I meant what I said to George about family, but right then my family didn’t feel like the safest place. All of us children were in the yard that afternoon trying to organize pieces to take to the market that Saturday. But instead of working together, we were falling apart.

Delvive had been trying to spruce up a dresser for over an hour, but she kept falling into spaced-out reveries. Hannan was spending more time scowling and grunting at her than doing any actual work.

He snorted in disgust. “Del. No one is going to buy that thing. It’s moldy. Once you get mold, it never goes away. It’s just going to eat the whole thing up.”

“You should know, Mr. Athlete’s Foot,” she spat back.

Hannan mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like “I can’t help it if I live in a shithole.”

“Besides, I’m getting rid of the mold.” Del lifted a spatula over her head. “Once you get rid of the mold, you don’t have mold anymore.”

Hannan put down the tin kettle he was supposed to be repairing. “You shouldn’t be focusing on big furniture, either. It takes up too much space in the truck, and people don’t buy it. You should be trying to find small things. Small things that people can afford.”

“There aren’t any small things.” Del motioned across the expanse of busted furniture, broken tents, and moth-eaten office chairs.

“What about your record player?” Hannan said. Delvive had a record player upstairs. She only had two records—Brahms and medieval lute—but she worshiped it like it was God.

“It’s my record player.”

“You should sell that.”

Delvive staggered to her feet. “Seriously? Seriously? You think there’s, like, some huge market for record players? You really think my getting rid of it would be worth the two bucks someone would pay for it?” She was close to tears. She gaped around, looking for help. Caspar was far out in the yard, working with a deranged intensity. Mortimer was helping Jerusalem bang a metal tub back into place.

“She’s right, Hannan,” I volunteered. “I doubt anyone would want it, anyway. It’s lopsided. Plus normal people have iPhones.”

Hannan met my eyes and then tossed the kettle across the yard. It landed in a plastic kiddie pool filled with mold. The others looked up. “This is all a joke! This is all a waste of time!”

“Just take a break, Hannan,” Caspar called out with his stupid over-cheeriness.

Hannan batted his hand through the air as though he were pushing us all away. “Father should make it so you get to keep whatever money you make. Then people might actually do the work.” And with that he strolled back into the house.

I continued working. I was painting a chair “distressed” green in the hopes that no one would notice the wood was starting to splinter.

Delvive sniveled. “Do you really think I should sell my record player? Father never lets me keep good records, anyway. If it would help, I…” She sat down on the ground and cried.

I watched the paint dry on the end of my brush, then dropped it in the water I’d taken from the pool. I walked over and sat down next to Del. “If you want to keep it, keep it. You’re right. I don’t think it would make any difference.”

I gazed across the yard, at Caspar working like a slave, at Mortimer banging on the metal tub like a demon possessed.

Delvive wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Why are things so bad? It doesn’t seem fair. I look at the people at school and think, didn’t we have it bad enough already? And it just keeps getting worse.”

“This, too, shall pass,” I said. “Right? They’ll go to the market this weekend and make a ton of money and everything will be better again.”

“But who’ll go with Father? I don’t think he’s gonna want Caspar after…after what happened last night. And I don’t…” She paused to sob. “I don’t want to go, because if anything goes wrong, it’ll be my fault.”

“It’ll be fine,” I said, fixing her hair. “Father will forgive Caspar, and they’ll bring Jerusalem, and she’ll do one of her paintings. It’s always worked out before, so we don’t have any reason to believe it won’t work now. We just have to have faith. That’s all.”

Delvive looked at me with a tear-streaked face. “I don’t think Father will ever forgive Caspar.”

“I’ll talk to him,” I said. I think she thought I meant Father, but I didn’t. Even I wasn’t that brave.

Caspar worked through dinner. There wasn’t enough to go around, so he volunteered to fast. I needed to talk to him, so I did the same. He was making something out of broken wood pieces, dresser legs and chair struts, and it was only then, in the dark, that I realized it was a birdcage, big enough for a person to crawl inside.

“Gosh, that’s really beautiful,” I said as he lifted it up and it spun in his hand.

His smile looked like a bruise in the dark. “I’m glad you’re out here. I need to ask you something. But first I need to apologize.”

I sat down on an old office chair, feeling unsteady on my feet. “You don’t have to apologize,” I said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Yes, I did.” He took a deep breath. “We’ve always been taught that everything is fate, and sometimes I think it’s easy to forget that the devil works in fate, too.” My stomach dropped.

“What do you mean? I don’t understand.” I hated, absolutely hated, when people mentioned the devil, especially after dark. It was like I could feel his malign spirit, pushed up against the edges of my consciousness. God and the devil are playing inside you.

“Amity,” he said, his voice long on the vowels. “I was in God’s Chambers and she just appeared, right at sunset, like it was preordained. And I’d been…I may as well tell you that I put myself down there because I was having lustful thoughts about her. I didn’t mean to, but it just happened. Just like that, when I wasn’t paying attention.”

The chair squeaked.

I felt a twinge of jealousy. Not because Amity was pretty or even because she was prettier than me (which she was), but because she had that confidence, that confidence that I would never have.

“So when she showed up, I guess I thought—no, I hoped that there was a reason for it. I hoped that it was fate, and I thought if I took her home maybe, maybe, maybe it was supposed to happen. But I lied to myself. I told myself it was fate when really it was just what I wanted fate to be, you see? I tried to force fate.”

For the first time, maybe ever in his life, Caspar looked desperate and confused. He looked like the rest of us: helpless, maybe even a little pathetic. Weak. But instead of reproach, I felt a vibrant sense of longing, and I couldn’t tell if I was longing for him or longing for him to get what he wanted, instead of what God wanted, for once.

I rocked myself left and right in the office chair, so it creaked and squeaked like the spell of a wicked witch.

Caspar’s expression dropped. “Mortimer says she’s an agent of the devil, leading me into temptation.”

“Well, Mortimer would know.”

Caspar put the birdcage down. “It’s not that I don’t believe anymore or that I’m questioning it or anything like that. I’m just…” He took a strange breath. “I’m just attracted to her. And that’s wrong.”

I breathed deeply, but it hurt going down. “I think it’s normal.” I gazed out at the treetops and the stars placed above, like the stars on the trees, put there to decorate the universe. To make it feel like a safe and beautiful place. “Caspar, do you ever think about what Father says, about how we’re destined to be together in heaven?”

“Yes.”

I couldn’t speak for a while. I tried to count to ten, but the numbers were jumbled. “But don’t you think that’s wrong? I mean, we’re brother and sister.”

“It would be wrong on earth. But heavenly laws are different from earthly ones.”

“Okay, but what about, you know, sex?”

Caspar frowned as though it were a grave consideration. “I don’t know if there is sex in heaven.”

“I’m not talking about heaven,” I said, concentrating on the stars as they seemed to smear and come apart before my eyes. “I’m talking about now. I mean, none of us will ever have sex. I don’t mean with each other. I mean with anyone. What if we live to be a hundred? What about the future? Do you ever think about that? Are we all just going to live forever in this house together? What about…I mean, Father will die one day. It happens. That’s what happens.”

He was quiet for a long time. I think he was shocked by what I’d said, or else he was trying to disassemble it so he could push the reality away like we all did, all the time. Eventually he said, “I don’t think we need to worry about that. I don’t think life will be for us like it is for other people.”

He was right. How could it be the same? It hadn’t started the same, and it couldn’t end the same. We were Cresswells. We weren’t like other people and we never would be. “Not ever?”

“I don’t think so.” And then he hugged me quickly, but he held on longer. We both gazed at the same stars. “Castley? I need you to do something for me. For us.”

“Okay.”

He pulled away, holding me out in front of him. “I want you to go with Father this weekend.”

My heart lurched. I didn’t want to go with Father to the market. I didn’t want the responsibility. I didn’t want to sit there while people stared. “But what if he wants you?”

“He doesn’t—he won’t want me. Castley, Father is extremely angry with me. I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon. Will you go in my place?”

I wanted to tell him that I couldn’t. That it wasn’t possible. That I couldn’t smile at strangers, that I couldn’t sell myself or anything else. But Caspar had asked me to, so I said yes.

As I took my seat in Drama the next day, I couldn’t stop thinking about the market. I had volunteered myself after scriptures last night. I’d hoped Father would say no, but he’d agreed right away. And now I could feel my whole body tightening.

I hunched over my desk, fingers curling around the edge.

“You okay?” George Gray sat down beside me, with the same stupid contented look on his face. “Hey, my friends and I are going into Huxley tomorrow to get stuff for Homecoming. Amity’s coming, I think.”

“Why would I care if Amity’s going?”

“Because isn’t she, like, with your brother or something?”

I sat up. “Why do you say that?”

“Because I see them together all the time.”

“What do you mean? When?”

“Like, I don’t know, this morning. I thought they were, like, dating or something.”

“I didn’t know that.” I couldn’t believe Caspar was still hanging out with her after everything that happened, after everything he’d said. After what he’d said just last night, about how wicked it was.

“So, you wanna come with us?”

“No.”

He frowned, but even his frown looked happy. “But I thought you said you wanted to hang out?”

“I didn’t say that. I didn’t say I wanted to hang out. And anyway, I can’t.”

“Why not? Are you not allowed?” I hated how gleeful all the things I wasn’t allowed to do seemed to make him. Like it was all some great joke.

“I have to go to the market with Father.”

“Which market?”

“Fall Fling or something. I don’t know; it’s some stupid festival where we sell stuff.”

“What do you sell?” He scooted forward in his chair.

I could tell he thought it was some cute, crafty thing we Cresswells did. Like we might sell embossed pillows or personalized door signs, not damaged furniture and old appliances Father picked up in front yards and landfills.

Last night Father came back with tanks full of water and very strict rules about when and how we were supposed to use them. That morning Caspar had made an arrangement with Miss Syrup, his cooking teacher, whereby we could come in before school and eat the leftovers. It was humiliating, but we were all so hungry that none of us cared.

“Whatever,” I said. “We sell whatever Father finds on the side of the road.” I almost told him we were broke. I almost told him about the water and about Miss Syrup.

“That’s cool,” he said. I don’t know how he arrived at that conclusion. I let my mind drift away, away from him and there. I could see Caspar’s birdcage spinning in the dark.

“Hey! I found us a scene,” he said. I shot him a look. Thanks for letting me pick, buddy. I guess everyone automatically knew that I didn’t have a choice, in anything. “Don’t look at me like that; I picked it for you.” He reached into his clean, new backpack and pulled out a crumpled playbook. “A Doll’s House. It reminded me of you.”

He put it on my desk, so I flopped it over and read the back cover. It was about a husband who underestimated his wife. “Why does this remind you of me?”

“Because you look like a doll.”

I hadn’t been to the market since I was a little girl. When we were younger, Father would bring as many of us as possible. We used to draw people in because we dressed in tiny bonnets and pilgrim-type pinafores. It was cute on a child. On a teenager going through puberty, it was just embarrassing.

We all woke up at three the next morning to pack the truck. Jerusalem climbed into the back with the birdcage and some burnt-out kitchenware, and I sat in the front seat next to Father. His eyes were clouded so they looked almost moldy as we drove through the semidarkness toward the market.

Father had taken the radio out of the truck in a pique of violence. He said that any kind of transmission could be manipulated by the spirit of the devil—radios, TVs, cell phones—so you didn’t know whether you were listening to actual people or if the devil had slipped into a DJ.

But as we drove past Huxley and into Grousman, I wondered if the devil even needed a radio. There was a bad spirit in the car, like there was in the house. Father claimed he was a conduit for spirits and visions—good and bad. He said it was a blessing, but right then I wished he weren’t quite so blessed.

Baby J was no help. She didn’t say a word, just sat in the back and watched the window. I didn’t know how we were expected to sell anything, with Father occupied by an evil spirit and Baby J speechless and me trying to swallow my growing disenchantment.

As we drove, on and on through the woods, I felt like we were a curse, my whole family, like we were a stain and a curse on the earth.

I tried to think What would Caspar do? as I helped Father set up. But it was a lot harder to be like Caspar than he made it look. I tried to smile, but my smile kept slipping. I tried to look pretty, because I thought that might pull people in, but the fetching patterns in my fabric weren’t exactly a huge draw in the twenty-first century.

Jerusalem sat down in the grass and painted, but that day her brush was limp and her colors were dark, and from what I could tell, she was painting a black hole.

Father was the worst. He just sat in the front seat of the truck with his hair awry and his lips twisted up. It was almost like he wanted us to fail.

A group of college-aged boys approached. I stepped forward, arms folded tight around my middle. “Good morning,” I practically whispered.

They looked at one another and sniggered. One of them stood back, like he was surveying our wares. “Did you raid a dump, or what?”

The others laughed, but I didn’t even feel it, and somehow that seemed worse. “We have good prices.” I heard my own words echo in my head, and I wanted to kick myself. I sounded desperate. I sounded pathetic.

“I bet you do,” one of them said, leering. I glanced back at Father, but all I could see was the back of his head inside the truck. I shivered.

They just stood there stupidly, waiting for me to say something so they could insult me again, and I hated them; for once I hated someone else more than I hated myself.

“You know what?” I said. “Fuck you. You’re all a bunch of fucking assholes.” Baby J looked up, eyes wide. “You seriously think I give a fuck what you think? If you don’t want to buy anything, fuck off.”

The ringleader held his hands up. “Jesus, way to overreact. We were just kidding. Take a chill pill.”

“What a freak,” another muttered.

“Just fuck off. We don’t need your fucking money.”

“Freak.”

“Bitch.”

They unloaded the rest of their insults and then they left. My fingers shook. I pressed them against my ribs. I glanced at the back of Father’s head. He was frozen, either asleep or in one of his trances. Baby J kept painting.

I sighed, and I felt it roll through me like giving up. I folded down in the grass beside Jerusalem.

“What are you painting?”

She looked at me. Blinked.

“You know, Mrs. Tulle came up to me the other day to talk about your paintings.” I reached down and yanked a dandelion out by the roots. I wasn’t usually so unnecessarily cruel to living things, but I felt angry. I felt an anger I didn’t think I could swallow. “She said you hid them. Because you didn’t want her to show them to anybody.”

Baby J went back to painting, purposefully ignoring me.

“Don’t you think people might want to see them?” I tried again. “Don’t you think they’re worth showing?”

She said nothing. She just kept painting, painting pictures to keep hidden, stacked in a pile at the back of our bedroom.

I forced myself to my feet. What was the point? I wanted to cry, but I knew that if I did, no one would care—not Father or Jerusalem or all the strangers, who thought we were nothing because we said we were.

The day didn’t go any better from there. Father never left the truck. Baby J finished her painting and spent the rest of her time staring into space, and all the shoppers gave us a wide berth. I knew it was partly my fault, but it was like I couldn’t stop. I hated them, I hated all of them, and I couldn’t hide it and they all felt it. They all knew it. I don’t know what Caspar was thinking, telling me to volunteer for the job. I felt guilty for letting him down, and that only made things worse.

It was like something was broken inside me, and the worst part was, I was pretty sure it had been broken for a long time. When you’re hanging on by a thread, you don’t even notice until that thread starts to break.

The only thing we sold was Caspar’s birdcage, which was the only thing I wanted to keep. It was funny how fate worked that way sometimes, like a trick. Like everything you wanted, you didn’t get, and everything you didn’t want, you got in spades.

As we drove home that evening, the evil spirit felt stronger, and I was pretty sure it was in me, too.

Father cleared his throat as we wound through the trees. “In the past, God has always provided for us—down to the letter, exactly what we needed, God has given us. And now, he isn’t. What do you think that means?”

I sighed. “That he’s testing us?”

Father shook his head. Try again.

“That he’s punishing us?”

“No.” He spoke carefully, as though it were a very simple matter. “If God provides to keep us alive, and he stops providing, what does that mean?”

My shoulders bristled. I looked back at Jerusalem, but she was staring out the window with starved, hollow eyes.

When we got home, Father didn’t even bother unloading the car. Caspar met us on the porch. His eyes passed quickly over the truck.

“Caspar,” Father said. “I want you to gather everyone in the family room. There is something I have to tell you. I have been keeping it to myself because I hoped I might be wrong. But I can see now that it must be shared, to break this boil that our lives have become. To liberate us, at last.”

Caspar’s eyes passed over mine as he turned back toward the house. He felt it, too. Something was about to happen. Finally.