Escape from Eden (2 page)

“I want to wear something pink, bright pink,” Aliyah said.

I yawned. “We’ll go see Sister tomorrow at the sewing cottage and see what she’s got.” I stopped below the flickering light at the back entrance to the kitchen. I took the hair tie from my wrist and pulled my hair into a knot. “Are you sure the Reverend is okay with you being out of uniform?”

“It’s probably fine,” Juanita said. “But check with Thaddeus first. You know how the Reverend feels about color.”

Aliyah brought her hand up to touch the baubles cinching her ponytails. “But this is Prayer Circle! It’s a celebration.” She dropped her hand, eyes filled with anticipation. “There’s singing and laughing—”

“How do you know?” I asked. “No one is allowed to talk about Circle.”

“I’m guessing that’s what happens.” She leaned in, a conspiratorial tilt to her head. “You know I’ll tell you guys, right? Everything there is to know about Prayer Circle. The second I come back.”

“You shouldn’t, Aliyah,” Juanita said. “You’ll be punished.”

“You’ll get your invite, too,” she continued as if Juanita hadn’t warned her. “Maybe it’s just a mistake that I got the invite before you two. You’re both older than me.”

“We’ll find you something pretty.” I didn’t care about an invitation to Prayer Circle, but I couldn’t ruin her excitement.

With a giggle, she looped her arm in Juanita’s. “Come on, Juanita,” she said. “I need to get a good night’s sleep.”

“Don’t we all,” said Juanita, raising her eyebrows at me. “Don’t stay too late prepping for breakfast, Mia.”

“Yeah, well,” was all I said as they turned away, Aliyah practically skipping toward our cottage behind the kitchen.

I peered down the dark and winding lane and tried to spot the warm glow of Mama’s cottage, where she lived with my brother Max and another mother with a small child. Once the children of the Flock turned thirteen, we were separated from our parents and sent to live in different quarters with kids our age. I missed living with Mama, even though she infuriated me these days. But I missed someone kissing me good night before bed.

With a sigh, I opened the door to the kitchen. It smelled of disinfectant and dishwater. Inside the kitchen was cool, cooler than outside, the humidity swallowed up by the stainless steel of the appliances and counters. I remember being surprised when I first saw the professional kitchen, so different from the simple tables and benches in the dining hall. Cleanliness was taken very seriously in Edenton. Despite being close to Godliness, dirty was dangerous. In the jungle heat, germs multiplied. Scrapes festered into debilitating wounds and food poisoning could sicken entire rows of cottages. Which meant the Flock thinned; which meant the Reverend lost the workers that kept his utopia thriving.

My fingers ghosted along the back of my thigh, remembering the splinter. Once breakfast service was finished in the morning, I’d go to the infirmary.

I switched on my workstation lamp and began prepping the mangos, loving the feel of the chef’s knife in my hand, the weight of it as it moved effortlessly over the cutting board; the thudding sound as it cut through.

A crash behind me made me whirl. A shadowy figure shot between the shelves lined with cooking utensils. Hanging ladles and spoons swung back and forth, the weak light from the window glinting off their handles. All I heard was my blood pulsing in my ears until my own voice broke through.

“Who’s there?” I asked, hating the way my voice quavered.

I swallowed down the fear and stepped forward. The panic pulsing through me was so foreign, so different from the complaisant calm that had existed inside me since the day we came to Edenton. Part of me—and not a small part—thrilled.

“Who’s there?” I said again, more forcefully.

From behind the shelves, someone moved in the shadows and took a deliberate step toward me. He moved forward until he was close enough that the small work light behind me revealed his features.

“Gabriel?” I asked.

Up close, his face wasn’t as hard as it had appeared on the stage earlier. His cheekbones were sharp but his mouth had a softness to it, a plush quality that reminded me of the curving indentation on a cherry. His tousled dark hair fell over his eyes. He seemed to realize I was staring at him because he stopped in front of me, eyes searching mine.

“That’s not fair,” he said. His voice was pleasant, subdued, the edge from earlier gone.

“What’s not fair?” I asked.

“That you know my name, but I don’t know yours.” He smiled then, just a hint of a smile but enough to cause my breath to hitch.

“Mia,” I whispered.

“Mia,” he said as if testing my name on his lips. “Mia what?”

“Eden.”

“Eden?” He sounded confused.

“The Flock’s surname is Eden.”

“So we’re family?”

I shrugged. “If you put it that way, I guess so.”

Gabriel’s brows drew together as he regarded me. He leaned down, eyes shimmering with mischief, and whispered in my ear, “Good. Because I’ve always wanted a sister.”

The heat of his breath lingered on my neck, his hair like feathers skimming over my cheek. A tingle I’d never felt before danced up my back and I let my eyes drift shut at the feeling. It wasn’t until I heard the kitchen door slam that I realized he was gone.

And it wasn’t until I looked down at my hand that I noticed he’d stolen my knife.

When I heard the knock on the door, I shoved my sketchbook to the bottom of the trunk at the foot of my bunk. My heart thumped faster than those three staccato taps. I thought I’d be alone for a few minutes while the girls from my cottage were on their way to physical training, and before I left to see Doc Gladstone. Sometimes, my moments alone with my sketchbook were all I had to look forward to in a day. I knew where I was going to draw, the upper-right corner of the twenty-second page. There were barely any blank pages left. All were packed with six years’ worth of sketches, almost every inch of each page used, so I carefully planned out what was left of the open space, sacrificing some drawings to the kneaded eraser I’d kept balled at the end of my last pencil.

What I was going to draw, though, was a mystery until the lead slid across the paper.

I heard the pencil hit the tile floor and I scrambled around looking for it under my bed.

“One minute,” I called.

I found the stubby thing and dropped it into my trunk. I couldn’t get caught with the sketchbook—or the pencil. Personal items of any sort were strictly forbidden. But it was all that I had left of my other life—the life I still longed for outside of Edenton. A life of freedom and breathing space. A life where possibilities were my own to create. I was sure that outside of this regimented, scheduled place, there was something bigger than me, bigger than the God the Reverend wanted us to worship.

I shook the thought away as I shut the trunk and rushed over to open the door.

“Agatha needs you in the kitchen,” Thaddeus said, looking down at me with his hands folded behind his back.

He was the Reverend’s number two, whom the Reverend trusted above all others. He, like most of the men in Edenton, was tall and well built, imposing in an almost elegant way. His dark skin always had an unnatural luster, as if the surface were opalescent. Unlike the rest of the men, however, who wore plain gray collared shirts and black pants or shorts, he wore a simple white collarless shirt and gray trousers. His garb was the telltale marking of one of the Reverend’s inner circle, with an embroidered Edenton crest on the left side of his chest. He waved his hand toward the path that led to the kitchen.

“Agatha?” I asked, and quickly realized my mistake. Thaddeus was never questioned.

“Yes.” His pitch-black eyes bore down on me. “Agatha.”

My hands began to tremble slightly. Thaddeus had spoken to me twice, as I could remember. Once when he welcomed our family to Edenton, and once when he’d thanked me for bringing him soup when he was ill. Otherwise, I was simply a member of the Flock. His presence alone made me nervous.

“I was on my way to see Doc Gladstone before training,” I said, trying to keep the quaver from my voice.

He tsked. “Mia.” My name sounded important in his deep-coal voice. “Agatha is the kitchen director and she needs you. Although I don’t want to call her your boss, your contribution as a member of the Flock is to feed the congregation. And she’s asked for you to assist in a task. I’m assuming it’s not a dire situation for you to visit Doc Gladstone?”

“Splinter,” was all I said.

“A splinter can wait.”

I nodded and thanked him before I hurried toward the kitchen. I felt his eyes on me as I skittered away. A trickle of sweat slipped down my spine. It was unusual for Agatha to call me to the kitchen at that time of day, right after I’d left breakfast service, but it was more unusual for Thaddeus to come find me. Did she know about my knife? Our knives were our tools, expensive tools from what I understood. I’d have to work off losing the knife.

You didn’t lose it. Gabriel stole it.

And like a fool—a tingly, girly fool—I let him.

When I opened the door to the kitchen, it was dark inside, the shades drawn over the windows. Agatha stood next to the opened door of the special provisions pantry, normally a locked closet at the back of the kitchen on the other side of the prep tables. A dim light from one of the workstations spilled over Agatha’s lanky frame. The furrows along her forehead deepened. I couldn’t see what she was unloading, but it made a tiny clinking noise, like glass.

“You requested to see me?”

Agatha jumped and pressed the palm of her hand to her chest. “Mia!” she said in a high-pitched voice. “You startled me.”

“I’m sorry.” I stepped into the kitchen and shut the door behind me. “Thaddeus said you needed me here?” I stressed his name, so she would understand how weird I thought it was.

She didn’t notice. “I do.” She stuffed something back into the pantry, the muscles beneath her sleeves flexing as she moved. “I’m baking today and need help,” she said as she fished a key from her apron pocket and locked the pantry door. She slipped the keychain, a curly yellow cord, around her wrist.

“But we baked the bread this morning,” I said.

“Not bread.” Agatha grinned tightly, her hair pulled back in a severe bun. Her cheekbones were honed under her eternally sunburned skin. “We’re making cookies.”

“Cookies?” I asked.

She began removing the large canisters of flour and sugar from the shelves. “Yes, dear. Cookies.”

We only made cookies—or any sweets for that matter—for holidays, like Christmas and Easter, when the Reverend allowed the Flock to celebrate. But other celebrations were rare in Edenton, about as rare as cold weather.

I didn’t ask any more questions and got to work, as was expected of me. Agatha asked me to measure and mix the dry ingredients. She remained on the other side of the kitchen diligently weighing and measuring the wet ingredients, then incorporating mine. We worked in silence for a few hours, hundreds of cookies going in and coming out of the ovens. Agatha kept the other staff away from our work area, even as the smell of peanut butter cookies baking filled the entire cafeteria, prompting a few questions and many longing stares.

As I worked, though, my eyes kept going to where Gabriel had appeared the night before. He’d slipped out of the darkness and come toward me with such determination that my heart still stammered thinking about the look in his eyes. I’d never seen anyone look at me like that. Even Octavio didn’t look at me like that.

But it was all a tactic, wasn’t it? A ploy to get my knife.

My eyes flicked to the empty slot in my magnetic knife rack on the wall.

From where I stood in the back of the kitchen, I caught glimpses of the dining hall through the staff serving lunch. Because all the girls my age worked in the kitchen, my cottage mates were on the front lines of service. They stole glances back at me as I scooped cookie dough onto baking sheets. Agatha had lectured me earlier about not tasting the dough. It was disrespectful to the other members of the Flock. But I’d always tasted what I’d cooked, numerous times, throughout the process. It was how I understood flavors, and how they bloomed during the cooking time. Not tasting the dough as we baked went against everything Agatha had said during my kitchen duty training.

After I’d stored all the cookies in airtight containers, I headed down the path to the infirmary.

The back of my thigh stung. It grew more painful as the day went on.

“Mia!” I heard, and turned around. Aliyah ran toward me, grinning. “Sister agreed to make me a shirt for Prayer Circle. Come with me to the sewing cottage?” Her large eyes pleaded with me in that little girl way of hers, and I caved.

“Sure,” I said and tried to keep up as she skipped down the path toward the sewing cottage.

Sister oversaw the sewing and laundry, although she preferred to call what she did textile arts. When we arrived, she was seated behind a large table inside, her graying hair escaping from a black-and-white floral headscarf. In her thin mouth she held a series of pins, the flat tops catching the light each time she bent her head. All around I saw gray, white, and black fabric, and boxes of Edenton emblems, the lids printed with the familiar tree.

Suzanne and Kori, girls a few years younger than we were, folded laundry in the back. We older girls were relegated to kitchen duty; the younger ones worked in the laundry. The Reverend believed in what he called “gender-appropriate chores.” I loved cooking, but sometimes I longed to be with the boys catching fish on the beach or weeding and planting the gardens, bugs and all.

Sister’s wrinkled fingers moved along a surprisingly pink stretch of fabric and they shook slightly with the effort. Beside Sister, Aliyah plunked down on a stool. Her eyes were alight as she stared at the spread of pink fabric like it was candy.

“Peony pink,” Aliyah breathed.

“It’s pretty,” I said, leaning my elbows down on the table. It was, too. Her dark skin would look velvety next to the color.

“It’s so beautiful.” Aliyah’s palm skated across it reverently.