Alex turned to me. "I'm sorry," he said, "about your cat. I never had a pet, so I don't know how you feel, but I can see how upset Jon is."
"Horton was a member of our family," I said. "It's like losing a member of your family."
Alex is like Syl, like Charlie. They don't talk about their pasts, their families. I know he has an older brother and a younger sister, but he's never told me what happened to his
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parents. And I don't want to think about what he's been through to make him so certain death could be preferable to life.I have scars. No one alive today doesn't. But Alex's scars have to be much deeper than mine.
"I'm sorry," I said. "It's different. But it still hurts so much."
Alex nodded. "I wish you hadn't come on the trip," he said. "You could have been home, maybe done something."
"Horton was dying," I said. "It was a matter of time. I don't like how he died. I don't think I'll ever forgive Syl. But it was good for me to go, to see what things are really like. I needed to know."
"I thanked Christ you were with us," Alex said. "I thanked Him for every hour, every minute, with you."
"Do you mean that?" I asked.
"I'm sorry, Miranda," he said. "I'm not good at loving people. I know you're supposed to want what's best for them, but all I want is you."
"I'm here," I said, reaching out for his hand to touch. "I'm not going anywhere."
"But I am," he said. "I've got to find a place for Julie."
"Her place is here," I said. "Your place is here."
"We live on charity here," Alex said. "Your family's charity. The town's charity. Charity doesn't last."
"There's a difference between charity and love," I said. "What we're offering is love. Love lasts forever."
"It only lasts if there's something given in return," Alex said. "I helped find food, the van. I gave your family things they needed. But now all I do is take. That wasn't what I was taught, to take and not give. We have to go, Miranda. As soon as Julie's ready, we'll leave."
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"Just think about it," I said."It's all I ever think about," he said. "Now come. Get Jon. It's not good for Julie having him here."
I followed him into the house. Gabriel was crying, and Lisa was trying to soothe him. "Julie and Jon are in the parlor," she said. "It's okay. Hal's with them."
I felt like an idiot. It took me until then to realize why Alex was so determined to separate Jon and Julie. Jon's almost fifteen; Julie's almost fourteen. They're not just talking about baseball.
But when we walked into the parlor, they weren't talking about anything. Jon and Julie were reading textbooks, and Dad was looking straight at them.
I haven't seen Jon since I got home. I didn't know what to say to him. All I knew was I couldn't cry and I couldn't tell him how angry I was at Syl.
"Hi, Julie," I said after I gave Dad a hello kiss. "How are you feeling?"
"I'm okay," she said. "I think I had a cold, but I've been okay since we got back."
"She's been coughing a little," Dad said. "But she's feeling better."
"Good," I said. "Hi, Jon."
Jon looked up at me. "I'm not going home," he said. "I don't care what you say."
"I haven't said anything," I pointed out.
"It doesn't matter," he said. "I'm not going home. Not while she's there."
"Her name is Syl," Dad said. "And you're going to have to forgive her sometime."
"I'm never going to forgive her," Jon said. "You can't make me."
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"Syl let Horton die," Julie said, like this was going to be news to me. "Jon hates her for that.""Julie, shut up," Alex said. "This isn't our business."
"Don't talk to her that way!" Jon screamed.
"Jon," Dad said. Gabriel howled in the background.
"No!" Jon yelled. "I hate all of you. Julie and I are going away. We're going to a safe town. We'll never see any of you again."
"You're not going anywhere, Jon," Dad said. "You're too young to travel on your own, and Alex won't let Julie go. There's no safe town in your future. You need connections to get passes. You can't buy them like movie tickets."
"We won't have to buy them," Jon said. "Alex has some. Julie told me. He's not using them, so we will."
I had no idea what Jon was talking about, but it was obvious Alex did. "You told him?" he said to Julie, sounding like he couldn't possibly believe she had. But then he must have believed it because he started shouting at her in Spanish, and she yelled right back.
"Stop it!" Dad said. "All of you. Right now!"
It was like a game of frozen statues. None of us moved.
I've never seen Dad so angry. "You have passes for a safe town?" he asked Alex. "What are you planning to trade them for? A truck ride to Ohio while your sister coughs to death?"
Alex looked like Dad had punched him. Then he raced out of the room, out of the house. Julie jumped up and ran after him.
"Go home, Jon," Dad said. "Go home with Miranda."
"I won't," Jon said.
"Stop acting like a child," Dad said. "I won't have it anymore."
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"Please," I said to Jon. "I need you. I hate it there without you."There was a moment when I didn't know what he would do. Jon's been so strong the past year. He's grown up so much. But there's a part of him that's still a kid.
Jon nodded. He didn't say anything more, but when we went outside, he ran to Julie. She took his hand, and after a moment's hesitation they started toward our house.
Alex watched as they walked away. He didn't move as I approached him.
"What's all this about?" I asked. "You have passes to a safe town? Does that mean you and Julie could be living in one?"
"It doesn't concern you," he said.
"If it concerns you, it concerns me," I said. "Honestly, Alex. What do I have to do to prove that to you?"
"I'm sorry," he said. He reached out and held me tightly. When our lips met, I felt like I knew everything about him. But of course there's so much I don't know.
"The safe town," I said, breaking away from him. "The passes."
"I have three passes," Alex said. "They're for family members--wives, husbands, young children. I'm past the cutoff age."
"But Julie isn't," I said. "Did Carlos know about the passes? When he decided she should go to the convent?"
"I told him everything," Alex replied. "I hoped he'd know where a safe town was. They keep them guarded. Carlos tried to find out where one was but he couldn't, so he told me to take Julie to the convent instead. Julie didn't want to go and I took her side. But Carlos insisted. Julie had to be someplace where she'd be protected, someplace where he and I could find her."
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"You still have the passes?" I asked. "You held on to them all this time?""I kept them in reserve," he said. "I would have bartered them for Julie if I'd had to. Then I thought I'd give them to the sisters, as payment for taking Julie. That way it wouldn't be charity."
"Julie's lucky to have you," I said.
"No one is lucky to have me," he said. "Haven't you figured that out yet?"
"I am," I said. "I'm lucky."
"Miranda," he said, but I hushed him with a kiss.
July 3
Dad and Matt went into town today for our food. As far as I know, this is the first they've talked since before the trip to the convent.After they left, Alex came over. "I was wondering if you wanted to go house hunting," he asked me.
We got on the bikes and began riding. I led us in a new direction, and we prowled through a couple of houses, not finding much but not expecting to, either. We worked in silence, staying in the same rooms, but never touching.
"Miranda, I've been thinking," Alex said at last.
"You think too much," I said.
He grabbed me. Or maybe I grabbed him. It's a little hazy. All I know is we were in each other's arms, sharing a long, hard, hungry kiss.
"No," he said, inching away. "This isn't right."
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"You're thinking again," I said, pulling him back for another kiss. He wanted me as much as I wanted him.
"Come with us," he said. "Julie and me. We'll be a family."
"What about the monastery?" I asked.
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"That was a dream," he said. "Like the safe town. Like the convent. But you're real, Miranda. You and Julie and the world we've been handed. We can make it work. I know we can.""That's what I want, too," I said.
Alex hugged me. "You won't regret it," he said. "We'll find a priest in Pittsburgh and get married there. I'll get housing for you and Julie while I work in the coal mines. You won't go hungry. I swear you won't."
"Married?" I said. "By a priest? Couldn't we just exchange vows right now?"
"No," Alex said. "We can't keep on like this. It's a sin. Either we get married in the eyes of God and the Church or we stop now."
I reached out to him and grasped his hand. "I'm sorry," I said. "I can't say yes, I'll marry you, and leave everybody I love behind. I love you and I want you, but I'm not ready for that yet. I don't think it's what you want, not really."
"You have no idea what I want," Alex said.
"So tell me," I said. "What do you want, Alex? To be with me? To be a Franciscan? Make me understand what you want."
He stood there so silent I could hear his heart beat. "I want to be good," he said softly. "But I don't know how."
"Oh, Alex," I said, longing to hold him and knowing he'd resist if I tried. "None of us know anymore."
He nodded and then he wept, like a little boy who'd asked for the moon and been told he could never have it.
July 4
I used to love the Fourth of July. Hot weather. Fireworks. Today was gloomy and 50 degrees.
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The guys celebrated the day by chopping firewood. Mom made her regular inspection of our food supplies. Gabriel, I suppose, cried, and Lisa most likely hovered around him.Syl doesn't eat breakfast. She says she never did and she doesn't see any point starting now. This, of course, drives Mom crazy, but good mother-in-law that she is, she keeps her opinion about breakfast being the most important meal of the day to herself.
So when everyone was busy and Syl was hiding in Matt's bedroom, I went up to talk with her. Which I've hardly done since I've come back, and which, frankly, I wouldn't want to do except there was something I had to ask her.
I knocked on the door and told Syl it was me and she said to come in. She was lying on the sofa-bed mattress, covered with blankets even though the electric heater was going full blast.
"I'm never warm enough," she said. "Except in the sunroom with the woodstove."
"You could come downstairs," I pointed out.
"I will later," she said.
I looked at her and thought about how she'd let Horton out to die, and then I told myself not to think about that, because there was a chance Syl knew something that could help Alex and Julie. "There was something you said once," I began. "About truck drivers."
"What about them?" she asked, propping herself up with her elbow.
"You said they stopped sometimes when they were going to safe towns," I said. "And picked people up."
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"Girls," Syl said. "They never stopped for guys. And they never did on the way to safe towns. The trucks would be filled with supplies then. On the way back they might stop for a girl.""Did they ever stop for you?" I asked.
"What business is that of yours?" she said.
"No," I said. "You don't understand. I was wondering if one of them told you where he'd come from, where the safe town was. That's all."
"No," Syl said. "They knew better than to talk. They could lose their jobs if they told anyone where the safe towns are located."
"Okay," I said. "I'm sorry if I bothered you."
"Sit down," she said. "I hate the way you're standing there, glaring at me."
"I'm not glaring," I said, but I did as she said and sat on the mattress by her side.
"It doesn't matter where any of the safe towns are," Syl said. "None of us could get in. We're not important enough. They're for politicians, people like that."
Syl and Lisa have gotten pretty close. If Dad had told Lisa about the passes, Lisa would have told Syl. Dad must have kept that knowledge to himself, figuring it would upset Lisa. I had to be careful I didn't let Syl know why I was asking.
"It's stupid," I said. "I thought maybe because Mom is a writer, we could get in. That's all. I remembered you mentioned them, so I thought I'd ask if you knew where one is. But you don't, and I'm sorry I bothered you."
For the first time since I've known her, Syl looked uncomfortable. "Look," she said. "There are things I've told Matt and things I haven't, but the only reason I haven't is
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because he hates hearing about them. All right? I'm not ashamed of anything I did. I'm alive and I'm here because of what I did. Matt knows that. He accepts that. But he doesn't like the details.""I won't tell Matt," I said. "I swear."
"Scout's honor?" Syl asked, and then she laughed. "All right. I believe you. It doesn't matter, anyway. I was in an evac camp. This was, I don't know, maybe a year ago. Pretty early on. The camps have guards, military police, young guys mostly. And one of them had gotten his hands on some bottles of vodka, so he and his buddies decided to party. Which they did with some of us girls. We left the camp and broke into an empty house and had a good time." She paused. "It was important to keep the guards happy. If one of them liked you, you might get extra food or a blanket."
I understood why Matt didn't want to hear any of this. And I started to understand why Alex and Carlos were so desperate to protect Julie.
"There were lots of girls at the camp," Syl continued. "The guards had their pick, so you did whatever they asked and you tried to make them feel important, like they were the star quarterback and you were head cheerleader."
"Matt isn't like that," I said.
"No," Syl said. "Matt isn't anything like that. Neither is Hal or Charlie or Alex. The guards wouldn't have been like that, either, probably, if things hadn't changed. But things did change, so they were full of themselves, and if you wanted some extra food, you acted like they were the greatest people on Earth. They loved reminding you how powerful they were.
"We were all a little bit drunk that night, and they started bragging about how many people they'd killed.
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Then they started talking about the first time they'd killed someone. And one of the guys said the first time he'd killed people was when he'd been assigned to clear out a college to make it a safe town. It was funny, he said, because it was Sexton University and he'd applied there and been rejected, and there he was, shooting professors who were resisting. I said I hope he got the dean of admissions, and he laughed.""How can you remember the name," I asked, "if you were drunk?"
"I wasn't that drunk," Syl said. "And I was still trying out different names, so I thought about Anne Sexton, only Anne is pretty dull and you can't call yourself Sex. So I went with Sylvia Plath instead. I like her more anyway."
I had no idea who she was talking about but it didn't matter. "Did the guard say where it was?" I asked. "Sexton University?"
Syl shook her head. "He'd said too much as it was," she said. "The next day I heard the girls who'd been at the party were being rounded up and put in a holding pen. I left before they found me."
"But if you knew the name, couldn't you have found it?" I asked.
"I didn't care where it was," she said. "I was trying to make my way east to see if any of my family was still alive. Which they weren't."
"You have family now," I said.
"That's what Matt tells me," she said.
There was nothing I could say to that, except to ask Syl not to tell anyone I'd been asking. I didn't want Mom to find out, I said. Syl agreed.
And now I'm in my closet, writing all this down, trying
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to figure out how to find out where Sexton University
is and what to do if I can find out.
July 5
I have no idea how many colleges there are in the United States, or how many there were, because for all I know now there aren't any. But Dad used to work at Denning College, so I figured there was at least a chance he'd heard of Sexton University and might know where it was.The only problem was I'd have to give him an explanation why I was asking. It's not like I could say, "Well, I'm thinking about applying there next year because I've always wanted to go to a school named for Anne Sexton, whoever she is."
I have a feeling he'd believe me more if I said I always wanted to go to a school that had Sex in its name, but it doesn't matter. Maybe there are still colleges out there, but unless they're biking distance from Howell, PA, I won't reach it in time for orientation.
I'd have to come up with a different reason why I wanted to know, and there wasn't one. It's not like I could say it came up in conversation or in a game of Name the Most Obscure University. And Dad can always tell when I'm lying.
I figured he could break me down in two steps, if it took that long.
Most likely Mom's heard of Anne Sexton, but that doesn't mean she's heard of Sexton University. And she could break me down in one step without even trying.
Back in the time when life was easy, the Internet would have told me what I needed to know. The great thing about the Internet was it didn't care why you were asking.
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But even though we have electricity more often than not, we don't have phone, or cable, or Internet. Maybe they do in safe towns, but I don't live in one.I tried to remember how people found things out before the Internet existed. They had to have questions, after all, and they couldn't always ask their parents. Or teachers. Or librarians.
Librarians! Librarians always know how to find out things. That was their job even before the Internet.
There was only one problem: The Howell library closed months ago.
But that didn't mean all its books were gone. Maybe there was a book that listed all the universities in the country. And if the library ever did have a book like that, it was probably still there, because who would have stolen it?