Page 99 of Drag You Down
I blink, coming back to reality, and I nod. I set the potatoes down on the counter in front of me, feeling a strange sense of deja vu. It hadn’t been at this exact bodega, but the similarities are enough to make that sensation tug at me.
“Yes.” I pull out my new credit card, the one linked to the account Gabriel had set up for me, and pay. It’s a small thing, and I know it isn’t reallymine, but it feels like it is.
I take my receipt and hurry out, heading back to the small apartment Evelyn is living in. It’s about thirty minutes from Gabriel’s, and I don’t think that the distance was accidental. He doesn’t try to dissuade me from visiting her, and it’s still a nice place to live — nicer than the apartment complex we’d been living in before — so I don’t mind.
I knock on the door before letting myself in with my key, and I find her in the kitchen.
She’s gone back to the familiar, defaulting to what she’d learned at her time in the complex.
Sometimes, I don’t think she’s going to move forward. Other times, she surprises me, like when she’d told me she’d gotten a job at the nearby soup kitchen.
Both of us want to help others, but our methods are vastly different. She wants to help, to heal.
I want to destroy.
“I saw Ruth on TV,” I say as I set the potatoes down on the counter.
Evelyn snorts. “Again? She’s been doing interviews every single month since the complex was ‘discovered.’” She sneers lightly. “I think they pay her for the interviews. All of them feeding off of our suffering…”
Four months haven’t been enough for her wounds to heal. At least, not the emotional ones.
“I guess it’s better than getting tangled up in another cult,” I say. I know some of the others have fallen prey to other scams. There’s always someone ready to take advantage of the vulnerable, and Zachariah kept all of us so isolated that there wasn’t much we knew how to do beyond care for him and hisneeds.
No wonder Ruth is capitalizing on her experiences. She probably doesn’t have many more opportunities than we would have if Gabriel hadn’t helped us.
Evelyn opens the bag of potatoes and starts washing a few. “I thought of reaching out to a few of the others. But I know they would blame me for destroying their good thing.” Her hands close tightly around a potato. “They’d say it was my fault that Father Zachariah ran away.”
I’m not sure if she believes the lie or if she’s lying to herself, but as long as she doesn’t go to the police and blame Gabriel — or me — for his disappearance, I can’t bring myself to care. It’s better for her to think that he ran off than to think that her brother is a murderer.
“He knew he was going to get caught,” I say. “He knew I wasn’t going to stand by and let him hurtyou.”
Evelyn sets the potatoes down and turns to look at me, a sad smile on her face. “Thank you, Lev—Logan. Sorry, I don’t know why I keep slipping. You’d think I could remember my own brother’s name.”
Zachariah used to make us take penance every time we used our birth names, so it doesn’t surprise me that both of us are having trouble getting used to reverting to them. But neither of us wants to be associated with who we were before.
“It’s fine,” I assure her. “We both have to remember who we were before.”
Or come to terms with who we’re becoming, whatever that may be.
Sometimes I still resent Evelyn for having ratted me out to Zachariah, but it was because of that punishment that I was finally able to see the light and accept Gabriel. And I know if our situations had been reversed, I probably would have done the same thing.
Zachariah had made it clear what the punishment for disobedience was.
I still sometimes expect Gabriel to cast me aside when I argue with him, but he only smiles and seems happy that I’m willing to give him my opinion.
I help Evelyn chop vegetables and put together a quick soup. “Have you given thought to what I said? About getting your GED with me?”
Evelyn ignores me, continuing to cook.
I wait, and finally she says, “I don’t know if I can, Logan. Everybody will know that I’m so… dumb.”
“Do you think I’m dumb?” I ask her pointedly. “Because I’m having to do the same thing. I’ve been taking all the practice tests, and there’s a lot I don’t know.” I wrinkle my nose. “All the science.”
“No! But you have Gabriel to help you, and I know you have tutors, and I’m just…” Eve sets everything down and turns to look at me. “I don’t know how to do anything but cook and clean, all right? I wasn’t supposed to do more than that. And imagining doing more… I realize how much of my life was a waste, and how I should have run earlier, and how Ibetrayedyou for… nothing.”
“I should’ve taken you and left whenshedid,” I say. I can’t even call her our mother, not right now, not when I’ve become angry and bitter over the abandonment. Gabriel has offered to track her down, but I know what would happen if he found her. “Or when I turned eighteen. Or something. And I don’t know what I’m going to do, either. I was just an errand boy.”
Evelyn lets out a bitter laugh. “Some pair we are. But okay. Let’s just have a nice dinner.” She wipes at her eyes. “Does Gabriel want to join us? It’ll be another half hour before it’s done anyway.”
