Free The Tempted Soul by Adina Senft

Edgeware Road.
    They hadn’t gone more than a hundred yards when the front lamps illuminated a figure wearing a white shirt. Tall, skinny, and coming from the Grohl place around the corner, maybe? That made it—
    “Alvin Esch?” Emma called. “Is that you?”
    The teenager turned and waited for them to draw up next to him. “Hallo, Emma. Hi, Carrie.”
    “This is awfully late for you to be walking,” Carrie said. “I’m just going to drop Emma at the farm. I can give you a ride down to your folks’ place if you like.” It would take her back around to the county highway the long way, but it wasn’t like she had anyone waiting for her at home, was it? Melvin wasn’t coming back until tomorrow.
    “ Denki .” Emma jumped down and he folded himself into the back. Then she climbed in again. “I wanted to ask you something anyway, Emma.” His voice sounded muffled, as though he were hiding his mouth with his hand. “Has any mail come to you lately?”
    Carrie peered out into the dark ahead of them and kept her mouth firmly shut. It would not do for him to know that Emma had told her and Amelia all about his correspondence courses—and her part in it. She would let Emma herself break that to him if she chose.
    “You don’t need to be so vague, Alvin,” Emma said matter-of-factly. “Carrie knows. She knows what you and I and Aaron King were up to last year, and she knows that your packets were coming to my house.”
    “Oh,” he said faintly. “I thought we agreed…”
    “We did. They found out another way. And anyhow, it’s all water under the bridge, because I told you when the school year ended that I would not be getting the packets anymore.”
    “But I’m starting the first term of junior year this week. I don’t know where else to have the people send them.”
    “General Delivery at the post office?”
    “You know Janelle would blab.”
    “I thought the post office was supposed to keep people’s mail confidential?” Carrie couldn’t resist speaking up.
    “We’re talking about Janelle Baum,” Emma reminded her, as if that explained everything. “She gave me a package for John once when I was in there. I could have been living in Strasburg for all she knew, and carried away his baler parts to sell at the flea market.”
    “Please, Emma,” Alvin begged. “You’ve helped me this long.”
    “And I was wrong to do it,” she said. “Besides, what good will it do you to have them sent to me for only a month? Come November, I’ll be living over on the other side of Whinburg.”
    “You could get them there. I can send them a change of address.”
    Emma turned on the seat to look at him as though she could see in the dark. Maybe she could. “It’s one thing to deceive Mamm for your sake, Alvin. But I will not deceive the man who will be my husband.”
    A long breath went out of him, and Carrie could almost feel sorry for the boy. Almost, but not quite. Because all three of them knew that he was disobeying the Ordnung and had been for two years. On top of that, it was just the run-up for something even worse. He could not go on with his education and join church at the same time. One precluded the other.
    “Alvin, you have two choices,” Emma said gently. “Either you stop here and be thankful for the two years you have more than everybody else, or you move to a district whose Ordnung allows its young men to finish high school.”
    “I want more than high school,” he said stubbornly. “I want to be more than a farmer, or a harness maker, or a builder. I want to be a scientist, or an engineer.”
    Carrie supposed there were college graduates among other Amish groups, maybe, but she’d never heard of any. “Are you saying you will leave your family and friends, then, Alvin?” she asked softly. “Is it worth it? Besides counting the cost of such losses, how will you pay for it in actual money?”
    “I’ll work my way through, somehow,” he said, ignoring the first part and