“I can’t do that,” I say, sick just-like-that to my stomach. I stand, Laura holding my hand so tight my fingers have gone purple. When I look into her face, I see her eyes have filled with tears. I glance at Mother Sarah. She sits up straight in her chair.
Father says, “Prophet Childs, I think there must be a misunderstanding. This man is my brother.”
I shake free of Laura. Step over my brothers and sisters whose faces are pale and seem like floating balloons.
“Duck, duck, duck,” Emily says.
Mariah lets out a bit of a cry. Does she feel what I feel? I turn and she reaches for me. But it’s like I look at a photograph, one that changes. I see her face collapse when I back away. See her little mouth open wide. Hear her start to cry.
Brother Fields reaches for me as I try to run, grabs the sleeve of my dress, but I slap his hand away and run out into the darkness. Mariah’s voice follows me.
“Wait,” someone calls. Mother Claire? Then, “Hush, baby. You hush now.”
How can this be? Is it for my sins? I have punished us all for my thoughts? For the books? And Joshua?
Just like that I’ll be marrying my father’s brother.
Just like that I’ll be marrying my own uncle.
MOTHER CLAIRE MARRIED FATHER when she was fourteen and he was seventeen.
Mother Victoria married Father when she was thirteen and he was nineteen.
Mother Sarah married Father when she was thirteen and he was twenty-one.
And now me. Me. Marrying my uncle who must be sixty, at least.
Saved for him?
OUTSIDE THE SKY has gone all dark except for the half-moon. All is quiet except Mariah’s wailing—a piercing cry that causes my heart to skip a beat. I almost turn back. The air is crisp, cool, though heat still rises from the desert. My uncle! I run from my family. At first, I start toward my tree. Then I think better of it.
“I don’t need a tree,” I say into the dark. “I don’t.”
So I turn around. I head back, past my trailer, past where my family meets with the Prophet and his Apostles and the old man I’m supposed to marry. My own uncle.
I trip on a line of bricks that Mother Victoria set up to surround a small flower garden and fall right into her petunias with an “Oof.” The sweet smell makes me sick and I think I might puke. My hands and knees hurt from the fall, and my shinbone feels like a gouge of meat has been scooped out against a brick. For a moment I hesitate. I want to cry. To howl like Mariah, who is really worked up now. But I can hear the rumble of voices from the trailer one over. Can hear one of the men say, “She’ll learn her place,” and another say, “God’s will.”
I push to my feet, and hurry away, right to the biggest sin of my life. I go to Joshua’s place.
THE FIRST TIME I really noticed Joshua Johnson was seven months ago at school (Did the books make me notice? Did my disobedience make me see him?) when I was coming out of quilting bee and headed for home.
“Hey, Kyra,” he said as we passed in the hall and he nodded at me like maybe he knew something I didn’t.
Oh my goodness, oh my goodness! My heart thumped. His eyes were so blue. Blue like the daytime sky. And he was using his eyes to look at me. Me!
Of course he’s using his eyes, I thought and looked at the floor then back at Joshua. “Hey to you, too,” I said.
He grinned and I felt my face redden. I hurried out the door and toward home.
Joshua. Joshua Johnson. Blue-eyed Joshua Johnson.
“Oh my gosh,” I said just as Laura came running up next to me.
“Where are you off to so fast?” she asked. “And ‘oh my gosh’ what?”
I swallowed at my jittery feelings, then leaned close to my sister. Her strawberry blond hair was pulled back into long braids. Her eyes, squinty whether she’s in bright light or not, looked hard at me.
“You’re embarrassed,” she said.
Touching my face, I nodded.
“Why?”
“Because,” I said, “Joshua Johnson said hello to me.” Laura stopped on the sidewalk that leads from the Fellowship Hall to where we all live. I could see the freckles sprinkled across her nose. “So?”
“So,” I said, then I let the words rush out of my mouth. “He is so cute. So cute.”
Laura stared at me a moment, then started toward home again. “You know you shouldn’t even let that thought in your mind.”
I said nothing at first, bothered by my sister. She was right. I knew that. But still. “I can look, can’t I?”
Laura didn’t even glance my way. Just marched toward home. “No,” she said. “No, you can’t look and you know it.”
Again I was quiet, then I said, “You’re right, Laura.”
She grinned at me, her squinty eyes growing sparkly. “Good then,” she said.
But I thought about him anyway. All the way home.
THE LIGHTS ARE ON STILL at the Johnson trailer and so I wait. I wait until all the lights have switched off. I hide near their chicken coop, the smells so thick I could have hurled them at someone.
I hear when the Prophet and Uncle Hyrum walk past.
Hear someone slam a door shut and a coyote cry out and get an answer from someone’s dog.
I hear Mother Sarah, and then Father, call me in.
But I don’t move. I wait in the dark, the soft cluck of chickens near, to make sure everyone at the Johnson home is sleeping. Then, in the light of that moon that has turned the color of cream, I tap on his bedroom window.
ONE AFTERNOON, when the sun sat in the sky like a crown on the mountains, I asked Mother if I could go play the piano.
“Just at the Fellowship Hall,” I said.
“Of course,” she said.
I tucked a fat book of Beethoven under my arm and started away. If I hurried, there would be plenty of time to play. I breathed deep the desert air, happy for the golden light that ended the day. Happy for a moment to fall into my music. I hummed the beginning of a concerto. In my head I could see the notes of a cadenza that was giving me fits. A few minutes of that to start, I decided. Then a jump to the end, maybe fifteen minutes’ practice there. That would get my piece . . .
“Hey, Kyra.”
I started at the voice. “Aaah!” Then, “What?” And finally, “Sheesh almighty.”
Joshua Johnson walked up beside me.
“Oh!” I said, and touched the front of my dress.
“Oh,” he said.
My face colored.
“That’s rude to mimic me like that,” I said. I marched forward over the sidewalk, embarrassed. The smell of the desert kicked up from a slight breeze that blew in from the west.
Joshua laughed. “I’m sorry, Kyra,” he said, hurrying beside me.
I refused to look at him. Instead, I kept my eyes forward and headed across the parking lot around the Temple, feeling a little angry but more horrified and even more pleased that Joshua had surprised me.
“Where you going?” he asked.
With my head, I gestured at the Fellowship Hall.
“Why? There’s no Youth Meeting tonight.”
I stopped, planted one hand on my hip the way Mother Claire does when she’s especially unhappy, and said, flapping the book at him, “To practice piano, if you must know.” Oh, you are so so so cute, I thought. So cute! Ahhh!