“Officer Emmanuel?”

  “Yes. Sesame, I’m calling with an update. I spoke with one of the Southwest High School vice principals this afternoon, and she informed me that Micah has an excused absence until winter break starts after school next Friday.”

  “What?”

  “His parents sent in an excuse note two weeks ago, well in accordance with the ten-day minimum requirement. Apparently, Micah and his parents are headed south on an extended camping trip through winter break.”

  “That’s not true,” I say. My voice is barely audible. I clear my throat. “That’s not true!”

  Officer Emmanuel is silent for a minute. “What makes you think so, Sesame?”

  “Because it’s not true!” I cry. “They’ve been stolen! They’re all hiding in the South Compound!”

  Again I sound like I’m the one who can’t be believed. I explain to her that the Stones aren’t the camping type, that they sold their car, that they don’t have any money because the Prophet took it all, that they’ve been brainwashed, that someone made them write that note, that Micah would never miss seven days of school because he’s a good student and he loves school and he’s not like me, who wouldn’t care if she never set foot in school again and on and on and on, and Officer Emmanuel listens to me for a while, but then she interrupts.

  “Sesame,” she says. “Please, Sesame. Try to calm down. There was nothing unusual about the excuse note, and given the lack of any other red flags with the Stones, either parents or son, I’m sorry, but it appears that everything is in order.”

  I don’t answer. What can I say that I haven’t already said? In a horrible way, I can even understand why she’s not going to do anything. They’ve covered all their bases. Micah’s excused from school until after winter break. I do some quick mental arithmetic. As of today, it will be twenty-four days before school starts again and Micah doesn’t show up.

  “Please update us if you find out anything else, though,” Officer Emmanuel says when I don’t say anything. “Thank you, Sesame. Keep the faith.”

  I barely hear her. So much can happen in twenty-four days. In the hands of someone like the Prophet, twenty-four days is enough to break someone.

  7 Micah

  DEAR WORLD,

  I’m writing this missive in my head while sitting on my army cot here in the Room of Micah closet. I would write it for real, in coded notes in the Hello Kitty notebook using the Hello Kitty pencil, but I’ve stopped doing that. If someone finds them, I’d lose more infraction points. I’m already down to seventy-five.

  Prophet (holding up one of the white robes I washed and hung up to dry in the laundry room): “You call this white, Stone?”

  Me: “Well, I’d call it white-ish, Prophet. What about you?”

  Prophet: “I call it filthy. Filthy thoughts beget filthy robes beget infractions. Minus five points, Stone.”

  Me: “But wouldn’t the mind that sees filth be a filthy mind, Prophet?”

  Prophet: “Transgression. Minus another five.”

  Me (starting to say something, but interrupted by a small-voiced Sandra Stone):…

  Sandra: “Please, Prophet. He didn’t mean it.”

  Prophet: “He did mean it, Sandra. But that is why we are here in the South Compound. We are gathered together to retrain our minds and hearts in the ways of Living Lights, that we may abandon the secular world and go forth in the full knowledge of the kingdom that awaits those who adhere to the principles and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah…”

  Oh, sorry, Prophet. I lost track there. Which is probably why, you guessed it, he minused me another five infraction points.

  Did my mom protest? No. She bowed her head and put her hands together, like everyone else after the Prophet speaks. Did my dad protest when I talked to them about it later in the dining room? Not really. I mean, he frowned and shook his head, but then he said, “You’ve got to be careful, Micah.”

  “Of what?” I said.

  “Of your thoughts. Of your actions. That’s why we’re here.”

  “Is it, Dad? Could you tell me why again, exactly, it is that we’re here?”

  “To examine the way we’re living our lives, Micah. To take stock. To make sure we’re on the right path.”

  I looked down at my plate. White bread, white mayonnaise, white cheese, raw cauliflower, tapioca pudding. Why is everything white? Robes, food, walls: white. No one questions it, though. If I question it, I’ll probably get more infraction points. It’s been, what, three days? Four? I’m losing track.

  “Am I not on the right path, Dad? Is that why I’m the only one with an infractions point chart? Is that why I’m the only one living in a closet? Oh, excuse me, I mean ‘Room of Micah.’ ”

  My mother cleared her throat. “What Dad is saying, Micah, is that nothing is easy here in the compound, and nothing is meant to be easy. The harder things are, the more we are tested. The more we are tested, the truer the mettle of our character will be forged.”

  What does that even mean? She’s talking the way the Prophet talks. They’re all starting to. Even the little kids, who are all the kids except for me. There are grown-ups, and there are little kids, and then there’s me. No-man’s-land Micah. Neither here nor there Micah. No one knows what to do with Micah, except the Prophet and his sidekick Deeson seem to have a plan. It’s like they can see right through me to my jeering mind, like they anticipated my rebellion and planned for it.

  “One more infraction, Stone, and you will be placed on permanent duty in the laundry room,” the Prophet said. “You will sleep there, you will eat there, you will wash and wash and wash again until the robes of the Living Lights congregants are sufficiently white.”

  I managed not to say anything, even though his eyes were daring me to. My parents stood by anxiously—I guess they were waiting for my next infraction too—but I stayed silent, and the Prophet walked away.

  The weird thing? That the little kids down here seem to enjoy it. It’s like they’re on extended playground time even though they have chores and Reflection and Living Light training just like everyone else. But they make a game of everything, like who can eat the slowest, or who can go the longest without saying anything, or who can sing the loudest when it comes to Songs of Praise. From behind my closed closet door, I hear them whispering in their Rooms of Sleeping until way after they’re supposed to be asleep. Jerald and Krystyna have emerged as the de facto leaders of each room. Their voices travel under the closed doors of the Rooms of Sleeping and down the hall, then under my closed closet door. So does their laughter. Everyone loves Jerald and Krystyna, even the Prophet and Deeson. They even smile when they see them traipsing along the hall in their miniature white robes.

  Maybe they see themselves in Jerald and Krystyna, as leaders, as the ones the others look up to. Dream on, Prophet and Deeson. No one looks up to either of you. They might think they do—I’ve seen the way Andrea K. and Gregory M. glance at each other and nod when one of you starts in with a new lecture—but the truth? They’re afraid of you.

  They’re right to be afraid of you, but fear will keep them down. Fear will keep them doing exactly what you tell them to do, which is rise, eat, wash, reflect, chores, study, sing, eat, wash, reflect, chores, study, eat, wash, reflect, sleep. Same schedule for everyone.

  My Life as a Fake Member of a Doomsday Cult.

  Pretend Cultist.

  The Cult of the Living Lights.

  I hate my chore. I hate the laundry room. I hate its damp cold. I hate the two big steel tubs here in the laundry room: one for wash, one for rinse. Cold water only. A washboard like you see in antiques stores. Dump the clothes in the cold water, scrub them up and down the washboard. Dump them in the rinse water. Rinse once. Rinse twice. Rinse thrice. Wring them out with your hands, which, do you have any idea how hard that is? Hang them up on the lines that weave back and forth above my head. Then try to avoid the drip drip drip of gravity pulling the water out of the wet clothes down onto the cement floor. Pretend you’re writing instead of wringing out cold heavy cotton.

  Doing laundry is hell on your hands. How did washerwomen hundreds of years ago do it? My hands are cracked. They bleed. It happens faster than you’d think, especially in winter in a basement compound heated with, count them, three space heaters. You know what I’ve started doing when we eat? Spreading mayonnaise on the white bread and then scraping some off and rubbing it on my hands underneath the table. There’s no lotion, no oil, nothing else to keep the skin of my hands from breaking open.

  It’s rough. All the food is white, all the walls are white, and all the clothes are white, which is the reason for the bleach on top of the detergent. White robes. White underwear. Yeah, that’s right. I get to wash everyone’s underwear. I can’t stand this laundry room another minute right now, so I sneak down the hall to the Room of Secular Refuse. The Room of Secular Refuse has a couch, which I’m sitting on, and a table. The Prophet and Deeson use the table to display items of secular refuse, like an unopened condom and a bank debit card.

  “There is no use for these items in the South Compound,” the Prophet said at lunch. He held the condom and the debit card up in front of the whole dining room, as if they were filthy. “All items such as these will be confiscated and placed in the Room of Secular Refuse.”

  I sat there with my parents, not looking at them nor they at me. Did they think the condom was mine? Because it’s not. Neither is the bank debit card. I snuck a look at it when I slipped in here after finishing the laundry: Andrea K. What was she thinking? She and all the other adults were supposed to pool their money, like, all their money, and give it to the Prophet to use for the Living Lights Project.

  I distract myself by thinking about Sesame and our plans. We’re going to build our own raft and float down Minnehaha Creek this summer, as close to the falls as we can get. We’re going to learn how to spin fire. We’re going to build an ice sculpture for the luminaria on Lake of the Isles in February. We’re going to open a café in Minneapolis when we’re through high school, after we couch-surf around the world. It’s going to be a combination poetry café and art gallery, a place where people can come for delicious food and beautiful poems and art that they won’t be able to stop looking at. We won’t have any menu categories like breakfast and lunch and dinner because why? If something is delicious, does it matter what time of day you eat it?

  We’re working on a good name for the café. Sesame wants it to be a line from one of her favorite poems, like Let Ruin End Here or I Contain Multitudes, but I want a food name, like Grape or Onion or Mango or Potato. A simple name of a simple food that has been around forever, a food that makes you feel warm and happy when you hear it. I wouldn’t say we argue about the name, but we definitely haven’t come to an agreement yet.

  We agree on the menu, though. It’ll be small because huge menus are exhausting. As long as every option is delicious, it’s better to have only a few options. Our goal is when you taste the food in our café, you’ll want to close your eyes because it tastes so good, the way my mom closes her eyes when I put a plate of spinach lasagna in front of her. You’ll want to move into the café and live there so you can eat every meal there. It won’t be just the food, either, it’ll be the way the place feels. Like home, like you’re known and loved the minute you walk in the door. The way home should be, anyway.

  Home. That wouldn’t be such a bad name.

  Our café won’t be expensive. Plus, one day a week will be donation-based, where you pay what you want. There’ll be a basket of scrolled-up poems by the cash register so you can take one on your way out. If you’d like to paint a piece of art for us, please do, and if it’s beautiful, we’ll hang it on the wall. Our definition of beautiful is broad, so don’t worry.

  See? This is how I distract myself. I think of anything but the basement laundry room and my bleeding hands.

  Do you feel any different now, Micah, now that you’re underground?

  No.

  Really? You’re a member of a cult that’s fled to a basement compound, though, aren’t you?

  I’m not a member of the cult.

  You sure about that?

  Yes.

  You don’t feel yourself slipping even a tiny bit? All that white food? All those white robes? All that bleached underwear? I mean, it’s weird not seeing the outside world, isn’t it? What if no one’s noticed you’re gone? What if everyone believes the note your parents sent to school and thinks you’re on an extended camping trip with them?

  They won’t. Sesame won’t, anyway.

  You sure?

  Yes. I’m sure—99 percent sure, anyway.

  Then: Knock. Knock. Which jolts me out of my thoughts, because these knocks are real. Someone’s at the door of the Room of Secular Refuse, which is where I’m hiding before dinner.

  Knock. Knock.

  My heart races. Who is it? Do they know I’m in here? Did I transgress again? I didn’t, did I? I finished the laundry, I used plenty of bleach, I made sure the Prophet’s robe is especially white, I rinsed out the tubs, I made prayer hands at Deeson when I passed him in the hall, I didn’t complain about the sandwiches of whiteness at lunch. In fact, I didn’t say anything. I haven’t said anything all day.

  Knock. Knock.

  “Come in!” I yell. Is that the right thing to say? Should I have jumped up and opened the door? It’s not locked, is it? Did I lock it? Is it against the rules to lock a door?

  KNOCK. KNOCK.

  Maybe they didn’t hear me yell, “Come in!” In desperation, I jump up and open the door, which wasn’t locked. Deeson is on the other side. Deeson with his eyes that are looking deader and deader, like the Prophet’s eyes. Dead-Eye Deeson.

  “Transgression,” he says. “Minus five points.”

  “Yeah? What was my infraction?”

  “Insubordination. Not being where you are supposed to be.”

  “Which is where? I finished the laundry and it’s not dinnertime yet.”

  “Read the schedule. Reflection. Everyone else is there, including your parents.”

  “Can I ask you a question, Deeson? Mr. Deeson, I mean? I mean Acolyte Deeson?”

  His dead eyes just look at me. But he doesn’t say no, so I risk it.

  “Does that condom on the table belong to you, Acolyte Deeson? It’s not my brand, so… I was just wondering.”

  Deeson’s dead eyes flare to life, if hatred is a form of life.

  “Insubordination!” he thunders.

  I chime in with him on the next line: “Infraction!”

  And just like that, I’m down to sixty-five points.

  8 Sesame

  THE LIBRARIAN AT the checkout desk looks up at me when I pass the counter and smiles. She’s known me since I was little. My grandmother and I used to live in this library, and I mean that semi-literally. We were here for story hour, movie nights, holiday crafts, lectures, you name it. I smile back at her, a real smile, and then I push open the door to the conference room. Inky and Sebastian are already there.

  Inky’s doing that thing with her hair where she twirls a curl around and around and then lets it spring. Sebastian, who’s freakishly double-jointed, is folding one finger over the other over the other, on and on until his hands are clumped-up balls of twisted fingers. Both are habits done only when they’re anxious or upset. My stomach clenches.

  “So, Ses,” Sebastian begins, and I hold up my hand.

  “Sebastian, if you’re about to tell me that everything’s fine and that they’re on a camping trip, don’t.”

  Sebastian closes his mouth. Inky twirls another curl.

  “That excuse note is a lie,” I say. Neither one looks at me, so I say it again, enunciating each word. “A lie. They’re covering their tracks. As instructed by the Prophet.”

  Sproing goes the curl. Sebastian untwists one of his claw hands. He clears his throat.

  “How exactly do you know that?” he asks.

  “Because Micah would have told me. Did Officer Emmanuel call you?”

  He shrugs. I turn to Inky, who’s got both hands imprisoned in her curls now, one on either side of her head. “She called you, too?”

  Inky doesn’t say anything. Instead, she sproings her fingers free, reaches down into her backpack, and hauls up a lidded cup of coffee. Sester is scrawled on it. Her name for me, a combo meal of Sister and Sesame. Stupid but not, because she thought it up when we were in second grade together at Lake Harriet Elementary, and that’s a pretty smart nickname for a seven-year-old. She pushes it across to me and I cradle it in my hands beneath the table in case anyone official walks by the glass wall and sees me with it. No one ever has, but still. No beverages or food. I slip the lid off and hold it up to my nose before I take the first sip. Cappuccino. Cinnamon sprinkled across the foam. Inky knows the exact way I love my coffee: dark and strong and cinnamony.

  “You guys,” I say, “here’s the thing. I get that no one official is going to do anything, at least not yet, because of the note and the lack of any reported neglect. But you get that we don’t have that kind of time, right?”

  Last night, when I couldn’t sleep, I’d googled how long does it take to die of hypothermia/dehydration/starvation.

  “I mean, we don’t know where he is, and we don’t know what conditions he’s living under,” I continue. “A person can die of dehydration in as little as a few days. Of hypothermia in less than a day. Of starvation in less than three weeks.”

  “Okay, Ses,” Inky says. “It’s just—” I put my hand up to stop her the same way I stopped Sebastian.

  “It’s just nothing,” I say. “Are you with me here?”

  I can still see doubt on their faces. In my head I beg them: Please. Please be with me. They must sense it, because they look at each other, then at me, and they nod. Real nods.

  “Yes,” Sebastian says.

  I wait a beat, to make sure. Inky nods.

  “We’ve gotten a bunch of messages,” Sebastian says, changing the subject. “Mostly just the ‘oh that’s awful I hope you find him’ kind. A few possible sightings, but none that sound remotely like Micah.”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18