An Honest Lie(33)

“You were welcoming our new family members.”

“That’s right,” he said, locking his eyes on to hers. “And what were you doing?”

She shrugged, trying to flatten her tone, but her heart was racing. “I left dinner early. I didn’t eat because I’m fasting. I didn’t want to be tempted, you know?”

He seemed to consider this for a moment, and then in a gentler tone, he said, “Was your mother upset that you were fasting?” His eyes were scanning back and forth across her face like he was trying to read her.

“I don’t know,” she lied. She tried to look bored.

“Come with me,” Taured said, his eyebrows raising in concern. “I think we need to have Doc look you over.”

Her head jerked away from the wall. “I’m fine,” she said. She didn’t like Sara’s father; his eyes and hands lingered where they shouldn’t.

“It wasn’t a suggestion, Summer.”

“Okay,” she said. She would have said anything he wanted in that moment; she just wanted out of that room with its pressing walls and suffocating air. Feeling small and afraid, she ducked her head in shame to hide her tears.

“Can I call my mother?”

He didn’t answer. She fell into step behind him. He was walking quickly, like he wanted to be done with her. Summer had never felt lonelier than in that moment, following a man who meant her harm—who meant her mother harm. When he was speaking to Sammy, he’d sounded like a different person. Summer had the urgent idea that maybe it wasn’t Taured all along; maybe she’d just thought it was Taured and she’d been listening to someone else entirely. Her hope fizzled out when she remembered that Sammy had called him by name. Just yesterday morning she’d trusted him, probably more than she trusted her mother. How long had her mother known that her daughter was a traitor, ready to rat her out? She was as bad as Sammy. The shame Summer felt was consuming. She could barely look at Taured now. When had she made him her most important person? Her mother said they were to be foreigners in this land, but here she was, lapping up the hometown honey.

Mama, help me. Summer could try to summon her mother all she wanted, but she was not there.

Summer was alone.

Taured stopped walking and faced her. Summer looked around. She’d been so focused on her thoughts that she hadn’t been paying attention to where they were going.

They were in the hallway, near his office, but he’d walked past it. Only two doors stood on this side of the hallway, which dead-ended at a brick wall. Taured opened the closest one. He stood with his hand on the knob, smiling at her.

“Go on in,” he said. “I’m going to get Doc.”

Fear drove her feet forward, through the doors and into—

Darkness.

She looked back at Taured and for a second he smiled. Then the door closed.

Summer was alone in the dark.



11


Then
A year later


“You swing like a rookie, Summertime.”

Her name sounded wet in his mouth. She didn’t like it when he called her that anymore.

Her hands gripped the bat, her breathing hitching in terror as she stood over home plate; she wouldn’t look at him, but she could always feel his eyes as they probed. It was a sixth sense she wished she hadn’t acquired on that terrible afternoon a year ago. Since the day she’d overheard his conversation with Sammy, everything had been...different. The change was noticeable to everyone; she’d gone from being attentive and eager to sullen and rebellious overnight.

“We don’t have all day.” He scratched his chin, eyes narrowed, focused on her.

She took the stance he’d taught her, and it pained her to do so—to obey him—even if it were something she cared little about, like softball. Softball was merely the newest way he’d found to torture them. Before that, Taured had become obsessed with the chemicals companies were putting in food: he made lists of bad foods and good foods, posting what they were and were not allowed to eat on the doors of the dining hall.

“Isn’t that very Luther of him?” her mother had mumbled when she first saw them nailed to the door. As the weeks went by, Taured had added to the list, saying that anyone who ate what was on them would be sent to isolation, insisting they work together as a community to bring about change in their own bodies. The list grew and their meals shrank. For three months they ate one meal a day consisting of nothing but broths and the vegetables they grew at the compound. Taured called it detox fasting. The crux: people started passing out, falling down while they worked outside, malnourished and dehydrated from the laxatives he made them take. When productivity went down, the food came back, this time in the form of potatoes, which they also grew themselves. When he got something in his head, Taured’s obsession would overtake the compound.

They were less hungry than a year ago, but as his focus shifted to softball, he was learning more creative ways to break their bodies.

He’d keep Kids’ Camp on the field behind the compound from sunrise to long past dark, suspending schoolwork, with no exception for the heat. They sat beneath the unrelenting sun, waiting for their turn to be “conditioned.” She heard the boys refer to their long days of softball as boot camp. They woke, they ate, they ran two miles in the desert, and after that Taured would have them work out in the obstacle course he’d created, having them do sit-ups and push-ups at various points until it was time to break into teams and play softball. In the evenings, they’d have more games, during which the parents would gather to watch. Most everyone was pretty okay at it, but there were a couple kids who largely sucked. Summer was one of them, and she was on this week’s rotation of humiliation.