Tracy Cruz smiled through her veil down at her father as she let go of his hand. She knew that the smile he flashed back masked a grimace of agony as he painstakingly turned his wheelchair and rolled over to her mother's side in front of the first row of pews.
She was so glad that this day could happen while her parents were still present to witness it. And so lucky to have survived this long herself. If she had taken thirty seconds longer to zip herself into a radiation suit after the Hurricane reactor retaining wall failed, she wouldn't be here today. Maybe it was, as so many of the church's congregation had told her, a miracle from Heaven that she had survived.
It was also a miracle that she could support herself here in Kerrville. Eric Romero, CEO of Southwest Pipelines, Inc., a local oil and gas transportation company, was a member of the church, too. Despite the faltering local economy, he had been kind enough to offer her a job as a corporate legal counsel. It wasn't going to make her rich, but it provided an income she could use to service her school debt and a mortgage.
As her father wheeled himself away, Ricky had taken her arm firmly and was guiding her towards their spots before the altar. She looked up at old Reverend Doctor Edgar Lawson. The man she'd affectionately called Doc in her childhood looked almost as weak as her parents, but he was still ministering to the small nondenominational church here in Kerrville where she had grown up. She remembered him, thirty years ago, giving her a sugar cookie and sip of grape juice during her first communion. He'd flashed her the same reassuring smile then that he was giving her now as he presided over her wedding.
She found her spot and turned to face Ricky. He was trying to keep his composure, but his crooked grin kept bursting through and he was rocking as she shifted his weight from one leg to the other.
"Dearly beloved," Doc intoned in his raspy voice. "We are gathered here today to witness the wedding of two of our congregants.
"Ricardo de Leon has been a lifelong member of our National Unity Church. In fact, I don't think there was a single Sunday in the last thirty-odd years when I didn't see him singing in the choir, or organizing youth events, or helping some of our elder members to and from the parking lot.
"It was first in this church, in Sunday school, that Ricardo met Tracy Cruz. They grew up together in our community. Yet after high school graduation, Ricardo's life remained rooted in Kerrville, while Tracy went out into the world.
"The world can be a dangerous place, and Tracy was nearly taken from us. It was only thanks to the Lord that she has returned. And so it is with a deep sense of gratitude towards the Lord that today in His house of worship we join Tracy's and Ricardo's into a single life."
"Ricardo, would you make your vow to Tracy?"
Ricky gulped and took a deep breath. Tracy tried not to smile. She knew he wasn't good with words, and she wasn't expecting much. "Tracy, my love. Every day after you left Kerrville, I prayed to God that one day you would return. I know that God has a plan for all of us, and that there's a reason for everything. I could never understand why His plan called for you to leave. But I think now it was a test, to prove that my love for you was pure. I know that I will continue to pass that test every day for the rest of our lives."
Simple and to the point. Just like Ricky. But smart, too. No customary comments about forming a family together. Because he knew her secret, the reason why she'd never let herself get too close to any man before him.
"And Tracy? Your vows?"
Now it was Tracy's turn to gulp and take a deep breath. She looked out at the audience. The pews were packed with family and friends, some of whom she hadn't spoken to in the nearly two decades between high school graduation and her return to Kerrville last year. Yet all of them had turned out to celebrate her wedding. That was the nature of a small tightly knit community. The community she had wanted so urgently to escape when she was eighteen, for reasons that had faded with time.
Escape! She tried to push the panicked thought from her mind. She was far from the Hurricane reactor.
Her eyes fell on her parents, and she saw them holding each other across their wheelchairs and weeping. Today's ceremony had been put together hastily to accommodate the fact that they had both been diagnosed with late stage lung cancer and were not expected to survive much longer.
Escape! It wasn't only Hurricane she was thinking of. What was she doing, wedding to a man she'd been dating for less than a year, hurrying things along just so her parents could see her married before they died? She gasped for breath and felt the walls of the church closing in on her. She knew she was having another panic attack, but she could do nothing to slow it down. She needed to get outside, away from here!
"Tracy." Who was talking to her? Frantically, she turned and saw Ricky had leaned in and put his arms protectively around her shoulders. "Tracy, it's all right. We're all here. We're all here for you."
It was crazy to marry Ricky, but it also made perfect sense. She couldn't hope for a more understanding man. She took another deep breath and felt herself calming down. It was time to make her vows. She had briefly sketched out some words last night.
"Ricky, I—" Now she was sobbing, and she couldn't remember what she'd planned to say. She began blurting out words. "You know the last year and a half has been very hard for me. But you were always there. From the first day I got back to Kerrville, you were always dropping by and trying to offer a hand. I didn't really—I didn't appreciate it at first. Maybe I took it for granted. Since I left for law school, I'd always thought my life would be something great, that you would all watch me on TV while I conquered the world. When I came back to Kerrville last year, I thought it was just temporary. I thought it was a setback. And yet there you were, always trying to help, even if it meant helping me move on."
She embraced him. It was a violation of wedding protocol but she didn't give a damn. "And then one day I realized I wasn't going to leave. I didn't want to leave. And you were the reason. You were the reason, Ricky."
***
Sarah woke up on the lower mattress of the bunk bed Willy had directed her to late last night.
The bed was similar to the one she'd used until yesterday at the Lal Orphanage. But instead of the cozy, carpeted double room she'd lived in at the orphanage, here there were eight bunk beds in a much larger room that had unpainted wooden walls and floorboards. The space was separated down its middle by a high screen, which she guessed was an effort to separate boys from girls. Dim morning light streamed through long, multi-paned wooden framed windows.
She pushed a tangle of long blonde hair out of her eyes and shook away her grogginess. What had Willy called this place? The ranch?
There were about half a dozen girls in the other bunk beds on her side of the screen, all still asleep. They were of different races, but she guessed they were about the same age as her: sixteen or seventeen. They all wore the same light gray t-shirts and shorts that Willy had told her to change into. She looked down at her shirt, which was at least a half size too large, baggy around the waist and covering her buttocks entirely. On the left side of her chest, S. Fenton was printed in black letters an inch high.
Sarah wondered what this new place had in store for her. It couldn't be worse than the tedium of the Lal Orphanage. She wanted to put some proper clothes on and explore her surroundings.
She was dismayed to see that the meager pack of belongings she had brought with her was gone. Someone had taken them during the night, and in their place left more gray t-shirts and a pair of white sneakers. She reached up to her throat and was relieved that the silver cross necklace her mother had given her was still cold against her flesh. She caressed the angular metal, to remind herself that despite her strange surroundings, she was not alone.
Sarah slipped out of bed, and walked barefoot to one of the long windows and looked out.
Outside was a large expanse of orange, dusty terrain covered in rough bunches of yellow and green grass that she guessed was about knee height. In the distance, the flat terrain met the wooded foothills of an angular, orange mountain. A stream trickled down the face of the mountain and wound its way towards the building she was in, passing it a few hundred feet from her window. Around the stream, the vegetation was thicker, with bushes and some stunted looking trees.
No wonder Willy called it the ranch.
Her mind flitted to the Hurricane Reactor disaster, which had irradiated a section of the Southwestern desert almost eighteen months earlier. She dismissed as silly her momentary fear that Willy had taken her to part of the irradiated zone, and continued taking in her surroundings.
As her eyes adjusted to the dim light of the early morning, she noticed that several hundred yards away, well beyond the stream, there was a tall chain link fence stretching across the horizon. It was topped with strips of razor wire that glistened in the morning sun.
"Hi," a tentative voice came from behind her. Startled, she whirled around. A boy about her age, with olive skin, brown hair and brown eyes, was standing couple of feet away from her. Chinese, she thought, maybe Korean. "I'm Michael," he said. He stepped forward and held out his hand.
"Your last name is Kang, right? I can tell that from your shirt," Sarah replied, peering at his broad chest. "We have our names on our shirts. See?" She pulled the fabric on her shirt taut over her small breasts to make the letters easy to read.
Michael's hand was still wavering in the air uncomfortably. "Nice to meet you," he prompted.
"Oh, sorry, nice to meet you, too," she replied, taking his hand and giving it a cursory shake. She'd learned not to invest a lot in friendships at the Lal Orphanage. People came and left without warning.
She took a second look at Michael. He was good looking – tall and athletic, good skin, good features. She instantly hoped the ranch would be different than her orphanage, and she would spend a long time with Michael. She narrowed her smile so he wouldn't see her crooked teeth.
"You weren't here yesterday. Where'd you come from?" Michael asked.
"Last night. I flew in from Providence with a guy named William Johnson. We got in really late. I guess you were asleep." The trip from Providence had been exciting – it had been Sarah's first time in a plane – but she didn't want to gush about it to Michael. It was possible he wouldn't be impressed. For all she knew, he flew every day.
"Wow, you flew, huh?" asked Michael with evident envy. Then his face got a sly expression. "You know, in our grandparents' day, every time they invented a new technology, like telephones or planes, they would say the world was getting smaller."
"So?" asked Sarah, nonplussed.
"Well, the telephone systems are failing and we're running out of fuel for planes. That makes us the luckiest generation ever, because we're growing up in a world that keeps getting bigger and bigger!"
Sarah suppressed a smile and rolled her eyes at the joke. She wasn't going to laugh like a dork at the first slightly funny thing this boy said to her. "Very funny. Where did you come from?"
"I got here yesterday afternoon, with Brian – you'll meet him soon, I guess. We were brought here by a man named Rad."
"Rad? Willy didn't mention him." Willy hadn't really mentioned much at all. Just that she should pack her belongings and prepare for a new life.
"I never heard of Willy. But watch out for Rad, he's a real—"
Before Michael could finish, the doors at the front of the building opened and a slender man wearing a buttoned up black suit walked in, leading a trio of sleepy-eyed youth. He was of nondescript European heritage, and his thinning hair was graying to match his eyes. The three children trailing behind him were wearing gray clothes identical to those sported by Michael and Sarah. "That's Rad!" Michael whispered.
Rad looked up at the sound of Michael's voice. "Well, well, we're early risers, aren't we?" he asked rhetorically, rubbing his hands together. His manner was slightly off-putting, though Sarah could not decide why – the appraising angle at which he held his head? The slightly mocking tone of his voice?
He leaned down and looked at Sarah's shirt. "Ah, candidate Fenton! It's a pleasure to meet you," he said in a way that conveyed meeting her was, in fact, an indignity he was resigned to enduring. "I'm Rad Jaeger."
He held out his hand for Sarah, slightly too far away.
Sarah cautiously leaned forward and shook it, then moved back. His gaze made her uneasy and she wished there was an excuse to end the conversation quickly.
She was relieved when Rad abruptly broke away to check his watch, then clapped his hands loudly and chanted "Time to get up! Time to get up! Five minutes to muster!"
As the other boys and girls climbed out of bed and headed to the bathrooms at the rear of the room, Sarah sized up the social scene at the ranch. She was pretty sure she was the best looking girl, although a dark-featured girl whose shirt read O. Freeman offered stiff competition.
There was no doubt that Michael was the best looking of the boys, and she congratulated herself on breaking the ice with him early.
She also noticed that the other teenagers were checking each other out just like she was, some radiating bravado and others acting uncertain and shy. Clearly, she wasn't the only new arrival.
After a few minutes, Rad harangued them all into a double line and marched them out the door. Sarah pulled her sneakers on carelessly while conniving to get herself placed next to Michael in the short double line.
As they walked outside, Sarah turned her head to Michael, who was looking past her at the stream. "What the hell is this? Boot camp?" she whispered.
"No pushups yet, so can't be boot camp. The way Rad keeps clapping his hands and making us line up, it's more like kindergarten," he replied with a sly grin.
"Did your parents send you here?"
"I don't have parents. They died six years ago in a car crash, with my only uncle. I've been living in an orphanage in Boise, same as Brian," Michael replied, indicating the stocky boy who was walking in line ahead of him.
"Hey, I'm an orphan, too! Is everyone at this ranch an orphan?"
Before Michael could answer, Rad ordered them to halt in the orange dust, facing the stream and beyond it, the chain link fence. Rad rubbed his hands together and said, "Wait here until Major Johnson gives you instructions." Then he turned and jogged rapidly across the stream and towards the fence in his military style boots.
In her thin t-shirt and shorts, Sarah shivered uncontrollably. As she hugged herself to stay warm, she heard other kids' teeth chattering around her.
After a few minutes, Willy, dressed in a dark suit that matched his complexion, walked out of one of the run down wooden structures of the ranch and stood before the group. Sarah felt herself warm up a little at the sight of his friendly grin. He was far better to be around than Rad.
"Good morning, candidates," he began. "My name is Major William Johnson. You can call me Willy."
Most of the teenagers stood sullenly, hugging themselves in the cold. Sarah and a few others muttered "good mornings" in response to Willy.
Willy looked down guiltily. "Don't worry, we'll get you moving around soon so you can warm up. And then you'll get a hot shower and breakfast."
There were ironic cheers and sarcastic comments from the crowd around Sarah. She fought a smile. She was going to fit right in.
"Great," said Willy in a cheerful voice. "We're going to start our competition this morning. We want to find out who the fastest, strongest, and smartest of you are. And do you know what the prize will be?"
"A tour of your magic chocolate factory?" called out Sarah, earning a few snickers.
"The winners get to stay at this ranch!" proclaimed Willy expansively.
There was empty silence. Sarah felt her mood darkening. She didn't know who Willy was, and she didn't know why she was here. But she was damned if she was going to let Willy kick her out as if she wasn't good enough. Where was she going to go? Back to the orphanage in a cloud of shame?
She looked angrily around her at the other candidates, her nascent thoughts of camaraderie melting into jealousy and competitiveness. She noticed several wary faces staring back at her.
Willy chuckled. "Maybe staying at the ranch doesn't seem like it's so great right now, when you're new here, and you're cold and hungry! But believe me, you want to win."
Willy allowed his gaze to pass over the entire group of children and said in a reassuring voice: "And for those of you who don't win, don't worry. We have plans for you, too."
"Can I just give up now and have some bacon?" someone called out from the back row.
"All right, time to get started," Willy continued, paying the heckler no mind. "Line up in a single row behind this line." He scraped his foot along the ground, creating a shallow ditch in the orange dust. Sarah nudged her way into line with the other teenagers.
"I want you to run as fast as you can to that fence where you see the Colonel standing, touch it, and then run back across this line." He gestured at the line he had just scraped on the ground. "First three get hot chocolate with breakfast."
A footrace? Sarah thought to herself in disbelief. Michael was right that this ranch was like kindergarten. But she wasn't worried. She had run intramural track at the Lal Orphanage, and figured she could do well in the race. At least she wouldn't get kicked off the ranch.
Maybe she would even earn some hot chocolate to warm her up. Food was more expensive every year and the Lal Orphanage had long run out of budget for luxuries like hot chocolate. It had been years since Sarah had tasted the drink.
To her right, Michael flashed her a thumbs-up. "Good luck, Sarah," he said, and then he began shaking out his arms and legs to warm up.
"Has everyone tied their shoelaces nice and tight?" asked Willy loudly. Sarah realized he was looking at her intently. She looked down and gulped. She'd been so distracted checking out the other teenagers that she had not properly tied her left shoe.
She refused to be the only dork who needed to bend down in front of everyone to retie her shoelace. Especially not when she was standing right next to Michael. She'd just have to be careful not to lose her shoe during the race.
"OK, then," said Willy. "When I say 'go,' you go. Ready, set, GO!"
Sarah guessed it was at least half a mile to the wall, so she ran at a measured pace like she'd learned from her track coach. But she noticed several of the other candidates sprinting ahead of her, and became nervous that she was out of her league. She picked up her pace to keep close to them.
By the time she reached the stream, she was breathing heavily. She stopped short when she saw the depth and speed of the water flowing past her. The quiet
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