Lies (Gone 3)

“Oh, it is,” Brittney said enthusiastically. “It’s cake and cheeseburgers and everything you would ever want.”

“So you’re the prophet?”

“No, no,” Brittney said with modestly downcast eyes. “I am not the prophet. I am an angel of the Lord. I am the avenger of the Lord, come to destroy the evil one.”

“Which evil one? We have a few. Are we talking pitchforks?”

Brittney smiled, but this time her braces did not show. It was a cool, wintry smile, a secret smile. “This demon does not have a pitchfork, Brianna. The evil one comes with a whip.”

Brianna considered this for several seconds.

“I have someplace I have to be,” Brianna said. She left as quickly as only she could.

“What do you want for your birthday?” John asked Mary.

Mary shook poop from a napkin that was doubling as a diaper. The feces dropped into a plastic trash can that would be taken out later and buried in a trench dug by Edilio’s backhoe.

“I’d like to not do this, that would be a great birthday,” Mary said.

“I’m serious,” John said reproachfully.

Mary smiled and inclined her head toward his, forehead to forehead. It was their version of a hug. A private thing between the two members of the Terrafino family. “I’m serious, too.”

“You should definitely take the day off,” John said. “I mean, you have to get through the whole poof thing. People say it’s kind of intense.”

“Sounds like it,” Mary said vaguely. She dropped the diaper into a second bucket, this one half filled with water. The water smelled of bleach. The bucket rested in a little red wagon so that it could be hauled to the beach. There, laundry workers would do an indifferent job of washing it in the ocean and send it back still stained and itchy with sand and salt.

“You’re ready for it, right?” John asked.

Mary glanced at the watch. Francis’s watch. She’d taken it off while she was washing. How many hours left? How many minutes until the big one-five?

Mary nodded. “I read the instructions. I talked to a person who’d been through it. I did everything I was supposed to.”

“Okay,” John said unhappily. Out of nowhere, John said, “You know Orsay is lying, right?”

“I know she cost me Francis,” Mary snapped. “That’s all I need to know.”

“Yeah! See? Look what happened from him listening to her.”

“I wonder how Jill is doing with them,” Mary wondered aloud. She was on to the next diaper. With Francis gone and no one entirely trained to take over for him, Mary had even more work than usual. And not the best work, either.

“She’s probably okay,” John said.

“Yeah, but if Orsay is this big liar, maybe I shouldn’t have let her take Jill,” Mary said.

John seemed baffled by that, not sure how to respond. He blushed and looked down.

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Mary said quickly, interpreting his look as concern for Jill.

“Yeah. Just because Orsay is, like, lying, that doesn’t mean she’d be bad to Jill,” John said.

“Maybe I’ll go check on her,” Mary said. “In my spare time.” She laughed. It was a running joke that had long since stopped being funny.

“You probably should just stay away from Orsay,” John said.

“Yeah?”

“I mean, I don’t know. I just know Astrid says Orsay’s making everything up.”