Maybe she could use that to her advantage.
“You’re to help me cook,” Rebekah offered. “Father wants you to help me in the Kitchen.”
“So you work in the Kitchen.” An idea was beginning to form in her head.
“I enjoy cooking,” Rebekah said, a trifle defensively.
Joan smiled. “Me, too.”
There was an awkward silence. She didn’t want to push, wanted to keep the two of them on her side, so she just stood there, smiling blandly, trying to ignore the heaviness in her head. Rebekah still looked suspicious, worried, no doubt, that Joan would reveal to someone the secret mushrooms growing in the closet.
“Perhaps we should pray together,” Mark suggested, closing the closet door.
“Yes,” Joan and Rebekah both agreed, and the three of them walked out to the living room, where the prayer cabinet was located.
Mark opened up the dark wooden door of the cabinet, revealing dozens of small compartments filled with scrolls. “You may choose,” he offered Joan, and she reached forward, plucking one from the top row. They knelt down together, bowing their heads, as Mark unfurled the paper and read the words:
O Lord of Heavenly Hosts! Protect me from The Outsiders. Shield me from sin and see me through times of trial and tribulation. Protect me from The Outsiders. Safeguard my friends and family from those who would corrupt us. Protect me from The Outsiders. Let Your light and goodness shine on me and mine. Protect me from The Outsiders. Amen.
Joan was silent afterward. She knew that prayer. It was the one her parents had given her when she’d gone off to school, and to her it still had power. She had no fear of Outsiders anymore—she was an Outsider now—but it seemed an appropriate entreaty for protection from an enemy, any enemy, and somehow it gave her strength.
Rebekah picked a scroll, and Mark again read the prayer. Then Mark chose a scroll and Rebekah read the prayer. All three scrolls were returned to their respective nooks, and the cabinet door was closed.
“Let us go to Chapel,” Mark said.
Rebekah shot a worried look at Joan. “You’re not going to try and run away, are you?”
“No,” Joan said, and managed to smile. “Not yet.”
Chapel was as dreadful as she remembered: the punishing stone floor, the muttering of Residents and Penitents all about her, the ever-increasing pain in her arms as she remained in worship position, her hands clasped in front of her. She hadn’t been hungry and hadn’t had to go to the bathroom, so she hadn’t had to suffer those indignities of the flesh, but the entire experience was just as brutal and grueling as it had been when she lived here.
Mark and Rebekah must have known it, because the first thing Mark said after they’d walked back to their living quarters was: “Would you like to try a piece of mushroom?” His voice was kind, but there was yearning in it, too, and she knew that that was what he wanted to do.
She shook her head. “No, thanks.” She smiled politely, but deep down she was still shocked that any Resident would do such a thing. She had been brought up strictly—no drugs, no alcohol, no caffeine—and it was a lifestyle to which she still adhered, an approach to living that had stuck, and in her mind the defection of her family was far less blasphemous than the couple’s clandestine drug use.
Although her headache was all but gone, only a slow thickness to her thoughts betraying the fact that she’d been sedated, she’d pretended at the Chapel and in the hallways on the way that she was still groggy. She’d lowered her eyes to half-mast and walked in a zombielike fashion. No one had spoken to her or remarked upon her appearance, though several men and one woman had greeted Mark and Rebekah as they passed through the Home.
Not for the first time, Joan thought about Mark’s knowing smile and what he’d said when referring to the substance that had knocked her out: “We have experienced that effect ourselves.” Something about his reaction struck her as significant, and it seemed to her that it might point the way to her escape, though at the moment she could not understand how.
It was midafternoon now, and obviously she was still feeling the aftereffects of being drugged because she felt tired. Excusing herself, she went into her old room, used the bedpan and lay down. It was weird being here again, and the superficial changes superimposed over the familiar layout of the living quarters were disorienting. She closed her eyes, intending only to rest for a few moments, but when she opened them again it was dark. For a brief, panicked second she thought she’d been drugged again, but she quickly realized that either Mark or Rebekah had closed the curtains in the bedroom and shut the door.
From the living room, she heard the clinking of knives, and the clanking of pots and pans. The juxtaposition of her groggy, dazed state and what sounded like the everyday noises accompanying food preparation caused something to click in her brain.
She suddenly knew what to do.
Excitedly, Joan pushed herself out of bed and stumbled through the darkness to the door. She pulled it open. The hallway was dark, too, but there was light coming from the living room, and she followed it.
Mark was sitting on the small couch in front of the coffee table, reading a Bible, while Rebekah was unpacking a box of cooking utensils that had obviously just been delivered. “Hey, you’re up!” Mark said in an overly familial manner, and Joan wondered if they had been discussing her while she’d been asleep and decided to go back to Father’s script.
“We’re making spicy scrambled eggs for breakfast tomorrow,” Rebekah said cheerily, and Joan’s heart sank.
She moved next to the prayer cabinet, equidistant between the two of them. “You work in the Kitchen,” she said to Rebekah. “You help cook meals for the Home. And Father wants me to help you.”
There was a slight hesitation. “Yes.”
“And you work on the Farm,” she said, turning to Mark.
“But I can’t get you out.” Mark seemed to know where she was heading. He sounded worried.
“But you know how to get outside,” Joan emphasized.
“Why are you asking this?” He was worried.
“You know why.”
Rebekah had stopped unpacking the box and stood next to her husband.
“I know how we can escape.”
They looked at each other. “We don’t want to—” Rebekah began.
“Yes, you do. If you were happy here, you wouldn’t be growing—”
“We are happy here.” Mark quickly cut her off. There was a pleading look in his eyes, and she suddenly understood. He was afraid they were under surveillance. Or he knew they were under surveillance.
She shut up. Glancing around, she searched for something with which to write. Finding neither pen nor paper, she held out her flattened left palm, then squeezed together her right thumb and forefinger and pretended to scribble. Neither of them understood her pantomime, and Joan walked around the smallish room until she finally discovered, in the drawer of a bureau, a stubby pencil next to a piece of paper containing a list of names. She tore the paper in half, took it out and placed it on the coffee table in front of them.
“I’m looking forward to helping you in the Kitchen,” she said aloud in the Language. “I’m actually a pretty good cook.” On the paper she wrote: We put mushrooms in the food.
Rebekah was shaking her head violently, but Mark looked thoughtful.
“Scrambled eggs sound good,” Joan said. She wrote: The same kind they used on me. Everyone gets knocked out and we escape.
“I like eggs, too.” Mark took the pencil from her.