Banished

“Wow,” Prairie said. I hardly looked like myself at all. I guessed that was the point.

Prairie had swept on blush and some eye makeup. With the sweater and headband, she looked like a soccer mom.

“Wow yourself,” I said back. “Um, not your best look.”

Prairie arched an eyebrow at me and then we both burst out laughing.

We were in so much trouble, but laughing felt good. Chub looked at each of us in turn and then he surprised me by pounding his little fist against my leg.

He wasn’t laughing.

Prairie knelt down in front of him. “Chub, honey, are they here? In the restaurant? The parking lot?”

Chub shook his head, rubbing his mouth with a little fist. “Not here.”

“Okay. But back there-back at the motel?”

“Bad mans,” he said again, looking like he was going to cry. Prairie put her arms around him and he went willingly, burying his face into her shoulder. She patted his back and murmured until he calmed down.

I felt awkward watching them. Chub had always had me-only me. I wasn’t sure I was ready to share him.

But he turned from Prairie to me and hugged my legs hard. As I wet a paper towel to wipe his hot, tear- streaked face, I knew he was still mine. My little brother, if that was what it was going to be. The person who loved me for me.

As I finished patting his face clean, Prairie turned her purse upside down on the counter, the contents spilling out.

There wasn’t that much: a set of keys on a simple silver key ring. Her cell phone and a couple of pens. A square black wallet. A small black leather case, which she unzipped, taking out a lipstick and comb and a compact.

“They’re tracking us somehow,” Prairie said softly. “At least they haven’t followed us from the motel. Yet.”

“You mean just because of what Chub said?”

“He’s a Seer, Hailey.” Prairie shut me down with her words. I tried to process what she had said. Sure, Chub had done an amazing amount of growing up in the past few days. Something important was going on with him, definitely-I was pretty sure no other kids on record had learned to talk and potty-trained themselves overnight. But Prairie wanted me to believe that, on top of all this, Chub could see into the future.

The men were all given the gift of visions, she’d said when she told me about the Banished. They could see into the future… to protect them from enemies…

A thought was tickling around the edges of my brain. I shut my eyes and tried to focus. On days Gram’s customers came calling, a lot of times Chub would stop what he was doing, set aside his book or toy and come to me, putting his face against my leg and holding on tight, which was what he had always done when he was scared or upset. And then a few minutes later I would hear the sound of a truck driving up onto the lawn, the slam of car doors, the shout of some half-wasted loser.

Maybe it was true. Maybe Chub was a Seer.

“Anyway,” Prairie said, “I think we’ve got to assume the thing, whatever they’re using to track us, is here with me. Or on me.”

She unzipped the wallet, took out her credit cards and driver’s license and cash, and stuffed them into a pocket of her jeans. She slipped a couple of keys off the ring and jammed them into her other pocket. She handed me her cell phone. Then she put the key ring, as well as the rest of the things on the counter, back into the purse and dropped it into the trash.

She took her phone back and gave me a gentle push.

“Let’s move,” she said.

In the parking lot she bent next to the front wheel while I got Chub settled into his seat and took Rascal for a quick walk.

“What did you just do?” I asked as we pulled out of the lot and back onto the highway, going at a normal pace now.

“Drove over my cell phone. Anyone trying to track us on that is going to find a pile of rubble in a Wendy’s parking lot.”

She was smart. She hadn’t done anything yet that you couldn’t learn from watching TV, but I was still impressed. There were moments when I felt the panic rising in my gut and I had to force it back with all my will. But I’d managed to do what needed to be done: to keep up with Prairie, to keep looking out for Chub. I was hanging on.

I wondered if it was a result of having grown up on constant alert. I was always watching out-whether for kids playing pranks on me when I was little, or for Gram taking a swipe at me as I walked past, or-worst of all-for the customers with their roving hands and hungry eyes. I was always thinking one step ahead.

“Prairie,” I said. “Uh, thanks. You know, for the haircut and the clothes and everything.”

She smiled, not taking her eyes off the road.

“Think I’ve got a future in it? You know, like I could be a stylist to the stars or something?”

“Um, not looking like that, I don’t think so,” I said, pointing to her sweater. “You look like you’re going to a PTA meeting.”

Prairie laughed and we rode along in companionable silence.

“So,” I said after a while. “How do you know how to cut hair?”

“I worked in a salon.”

“I thought you said you were a waitress.”

“Yes, I did both. What happened was, when I’d been waitressing for a while, I went for a walk one day and found myself in a part of town I didn’t know, in front of a salon. I felt a… compulsion to go inside. I couldn’t resist, so I went in and met the woman who owned it. She was from Poland, and her name was Anna. We hit it off right away. She gave me a job. I worked there while I went to school, learned the trade. Then after I graduated I got a research job, and we… lost touch.”

I could tell there was more to the story, from the way Prairie chose her words with great care.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Prairie bit her lip, and I waited.

“You remember how I told you that I got a fake identity?”

“Yeah.”

“Anna was the one who helped me with that. She knew a guy who could get what I needed. Anna helped me become a new person.”

“Why couldn’t you just be yourself? Gram would never have come after you. You said it yourself.”

“But I never stopped worrying. After I found out about Clover, I was done with Alice, I wanted no part of Gypsum-none of that. I saw what the people there had become. I thought I could take the Healing gift with me and leave the rest behind. The men, Gram’s customers… their visions had clouded; most of them couldn’t see the future anymore, and there was so much crime and violence. I saw how they treated the women, and I knew if I ever went back I’d get sucked into that life again.”

“Why?” I demanded. “I mean, I hate Gypsum too, but you’re acting like you didn’t have free choice. Once you turned eighteen-”

“The Banished are bound together,” Prairie interrupted. “Haven’t you seen that? Felt it? The Morries-the way you feel drawn to them?”

I felt my face redden: it was as though she could see inside me.

“It’s not your fault,” Prairie said, her voice softer. “It was ordained. But I knew I had to be away from all that. So I became someone new. Only…”

For a moment she said nothing, and then she laughed softly, but there was more hurt than humor in the sound.

“Anna was Banished too.”

“What?”

“It’s not just Gypsum, Hailey. There were others, from the village in Ireland. They lived there hundreds of years before the famine came and threatened to wipe them out. One group went to Poland. Anna came to the United States years ago, after her mother died.”