Agnes at the End of the World Read online

  Agnes fought the urge to be flattered, which was only weakness, plain and simple. Quickly, she zipped the cooler into her backpack.

  When she looked up, Matilda was frowning again, and Agnes’s stomach clenched.

  “Listen,” Matilda said. “I can’t make it next month. I’m taking on more hospital shifts.”

  She froze, remembering Ezekiel’s first crisis. How close death had come.

  “Sweetheart, I’m sending someone else. My son. Danny.”

  Her son?

  Was she insane?

  She opened her mouth to protest, to tell Matilda that she couldn’t under any circumstances sneak out at night to meet a boy. God would surely destroy her for that, if Father didn’t first.

  She heard Beth’s voice, rebelliously eager: Is it a boy? Is that it?

  Inwardly, she groaned. But the Outsider was already fishing in her purse for car keys. She left her alone and dazed among the graves.

  Beneath the stars, Agnes bowed her head to pray.

  God forgive me.

  The Prophet was right about Outsiders. They tricked you with kindness, and nothing they said was as simple as it seemed.

  If she had to meet a boy in the dark next month—a faithless, Gentile boy—she’d bring Father’s gun along with her.

  In the meantime, she’d bury her secret deeper than the insulin cooler. She’d pretend she’d never met Matilda or witnessed the miracle of her medicine. When she administered Ezekiel’s shots, she’d watch the needle with only half her mind, keeping the other half pure and clean.

  Every day, she’d be so faithful that God might overlook this trespass. Might even decide it was finally time to cure Ezekiel.

  What a miracle it would be, Agnes thought fervently, trudging up the steep hill. If God took his sickness away.

  2

  AGNES

  Until marriage, stay chaste. Treat the other sex like snakes.

  —PROPHET JACOB ROLLINS

  At dawn the next day, Agnes drew Ezekiel into the bathroom and carefully locked the door. She drew up her skirt to unstrap the glucose meter from her thigh, wincing as the tape tugged at sensitive skin.

  Solemnly, Ezekiel extended the third finger of his left hand for her to prick.

  The sinful screen flashed. His morning blood glucose—a safe 95.

  She recorded the number in his log while he played silently with his stuffed Sheep. Then she prepared his basal insulin. With a steady hand, she plunged the syringe into his arm.

  “Thumbs-up if you feel high today, okay?” she said. “Thumbs-down, if you feel—”

  “Low, I know.” He chewed his lip, pouting. “But Agnes, why should I?”

  She frowned. “Why signal me, you mean?”

  He shook his head vigorously. “I mean, why am I sick? Why is God mad at me?”

  Her chest tightened. “Oh, Ezekiel. I truly don’t know.”

  His features firmed with resolve. “I’ll pray extra hard in church today. I swear.”

  Tenderly, Agnes kissed his forehead—her own body burning with grief and guilt.

  “Our secret, remember,” she reminded him.

  He nodded. “Our secret.”

  Thanks to the Outsider, he had enough insulin to survive another thirty days.

  In the kitchen, Beth speared Agnes with a look so meaningful it bordered on sinful.

  A look that said, You’ll regret keeping secrets from me, sister.

  “Mary, go brush your teeth!” Agnes shouted, ignoring her. “Sam, help your sisters tie their shoes. I mean it.”

  If they didn’t hurry, they’d be late for church.

  Bells tolled and the screen door slammed. They followed Father to Red Creek’s dusty road, joining a procession of other families on their way to the white clapboard church. On the first of July, the air shimmered with unrelenting heat.

  Only Agnes’s mother stayed behind. She never went to church anymore—never went anywhere. Father lied, told their neighbors she was infirm. In truth, she indulged the sin of despair, staring blankly at the bedroom ceiling, day after day.

  She only came out to shower when everyone slept.

  Agnes had discovered her once, her frail mother standing in the hallway, her hair lank and damp. She wished she’d never seen her mother scuttle back to her room. It was the first time she’d laid eyes on her in weeks.

  Afterwards, Agnes made a point of staying in bed when she heard running water.

  Father often wondered aloud when the Prophet would gift him with another, better wife. A real helpmate, this time.

  “It’s a great blessing I have Agnes to keep house,” he told approving church matrons. “Honestly, I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

  The road was more alive on Sundays than on any other day. Agnes loved to see three hundred of God’s faithful in their starched collars and hear all the children’s voices rising high. And there were plenty of children. Most Red Creek families were bursting at the seams. The Prophet himself had twenty-one children and eleven exalted wives.

  Father hadn’t been so lucky. Agnes and Beth wondered, beneath the bedcovers, what marked him for such misfortune.

  “God must’ve told Prophet Rollins that Father isn’t ready to take another wife,” Agnes said. “Maybe there’s some stain on his soul?”

  “I don’t want another mother, anyway.”

  “She could help with chores,” Agnes pointed out.

  “Or she could be spiteful,” Beth replied. “And cause more trouble than she’s worth.”

  The words made Agnes squirm, because they sounded like rebellion. God would give them another mother or not, just as He would give them away in marriage or not. But Beth had always struggled with her woman’s role.

  I made the right choice, keeping Ezekiel’s secret to myself, she thought. Perfectly right.

  On the road, Agnes held Ezekiel’s hand, and Ezekiel cradled his Sheep. Sam hurried to catch up with them, cheeks ruddy under the high desert sun.

  “Will the Prophet preach the Rapture today? I want to hear about fire and brimstone and what will happen to the Outsiders!”

  Sam couldn’t get enough of avenging angels with flaming swords.

  A smile touched Agnes’s lips. “The Prophet will preach what God wills.”

  “But the Rapture is so exciting! I wish the apocalypse was happening today.”

  Ezekiel tugged Agnes’s hand, her cue to bend so he could speak into her ear.

  “I don’t like the Rapture sermon,” he whispered gravely. “It gives me nightmares.”

  “Only Outsiders need fear the Rapture,” she whispered back.

  “And the rebellious, right?” Ezekiel squinted, anxious. “Won’t they be struck down, too?”

  Moonlight on the King family gravestones. A syringe in her hand. And Beth asking, Agnes, are you in rebellion?

  Unsettled, Agnes entered the church.

  The building had been constructed in the time of the Prophet’s grandfather, with pews to seat the three hundred people of Red Creek. No windows—the Prophet said earthly light was a needless distraction. An enormous cross hung from a wire, twisting slowly on its bearings. The bronze symbol made her anxious, looking as if it were always about to fall. She soothed herself that the wire was strong.

  She glanced at Ezekiel, alive by the grace of a dozen broken Laws, and swallowed.

  What if her wires were faulty? What if she was the one about to fall?

  She opened her well-loved Bible with shaking hands. It fell open to a familiar passage:

  I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek thy servant; for I do not forget thy commandments.

  “Amen,” she whispered while the cross twisted this way and that.

  After the sermon, the girls filed into one annex, the boys into another.

  Agnes’s eyes lingered on Ezekiel’s thin back as he disappeared behind the boys’ door. She’d stuffed his pockets, as usual, with homemade granola bars in case his blood sugar dipped low. She told herself he’d
be fine, that God would watch over him. But her stomach twisted anyway.

  In the girls’ room, Agnes pulled out her notebook to copy the name of the lesson scrawled on the chalkboard—Why Perfect Obedience Produces Perfect Faith.

  Beth yanked Agnes’s braid and passed her a folded paper.

  “I wish you wouldn’t pass notes,” Agnes murmured irritably.

  But their Sunday school teacher hadn’t arrived yet. The other girls were busily chattering, enjoying their time away from chores.

  The note, written in Beth’s bubbly cursive, was short and sweet:

  I forgive you.

  Agnes looked into her wide green eyes, surprised. Beth smiled so graciously that Agnes couldn’t help but smile back. Her sister had a good heart. Of course one single secret wouldn’t come between them.

  Beth turned away, and Magda Jameson tapped Agnes’s shoulder.

  Agnes felt an inwards curl of disgust.

  Magda was Red Creek’s most vicious gossip. She was prone to mincing, fussing, and looking down on anyone whose father owned less land and fewer livestock. Though Agnes braced herself, nothing could’ve prepared her for the lash of Magda’s poisoned tongue.

  “I heard your sister’s been tempting my brother Cory.”

  Her pencil clattered to the floor. “What?”

  Magda wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Everyone says she’s utterly shameless. Practically in rebellion.”

  Agnes wanted to shake her for saying such a thing. Girls had been shunned, humiliated, banished for less.

  “That’s vile gossip and you know it.”

  Magda only smirked. Agnes was grateful when Mrs. King marched into the room, angling her hips between rows of identical desks.

  “Well, girls? Who’d like to share her summary of the sermon?” Mrs. King’s eyes roamed across their faces and, finally, with a cruel glittering, fell on hers. “Agnes? Will you?”

  Her stomach dropped.

  Since childhood, she’d dreaded public speaking.

  She looked helplessly at her hands. On her right was the ugly broken knuckle, never properly healed. She didn’t blame Mrs. King for breaking it. Her methods may have been harsh, but Agnes had dearly needed the correction.

  She had spoken blasphemy, claiming to hear God—but never again.

  Mrs. King sighed. “Well. I see the cat’s got her tongue.”

  The other girls tittered, and Agnes could’ve died.

  “You know she can’t answer in front of everyone.” Beth’s voice rang clear as a bell. “So why do you keep calling on her?”

  Mrs. King’s face darkened. Agnes held her breath.

  Rebellion, her heart beat. Beth, are you in rebellion?

  “If you object to how I run my class, you can leave it,” spat Mrs. King. “I’m sure the Prophet will be happy to see you in his office.”

  Fear buried itself in Agnes’s chest like an arrow. Beth must not choose this path. Didn’t she know what was at stake?

  Punishment. Exile.

  And worst of all, the wrath of God.

  A long, tense pause, while the other girls watched, curious as crows.

  “I only mean, it seems unfair,” Beth said—but repentantly enough.

  Agnes slumped with relief.

  “Careful, young lady,” Mrs. King warned her sister. “Now. Who will summarize?”

  Magda’s hand shot up, and Agnes grimaced.

  “The sermon was on the role of the sexes.” That mincing voice, sickly sweet and taunting. “The Prophet says that until marriage, girls must keep themselves pure and chaste, and treat men as if they were snakes.”

  Beth laughed, a punched, angry sound.

  Mrs. King whirled. “Who’s laughing? Raise your hand.”

  Beth stared innocently at the chalkboard. No girl proved brave enough to point a finger. But the damage was done, her reputation further sullied.

  Agnes squirmed, underlining the lesson’s title over and over: Why Perfect Obedience Produces Perfect Faith.

  Then came a bitter rush of guilt. Beth was toying with rebellious urges—Agnes saw that quite clearly now. For years, she’d been entirely focused on Ezekiel’s illness. But all along, something dark and equally dangerous had been happening inside Beth.

  She remembered her sister saying, If you are in rebellion, I understand. Don’t you know I have doubts, too?

  At the first opportunity, Agnes promised herself she’d speak to her sister. She hoped it wasn’t too late to stop her from doing something stupid, or dangerous, or both.

  3

  AGNES

  Women are wholly incapable of interpreting God’s word.

  —PROPHET JACOB ROLLINS

  Sundays are a day of rest.

  Fortunately for the people of Red Creek, however, God Himself had revealed to the Prophet that women could still perform housework.

  For Agnes, that meant mountains of laundry followed by the dull, repetitive work of ironing. Afterwards, she and Beth baked crackers for the week ahead. If they had time, they tackled mending—loose buttons, torn hems.

  Today she planned to corner Beth while the crackers baked. Father had gone to his Scripture meeting. If she sent the kids outside, they could talk—really talk—alone. But when it came time to heat the oven, her sister was nowhere to be found. Not in the living room or the bathroom (where she often lingered before the mirror), or in the meadow.

  While Agnes searched, her throat tightening, the twins, Mary and Faith, perched outside the screen door, practicing their reading.

  “M is for Mary, the Mother of our God,” they recited from a tattered workbook. “And N is for Noah, who saved the Naughty world.”

  Beth disappeared sometimes. Probably, she was only scribbling in her diary at the forest’s edge. But she’d never abandoned Agnes on a busy Sunday before. Glancing at the laundry heaped on the kitchen table, she frowned.

  “O is for Obadiah,” intoned the twins, “who hid the prophets from Oppression.”

  “Have you seen Beth?” she asked Sam.

  He glanced at her, face troubled. “Something’s wrong with Ezekiel.”

  Panic swooped in on black wings. “Where is he?”

  He pointed. “He said he was too tired to come up the hill. I called him a wimp, but—”

  It was low blood glucose, had to be. Agnes felt inside her pockets, where she kept hard candies, each fifteen carbs exactly. She brushed past Sam and raced outdoors, pulse throbbing in her temples, glucose meter cutting into her thigh. She found her little brother slouched beneath a tree. Deep circles had etched themselves around his eyes. He looked like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

  “Agnes?” he slurred.

  “Here.” She handed him a candy. “Eat this.”

  With her back turned to the trailer, she reached under her skirt and unstrapped the meter for a check. She’d assumed he was low, but still the number shocked her.

  65!

  If Sam hadn’t warned her—if he’d passed out, all alone…

  Try not to scare him, Matilda had said. But understand, a low could kill him faster than you’d believe.

  “Why didn’t you eat one of your granola bars?”

  “Tommy King took them,” Ezekiel whispered.

  Agnes shuddered, hating that little bully. But her feelings weren’t fair. No one but her and Ezekiel knew anything about his dangerous illness.

  It had all started when Ezekiel was five years old. Suddenly, he couldn’t get enough to drink. He hogged the bathroom all day and wet the bed every night. He grew as sinewy as a starving lamb.

  “You’re praying to God, aren’t you?” she’d asked while tightening his leather belt around his disappearing waist. “You’re asking for forgiveness, for Him to make you well?”

  He’d opened his mouth as if to answer, and viscous, black vomit spilled out.

  Vomit that smelled of acid and, very clearly, of death.

  Terror had seized Agnes then. She’d screamed for her mother, who stumbled bleary-e
yed from her bedroom. She’d taken one look at Ezekiel, her last baby, trembling in Agnes’s arms, and did what only a woman raised Outside would ever think to do.

  Called the hospital.

  “Don’t send an ambulance,” she’d said curtly into the phone. “The neighbors can’t know.” A pause. “Yes, we’re in Red Creek. No, we aren’t allowed to leave.”

  Matilda, the nurse on the phone, volunteered to come herself.

  By the time she arrived, Agnes’s mother had retreated back into her bedroom. So it was Agnes who learned that Ezekiel had something called type 1 diabetes, and that he’d die without insulin, no matter how hard she prayed. It was Agnes who arranged for Matilda to visit every day whenever Father was out, until she’d wrestled Ezekiel’s blood sugar back under control.

  In a week’s time, Ezekiel was playing outside with Sam and the twins again, and Agnes understood what she must do—what she must sacrifice—if she meant to keep him alive.

  She couldn’t bear to watch him suffer. Not him, the baby of the family—and, since his mother had abandoned him as an infant, her baby, almost.

  In the meadow, Agnes shook away that dark memory and fished a granola bar out of her pocket.

  Ezekiel took a bite, chewed, and dissolved into hiccups and sobs.

  “Ezekiel,” she said, alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

  “Tommy King.”

  She scowled. “Don’t worry. I’ll speak with his mother. I’ll—”

  Ezekiel shook his head. “No. Agnes, he said there’s sickness among the Outsiders. Plague!”

  Instinctively, they both looked east. The Underground Temple lay that way—a hidden bunker, where the faithful would one day shelter from the apocalypse.

  Hadn’t Matilda said something about sickness? About taking on extra shifts?

  Agnes kept her voice carefully neutral. “Where did Tommy hear that?”

  “He heard it from his father,” Ezekiel whispered. “He said the Outsiders are dying and we’ll all be in the Temple soon.” The color drained from his face. “He said we’d better not be afraid of the dark!”

  Agnes rubbed his back in rhythmic circles. “Don’t get upset. Remember, your blood sugar—”