The Chosen One - Carol Lynch Williams Page 0,53
morning sun, her shadow falling long on the road beside her. She is so angry I think she’ll walk right through Brother Felix. She yells in his face, just inches from him. The other officers watch her. One of them is grinning.
She comes back, hand on her gun.
“Who are they?” she says to me. She’s pulled on her sunglasses. They are little mirrors and when she turns to ask me this question, I see myself. Right there. Twin reflections. Me. Me.
“The God Squad,” I say.
I move to the side of the police car, somehow getting to the sideview mirror. The lights flash. I see them go across my body.
“Honey?” Officer O’Neil says. She touches my shoulder. “What do you need?”
I look back at her, and there I am again, in her sunglasses. Two of me. I can’t answer. I just stare at myself. It’s me in the reflection. I haven’t changed at all. Not at all. I touch my lips with my fingers, see the bruising in the morning light, see my mouth trying to heal. I can hear the radio crackling in the police car.
How can this be?
I was sure, sure, I had changed. Sure of it, that only the new me would run. That if I saw me, I would be different. Sure only the new me would have been able to get away. The hollow places inside me start to fill up.
“Honey,” Officer O’Neil says, “come sit down.” She points to the backseat of the police car and I slip inside.
“What is it?” she says.
I look at her—look at me—and say, “I’m still here.”
“What?” She raises the glasses. Her eyes are dark brown.
“I thought. . .” I’m not quite sure what I thought. “I thought they might have killed me, too.”
With a gentle hand Officer O’Neil touches my face. “No, honey,” she says. “You’re safe now.”
I TELL THE DETECTIVES all of it, every single bit, even though my heart feels like it will give out the way it pounds. I tell about the Lost Boys and Bill and Ellen. All about Patrick and the graves of the unwhole children. I tell them about the beatings and the book burnings and how the girls are saved for the old men. I talk and talk until my throat burns when I sip down the orange juice they give me. I talk through tears and sometimes I’m so angry my head hurts.
After I tell them what I know, the police say I’ll be going to a safe house.
“A safe house?” I say to Officer O’Neil as we head off. I remember Joshua saying something about a safe house. Will he be there? It’s dusk and the streets are full of cars, the sidewalks full of people. Are they headed to their homes, all of them? Everything aches from my crying and talking and crying and talking.
Officer O’Neil looks at me, then she reaches for my hand.
“A place where you’ll be safe, Kyra,” she says. She clears her throat. “There’s a warrant for Mark Childs and some of those other thugs.”
By thugs she means the God Squad.
We’re quiet a moment.
“The Chosen have come here before,” she says, flipping on her blinker. We turn and chase the headlights down the road. “To Samantha Oberg’s.”
“What?”
“When polygamists run, we sometimes put them up in this house. At least for a day or two. Or until we can get them settled into the foster-care system.”
“Oh.” I look out the window. Foster care. Is that where Joshua ended up? Do the Lost Boys stay with this Samantha Oberg? We drive for a while. The radio in Officer O’Neil’s car talks to her and to other people. I don’t have to say anything.
The sky changes into an almost purple-blue. There are lots of houses lining the streets out here. Less city. More country, it seems. Some homes are big, some smaller. But nearly all of them have their lights on. The light falling out of the houses like that makes my heart hurt more. I miss my family. For a moment I see Laura in my mind, see her with her hand up as I drive away.
Officer O’Neil pulls into a driveway of a house that has a porch across the front and down both sides. A woman leans against the rail. A girl stands beside her. But there is no Joshua. No Joshua.
“That’s Samantha,” Officer O’Neil says. “We told her about you and she told me she couldn’t wait to meet you.”
She’s to us before the