Gated (19 page)

We have to stop at the post office next and then the gas station before we leave town for good. My dad starts the truck and my mom hands me the bag of trash she’s gathered so I can throw it away. I hop out of the cab and walk the trash to the front entrance of the store. I watch the continuous stream of people coming out and begin to search for the trashcan.

I’ve just crossed the main thoroughfare between the parking lot and the front doors when Cody appears. The automatic doors slide open and there he is. I smile almost on reflex. I take a step forward, my hand already coming up to wave. Then I wonder if my parents are watching, if they see me doing the one thing I shouldn’t, and I turn around. I start to take a step back into the parking lot. I can throw our stuff out at the post office.

I have about a second to register sunlight glinting off something metal. There’s a flash of green. Something strikes my left side. Hard. My body flops against it. I realize with a detached sense of wonder that it’s a car. I walked in front of a moving car.

The world tilts. I’m falling. My butt smacks the asphalt. My hands scrape across loose gravel before my head snaps downward. There’s a strange cracking sound
inside my head. I blink. Then I open my mouth to breathe, but my lungs won’t work. The car screeches to a halt a few feet away.

I’m flat on my back on the road. My shirt has ridden up and my lower back is burning, melting into the ground. I can’t move, can’t make myself get up. There’s noise and people all around me, but I can’t make sense of any of it. Then it’s as if the asphalt expands, wraps around me until there’s nothing more than blackness and the sound of my mother’s screams in my ears.

When I open my eyes next, there’s a ring of heads looming over me. I can’t make sense of their faces, can’t decide if I know any of them. My head hurts—enough so that I keep closing my eyes again to block out the colors and light. The flashes of movement around me feel as abrupt and disturbing as gunfire. My ears are ringing. I can still hear, but the noises are muffled. People are talking. None of it makes sense. I try to sit up, but hands hold me tight to the ground. It hurts to fight them off, so I stop trying. I lick my lips instead and try to speak.

“Sweetie, you have to stay very still for me.” My dad’s voice breaks through the haze in my head. He’s next to me, right by my shoulder. His face is all fear. It scares me.

“Car,” I manage to mumble. My eyes are either watery from the pain or I’m crying. I can’t tell which.

“Yes, we know. The ambulance is coming now.” My dad looks up and I follow his gaze. He’s staring at my mom. She’s leaning over my other side. My head clears a
little. They’re scared because I have to go to the hospital. This is bad. It means unwanted attention for all of us. I struggle agai stleanst my dad’s hands again. I have to get up. We have to leave before the ambulance actually gets here. We have to get back to Mandrodage Meadows.

“I’m all right,” I croak.

“No, sweetie, you’re not. You have to lie still.” Dad leans over, close to my ear, and whispers in it. “Don’t worry. We’ll handle the people at the hospital. The only thing that matters right now is that we make sure you’re okay.”

I look out at the crowd of people standing around us. Most are whispering to each other, their faces openly curious. Do they already know who we are? Where we’re from? I look for Cody. He was there. In the store. Right before I got hit. I don’t see him anywhere now, though.

Good.

At least he had
enough sense not to get involved.

My mom smooths my hair and kisses my forehead. Her face goes from reassuring to crumply and half hysterical, then back again. She’s barely holding it together. I’ve made her face her worst fear all over again. I can see her reliving Karen’s disappearance as she looks down at me.

“I’ll be fine, Mom. I promise.” I try to smile, but wince instead. My head and neck are pounding.

My mom finally loses the battle and lets out one long wail just as the ambulance comes tearing through the parking lot, its siren mixing with her cry in a terrible duet.

I’ve never been in an ambulance before, but I’ve seen them in the movies. Usually the person being rocketed to the nearest hospital is seconds away from death, and the EMT next to them is holding electric paddles over their chest. They’re always injured doing something worthy of a hospital visit—gunning down bad guys or falling from buildings before they blow up. But not me. I manage to get knocked on my butt by an old lady driving an even older car in the Walmart parking lot. It would almost be funny, actually, if my parents hadn’t been there to see the whole thing. My mom’s probably in worse shape mentally than I am physically.

The EMT crouches next to me and busily wraps things around my arms and hooks me up to some machines that make beeping noises. I’m still not really sure why I’m even in the ambulance. I don’t feel like anything’s really wrong.
I guess I hit my head on the road when I fell. The EMT said I lost consciousness for a little bit. I do have a pretty wicked headache, but other than feeling like I’ve been run over by a car—which I have, ha, ha—I’m pretty sure nothing on me is broken. The old lady couldn’t have been driving that fast. I mean, maybe it was faster than she was supposed to be going, but it wasn’t highway speed. I basically stepped into her bumper and ricocheted off.

I want to sit up. I feel sort of silly lying down. I’m still holding out hope that I can convince the EMT to stop the ambulance and let me out so I can climb back into the truck and head home, pretend like none of this eg over happened. I’m sure my parents would be relieved if I did. They have to be panicked that I’m hurt enough to be hospitalized, and also because we’ve attracted unwanted attention—and not just for us, but for the Community as well.

I try to avoid looking at the EMT. She’s asking me questions, lots of them. I’m not sure how to answer them without my parents close by to help me. I close my eyes. I’m tired and shutting them against the bright overhead light feels really, really good.

The EMT taps my arm. “Hey, Lyla, try to stay awake, honey.”

I open my mouth to answer her, but talking seems like such an effort. If I can just close my eyes, I know I’ll feel clearer.…

The ambulance ride becomes disjointed. I keep opening
my eyes when the EMT jostles me, but the minute she stops, I close them again. This happens over and over before the ambulance lurches to a stop and I’m lifted out and into the even brighter afternoon sun. It’s strange being moved around this way, lying down, strapped to a very skinny bed.

The hospital is another first for me—all bright lights and funny smells that aren’t entirely covered up by the bleach they’ve apparently cleaned with. I don’t like it, not that I had any real illusions that I would. I get poked and prodded several times over and then taken to a few different rooms for various tests, the names of which I either haven’t quite caught or can’t retain. Eventually I end up in a room with a view of a single tree and a brick wall. I’m in the only bed and my mom is sitting stiffly on the edge of the chair beside it. There’s a television in the upper left-hand corner of the room, but it’s not on.

“They say that you have to stay here tonight,” my mom says as she brushes my hair off my face and onto the pillow.

“But I feel fine.” I try to say this with a smile, but moving my face intensifies the thunder in my head. I grimace instead. My left leg is tender all along the thigh where the car hit it. I’m starting to realize that I’m a little achy everywhere now, like my whole body rearranged itself on impact. My tailbone and head hurt the worst; both struck the ground pretty hard, I think.

My mom kisses my forehead in that overly glommy way of hers. I always have to make myself not recoil when
she does this, because I know it will only hurt her feelings, but it’s too frantic and smothery.

“They want to make sure you’re okay. They said you have a concussion and they want to monitor you in case there’s swelling.” She’s smiling, but the hand on my forehead is shaky.

“But we aren’t supposed to be here,” I whisper, my eyes straying to the open door in case someone’s already there, eavesdropping. “Pioneer says …”

“If we try to leave, it’ll only make things worse. If we’re smart about this and give them as little information about the Community as we can, we might be able to get through this without making anyone too curious. But you have to leave the talking to your father and me. Just stay calm, okay?” My mom’s voice is harsh. It confirms what I know in my heart to be true. Our situation is precarious. One wrong answer or slip of information and we will single-handedly make the Community too much of a curiosity.

“What do you want me to do?” I say, and throw one arm over my eyes to block out the light and the possibility of more of her kisses.

“Be polite, but quiet. Don’t offer any information that they haven’t asked for directly. And above all, make sure to let them know that we are just a simple farming community focused on growing our own foods and living a simple life. No matter what, don’t mention anything about Pioneer’s dreams or anything else.”

“I’m not an idiot, Mom,” I say, but then maybe she sort
of has a case for my being one, since I’ve started walking in front of moving cars. “Where’s Dad?”

“They needed him to fill out some forms.” She sighs heavily. “There’s no health insurance … which complicates things.”

“What about all of the supplies? We’re supposed to be on the way back right now.”

“Your father’s going to drive them back after he’s done and then come back in the morning. He has to let Pioneer know what’s happened.”

“What about you?” I ask, and am surprised at how clingy I feel. I don’t want to be here alone.

“Staying here with you, of course.” She tilts her head toward the chair. “The nurse is bringing me blankets. Supposedly that thing turns into a bed.” She points to the chair and we both eyeball it.

It gets quiet for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” I finally say, my voice tighter in my throat than usual. I feel like there’s so much I should say, but the words pile up inside my throat. There’s too many of them trying to get out all at once. I have to work to swallow. It feels like I’m choking.

My mom breathes in and out slowly. “I know.”

“I just don’t like worrying you.”

“You’ve never done it on purpose, Lyla, I know that. But you’re a child. Worrying me is part of your job description. Just like the actual worrying is part of mine. That’s why
I’ll be so glad to finally be in the Silo. You can’t do much to worry me there.” Her mouth curls up the slightest bit.

My dad checks on me briefly before leaving. He tucks my blankets under and around me tightly from my shoulders to my feet the way he used to when I was little and I thought monsters might be able to slither under the covers if there were any gaps.

“Lyla burrito,” he says with a smile, and then presses his lips into my hair. “Get some rest.”

“You’ll be back first thing tomorrow morning, right?”

“Before the sun’s even all the way up,” he promises.

My mom follows him to the door. “Be just a minute, sweetie,” she tells me.

I fiddle with my bed while I wait for her to come back from walking my dad to the truck. The buttons that lift it are entertaining. I raise my feet higher than my head and then my head higher than my feet before all of the movement makes me dizzy and sick. I stare at the ceiling and then out the window. Television’s out. Even if I wanted to watch, I couldn’t. My mom gave the nurses the remote as soon as she came across it. Pioneer would want us to keep the Community’s rules, especially here. Eventually I stare out at the hallway and watch the nurses go back and forth. It’s pretty quiet. I don’t see any other people. I wonder how many other people are out there arhal in rooms just like mine.

I wish I had my sketchbook so I could sketch some of the nurses, but it’s all the way across the room in my
backpack. I’m not up to getting out of bed and retrieving it. Instead I settle for the tiny notepad in my bedside table with
CULVER CREEK HOSPITAL
written across the top and the pen that was with it when I found it. But then I don’t know what to draw, and besides, it’s really hard to concentrate. I end up making random doodles, a maze of squiggly lines and circles.

“Knock, knock.”

Cody’s in my doorway, leaning against the frame. My mouth drops open, but no sound comes out.
What is he doing here?
is my first thought, but a close second is,
I must look awful
.

“I wanted to see if you were okay,” he says. He fiddles with a plastic Walmart bag that he’s got gathered up in one hand.

“How did you know how to find me?”

He laughs and rubs his chin. “Uh, you were in a car accident—it was pretty much a given that you’d end up here.”