An Honest Lie(40)

The bathroom emptied out three times over. She walked the area twice, scanning every face she passed. She checked the two coffee stands and the ticket counter, where the man with the sausage fingers had helped them. There was no sign of Lorraine. Summer tried to remember the gate number from the tickets. Maybe her mother had gone there. But even as she thought it, she knew it wasn’t true; her mother would never leave her, especially not during a time like this. Going back to the board, she searched for the departures to Albuquerque and found that their flight had left ten minutes ago. Summer tried not to cry, but it was all too much. She did another lap of the airport, past the flashing, pinging slot machines, and past tourists in brightly colored shirts, wearing their vacation faces. She could smell coffee and the sweet aroma of baked goods mixed with a man’s cologne.

Where was her mother? This felt like a nightmare within a nightmare, Summer thought, like a Stephen King book she had snuck back from Red’s one time. This felt like when her dad had died and she didn’t know what to do with her hands or face, because nothing made sense. She had no money, no way to make a phone call—and who would she call, anyway? She didn’t even know her grandparents’ phone number. She wandered outside, back to the trash can where her mother had deposited the gun. She stood there for a good few seconds before she noticed the man standing against his car, looking at her. He was casual, arms crossed over his chest, his glasses reflecting the activity of the drop-off. It was Taured.

She sat in the back seat of his car, the BMW she’d stolen the photos from. Her mother sat beside her, pale, her hair tangled and her lip swollen. When Taured pushed Summer into the back seat of the car, Lorraine had looked at her daughter with scared, wet eyes, but didn’t say anything. Summer quietly folded herself into the seat, eyeing the police officer who was watching traffic a few yards away. Could she jump out and run to him? Would Taured drive away with her mother if she did? Would he be arrested? She looked at her mother, who was breathing nosily from the seat beside her. She was hurt. Then the car was moving, and it was too late to do anything. Summer reached across the leather seat to hold her mother’s hand.

They grabbed her by the arms, fingers digging into her thin flesh as they pulled her from the back seat of the car. She didn’t cry out in shock or pain but kept her posture rigid as she watched them do the same to her mother. They dragged her through the prison kitchens and toward the courtyard outside. The courtyard was an eight-by-ten concrete block, fenced in on three sides. It had a drain in the center and a waterspout low on the wall. It stood to the side of the prison and ran along a steep gully. Someone had told her that they slaughtered the livestock there.

She didn’t resist when the sisters stripped her, leaving her naked aside from her panties. It was too hot to shiver, too bright to hide. The elders started to arrive, Taured’s most faithful, most likely not to question him. She saw them through the diamonds in the fence: bodies surrounding the cage to witness her shaming. She couldn’t look at their faces; if they wanted her to feel shame, she did. It was so great she touched her chin to the hard bone of her clavicle and let her hair hide what it could. Standing above the drain, Summer knew Taured would appear at any moment. She knew what was about to happen. She’d heard about this punishment, heard about the humiliation that some of the adults had to endure in their path to righteousness. She’d always felt separate, better than those people.

Now, she was displayed like a thing, not a person—Taured’s thing. She couldn’t see Kids’ Camp, but she could hear the younger kids playing on the equipment, their squalling and their laughter making happy noises. She couldn’t see her mother. She imagined they were keeping her in one of the solitary rooms. Until it’s her turn, Summer thought, buckling under the nausea of this thought. She dropped to her knees, her bare skin digging into the grate as she heaved above it. She would rather do this a hundred times over than know her mother had to stand in front of these pigs. But nothing came: no vomit, only contempt. She stood up, hid behind her hair.

Her mother wasn’t here to protect her and neither was her father, who had died and allowed this to happen. But she wasn’t afraid, no. Taured had already pushed the fear out of her, and now there was nothing. She was a void; you couldn’t frighten something that didn’t exist.

Marshall Carruthers, one of Taured’s goons, was attaching the hose to a spout, making sure to keep his eyes on her body. Taured stood in the doorway, filling it up. Marshall handed him the hose and stepped back.

The water stung her skin, especially her breasts, where it hit her hard as rocks. She struggled to stay upright, her body bending under the pressure. But she’d heard that was the important part: if you could stay upright during a cleansing, the punishment was less severe. The water sprayed in her eyes, her nose, her mouth—it felt like it was being driven up into her brain. She coughed, bending at the waist, and almost toppled when the spray hit her face. There was no more hair to hide beneath; it was plastered like fat leeches to her back and arms. She heard the school bell and thought about screaming.

Why didn’t anyone think this was wrong?

And then it was over. She’d stayed on her feet, but as soon as the water stopped, her knees gave out. Marshall threw a blanket over her shoulders and Dawn pulled her to her feet as she trembled. Taured was gone. But if he was punishing her, he wasn’t punishing her mother.

They took her to isolation.