“I mean, Nell was the special one. The rest of us…we didn’t protect each other. We told on each other, as a matter of fact. But we all protected Nell. I was closest to Lizbet, though.”
“Where is Lizbet now?”
“My father wasn’t a monster.” Jonah stops. We are in the middle of a glade, and it’s cooler here. He picks up a pine branch and begins to strip the needles. “I don’t want you to think that. He and my mother left San Francisco because they didn’t like the atmosphere there. Everyone thought they were weird for having twelve kids. So they moved to the foothills of the Sierras for a while. I remember that. I was ten when we moved here. He said the family was the core of society, and if we made the perfect family, we could show the world how to live. He really believed that. Perfection was everything to him. He encouraged all of us to reach our potential. He shipped in my computer stuff. It wasn’t like he didn’t want us to succeed. He just wanted us to be special.”
“Is your dad still alive?” I ask.
He looks around vaguely. He scratches his arm with the tree branch. His skin is pale, as if he never goes outside in the summer. He has a face people wouldn’t remember. He’s not handsome, but he’s not bad-looking. There’s no distinguishing feature in his face. Everything is in proportion, everything makes sense. But his eyes don’t focus on the world.
“I don’t see any of them now,” he says.
Jonah is speaking to me now as an adult. I realize that this is why I felt such a disconnect with him. I remember him on the boat. It’s solar-powered! I’m glad you can come over! Sometimes he speaks like a teenager. And sometimes he speaks like he is, like a man. He slips from one to the other.
“I just want you to have a nice meal,” he says to me, with such simple directness I suddenly wonder if I’m the one who’s crazy, and he’s completely sane.
“You said you’d bring me back if I didn’t want to stay.” I figure I can at least try this when he seems so reasonable.
He cocks his head and smiles. “But you haven’t given us a chance.”
“I’m not Dora,” I tell him. “I don’t have an alcoholic mother. I’m not looking to be saved.”
He nods. “But you belong here anyway. Don’t you?” He takes a step closer to me, and I step back. “There’s a hole in you,” he says. He touches my collarbone, and I try to control my instinct, which is to shudder. But the touch is light and fleeting. “Here. Inside you. I can see it. You’re like me. All of you, you’re all like me.”
“There’s a lot of pain here,” I say.
“That’s why this will work. All it takes is time.”
He starts walking again, and I follow as if tethered to him on a string. We break through the trees into a clearing.
The garden hasn’t been weeded or watered. Some of the tomatoes have fallen off the vine and lie on the ground, split and rotten. Flies buzz over the pulp. Jonah stands, hands on his hips, looking at it. He begins to slap his thigh rhythmically.
“They were supposed to take care of this.”
“It’s not so bad,” I say.
“We’re all supposed to work together for each other.”
“There’s some nice tomatoes left.”
“We’re supposed to help each other.”
His voice is strained and cracking. He is slapping his thigh harder now, slapping it with the branch he still holds in his hand. I start to back up.
“We’re supposed to work together!” he screams. “How is this going to work if they don’t listen! It’s all their fault, and they won’t try hard enough, and it’s all about that, isn’t it? We have to share. If only they could see that. How much harder can I try? They make me sick, they make me so mad!”
I have heard this voice before. I have heard this rant in my vision. I have seen this dark energy spill over in a torrent, and it is scarier in person.
He throws down the branch and picks up the hoe. He begins to hack at the garden, the tomato plants, the lettuces, the herbs, slamming the hoe into the ground, into the plants, over and over. Tears are running down his face. The hoe is flying in the air, a weapon now.
The rage came on so fast. How could I have not realized how dangerous he was? The danger was there, beneath the surface, beneath the khakis and the glasses and the smile.
I turn and run. I run through the forest, afraid he is following me, but I am alone with the whispering trees. I hear my breathing, frantic, and my footsteps on the hard ground. My footsteps pound out what I already know:
I have to find a way out.
TWENTY-EIGHT
I run straight into Jeff. Literally. I bounce off him and fall.
“Where’s the fire?” he says.
The fire…the fire! I see it then, I see the house burning. But is it in the past, or the future?
I can’t tell.
“What’s the matter with you?” he asks, crouching over me.
“He went crazy,” I say. “In the garden. He’s destroying it. You didn’t take care of it while he was away.”
Jeff shrugs. “It’s hard to remember everything he wants us to do.”
“You don’t understand. He’s out of control!”
“He gets like that.” Jeff pulls me to my feet. “Then he sort of shuts down for a while and disappears into the woods. That’s the good part. I think he’s afraid he’ll hurt us.”
“But what if he does?”
His face hardens. “I’m not afraid of him.”
“Why don’t we all just jump him? Take that swipe card—I saw it in his pocket. We can get to the boat—”
“Shut up,” he says.
“We can get out of here!”
“Shut up,” he says. His gaze is flat and hard. “Shut your mouth and keep it shut and follow the rules. You don’t know crap. We’re in the middle of nowhere, man. We’ve got it good here.”
“You’re just as crazy as he is.” I try to push around him, but he grabs me by the upper arm.
“I’ve lived in a lot of places,” he says. His grip is tight. “My dad is an addict. So I get bounced around every time he’s in rehab. Or jail. Jonah is a meal ticket, and this is five-star dining. Got it?”
“I’ve got news for you,” I say. “You’re the one who’s in jail.”
His face tightens. “He’s not around all the time. When he’s not, Torie and I are in charge. I’d think about that, if I were you.” He squeezes my arm until it hurts, and then he keeps on squeezing. I try to twist away, but it just hurts more.
Finally, he drops my arm, but he keeps his eyes on my face. I’m trembling, and my arm is on fire. I walk past him, trying not to run.
Inside, I stop in the kitchen and splash water on my face. I take deep breaths, trying to get my focus back. Jeff’s words return.
Then he sort of shuts down and disappears into the woods…
He’s out there now, roaming in the woods, trying to get his control back. It’s now or never. I have to try it when Jonah is here, because if I can get out of the house and past the wall, I’ll need the boat. I can’t rescue everyone, but I can get Emily and maybe Kendall. Once we get to the police, they can save the rest.
For a second, I waver. I think of pudgy Ruthanna at the dinner table, shoveling ravioli into her mouth. There is a sadness in her that is total. And Eli, and Maudie. They’re only eleven or twelve. How can I leave them?
I have to leave them. It’s the only way to get out of here. It’s the only way to save them.
There are no sharp knives in the kitchen, only butter knives, but I take one, along with a fork.
The other wing of the house is Jonah’s. It’s separated from the rest of the house down a long hallway. The door is locked, of course. I kneel, examining the lock, but I don’t know why. I don’t know anything about lock-breaking. I try to stick the blade of the knife in between the door and the lock. I push and push. Nothing.
A shadow looms behind me and my heart leaps into my throat.
“If you open it, an alarm will go off.
The place is wired.”
It’s Hank, one of the twins who aren’t twins.
I slump against the door. “Oh.”
He’s eating a carrot stick. He waves it at the door. “You’ll never be able to break the lock that way, anyway. You can’t use a butter knife to break a lock.”
“You know this?”
“I’m handy. My dad is a carpenter.”
The words cause him pain. I see a man in a room. Sitting in a chair. Dogs surround him, licking at empty bowls.
Hank shakes off the emotion. He crunches into the carrot. “Anyway, I’ve been in there. He needed help once, there was a busted pipe in his bathroom and he couldn’t fix it by himself. He needed someone with small hands. I’m good with my hands. There’s a control panel in his bedroom. I saw it. But you need his swipe card to get inside. There’s controls for everything. The shutters, the main power switch. There’s a generator and a backup generator. The swipe cards work on batteries, so even if the power goes out, the doors stay locked unless he opens them. He’s thought of everything. Even if you got in that room, there’s nothing you could do.”
“There’s got to be something. A phone…”
“He doesn’t bring his cell inside. He keeps it in the boat.”
“The wall…”
“It’s electrified, didn’t he tell you?”
“So help me break into the room, and we’ll turn off the power.”
Slowly, he shakes his head. “I’m not rocking the boat.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. “I don’t understand any of you.”
“That must be because you come from a place you want to get back to,” Hank says. He shrugs.
“What about the other kids?” I ask. “What about the young ones, like Eli and Maudie? Don’t they deserve better than this?”
Hank pops the rest of the carrot in his mouth. “Don’t you get it? We’re all in this alone.”
He hears a noise and he freezes in fear for a moment. It is the back door opening. Jeff coming back, maybe. I don’t care. But Hank does, and he quickly and silently moves down the hall.
I lean against the door for a moment. I have felt pain before that made me rock and howl. And I have felt trapped in a deep hole of sorrow with no way out. But this is different. This is horror wrapped in a normal package. This is knowing that the worst isn’t behind me. The worst is ahead.
And I’m the only one who cares.
TWENTY-NINE
That night it rains, a hard, steady rain that drums on the roof insistently. We eat our meat loaf in silence. Jonah is distracted, as though he is listening to voices from far away.
He is.
Every so often his fork drops to his plate with a clink, and he sits, staring into nowhere.
Torie and Jeff glare at all of us, keeping us in line. The threat of violence hangs over us, impossible to misinterpret. I’m not sure what they’d do, but I’m sure they’d do it. They are the most desperate of all of us. They’ve lived on the streets. They want this safe berth. They want the food, and the clothes, and the warm bed. For them, this place is their future. The only future they can see. It was no accident that Torie had mentioned Jonah’s money right away to me. She would do anything to protect her status here.
Torie directs us to clear the table, moves us with shoves when Jonah isn’t looking. Everyone is quieter tonight. They move fast and efficiently. Jeff hovers over us in the kitchen, watching us put food away, stick the dishes in the dishwasher. Jonah stays at the table.
As we’re getting ready for bed, Kendall whispers to me, “He doesn’t like the rain.”
“Whoa, is he living in the wrong part of the country,” I say.
She twists her mouth as if it’s been so long since she smiled that she doesn’t remember how.
We all go to bed, and the house is silent except for the clamor of rain. When I see the flashlight, I freeze. I’m remembering Jonah outside in the garden, slashing at the plants, the sharp edge of the hoe coming down and scoring the earth. But I slip out of bed. The flashlight tracks me as I move toward him.
“Go back to bed,” he says. He looks glassyeyed, and he’s perspiring. His hair is matted to his forehead.
“I’m afraid of the rain,” I say.
His gaze doesn’t stop; it just keeps roaming.
“I needed to check on Nell. Is Nell all right?”
“She’s fine,” I say. The light rests on Emily. I know she is awake, but her eyes are closed. She has drawn herself up into a tight little ball underneath the covers.
“Go to sleep,” he says to me, but there is no force behind his words. He’s not aware of me, really. He’s looking at Emily.
He looks with a hunger that frightens me. He looks capable of anything.
I sag with relief when he turns and leaves the room. What I want is to crawl back into bed.
What I do is follow him.
He passes through the dark playroom and into the living area. He sits on the couch and takes off his glasses. His head falls into his hands. I don’t say anything. I don’t try to hide. I stand in the darkness, watching him.
“My head hurts,” he moans.
There is a flash, but it isn’t lightning, it’s another vision. I am so open to them now, it’s like the boat locks in Seattle, the water rushing in, filling the compartment, and everything rising with it. Only here, it is the past. I think it is because Jonah lives with the past. I can pick it up so easily from him.
It is Nell, I see now.
Nell is sick, very sick.
The father stands in the doorway. He won’t let the mother go in.
I can hear the voices, but nobody’s mouth moves.
They are frozen like statues.
The human body is perfect, I hear. It is Jonah’s voice. I am hearing the memory through Jonah. She has received the right caloric input, the correct balance of nutrients. Her body will fight this without our help.
The mother is crying silently. Her hands are tightly clasped, as if she thinks that by taking on the posture of begging but not speaking, he will somehow listen to her.
Jonah stands behind them, the oldest boy.
Father. Dad. We can use the radio.
She needs no help.
He closes the door.
The vision fades.
“You wanted to help her,” I say to Jonah.
His head is still in his hands. “I wanted to.”
“You wanted to call for help on the radio.”
“I did want to!” He raises his head, and his face is streaked with tears. His pale skin is wet and glows in the darkness. I can smell him now. He is sweating. “I sneaked in to see her. She was so sick.”
I see him again. It is Nell he is carrying in the rain.
He didn’t kill her.
She was already dead.
“You tried to get help,” I say. “You tried to get her to the boat.”
“I thought…if I could get her to the mainland. To a hospital.”
“It wasn’t your fault she died, Jonah.”
“It was her birthday. She was thirteen. She was excited about that. About being a teenager. Being one of the older ones. Every birthday we thought, I am closer to getting out.”
He curls up in a ball, resting his head on his elbow. “You know how when someone you love dies? It’s like running into a wall. You bang your fists against it because you can’t believe it’s real. You can’t believe you won’t see that face again. You can’t believe you won’t hear that voice. You can’t believe it.”
“I know,” I say. I swallow against a throat suddenly dry.
He looks up at me without moving. “You do know.” In the dim light, I can see only the gleam of his eyes.
“Tell me,” he says, and I know immediately what he wants me to say.
It is like the storm outside is inside me, and if I open my mouth it will rush out in a flood. This is the moment, this is it, this is the time when I must say it, crazily enough, on this nowhere island, to t
his crazy man full of pain.
I open my mouth. I feel something crack inside me like ice. Then the words come. “My mother is dead.”
“How?”
“A car crash. She got caught between a semi and a truck. The truck was carrying oranges.”
I can taste it suddenly, orange in my mouth. Jonah rises to a sitting position, his eyes on my face, not leaving. I have never felt so listened to before. He is listening with his whole body. He is eager to hear. He wants to fill up on my pain, he wants to know it. He wants to share it.
No, he doesn’t want to share it.
He wants to take it for himself. He wants to own it.
And I want to give it away.
“The oranges rolled all over the road. She was…she was choking to death. On her blood. The oranges…I can’t see it. But I smell it. I smell it sometimes. I taste it. I can’t eat oranges. I can’t even smell them. The smell makes me sick.”
My mouth still open, I start to cry. The tears run into my open mouth. I collapse on the couch across the room from him. My sobs are so strong they wrench my belly. I reach for a pillow and grab it, slam it on my knees and push my face into it to cry. I’ve done this before. I know what to do with this kind of tears.
I thought this kind of crying was over.
It will never be over.
I almost feel a kinship with him now. Jonah knows that the grief that marks you never leaves. What haunts you, haunts you. Just when you think it lets go, it comes back with teeth and claws.
“I asked her not to go,” I say into the pillow.
“You couldn’t have stopped her.”
“That’s what people say. But they don’t know. I could have.”
I lift my head. The pillow is wet. I am lying in a stain of my own tears.
I look at the damaged man across the room. I want to say, I am damaged, too.
I don’t have to. He already knows it.
He crawls over to me. He lifts my chin so that we are at eye level. His gaze is tender.
Now I smell the burning again, and this time I see the house on fire and the children running. A window blows out, the glass flying into the night air.
His face is close. His eyes unfocus. His whisper is anguished and hushed and for my ears alone. “I don’t want to do it, Lizbet. Help me.”