
Me, in the Fellowship Hall with Joshua.
On the piano bench.
Smelling the soap he uses.
Watching his hands.
Hardly thinking of music.
“This is the chord you should be playing,” I said to Joshua.
I glanced in his direction and saw him looking at me. Not at the piano keys.
“Put your hand like this,” I told him. “You have to look here.” I tapped the keyboard.
He let me move his fingers to the right position. So warm, those fingers.
“The C and E and G,” I said.
But Joshua’s hand didn’t stay where I put it. Instead, his fingers tangled up with mine. The whole side of his body leaned into me. His other arm slid around my waist.
“You can’t play the piano holding my hand. Or leaning crooked like that, either,” I said, my voice breathy. The words almost didn’t come out of my mouth. But I thought, I could kiss you right now and go to hell and it would be worth it. Worth it. I glanced around the room. Emily still played with her baby doll, humming.
“That’s okay,” Joshua said. “I can wait a minute.”
For a long moment we sat together like this. Then Joshua loosened his hand from mine and played the chord like he’d known it all along.
“Good job,” I said, his left hand resting on my hip like it was a part of me. My fingertips felt hot, like it was me who’d been playing for hours, not teaching.
“I’ve been practicing,” he said.
“Really? Good,” I said. “I’m proud of . . .”
And then I kissed him. Just fell into him right in the middle of a sentence. Pressed my lips to his. So soft. Then he was kissing me back. And I didn’t even know how to kiss, had never kissed anyone in my life but my family, and then only little pecks on the cheek.
It felt like Joshua sucked the breath from me, there on the piano bench, with all the thoughts of sin going through my head, but me not caring at all. Not at all.
“I better go,” I said, when I finally pushed away from him. My hands trembled. My knees shook.
And he said, “Don’t be scared, Kyra. I’m right here.”
IN THE DARK, I ease around the Johnson trailer. Only the Temple spire is lit up, pointing straight to heaven. Heaven—the place I cannot go now. Not now. Not with all I have done and not with what I’m thinking.
The longer I walk, the longer I try to get away from what has happened tonight, the more I realize that I have to get away. I have to run away.
“You have a month,” I say as I walk toward the Temple to wait. “A month to plan. And then go.”
__________
ON THE TEMPLE, right over the tall double doors is one large stone eye. It’s hand-carved and big as a car.
That eye watches us walk into meetings and out of meetings four hours later. It looks out over the parking lot and the Prophet’s and Apostles’ homes. It sees the Fellowship Hall and the community building and the cars that come and go. It looks toward the trailers and our gardens and the stand of trees that run back along the river. It watches people shopping in the small store owned and operated by Brother Greer.
That eye sees us all the time.
“God’s eye,” Prophet Childs says sometimes. “He sees all. He lets me know all.”
I used to dream about that eye. In my dream the eye blinked and walked around the Compound looking for something sweet to eat.
There’s a concrete stairwell that runs down the rear of the Temple. It leads to a back entrance. The door there’s always locked. It’s shaded and cool in the heat of the summer. And it’s hard to see anyone in that farthest corner, especially at night.
A chain with a sign saying DO NOT ENTER shields the stairwell. No one ever goes there.
Except,
some nights,
Joshua and I meet in that stairwell. We can’t talk because our voices echo. But we meet there. I kissed him in that stairwell so long one night, my lips felt bruised the next morning.
JOSHUA’S THERE in just a few minutes. He takes my hands and pulls me to his chest and says, “What, Kyra? What’s wrong?”
How does he know I’m scared? Could he hear it when I called his name?
At first I don’t think I can even say anything. The words are frozen in my throat. They can’t get past my tongue.
“Tell me.” His face comes close to mine. I smell his minty toothpaste. He’s so warm that the front of me feels sort of calmed down, pressed like I am to Joshua.
At last the words have thawed.
“I’ve been Chosen.”
ONE NIGHT, Joshua and I met near the Temple. No lights burned anywhere because it was after eleven-thirty. Everyone must be in bed by this time. The devil, we’ve been told, rules the night. Joshua and I shouldn’t have been out.
That night I almost laughed thinking about it all. How we shouldn’t be doing any of this. Not touching, not whispering to each other. Not spending time pressed together like we did. Does Satan rule me? I wondered. Rule my body? Is he the reason I want to stand so close to Joshua?
“Kyra,” Joshua had said, when he saw me walking to meet him. His voice, low in the dark, headed straight for me and caught me somewhere in the heart.
All the thoughts of what we shouldn’t be doing were gone.
We whispered long into the night, sitting in the shadows of the Temple. His arm was around my shoulder. I petted his face like Mother does with Father.
“I saw you today,” he said, “walking over to the Fellowship Hall with your music.”
In the dark I grinned. “You shouldn’t watch me like that,” I said.
He stretched his long legs out. Rested his head against mine.
“Tell me,” I said. “Tell me when you notice me.”
“All the time,” Joshua said. His breath was warm in the cool night air. I could hear him smiling.
“Tell me when.”
“Okay. Let me think.”
I waited, wanting to stay like this forever. I wanted to be like this in the open. In the daytime. In front of others.
“I notice you going into church,” Joshua said. “I notice your hair, how blond it is. But how in some light it looks like it has red in it. I notice the way you smell when we’re close. And the way you walk when we’re headed home from church and your family gets out of the Temple first. I notice how you are with your family and how you hold your little sisters.” He took a breath. “I’ve seen you stand out on your doorstep and look off across the desert. I’ve watched you walk toward the Compound fence and then on past that. You’ve been walking for years.”
“You’ve noticed me for years?” This I can’t believe. I’m so pleased with the thought that Joshua noticed me early on, I can hardly stop smiling.
“For a couple of years now, Kyra,” he said. “I notice you all the time.”
I slung my arms around his neck, kissed his face all over.
“Kyra,” he said and his voice was low. “Kyra, I want to Choose you.”
“What?” My voice came out high in the night. Too loud for what we were doing. Loud enough to be found out.
“I’m sixteen,” he said. “Almost old enough to make a Choice.”
I droppe
d my arms from around his neck. “Well, not for three more years,” I said.
“I’m not that far from seventeen,” Joshua said. “And two years will go fast after that. I’d work with my father. Raise money. Get us a place of our own.” He paused. Took my hands in his. “Would you let me Choose you?”
In that moment a whole line of men, old men, went past in my head. Their mouths in O shapes, their eyes wandering like hands over some of us unmarried girls.
“Would you Choose me, Kyra?” Joshua asked. His face was close to mine, his lips touching my face.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes.”
NOW JOSHUA HOLDS ME by the shoulders. “What do you mean?” he says.
I tell him everything, everything.
“Your uncle?” he says.
I nod.
“This isn’t good,” he says after a moment. “He’s an Apostle.”
We stand quiet, me leaning against Joshua, the two of us swaying.
“I have four Sundays,” I say. “Four.”
Joshua nods. “I’ll think of something,” he says.
And I believe him. For the first moment since the Prophet has made his announcement, I feel like maybe, maybe, I have a chance.
__________
IN THE MORNING I am awakened by Mother Sarah throwing up. The walls in this trailer are thin and I can hear her where I lie next to Laura, who snores beside me.
I came in late, late. No one was awake. I found a note from Father on the kitchen table. “I will talk to them, Kyra,” it said.
So now there are two people looking after me. Two people that I love.
I crawl out of bed and hurry in to where Mother is. The bathroom smells of vomit.