“Fast and ask for forgiveness. Your transgressions can’t be hidden from God,” she said darkly.
Then she closed the door. The lock sliding into place. I didn’t know when she would return. Most likely not until morning. I was left alone. With no way out.
I felt like screaming.
But I wouldn’t.
I sat back down on the bed, pangs of hunger making me feel ill. I would have to ignore them as I had done many times before. I pulled the Bible from the bedside table and opened it. Yet, I didn’t read the familiar words. It felt heavy in my lap. It’s weight pulling me down.
In a fit of anger, I threw the Bible across the room. It hit the opposite wall and fell, open and face down, onto the floor.
The guilt was instantaneous. I scrambled across the floor on my knees to pick it up. But I wouldn’t open it again. I couldn’t.
Not tonight.
Not here, in my home, made prison.
I carefully put it away and then pulled out the hidden book beneath my pillow. I unfolded the piece of paper and flattened it with my hand, tracing the pencil lines with my finger.
My hands shook as I turned to the first page. My eyes burned but I would not cry.
Instead I read the story Bastian had given me.
And I found solace in it.
“Come on, D, get up.” I pulled the covers off David like I used to do when we were kids. When I’d run into his room and jump on the bed trying to wake him up.
Back then he’d sweep my legs out from underneath me and hit me in the face with a pillow.
Now…he just laid there. Curled into a ball, his eyes closed, refusing to open them.
He’d been like that most of the day.
Part of me wanted to join him. Hide under the covers and hope that when I decided to come out again I was tucked into my bed at school. Far away from this insane reality I found myself in.
I hated The Retreat. I felt confined. Restrained. Even though it was situated on a goddamned mountain, I had never felt so claustrophobic in my life.
Every moment of the day was monitored. It was obvious that going to the waterfall was a one-time thing. I felt watched now. More than before.
I knew that Pastor Carter didn’t trust me. Eyes were on me every second of every day. Reporting back to their venerable leader.
Stafford and Bobbie kept me busy. Asking me to help them fix the fencing that circled the one-hundred-acre property. It had taken up all my time. Bobbie was quiet. He spoke even less than Dave but I liked him. He was one of the few who didn’t look at me like I was a bomb about to go off. And Stafford spent most of the time criticizing my hammering skills. Which, admittedly were quite poor.
David hadn’t joined us. He had been sequestered away with Pastor Carter since a few days after going to the waterfall. Two of the elders, the ones I recognized from the day in the woods, would come and get him after breakfast and then bring him back just before curfew.
We were adults and we had a fucking curfew. It was nuts.
I had barely seen my brother. Let alone talk to him.
Yet, in the small increments of time we were together I could tell that his mood had altered completely.
I had felt slightly hopeful at the waterfall. David had seemed almost how he used to be. He smiled. He made jokes. He had thrown me, headfirst, into the river. I attributed a lot of that to Anne. Her presence was obviously helping him. They clearly liked each other.
But then we came back from our brief trip into the woods and it was like a hammer dropped. Sara had asked if Pastor Carter had spoken to us. He hadn’t said so much as a word to me since that day. It was as though he was avoiding me completely.
Yet his time with David increased dramatically.
It was more than obvious that our time at the waterfall hadn’t gone unnoticed. And that it wasn’t viewed favorably.
