Books : The Unspoken : Excerpts

SCARS

Allison wakes up the next morning with a craving for key lime pie. Sure, she has always had a sweet tooth the size of the Mississippi Delta -- which, as any map will tell you, is pretty big -- but she usually wants chocolate. Ding Dongs. Double chocolate chip cookies. Hot chocolate. Chocolate chocolate chip ice cream. Chocolate fudge brownies. In a pinch she'll even eat a Hershey's Bar -- which, as any chocolate lover will tell you, is second-rate stuff. But recently Allison has been thinking more about key lime pies than chocolate, and she isn't sure why.

Key lime pie was her ma's favorite treat, and she always let Allison and Melanie help with making desserts. "There are two things you need to know about a good key lime pie," her ma would never forget to remind them. "You gotta have real key limes from Florida. And you need just the right amount of juice." That last part might sound obvious, but balance is everything. You need enough tartness to make your mouth pucker up and enough sweetness to make you want another mouthful.

And another.

Balance. Ma, Daddy, Mel, and Allison. Together the four of them were like ingredients. Each one made up an essential part of their family, but when Melanie was gone, nothing tasted right anymore. Ma got real quiet. Daddy stopped laughing. And Allison became invisible, at least to her folks.

Most days when Allison got home from school, her ma would be sitting in front of the television, staring. That may not sound strange at first, but the television was completely broken. You couldn't see anything but your own reflection on the black screen. A few weeks earlier Daddy had plugged one too many things into the same electrical socket, and something inside the TV made a loud popping sound. He liked to joke that Ma's favorite shows were so bad that the TV finally exploded in protest.

But after Mel died, nothing seemed funny anymore. In fact, nothing seemed to work in the Burke house after that -- broken towel racks, burned out lightbulbs, leaky faucets. It was as if the entire house was falling apart too.

Three months later her ma wasn't sitting in front of the television, or anywhere else in the house, for that matter. She disappeared on a Saturday afternoon, along with her clothes and jewelry and her favorite cookbook for desserts.

It was the weekend of the state fair, and ma didn't want to go. No amount of persuading would change her mind, either, so Allison and Daddy went without her. It was good to be away, Allison remembers thinking -- outside and in the warm sunlight. At the fairgrounds they ate funnel cake and fed the largest pig in the world. They even got tickets for one of those spinning rides whose only purpose is making people dizzy. By the time they got home, Allison's stomach ached from all the spinning and eating -- especially the chocolate-dipped Rice Krispies Treats and the rainbow lollipops.

She and Daddy called out when they walked through the door, but no one answered. All the rooms were half empty, and Ma wasn't anywhere to be found. Allison wanted to call the police.

"No," her daddy said, staring at his shoes and speaking in a whisper. "Sometimes people need to disappear for a while...she'll come back for you."

Allison figured those words must have hurt a ton -- thinking that Ma would return for her daughter but not for her husband. No matter. It turns out he was wrong anyway.

Ma never came back for either one of them.

Before that day Allison had always assumed that disappearing would be hard -- that only magicians, CIA agents, and serial killers could do it. But in the Burke house eight years ago Allison learned that disappearing was about as hard as making key lime pie.

And that's not hard at all.

Allison gets out of bed, relieved that there isn't any blood on her pillow. She feels mostly back to normal this morning, though her tongue is sore and swollen, and her head throbs as if Brutus Packer Jr. has been using it for a drum solo. Her duffel bag is ready and sitting by the bedroom door. The gas tank in her car -- the ancient car that Mr. Packer gave her when she turned seventeen -- is full. And she has left out plenty of crunchy food for John Donne, the Packers' enormously puffy cat.

Now she just needs to get dressed and check e-mail before hitting the road. She hopes Bo has sent his usual good-morning-I'm-thinking-of-you e-mail. For the last month he has written her something every night so she has it first thing. But today her in-box is empty. She's not that surprised, though. Yesterday when Bo asked her why she needed to leave town all of a sudden, Allison couldn't answer.

"It's just something I gotta do," she said.

He got real quiet after that.

How could she tell him -- or anyone -- about the terrible things that happened back then? About her fear that she might die soon? And if she couldn't explain it to Bo, there was no way Mrs. Packer would understand. So Allison did the only thing she could think of.

"I really need to stay at Heather's place this weekend," she said yesterday after school.

A lie.

"Heather Montgomery?" Mrs. Packer asked, as if Allison knew so many Heathers that it was hard to keep track.

"Yes, Heather Montgomery." The only Heather I've known my whole life, she wanted to say. My only real friend at school. Instead Allison added, "We have a big history test on Monday."

Another lie.

Allison hates lying. It reminds her of Jacob Crawley and the lies that brought Daddy and her to the Divine Path. The lies that led up to the night of the fire. But Allison doesn't have any other choice right now. She needs to go to Harold's funeral, and there's no way that her foster parents would allow it. As Mrs. Packer would say, "N-period-O-period." So Allison has told two lies. She figures it's better than disappearing like her ma did. She'll never do that to anybody. Ever.

It hurts way too much.

Besides, Heather will cover for her. That's what best friends do. Heather has long blond hair, sky blue eyes, and cheerleader good looks, but she doesn't act like it. She reads books and plays the cello. She's also the only other girl in school who thinks Bill Stringfield, the quarterback of the football team, is the biggest loser in the world. Which he is -- and not just because he thinks he's God's gift to women and one time in English class he spelled "potato" with an e on the end.

Heather is the only one whom Allison has told about the Divine Path. Well, little bits here and there. But Heather has heard enough to know that Allison has to go back to Meridian. Pronto.

Like Allison, Heather also has a scar, but hers resembles jagged glass and runs from the palm of her hand to the bend in her elbow. She got it in a car accident several years ago when her stepfather-no-more, Tony, drank too many beers at a neighborhood barbecue and insisted on driving Mrs. Montgomery and Heather home. He crashed into an oak tree less than two blocks from their house, giving his wife three broken ribs and cutting up Heather's arm real bad.

And Tony...well, he didn't have a scratch on him.

Heather says she doesn't mind the scar so much anymore, but then again, she mostly wears long-sleeved shirts. Allison doesn't mention this. She understands that Heather hates having a permanent reminder of Tony on her body -- especially since he left her mother and her about a year after the accident.

Allison knows all about wanting to forget the past.

She knows all about scars, too....

The Confessional was about six and a half minutes from the campsite -- far enough away to be out of earshot but close enough to remind you that it was always there. It was the place where Jacob gave penance to those who sinned. At least, that's what Jacob liked to call it -- "giving penance."

Allison walked that six and a half minutes enough times to do it blindfolded and backward. She can still picture every step -- where the fallen tree blocked most of the stream, where the strange black rocks formed an X on the side of the hill, where you could first see the Confessional under a canopy of thick branches and leaves.

From the outside the Confessional looked like a dilapidated shed with wood as dark as the night sky and walls tilted unnaturally far to one side. It seemed as if a gust of wind could knock the whole thing over. If only. But the inside appeared both bigger and smaller at the same time. Mirrors of different shapes and sizes covered each wall, and even the ceiling was made up of reflective glass. It was like everything was looking back on itself.

A deep, circular pit took up most of the space where the floor should have been. For a long time no one -- not Allison or Harold or any of the other kids -- got close enough to see inside. They had all sorts of theories about what was there, though. Sharks. Bats. Killer bees. Monsters. Even terrorists.

Once Allison thought she heard a gasping sound like someone choking. Harold heard things too. But he was convinced that something was gurgling, like it was trying to come up for air. No matter. They all had different theories until the day Allison got caught stealing. Until the day she sneaked into Jacob's room to find the box with David's asthma medication.

Jacob's bedroom was more boring than she had expected. A bloodred candle glowed in the far corner, its light flickering across the desktop, and the shelves overflowing with books and yellowing papers. A rectangular rug with faded patterns covered most of the floor, and thick purple drapes hung from the windows. Jacob's bed was against the opposite wall.

Allison hurried across the room to look underneath the bed. The golden box was there -- just like Harold had said. She dragged it onto the rug, and its surface held a distorted reflection of everything in the room, like a dirty fun-house mirror. There was no lock or latch on the box. No lid or visible opening. But it wasn't solid wood, either.

Allison tapped on the surface, and she could hear its hollowness. Nothing but four smooth sides. She ran her hands over the entire box again but couldn't figure out how to open it.

It has to be in here, Allison remembers thinking.

Jacob had mentioned the box many times. It was the place where he kept their past -- tokens from their lives before the Divine Path, tokens he held on to as if they had some magic power over them. She started to pound the box against the floor, but nothing happened. Not even a dent. She stood up with it in her arms, planning to run outside for a rock or something heavy to smash it open.

That's when Jacob walked through the door.

Her heart stopped beating.

"Good evening, Allison." Jacob smiled, and a slow, easy expression crossed his face. She knew what that meant -- another trip to the Confessional.

Less than fifteen minutes later the Doctor brought Allison to the shed. In fact, the Doctor always took "penitent" children to the Confessional. No one had seen him before Jacob moved his followers to the campsite. The Doctor came after that. He just appeared one morning at services, when Jacob brought him up to the podium and introduced him as "the Doctor." Since no one knew what else to call him, the name stuck. He mostly handled basic medical stuff at the camp -- bandaging cuts and sprains and that kind of thing. Jacob didn't allow the use of any medicine. He said that God took care of the sick, and that was that.

No one was sure how the Doctor felt about this. He didn't say too much. Besides, his drooping face, unshining black eyes, and grayish skin didn't make you want to strike up a conversation with him. Still, the Doctor always looked worried when someone started coughing or running a fever. He wore that same worried expression every time he escorted Allison to the Confessional. He'd tell her that everything would be fine, that Jacob was doing this for her own good. But she could see that he didn't believe a word of it.

Adults can be the worst liars.

This visit to the Confessional was different from the start. The Doctor walked Allison to the edge of the pit and told her to look inside. She thought it was some kind of trick. Jacob had never said you couldn't look inside, but he'd never said it was okay, either. It was as if he just wanted you to wonder, to worry about what was down there. But the Doctor waited...waited until she leaned over the uneven edge of the pit and peered down.

Nothing. Empty. A big black zero, Allison thought with relief. After all that time she'd spent imagining the terrible things down there, it was only in her head. Either that or the hole was too deep to see anything. She turned back to the Doctor, but he was gone. Instead Jacob stood in the corner of the room, his body reflected in the dozens of mirrors around him.

"What do you want with the box, Allison?"

She didn't answer. In truth, she was sick to death of talking to Jacob.

"I said, what do you want with the box?" Jacob stepped forward, and so did the dozens of Jacobs in the mirrors. His white linen suit and silver hair made his entire body shine.

"I..." She hesitated. "Nothing."

Jacob nodded. In an instant he grabbed her shoulders and held her at the ledge.

"Look into the pit again, Allison," Jacob said. "This time I want you to open your eyes. I want you to see what's really down there."

Allison had no choice because Jacob was holding her over the opening now. It wasn't the idea of falling that scared her. It was the realization, maybe for the first time since Daddy and she had become part of the Divine Path, that Jacob would really hurt her. And even worse, that he wanted to hurt her. Bad.

"Think about the thing that you're most afraid of, Allison. Concentrate."

Jacob's grip squeezed tighter, and that's when she saw something moving in the darkness below. Allison stared into the pit, trying to see more clearly. The shadows shifted again. Then she could hear a scraping sound, like someone sharpening metal. It got louder and louder, moving closer to the surface. Allison struggled to pull away from the opening, but Jacob held her firmly in place.

"Why do you want to bite the hand that feeds you, Allison?"

Beneath her, something started to glow in the darkness. Red and hot and burning. Then she heard more scratching. Her eyes started to sting and tear. Smoke was suddenly coming up from the pit. It was filling the entire room and scorching the inside of her throat.

"Please," Allison begged. "I can't breathe."

That's when Jacob released her, and Allison fell into the darkness.

"What are you doing?" Brutus Packer Jr. practically shouts across her room, and Allison almost drops the scarf in her hand.

"How many times do I have to tell you to knock, Brutus Packer Jr.?"

He hates the fact that Allison always uses his full name, and his face turns pinkish red. He then glances at the duffel bag by the door and taps it with his foot.

"You're leaving?" his voice cracks somewhat.

Allison suddenly realizes that her neck is not covered, and she wraps the scarf around it, hiding her scar -- the scar Jacob put there that day at the Confessional.

"I'm spending the weekend with a friend," she says, and for the first time since she has lived here, Brutus Packer Jr. seems disappointed, almost sad. "I'll be back soon," she adds, and his face brightens briefly.

"Whatever, stinky-pants," Brutus Packer Jr. blurts out before hurrying out of her room.

Allison smiles as she grabs her bag and walks downstairs. It is still early in the morning, and she can sneak out before Mr. and Mrs. Packer get up. Allison considers waiting around to say good-bye, but she's too anxious for that. It's going to be a long drive, she reminds herself. It's going to be a long trip back to a place she doesn't want to go, to a place that could be dangerous.

She thinks again about Harold and Daddy and Mel and the other kids she used to know. She thinks about key lime pie and how the little things in life make you ache the most for home. And as she starts the engine of her car, she even thinks about Brutus Packer Jr. -- her new family, her new life...a life she hopes she'll live long enough to come back to.