My father is the one who fetches me from Steph’s house, not any of the Things. “Did you have a good first day at school?”
“Yes, sir,” I say, trying to sound like I mean it. I don’t think I really succeed.
“Jenny asked me to pick up dinner,” he says. “What sort of food do you like?”
“Oh, anything at all,” I say.
“Mexican? Indian?”
Mom makes tacos sometimes, and they’re okay. I have no idea whether I like Indian food or not. “Mexican, please.”
This Mexican food comes from a restaurant, and my father orders in Spanish. When we get home, the dining room table that’s been covered with papers since I arrived has been cleared off and set with plates, and my father unloads a stack of heavy cardboard takeout containers and plastic cups of salsa and guacamole.
The tacos my mother makes have hamburger and lettuce that you scoop into crunchy shells. These tacos are made with wraps and served with lime wedges. I try one, cautiously. I have no idea what sort of meat I’m eating, but the sauce is really yummy. Thing Two pushes one of the containers of salsa across the table to me. “This one’s mild,” she says. “You can try it on some of the chips, if you want.”
“Thank you, Ms. Hands-Renwick,” I say. She winces a little and tries to hide it. I catch Thing Three shoot her a look like, Don’t pick this fight, and feel a little thrill of victory.
I mean, yes, the food is good. But that doesn’t make up for the fact that these people took me away from my home and everyone I know.
When we finish eating, I tell them I’ve decided I would like to paint my room blue, and Thing Two leaps to her feet like we’re going to Disneyland and sweeps me out the door to head to a home improvement store before I realize that she’s using this as an excuse to avoid doing the dinner dishes.
Thing Two insists on buying samples—miniature cans of paint in near-identical shades of blue—assuring me that if I paint the swatches tonight and choose my favorite, she will buy the paint for the full paint job while I’m at school tomorrow. “I’m happy to paint with you,” she says.
“Thank you, but I can do it myself.”
I can see her forehead pucker, like she’s worried I’m going to accidentally paint the floor. “That’s fine,” she says.
Except then I can’t get the paint jar open. It’s a screw-top lid, but it’s as tight as a new jar of pickles. I almost just give up, but I have an assignment and Steph’s got me all nervous that they’ll know somehow. So I choke down my pride and say, “Excuse me, Ms. Hands-Renwick, could you help me open this?”
She takes the jar with a sort of patronizing smile, but her eyes widen as she tries to open it. “This is really stuck,” she mutters, and gets some sort of fancy jar-opening gadget from the kitchen to pry it open, and then just sort of drifts after me into my bedroom, an old bedsheet in hand to use as a drop cloth. I paint the three sample squares and conclude, reluctantly, that she’s right, one shade lighter than the paint chip I initially picked will be fine.
“Why mustard yellow, anyway?” I ask as she wraps up the paintbrush in one of the plastic bags from dinner so it won’t drip paint while she takes it to the sink.
She grimaces. “Look, when I insisted you needed samples, there was a reason,” she says.
I check off Make your space your own on the Invisible Castle but still get no gold star, maybe because I haven’t actually finished this yet.
And then my Tribulation Team chat buzzes to let me know a close friend has logged on. That means Glenys. My heart leaps with joy and relief, and I drop to my bed and pull up the chat. “I’ve been worried about you,” I type without preamble. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she says.
“How are you? How is everything in Lake Sadie?”
“Same as it always was. I miss you. Tell me about Minneapolis.”
“I live in a literal house of sin and depravity,” I say. “My father has a wife and a girlfriend AND she has a girlfriend and everyone lives in this house. They put me downstairs so I don’t have to go up to where I assume they engage in sexual debauchery. Also, they’re slobs.”
I expect Glenys to make a joke about the debauchery, but she says, “That’s terrible.”
We have an actual code for “My mother is nearby and either reading over my shoulder, or could start reading at any moment,” so I ask, “How’s Gretchen the Chicken?” There was this laying hen at her house who was incurably curious and nosy. Nosy as ever means, “Yes, my mother is potentially in my face right now,” and Still soup means, “No worries.” Actual Gretchen the Chicken turned into soup a while ago.
Instead, Glenys says, “All the chickens are fine,” which makes no sense, and then she asks, “Do you have any chickens in Minneapolis?” which doesn’t follow at all, and I feel a prickle of anxiety. Something isn’t right. My palms are sweating.
“No,” I say. “But some neighbors do.” The question Glenys asks me if it’s my mom or grandparents who might be snooping is, “Have you washed the dishes today?” If I say, “All clean,” no one’s looking. If I say, “I should do that,” danger. Since she didn’t answer her own question, I say, “I guess you don’t need to ask me about dishes, right now.”
“Because no one at your house does them, anyway? Since everyone’s a mess?”
“Right,” I say.
“Hey, I have a question,” Glenys says. “I forgot one of my passwords and the reminder prompt is ‘Best friend.’ I figured it would be Nell, of course, but that didn’t work. Do you know what I put for that?”
It feels like all my insides just dropped out, like a flip-top box full of blocks that just got dumped onto the rug by one of Glenys’s little brothers. It’s hard to type because my hands start shaking. When she didn’t respond to our own secret questions, I knew—this couldn’t be Glenys. But now I really know. This has to be Glenys’s mother, snooping. If the hint is “Best friend,” that’s me, but Glenys probably used Mell, with an M, which is a nickname we use just between the two of us. Glenys would never forget. Never.
“It was probably one of your best friends from before we met,” I say. “Like that girl from church camp in fifth grade.”
“Oh, probably,” says Glenys’s mother, who apparently doesn’t remember that when Glenys went to church camp in fifth grade, she was bullied relentlessly and made no friends. “So, how is school?”
“Fine,” I say.
“I’ve gotta go,” Glenys’s mom says. “But it was great to talk to you!” She blinks out.
I stare at my phone for a minute and then at the wall, the mustard-yellow wall with the three patches of sky blue painted on it. My eyes are blurry, and it’s almost like staring at a patch of sky through mustard-yellow bars.
The very first time we ever kissed, Glenys said that if her parents ever found out, they’d pack her off to some Cure Lesbianism with Jesus place even if technically they’re illegal. That’s what I’ve been worried about ever since my mother disappeared and Glenys didn’t get in touch. But how did they find out? How did anyone find out?
The paint cans are still sitting on the drop cloth on my desk, and I hurl them at the wall; I’d expected paint spatters everywhere, but Thing Two used most of what was inside painting the patches on the wall. I rip the drop cloth off my desk; the edge of the bedsheet catches a tin can full of pencils and pens and sends it spinning, scattering the writing implements everywhere. I bundle the drop cloth into a tight little knot and hurl it at paint still drying on the wall; it thumps gently off, leaving a tiny, barely noticeable smear.
My door swings open. It’s my father.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
It feels like my chest is on fire, and I flinch away from him without thinking, not able to answer civilly or really even at all. “Nothing’s going on, sir,” I choke out.
He swallows hard and says, “Right, okay. I’ll knock next time.” He closes the door.
I clench and unclench my fists, feeling utterly alone. I want to help Glenys—save her—get her out from wherever they’ve sent her. I close my eyes, trying to think. Would her siblings know anything? Nicholas, the next oldest, is fourteen and has his own phone. But he likes being the oldest boy and bossing Glenys around, and he never liked me. The one who likes me the best is Kimberlyn, who’s eleven and doesn’t have a phone. I could write her a letter, but it’s the six-year-old’s job to walk down and get the mail, and there’s no chance she’ll just discreetly give the letter to Kimber, she’ll announce to the whole house that Kimber has a letter. This isn’t any use.
My grandmother doesn’t talk to people in “the cult,” which is what she calls the Remnant. And no one’s written to me, or texted, or called. Which could just be because the Elder’s been increasingly insistent that the Tribulation is right around the corner …
The Elder.
For the last year or so, I’ve viewed the Catacombs mostly as a way to chat with Glenys. But high-level users have access to the Elder—they can ask questions. And the Elder knows everything. Truly. It’s why my mother and I joined the Abiding Remnant—because the Elder was clearly a real prophet.
Will he tell me where Glenys is? Or for that matter, where my mother is?
To find out, I’m going to need to actually do the Catacombs missions.
And I’ll ask Steph. She seems very worldly. Maybe she’ll have a better idea.