BUT. Here is another secret. Another sin. Because I am not allowed to be with Joshua. I am not allowed to feel this way. Tingly when he looks at me. Weak when his hand is near mine. And the worst part—I couldn’t help but wonder how it would be to kiss him.
And when we did kiss, it was all my fault.
Emily in the corner with her baby doll.
Me, in the Fellowship Hall with Joshua.
On the piano bench.
Smelling the soap he uses.
Watching his hands.
Hardly thinking of music.
“This is the chord you should be playing,” I said to Joshua.
I glanced in his direction and saw him looking at me. Not at the piano keys.
“Put your hand like this,” I told him. “You have to look here.” I tapped the keyboard.
He let me move his fingers to the right position. So warm, those fingers.
“The C and E and G,” I said.
But Joshua’s hand didn’t stay where I put it. Instead, his fingers tangled up with mine. The whole side of his body leaned into me. His other arm slid around my waist.
“You can’t play the piano holding my hand. Or leaning crooked like that, either,” I said, my voice breathy. The words almost didn’t come out of my mouth. But I thought, I could kiss you right now and go to hell and it would be worth it. Worth it. I glanced around the room. Emily still played with her baby doll, humming.
“That’s okay,” Joshua said. “I can wait a minute.”
For a long moment we sat together like this. Then Joshua loosened his hand from mine and played the chord like he’d known it all along.
“Good job,” I said, his left hand resting on my hip like it was a part of me. My fingertips felt hot, like it was me who’d been playing for hours, not teaching.
“I’ve been practicing,” he said.
“Really? Good,” I said. “I’m proud of . . .”
And then I kissed him. Just fell into him right in the middle of a sentence. Pressed my lips to his. So soft. Then he was kissing me back. And I didn’t even know how to kiss, had never kissed anyone in my life but my family, and then only little pecks on the cheek.
It felt like Joshua sucked the breath from me, there on the piano bench, with all the thoughts of sin going through my head, but me not caring at all. Not at all.
“I better go,” I said, when I finally pushed away from him. My hands trembled. My knees shook.
And he said, “Don’t be scared, Kyra. I’m right here.”
IN THE DARK, I ease around the Johnson trailer. Only the Temple spire is lit up, pointing straight to heaven. Heaven—the place I cannot go now. Not now. Not with all I have done and not with what I’m thinking.
The longer I walk, the longer I try to get away from what has happened tonight, the more I realize that I have to get away. I have to run away.
“You have a month,” I say as I walk toward the Temple to wait. “A month to plan. And then go.”
__________
ON THE TEMPLE, right over the tall double doors is one large stone eye. It’s hand-carved and big as a car.
That eye watches us walk into meetings and out of meetings four hours later. It looks out over the parking lot and the Prophet’s and Apostles’ homes. It sees the Fellowship Hall and the community building and the cars that come and go. It looks toward the trailers and our gardens and the stand of trees that run back along the river. It watches people shopping in the small store owned and operated by Brother Greer.
That eye sees us all the time.
“God’s eye,” Prophet Childs says sometimes. “He sees all. He lets me know all.”
I used to dream about that eye. In my dream the eye blinked and walked around the Compound looking for something sweet to eat.
There’s a concrete stairwell that runs down the rear of the Temple. It leads to a back entrance. The door there’s always locked. It’s shaded and cool in the heat of the summer. And it’s hard to see anyone in that farthest corner, especially at night.
A chain with a sign saying DO NOT ENTER shields the stairwell. No one ever goes there.
Except,
some nights,
Joshua and I meet in that stairwell. We can’t talk because our voices echo. But we meet there. I kissed him in that stairwell so long one night, my lips felt bruised the next morning.
JOSHUA’S THERE in just a few minutes. He takes my hands and pulls me to his chest and says, “What, Kyra? What’s wrong?”
How does he know I’m scared? Could he hear it when I called his name?
At first I don’t think I can even say anything. The words are frozen in my throat. They can’t get past my tongue.
“Tell me.” His face comes close to mine. I smell his minty toothpaste. He’s so warm that the front of me feels sort of calmed down, pressed like I am to Joshua.
At last the words have thawed.
“I’ve been Chosen.”
ONE NIGHT, Joshua and I met near the Temple. No lights burned anywhere because it was after eleven-thirty. Everyone must be in bed by this time. The devil, we’ve been told, rules the night. Joshua and I shouldn’t have been out.
That night I almost laughed thinking about it all. How we shouldn’t be doing any of this. Not touching, not whispering to each other. Not spending time pressed together like we did. Does Satan rule me? I wondered. Rule my body? Is he the reason I want to stand so close to Joshua?
“Kyra,” Joshua had said, when he saw me walking to meet him. His voice, low in the dark, headed straight for me and caught me somewhere in the heart.
All the thoughts of what we shouldn’t be doing were gone.
We whispered long into the night, sitting in the shadows of the Temple. His arm was around my shoulder. I petted his face like Mother does with Father.
“I saw you today,” he said, “walking over to the Fellowship Hall with your music.”
In the dark I grinned. “You shouldn’t watch me like that,” I said.
He stretched his long legs out. Rested his head against mine.
“Tell me,” I said. “Tell me when you notice me.”
“All the time,” Joshua said. His breath was warm in the cool night air. I could hear him smiling.
“Tell me when.”
“Okay. Let me think.”
I waited, wanting to stay like this forever. I wanted to be like this in the open. In the daytime. In front of others.
“I notice you going into church,” Joshua said. “I notice your hair, how blond it is. But how in some light it looks like it has red in it. I notice the way you smell when we’re close. And the way you walk when we’re headed home from church and your family gets out of the Temple first. I notice how you are with your family and how you hold your little sisters.” He took a breath. “I’ve seen you stand out on your doorstep and look off across the desert. I’ve watched you walk toward the Compound fence and then on past that. You’ve been walking for years.”
“You’ve noticed me for years?” This I can’t believe. I’m so pleased with the thought that Joshua noticed me early on, I can hardly stop smiling.
“For a couple of years now, Kyra,” he said. “I notice you all the time.”