I'll Be You(100)

“Just checking: You ladies know you joined a cult, right?” I thought I saw an electric pulse—a flinch of painful recognition—cross some of their faces. Those twentysomethings, maybe. At least I hoped that was what it was. “No? Think about it.”

And, with that, we left.

Behind us, before the door slammed shut, I could hear the volume of the room slowly rising, voices growing hot and agitated, and then Dr. Medina barking out a single word: “Hush!”

Outside, night had finally fallen. A barn owl called out an alert as Elli and I scrambled down the path toward the front gate. The suitcase lumbered behind her, its wheels catching on the edges of the paving stones. Mosquitoes bit at our bare ankles.

I could hear voices behind us now. I knew that if I looked back I would see the women standing on the porch of the lodge, watching us leave. But no one tried to stop us; no one chased us down to force us back inside. I supposed they thought they didn’t need to. They had other means with which to bind Elli to them. But those means, I hoped, were safely ensconced in the suitcase that now wobbled from side to side behind my sister, drunk with its burden.

“You OK?” I whispered.

She didn’t answer. “Hurry,” she said. “If someone goes into the front office, we’re screwed.”

We crossed the parking lot, where the cherry-red Land Rover gleamed in the dark. Its passenger-side window was smashed, a halo of safety glass glinting on the asphalt below. The axe that had once been lodged in the wooden WigWam Woods camp sign now lay abandoned nearby.

Through the parking lot, then, and down the pitted driveway, until the iron gate finally loomed up in front of us. Here I had a sudden bump of panic—would we need them to open it for us?—but Elli simply pressed a button by the entrance, and the gate groaned open on its track. Just like that, we were outside.

It wasn’t until we were out on the road, the gate vibrating closed behind us, that we began to run. Down the hill and through the groves of oaks, past the quiet avocado farm and the chaparral scrub still blackened by the wildfires. Our sneakers slapped in the dust; our breath came fast in our chests. If I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine that we were children again, running down the trail from Rattlesnake Canyon, hand in hand, away from the rocky precipice that threatened certain doom and toward the safety of home.

Down we ran, my sister hysterically laughing, manic with her unexpected freedom, the white dress flying out like a sail behind her, and me, following in her steps for once, unsure exactly what I’d just done but praying that it was better than anything I’d done before.





34




LOOKING BACK AT OUR childhood, at those handful of years when Elli and I played at being each other, I see now that I always got the biggest thrill out of deceiving our mother. You could say I was a cruel little shit. Or that I was testing how little our mother saw and understood, for my own devious purposes. Or you could simply argue that all children grow by cutting their parents down to a manageable size. It’s only once you recognize that they aren’t superhuman, after all, that you start aspiring to evolve beyond them.

But that night, when our mother opened the door to her house and looked momentarily baffled by the sight of Elli and me standing on her front steps—her eyes flicking uncertainly from one of us to the other and back again—I felt no glee at all. Instead, I was relieved when it took her only half a beat to lock eyes with Elli and reach out a hand to draw her inside: “Good God, Elli, where on earth have you been? You said you’d be gone a weekend. It’s been two weeks!”

It was just past nine, and she was already wearing a bathrobe that she clutched closed at her chest. From the living room I could hear the sound of the television, my father’s snores intermingling with a comedy laugh track. Our mother made no comment on our matching outfits or our cultish haircuts or the blood smeared on my sister’s dress; she simply stood aside as Elli made a beeline for Charlotte’s room without answering her question. And for once I was thankful for my mother’s fear of hearing about things that she didn’t want to know. Because I didn’t want to have to explain it at all. Not yet.

But she did grip my arm as I lingered in the doorway, waiting for Elli to return with the child. “Thank you,” she said, bringing her mouth close to my ear. Her breath smelled of Riesling and popcorn. “Thank you for watching out for Elli. Thank you for bringing her back.” Then she pulled me into a tight hug as I stood there, blinking in surprise. She made a little buzzing sound in her throat, her body hitching with her breath, and I realized that she was trying not to cry. I hoped that she wouldn’t because if she did I was in danger of losing it entirely, too, and I didn’t have that luxury. Not tonight, when there was so much still to do.

But it was also in that moment that I finally understood: She did see what Elli and I were up to, and she always had, even if she had her own reasons for pretending not to notice. I might never know what those were, but it didn’t really matter, because they were hers and not mine, and so they weren’t my burden to carry anymore. I didn’t need to prove anything to her; the only person I had ever needed to convince of my value was me.

Elli reappeared in the hallway then, with Charlotte in her bunny pajamas dead asleep on her shoulder. Charlotte’s curls were damp with sweat and her mouth worked drowsily at her thumb. She looked so content there in Elli’s arms, and my heart was sick just watching them.