Alder was many days’ drive from the coast, and there was always talk among councilmembers of moving its boundaries even farther inland as more coastline succumbed to the poisoned oceans each year, turning what had once been sprawling continents into precarious islands forced to make do with their own limited resources. It was hard to know when the moment to stand and accept the Will would come. Even the executive council didn’t know, at least not yet. The messages still focused on conversion of the Tribes, redemption through the union of all faiths, and preparation for the Rapture. According to the doctrine, the seas were lifeless graveyards of toxic debris, utterly inhospitable and useless to humans. There weren’t even any Unitas branches along the coast, only Tribes.
Gabi tugged off her bulky sweater and the plain T-shirt underneath and looked at herself in the full-length mirror on the outside of her closet door. Purple bruises were already beginning to form blotchy tattoos around her upper arms. They resembled pictures she’d seen of what used to be the Great Lakes, linked by the riverine veins tracking beneath her skin. On good days Gabi imagined that, against the backdrop of her underwater walls, she glowed like a slice of milky moonlight on the waves. On bad days she reminded herself of the slick blue fetus that had slid out from between the woman’s quaking, blood-smeared thighs in the video her health teacher made all the eleventh-grade girls watch. Facing her reflection was hard, but Gabi made herself do it every day, just to prove to herself that she wasn’t some sad ghost haunting the world of the living.
Out in the world, she was an alien, someone whose very existence was improbable. The most natural things were a trial for her. Breathing. Speaking. Doing. She didn’t seem to fit or belong anywhere or with anyone, except maybe Gram. Gabi knew her father and Mathew loved her, but they lived in a world of hale bodies and hearty spirits that she could only dream of inhabiting. Yet somehow here, in the manufactured murk of her bedroom, she looked like she belonged. She looked, if nowhere close to strong or beautiful, at least a little more right, and she badly wanted to understand why this was so. Maybe if she could learn enough about the aquatic world that fascinated her, perhaps she could learn something about herself, like why the Will had determined that she live despite her total unsuitability for life. But nothing in the mountains of books she amassed brought her any closer to an answer.
Gabi picked up a textbook from her bed and thumbed through it, as though some new insight might have magically appeared since she’d put it down that morning. But the thick bars were still there, blacking out more than half of every page. What little was left after Corrections had its way was the same thing she found in every text. Behavior, movement, feeding, and mating. Anything that could not withstand the scrutiny of correction had been concealed so as not to corrupt the fellowship.
Old Science, Unitas declared, was the equivalent of guesses and fairy tales and had failed as a means of preventing catastrophe. What was behind the black ink in her books, Gabi’s teachers assured her, wasn’t worth knowing. Inside the front cover of each of her marine biology texts was the same quote from the Book of Revelation on an embossed sticker: “And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea.”
Whales were extinct, along with every other form of marine mammal. Their habitat had been rendered a hell of poisons, as predicted by the original doctrine. Revising every book with links to Old Science in all branches of Unitas was an arduous task, and until such time as new texts could be written, the corrected texts would have to suffice. This meant Gabi’s reports would continue to read like shallow blurbs, and whatever the oceans had to tell her about herself would remain a mystery. It made her want to punch someone.
“Gabi. Pills,” her grandmother shouted from the kitchen. Gabi tossed the text onto her bed and opened her bedroom door, looking back at the towers of books. Suddenly the narrow towers looked like prison bars encircling the messy refuge of her bed. Was it possible that by surrounding herself with books filled with blanks and incomplete facts, she had erected a barrier between herself and the truth she sought? Gabi had seen a copy of one of the new texts her father brought home for review and stole a quick peek through its pages. It looked just like the old one, only much skinnier. Nothing beyond pieces of scripture had been added, and nearly two-thirds had been taken away.
The only thing that ever made Gabi feel strong was what she learned from books. She may not have been able to do things, but she could know things, and every time she learned something new, she wasn’t at the mercy of anyone, even Bradley Fiske. Those heavy reference books, though their pages had been marred by the Correctors’ ink, at least held the promise of knowledge. The pamphlet was like a deflated balloon, a shapeless husk without substance, which was exactly how Gabi felt. But perhaps there was a way to learn the whole story. Maybe Old Science held the answers Gabi sought. She shut her bedroom door hard, heard a couple of the towers topple behind it, and smiled to herself. If her cove of useless books was a prison, it was one of her own making, and she would have to be the one to break herself out.
Chapter TWO
GRAMMY LOW was not a typical Minder, Gabi thought for the hundredth time as her grandmother tottered into the Care Center with her coworkers before services on Saturday. Minders never attended temple on Saturdays.
