I don’t have to explain to Harp the slight spring in my step as we return to the car; she takes one look at me when I drop to the pavement beside her and makes a face. “Oh, Viv. Don’t you know how to play hard to get?” But Harp can never stay too unhappy when I’m happy. Despite Peter’s messiah theory and the impossible mystery of the missing Raptured, we’re both a little giddy on the ride back to Silver Lake. Harp scans the radio for something upbeat and secular, and we make do dancing away our frayed nerves to a poppy jingle for Church-brand toothpaste: “For a smile as white as the robes of Jesus!” I still feel the scratch of Peter’s bit of stubble around my mouth; I remember our kisses with a shudder of pleasure. For the first time in a long time, I realize as we park in front of The Good Book and try to compose ourselves, I feel young—sneaking out with my best friend, kissing cute boys. I feel like an actual teenager.
We slip in through the bookshop and climb up the stairs, thinking longingly of the beds waiting for us. I’m so buzzed on the night’s various surprises—we didn’t get caught! Peter’s on our side! We might have figured out the Church’s plan, and we’re going to try as hard as we can to stop them!—that I don’t notice until a split-second too late that the knob of the second-floor door is turning.
Then it is open, and Diego stands there.
Harp gasps. My mind runs through a string of weak excuses—we heard a noise? We needed some air?—but my head goes blank when Diego steps aside and I see the rest of them behind him, waiting: Winnie by the kitchen, staring stonily at the floor; Amanda beckoning us in with a manic false smile; and, worst of all, poor Robbie, slumped on the couch, red-eyed.
“Here you are!” Amanda’s voice is ice-cold. “See? Not to worry, Winnie. They were probably just taking a midnight joyride, like two average red-blooded American teens.”
“Where were you?” asks Winnie in a muffled voice, and I realize she’s been crying. “When Kimberly came to bed and you weren’t up there, we thought at first—”
“How long have you been doing this?” Diego sounds disgusted. “Robbie told us he gave you the keys a week ago, for a ‘secret’ mission I sure as hell know nothing about. What is the matter with you two? You made me swear to protect you.” He turns his dark-eyed glare on me; I have to look away. “We’re putting ourselves at risk, protecting you—this is how you repay us?”
I feel sick. I glance at Harp; she has a distant, slightly bored expression on her face. This is how she hides herself from hurt: she transforms herself into stone, makes herself impenetrable. But I feel like an open wound. I force myself to look at Robbie. Winnie’s distress would be bad enough, but Robbie—he’s trying to sit still, but I can tell by the jerky motion in his shoulders that he’s crying.
“Robbie—” I say. He looks up at me, wary and embarrassed. We’ve made a fool out of him.
“Go to bed, Robbie,” Amanda says firmly, and without a word, he gets up and pushes past us to the steps.
“Don’t punish him,” Harp says in a would-be careless voice, but there’s a pleading hitch in it that tells me she feels terrible, too. “We talked him into it.”
“He’s a soldier in this militia, and he should know better.” Amanda’s voice snaps like a rubber band; any second now she’ll be screaming.
“This isn’t a militia, lady.” Harp still sounds casual. “This is a group of people you’ve convinced to kill themselves for your personal vendetta. Don’t call them a militia just because it makes you feel better about the fact that they’re going to die.”
Winnie and Diego stand very still and show no reaction to Harp’s words. But Amanda takes a deep breath through her nose. When she speaks again, it’s with the silky smoothness of a businesswoman.
“Vivian, would you be so kind as to tell me where you were tonight?”
“Um … ” I feel Winnie watching me, willing me to give an answer that will satisfy. “Just driving around? Like you said. We’ve been—you know, we’ve been cooped up a lot, in the apartment, and we were just feeling kind of … stir crazy?”
There’s a brief moment where I think I’ve convinced her. She nods, as if taking this in, then laughs gently. But when she speaks, Amanda says, “You are frankly the worst fucking liar I have ever met in my life.” She glances down at her nails, like she’s too bored with me to even look at me. “You’re no longer welcome here. You are no longer under our protection. I’ll give you an hour to pack your bags.”
Winnie stiffens almost imperceptibly. Diego gives Amanda a sharp look.
“Amanda,” he says, “the Church of America is looking for these girls. If it finds them, they’ll be killed. We can’t just turn them out on the street.”
“Well, maybe they should be killed, Diego! Because really, what good are they doing us? We had an arrangement—they could stay so long as they built up support for violent measures against the Church. But all I see on that blog are long screeds about this idiot’s romantic woes”—Amanda sneers at me—“and dull posts about where Believers were vacationing before the Rapture. I mean, what is that shit?”
“That’s me trying to find proof that the Rapture was faked,” Harp snaps. “Something we’ll need to actually get rid of the Church of America. I know you’re not so deluded that you think this attack will actually work, so why aren’t you putting any of your resources towards finding the missing three thousand?”
“How dare you question my methods,” Amanda snarls, wheeling closer to us. “You have no actual idea of what it takes to create change in the world—you’re fucking teenagers.”
“Amanda—”
“I don’t want to hear it, Winnie! So long as the Church is looking for them, these girls are poison. This isn’t an orphanage. This isn’t a home for wayward kids. We don’t have time to raise a couple of needlessly reckless fugitives. Especially now. Because, frankly, you know—she’s not entirely wrong.” Amanda nods to Harp. “Not everyone’s going to make it out alive after the bomb goes off, and the ones that do will be on the run. I don’t intend to adopt these two once the Babysitter’s Club breaks up for good. I’m busy trying to recruit to make up for the numbers we’ll lose at the end of August.”
I clench my jaw. Amanda is right. We’re not helping her cause. If anything, her army’s protection of us has only hurt them, removing Suzy and Karen from their ranks. She’s well within her rights to kick us out, to stop providing beds and food we’ve in no way earned. Even though I am weak with fear that Diego, still standing solemnly near the door, is about to comply, I understand that Amanda is right. But still I feel a surge of anger towards her, the careless way she’s spoken of her soldiers’ lives. The numbers we’re going to lose. As if they don’t have names or faces or personalities. As if one of them isn’t my sister.
Winnie moves towards us now from across the room; she steps in front of me and looks into my eyes. Diego falls back and I realize she’s the one who’s going to do it. I’ve pushed too hard at the bond between us; I’ve let her down. Winnie doesn’t want to be my family anymore. It makes sense that, as the one who brought us under the protection of Amanda’s militia, Winnie will be the one who ushers us out of it. But still it’s hard to look into her eyes as she fixes Harp, then me, with a hard stare. Her eyes look so much like my own.
Winnie turns then, standing in front of us, shielding us from Amanda.
“These are children,” she says. “These are girls. As bright and brave as they are, they’d be in danger out there. They’d be in danger even if the Church wasn’t looking for them, and you know it. You told us when you recruited us that this would be an effort to put things right. How is this the right thing to do? Maybe it’s because you’re alone, Amanda”—her tone becomes softer, sympathetic, and I notice a muscle twitch in Amanda’s cheek; she looks furious—“but you don’t understand. We’re more than just bodies. Vivian and Harp are going nowhere.”
I glance at Diego to see if he objects, but he just frowns mildly, like he’s not sure whether or not he’s in charge anymore. Amanda glares up at Winnie, but I see the raw, confused hurt on her face. It’s hard to keep everybody’s separate threads of tragedy in my mind at a single time; it’s hard to remember that all of us, Believers and Non-Believers alike, have had something taken from us. Some invisible knot that held us all together. The knowledge that there are things worth living for. I don’t think Amanda knows that. Somewhere along the way, she’s forgotten.
“When you’re gone,” she tells Winnie after a pause, “they’re not my problem.”