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But it’s worth it because the smile that got me in trouble came from a place deep inside me that I hadn’t even remembered existed.
And no amount of pain could dim the happiness that I’d discovered in the last week.
Apollo and I spent every afternoon together. And for those two hours, we lay in my hammock, we read and talked.
She told me all about her life in Las Vegas, and I told her about living here in Cain's Weeping.
I’ve read five books, too. All of them about things I’d never dreamed existed.
But, what we have planned tonight is going to be the icing on the cake.
Apollo is going to show me her telescope. She said we can see the stars up close at night. As soon as she told me she could show me some of the constellations the book talked about, I knew I’d risk anything to see it.
Sneaking out of the house is easy. He’s a heavy sleeper, and I can hear his snores through the entire house as I slip out the back door. My memory serves as my internal navigation system as I run all the way to Apollo’s house.
My back is stiff after my whipping, but it doesn’t slow me down or dim my excitement about tonight. Thinking about seeing her again always excites. Every time she steps out from the little path I cut through the woods and sees me, she smiles so happily. It feels like the universe has suddenly remembered that I exist and sent me my very own angel. She isn’t just smart. She’s nice, too. Not just because she brings me cake every day. She cares about the things that most people never even notice.
When I started to wipe away a spider web that clung to the leaves on the trees I was about to hang our hammock from, she’d stopped me. “We can find another set of trees to read in today. This spider will have to build a whole new house.”
Yesterday she stopped to pluck a worm-eaten leaf and asked me if I knew if worms had teeth or if they did this with just a little mouth. I didn’t know. And despite never having even thought about it before, I wished I had a way to find out. The more time I spent with Apollo, the more time I wanted to know answers to all of the questions she had.
Living in Cain’s Weeping meant I probably never would. No one ever left. Except for the Fergusons. Mr. Ferguson used to run the town bakery out of the back of their house. They had a son, too. His name was Riley. We hadn’t been friends. He was older than me by almost ten years and was already working out in the field, but our mamas had been friendly.
At least as friendly as you could be with anyone in Cain’s Weeping.
When Mrs. Ferguson came by to deliver our daily bread, she’d always sit for a few minutes and talk with Mama. She smiled at me and ruffled my hair every time she went up and down the steps.
And then one day, three weeks ago, she didn’t come to deliver the bread.
Not ever again.
I never knew what happened to them. Two days after the last time I saw her, Mr. Ferguson delivered the bread himself.
He didn’t stop to smile at me as he walked up the steps. He didn’t linger after he’d laid the basket outside the front door. I watched him walk down the steps and disappear into the cornfield that separated our houses before I scrambled inside to find my mama.
She’d been in the kitchen. Her arms were moving in slow circles in the elbow deep dark red water inside the vat of wool she was dyeing.
“Mama, where’s Mrs. Ferguson?” I asked as I stood in the doorway
“Who?” She’d answered quietly without looking up from her task. Her arms never lost rhythm. I knew then that something was wrong. The only time mama avoided my eyes was when we weren’t alone. I held my breath before I glanced at the crib in the corner of the room. He wasn’t there, and some of my apprehension eased. I looked back at Mama and said tentatively, whispering now even though we were alone.
“Your friend …”
Her arms stopped their motion, and her eyes came to mine. In them, I saw a look I didn’t understand, but that stopped me from asking the other questions that were dancing on my tongue.
That same night at a special assembly called by my stepfather and held where every important meeting in town was held, with Mr. Ferguson standing next to him, my father warned us to forget the abominations who had lived among us. He called them a cancer that had been cut out of our body—of our town’s righteousness.
But I thought about them all the time. I walked down the path leading to Apollo’s house. I wonder where they went. I think about the hole in the fence. Is that how they got out? Why didn’t they take us with them?
Maybe, like me, they’d met someone who showed them that the world outside of town wasn’t full of dangers. That it was just the opposite—full of wonderful things that he didn’t want them to ever know or see.
When Apollo brought the mirror the next day, she’d told me that where she grew up and everywhere she’d been, everybody had at least one in their houses. The only time I’d ever seen myself was catching a reflection in the lake, but it wasn’t very clear.
Her mirror was only a tiny thing, but it felt like so much more. When I first held it in front of my face, all I could see were my eyes. I thought it was Mama staring back at me.
Apollo took it from me and held it a little farther away so I could see my whole face. I was glad she was holding it because I think I would have dropped it. I touched my face and only when I saw my hand had I believed I was looking at myself. My eyes are just like Mama’s. So is my mouth. My hair is the same color, too.
But my nose, my chin, the shape of my head is different. I wondered if those were from my daddy. It was the first time I’d ever thought about him as more than just some man I’d never know.
