Free The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly by Stephanie Oakes Page A

just real good at lying to themselves,” she says, her voice low. “Real good at it.”

Chapter 16
    I ’ve been wondering if jail does anything it’s supposed to. It’s not true justice, not really. Philip’s organs aren’t knitting themselves together any faster because I’m locked in here, and it’s not fixing me, either. It’s punishment, and for now I probably need a little time sitting under the weight of everything I’ve done. I deserve to feel the blackening caverns of my heart pull inward every time I remember Philip’s blood sketched across the fallen snow. To look my guilt about Jude and Constance straight in the eyes. To sink down in the pain and let myself feel exactly as bad as I should.
    â€œYou did nothing wrong,” is what Angel says on the occasions I talk like this, but I know it wasn’t natural or right what I did, and I question how it all could have happened. Not just for me, but everyone in the Community. How each of our hands went from farming and praying to hurting and killing.
    It was never supposed to be like that. From the beginning, things were supposed to be better than they’d been.
    Before we came to the Community, nobody could’ve mistaken us for saints. With my parents, there was always something unspoken and static-charged beneath the surface, but I was too preoccupied with childhood to notice. My days were simple and divided up into clear segments: the time of eating cereal, the time of watching my mother fold laundry, the time of my father arriving home. My mother would pull the zipper on his yellow jumpsuit, and he’d step out of it like a discarded shell, his undershirt salty with drying sweat.
    The world was small where we lived, on a dirt lot that all the trailers on our street backed crookedly on to, where the neighborhood children ran on chubby legs in raggedy, stained clothes and diapers that dragged on the ground. We’d congregate at the rusty swing set and dented slide that sounded like sheet metal shaking every time someone went down. The lot wasn’t much to look at, covered with trampled brown snow in the winter, and in the summer a weed clawing out of the earth every few feet. The only spectacular things in that place were the view of the mountains, so big they could stun you every day with your own smallness, and an apple tree that grew from the very center.
    The day my father brought the Prophet home for the first time, the leaves of the apple tree shone almost silver in the sunlight, and the apples were unripened green buds the size of my fist.
    I stretched my hand high in the air, trying to reach the lowest hanging apple, just to see if I could.
    A hand darted out and wrenched the apple from the branch. The stem was green and unbreakable still. The hand had to pull so hard that, when the apple came free, the tree shook its boughs like arms waving in anger.
    Above me hung the face of a man with pebbled eyes, peering through a pair of thick, yellowed glasses, a heavy beard patched over his cheeks. He looked normal, like any of the paunchy dads in the neighborhood who drove beat-up trucks and tuned their TVs too loud.
    â€œHere you go,” he said, holding the apple by the stem.
    I reached for it and he placed it on my palm. My fingers closed around it.
    â€œAren’t you going to eat it?” he asked.
    â€œIt’s not ripe. They don’t taste good yet.”
    He plucked the apple from my hand, stuffing it into his mouth whole. He watched me as he chewed and swallowed.
    The screen door opened with a screech. My father was standing on the back porch. He said something odd then. He told me this man was holy beyond understanding. That I was to do whatever he asked. That I was to believe everything he said.
    Because he spoke to God.

Chapter 17
    I walk down to lunch with Angel and Rashida. It’s become easier since I discovered that, even without Angel around, the girls don’t