the torments the Prophet had described to us, Sundays without end. The stench of boiling tar. The screams of the damned. The Devil, nine feet tall and grinning, sending out his dark energy like a cloud and pulling our souls from our writhing, naked, burning bodies.
I didn’t believe it. I didn’t. But standing there with Uncle Aaron before me—I nearly did. My flesh was already shrinking, my soul shriveling. And still, I stood.
“Chastity,” he’d said, seeing me, speaking to me, even though I was damned. Even though I was dead.
“D-Daisy,” I somehow had the courage to answer. “I have a … new name. And you can’t make me go back. Nobody can. I won’t go.”
He looked down at the ground and sighed, then looked up, his blue eyes mild, and said, “How are you? And Dutiful?”
“D-Dorian,” I said. “We’re … well. Going to school. We’re well.”
He sighed again, then said, “Let’s get a coffee.”
That shocked me even more. We didn’t use caffeine at Mount Zion. Caffeine was like alcohol, an intoxicating substance. On the other hand, I was damned already, and I’d found I quite liked coffee.
He didn’t ask me where I wanted to go. I wasn’t surprised. He took me, though, to a bright, friendly place with gleaming brass lights and seafoam-green walls, with a menu written on a chalkboard and open wooden tables, and when we were sitting there, he didn’t comment on my jeans or my bare arms or my strappy sandals or my makeup or my hair, which at the moment was a messy cross between a bob and an undercut, with the longer hair swept over on one side. Instead, he said, “Tell me about school.”
I did. Haltingly. How I was studying chemistry and physics, and how next year, I’d be doing biology. I said it and waited, half-trembling, half-defiant, for him to tell me I was wrong. That I was nothing. That I had to come back, where my duty lay, because I knew in my heart that it was right. Instead, he said, “And Dutiful?”
“Dorian,” I said again.
“Dorian,” he repeated. “What is he doing?”
“Maths,” I said. “Physics with me, and calculus, and geometry, because he missed it. And the other subjects. He’s going to University.” I took a breath and said it. “We both are. I want to be a nurse. Or …” Another breath. “A doctor.”
He nodded and took a sip of his coffee. I hauled on every bit of courage I had and asked, “How are Mum and Dad? How are the kids?”
“Well,” he said.
“Will you tell them you’ve seen me?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
I sat there, and after a minute, he pulled out his phone, an item that wasn’t allowed at Mount Zion except for the very few, and said, “If you give me your number. I’ll put it in under ‘Daisy.’ In case you need me.”
Now, I told Gray that, and said, “It was so hard to give him that number. It felt like they could reel me back in, but I must have wanted the connection, because I did it. I didn’t contact him often, though, and Dorian didn’t contact him at all. He was ashamed, I think. I think he still is. Thinking about it hurts him, so he doesn’t think about it. I can’t do that. I can’t escape reality. Reality is here.”
We were nearly to the house now. I would have turned in, but Gray said, “Another kilometer, and we’ll see that beach. I’d like to show you that beach.”
“Oh.” I’d completely forgotten. I was shaky, but I was still running. You couldn’t outrun pain and uncertainty, but you could run until you could stand the pain and live with the uncertainty, so that was what I did.
“And Fruitful and Obedience?” Gray asked. “How did you work that out?”
I said, “I’m going to tell you something. It’s the biggest secret. If Gilead knew, if my father knew, if the Prophet knew, I’d …” And then my blood ran cold, because of course they knew. Of course they knew, now.
Gray asked, “What?”
I swallowed and said, “Birth control. I’ve been providing it.”
Gray laughed and said, “Doesn’t sound so bad.”
“You don’t understand,” I said. “It’s disobeying God’s will. It’s encouraging women to be defiant. It’s the worst thing I could have done, and now, they know.”
“The Punishment Hut,” Gray said. “Fruitful.”
“Yes. That was why we had to go before we were ready, or rather—before she and Obedience were. Leaving’s a big step. She wanted to go, but Obedience