These last days leave little room for fear.
Fear eats away at faith, and so it must be immediately rooted out and stomped underfoot.

—Pioneer

My dad is on guard duty when we get back. He’s standing by the little one-room station just outside the front gate when we walk up. I concentrate on the wooden sign beside it. It says WELCOME TO MANDRODAGE MEADOWS. It’s painted so that the name is floating above a sun-filled field. A lot like the one we’ve just come from, minus the guns and targets.

I don’t want to meet my dad’s eyes. I don’t want to tell him that I’m still struggling with target practice, but out of the corner of my eye I can see his shoulders fall slightly and I know he’s already figured it out.

“It’ll be fine,” Will says quietly, and takes my hand in his. My dad notices our joined hands and his eyes light back up again. Ever since Pioneer announced that Will was my Intended—the boy he’s decided I’ll marry next year when I’m eighteen—my mom and dad have celebrated every tiny gesture of affection between us. I wonder if they’ve noticed that Will’s always the one making the gestures, not me. Will has definitely noticed, but he hasn’t brought it up so far. I doubt I have long, though, before it becomes the next problem Will—and everyone else, for that matter—feels I need to work on.

“Hey, kids, beautiful day, isn’t it?” My dad claps Will on the back and tries to tousle my hair even though it’s in a braid. I grimace and let go of Will’s hand so I can smooth the wayward hairs back into place.

Marie giggles behind us. “As if that’s going to help.”

I pretend to glare at her, but really she’s right. My hair has never cooperated with me, not even once. It always lands where it wants to despite my best efforts to tame it—a stick-straight mess. Pointy pieces of hair poke out of my braid like they’re trying desperately to keep from bending.

“Headed to class, right?” Dad says with a smile. He leans into the guard station and presses the button that opens the large iron gate to our development. The gate groans loudly as it shudder-slides behind the high brick wall that borders all of Mandrodage Meadows.

“Unfortunately.” Marie frowns. “It’s too gorgeous out to be cooped up in the clubhouse.”

Dad looks at Marie the same way most of the adults in the Community do—like he’s not sure whether to hug her or punish her. “Your lessons are important. How do you expect to accurately remember all of this”—Dad gestures to the wide-open spaces beyond the gate—“and learn from its mistakes if you don’t understand its history?”

I roll my eyes skyward. We don’t have time for one of my father’s impassioned lectures on how we are the only future this world has, the keepers of its doomed history and culture. Blah, blah, blah. He used to be a structural engineer back in New York, but I’d swear that he really should’ve been a history teacher, he’s so over the top about it.

“We’re gonna be late, Dad.” I point to my watch. Pioneer has the entire day scheduled, even our free time. Not showing up where you’re supposed to be when you’re supposed to be there only brings punishment. And I’ve messed up enough for one day, thank you very much.

“Yeah, okay, sorry,” Dad says with an embarrassed smile. “Go on. See you at dinner, Lyla.”

I lean up and give him a quick peck on the cheek, and then we rush through the gate. I can hear it rumble closed. I wave at Dad one more time before he disappears behind it, and then we pick up our pace even more.

Mandrodage Meadows looks like any other suburban gated development in America—at least that’s what my mom says. Beyond the entry gate is a large circle of houses, twenty in all, one for each of the families that live here. They’re made to look like mountain cabins, with lots of stacked stone and log siding. I’ve always kind of liked the woodsy feel of them.

In the center of the circle is a large green space with a pond, gardens, and picnic area, and beyond that—where the houses end—are our clubhouse, pool, wood shop, barn, and stables. The orchards are at the very back and border the brick wall just beyond the fields where the animals are let out to graze. And just below them is the Silo, our underground shelter, silently waiting for the next three months to go by and for the apocalypse to arrive. It makes my chest tighten to think about it, so I try to ignore it most of the time, but it’s hard, since some part of it is underneath just about every inch of ground we walk on here. I look up at the wide-open sky, take a deep gulp of fresh air, and try to focus on the upcoming lessons or Marie’s endless chattering. It doesn’t work very well.

Sometimes it seems like our families have put out a lot of wasted money and effort to make it so nice in the aboveground buildings, since everything will be destroyed in the end. Pioneer says that apart from giving our families a comfortable place to live for the past ten years, the cushy normality of it serves as a distraction to anyone who happens to find us. Visitors here would see us as very reclusive, eccentric suburbanites. They certainly wouldn’t expect us to have an underground shelter hidden beneath the orchards or an armory of guns to protect it. Even our development’s name enhances the illusion. “Mandrodage Meadows” sounds kind of uppity, vaguely French. We’re the only ones that know that it’s an anagram for “Armageddon Meadows”—a private joke that Pioneer made up.

We jog all the way to the clubhouse, making it to the meeting room just in time to take our seats before Pioneer arrives. He takes his place at the front of the room, sitting cross-legged on top of the Formica table there. He leans back on his hands and smiles at us. There are thirty of us in all—every child in the Community—all of us around the same age. There are equal numbers of guys and girls—something the Brethren had Pioneer be sure of when he picked families to move here. This way we each have an Intended. Will with me, Brian with Marie, and so on. No detail of our lives has been left to chance.

Pioneer picks up one of the thick books beside him and opens it on his lap. He clears his throat. “Today we will focus on history, specifically the characters throughout whose bad decisions—their … hesitations—jeopardized their countries as well as their fellow man.” He pauses and looks at me, his lips curling into a smile. “Historical cowards is our topic for today. Any thoughts on this … Little Owl?”

His words blindside me. My face burns all over. All eyes are on me, waiting. Even though Will, Brian, and Marie are the only ones who could possibly know what happened at target practice, I feel exposed. Is he really going to out me to everyone?

“Um, not really, no,” I say. The others laugh nervously. The air feels charged. I know I’m not the only one who senses it. But then Pioneer chuckles and launches into a detailed lecture about George B. McClellan, a Union general during the Civil War who kept refusing to engage in battle even when he had the clear advantage—my historical counterpart, I guess. Pioneer is obviously not done reforming me yet.

I want to find some excuse to leave, ask to go to the bathroom, fake sickness, anything so I won’t have to keep sitting here. Will puts his hand on my leg. He’s holding it a little too tightly—agreeing with Pioneer, forcing me to stay. He nods emphatically as Pioneer talks. His devotion to protecting the Community is borderline manic sometimes.

I fight the urge to wrestle my leg out from under Will’s hand. If I run, I will only prove what they’re starting to suspect—that I’m a coward and that it’s their duty to try harder to rehabilitate me. That kind of attention frightens me more than anything else.

After class, I rush out without a word. I want to paint by the lake or head out to the corral and saddle Indy, but I know Will will just follow me there and I don’t want to see him right now. His need for perfection in all things, even rule following, is frustrating to be around sometimes, and the way he acted in class has me more than a little angry. I don’t need him to remind me of what I need to work on, so I head home instead.

My mom’s in the kitchen preparing dinner. It’s Sunday, the one day a week when we eat in our own homes. Every other meal is eaten in the dining room at the clubhouse with the rest of the Community. For once I’m glad it’s Sunday. Not having to face Will and Pioneer tonight is the one bright spot in this whole wreck of a day.

I linger in the doorway and watch my mom chop vegetables. She lifts her foot and scratches the back of her leg with one toe. Her hair is pulled back into a haphazard ponytail. The light from outside enhances the red-gold in it, effectively camouflaging the gray that’s started to come in. She’s tinier than I am, and although we’re both pale, she’s much thinner, more fragile looking. Standing behind her, I feel taller, curvier—sturdier—like a coffee mug placed next to a china teacup.

She turns to drop her pile of cucumbers and tomatoes into a bowl of cold pasta noodles and sees me. “Hey there. Dinner’s almost done. Would you mind tracking down your father?”

“Sure.” I come up beside her and reach into the bowl to grab a cucumber and she swats at my hand. Part of me wants to talk to her about what happened out on the field … but can she understand? When she practices shooting, I know she’s like me and also imagines the targets as actual people, but for her it’s different. She sees the person who took Karen and she’s never missed a shot. Not once.

I decide to just walk away and leave her to finish making our meal. She’s humming to herself as I leave the kitchen. I’ll have to try to imagine whoever took Karen when I shoot next, but I know I won’t be able to draw from the same emotions that she does. Karen is all faded for me, not a flesh-and-blood girl anymore, just one more thing to feel guilty about. Is it because I’m missing some crucial part of my heart that I can’t keep feeling the pain the way Mom does? Am I really just like McClellan, cowardly and selfish? The worst of it is that I want to be good, to do what’s expected. So why do I still hesitate?

“So how’d target practice go today?” Dad asks between mouthfuls of pasta salad once we’ve sat down to dinner. I sigh heavily and set my fork down on the place mat. When I look up, the first thing I see is the picture of Pioneer that we keep on the kitchen wall. I always feel like the real Pioneer’s watching me through it somehow. There goes my appetite.

“Something tells me you already know how it went,” I mumble.

“I have an idea.” Dad leans back in his chair and looks at me. Mom looks from me to him and back again. Now I get the rare privilege of telling her what happened after not telling her as soon as I came home and then getting a double dose of lecturing from both of them. Wonderful. I push down on the tines of my fork with my fingers, making the handle bang against the table.

“Kneecaps,” Dad says in explanation, and my mom makes an “Ooohhh” face. My shooting habits aren’t exactly a surprise to either of them, I guess.

“Look, I shot the heart today, okay? Pioneer already talked to me about this. I get what I have to do.” I lean back in my chair and look up at the ceiling.

Dad wipes his mouth on his napkin. “We’ve never doubted that. But can you do it when there’s a face staring at you instead of black plywood?”

“If I have to, yes,” I say, but I’m not the greatest liar. I don’t even convince myself.

“That’d be easier to believe if you actually shot accurately without being prodded by Pioneer first,” Dad says.

I glance up at my mom. I was sort of hoping that she’d take pity on me and change the subject, but she’s holding Dad’s hand now, making them a united front.

Dad goes into lecture mode. “Look, none of us want to hurt people. You get that, right? But we may have to make some hard choices pretty soon in order to survive. The Community’s stayed safe for a lot of years, but we’re still a point of curiosity for the towns around here. Don’t you think they wonder why we’re out here all alone? Do you think that once the earth’s rotation reverses, they won’t figure it out? We only have enough supplies stockpiled for our own people, and even then we might not have enough. If people start showing up here looking for shelter, they aren’t just gonna take ‘Sorry, we’re full up’ as an answer and walk away. They’ll fight,” Dad says, the volume of his voice gradually increasing with his enthusiasm for this subject. “Would you really risk one of us dying to ease your own misguided conscience?”

“You’re being too soft speaking of them that way, Thomas.” My mom’s eyes are rippling with tears. “Those people out there are monsters. Evil. Each and every last one of them. They need to be wiped from this earth. Not one deserves our mercy. The Brethren watched all of us for years. They know the Outsiders’ motives. We are the chosen, the ones who showed true goodness and compassion. We are meant to survive, not them. And if they come here before the end—or just after the disasters begin—we cannot feel sorry for them. Not ever. We would only be helping to keep evil alive, and all of this, all that we’ve done here, would be for nothing.” She’s started trembling now. I watch as she looks over at Pioneer’s picture. She puts a hand out and touches the frame with the same kind of anxious strokes that she uses when she rubs Karen’s shoes. If somehow Pioneer really can watch us through that picture, she probably sees it as comforting.

I stare at my plate. Tears blur my own vision, making everything look like an abstract painting. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, okay? I want to do what I’m supposed to, believe me … but I just, I don’t know. I just freeze up or something.”

Mom puts a hand on one of my shoulders and Dad puts his hand on the other, their other hands still tightly clasped together. We are all connected now in one unbroken circle.

“It isn’t wrong to defend yourself, honey. What would be wrong is not fighting to keep the people you love alive,” Mom says.

They’re right, of course. I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to them, to Will or Marie. I’ve been selfish, and worse—stupid. I have to do better.

“I’ll shoot right from now on.” I speak my words like a vow—to them and to myself. I’m not a little kid anymore. I can’t choose to ignore what’s happening. It’s time I grow up.