Of course, if the town isn’t real, then the college classes aren’t either. She can’t say that though. Her mother is smiling.
“No, I hadn’t heard that. Will they be able to get degrees?” she asks, trying to sound sincere.
Tabitha’s brow creases and she looks at her. “They? Don’t you mean you. You can go too. Once it’s our turn to move anyway.”
“Yeah, that’s what I meant.”
“Hmm,” Tabitha hums, still glancing at her with worry on her face, like she doesn’t quite believe the glib answer.
“I’m just tired, Mom. Promise. That’s why I asked if there would be degrees. Of course I want to go.”
Tabitha reaches across to brush the sweaty hair away from Charlotte’s temple. It’s a loving, slightly brusque gesture, the kind that comes naturally only to mothers and their children.
“Well, I’m not sure of all the details, but they say the goal is to provide a full education, so that must mean degrees. It should be nice. No fighting for parking!”
There’s a truck at the service doors to the module next to theirs when they arrive. Women’s voices, high and excited, are punctuated by laughter. It’s the Beta Testers. Charlotte stands with her mother on the walkway, just where it divides and leads to the two modules. Tabitha sighs a little as she watches a grinning young woman wheel a hand truck overloaded with boxes toward the open back of the vehicle. Another young woman teases her about her mountain of stuff.
Tabitha hugs Charlotte to her side with an arm around her shoulders. “Someday, it will be our turn, but I’m glad someone else is going to work out all the kinks before we go.”
The temptation to tell her what she suspects is so strong that Charlotte has to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself. She wants to run to the laughing girls and throw all their things off the truck and scream at them. She can’t though.
She has seven pills in her quilt, but it takes time for the effect to wear off. Her meds helped her remain calm, but even with chemicals coursing through her system, the urge is strong.
“You’re shaking, Charlie,” Tabitha says suddenly. She shifts her grip to Charlotte’s face, cradling her cheeks in her hands. “What’s wrong, honey? Are you sick? Is something wrong with your medication?”
The old alarm, the fear that Charlotte will do what she did before with her meds, is right there and visible in her mother’s face. Reaching up, she grips her mother’s hands and pulls them down. This is the time, the time to tell her and stop carrying this load alone.
She can’t though. She just can’t do it. There’s so little opportunity for happiness and her mother has lost so much already. She won’t take that too.
Her smile is shaky, but it’s there. She says, “I just need water, Mom. I forgot to take breaks.”
With that, they turn to the module and Tabitha’s strong arm wraps her waist.
*****
The summer blooms as the women leave in dribs and drabs. First the large group of Beta Testers, then another dozen, then a half-dozen. Slowly, the camp grows less noisy. What Charlotte can’t understand is why no one seems to notice who is leaving.
It’s just as she suspected. Young women and teens without parents. There are a few older women, but only a sprinkling, as if whoever is planning this knows it will be suspicious if there are no older inhabitants.
Only after enough months pass with no phone calls, no letters, and no chatty emails does Charlotte see anything other than eagerness in any face. There’s a blog, which everyone in the camp peruses daily. There are posts from different women who have left talking about houses, gardens, work, and the daily challenges of creating a new town from scratch.
Charlotte sees the posts a little differently. They aren’t unique. They may have familiar names on the posts, but they could have been written by anyone.
In the mother’s with older children module that Tabitha and Charlotte inhabit, only one pair has been called. A teen named Tandy and her youngish mother, Maria.
During dinner one night, a young woman named Sarah leans close to Charlotte and whispers, “I haven’t gotten any emails from Tandy? Have you?”
While Charlotte wasn’t exactly as tight with the pair of girls as they were with each other, they were friends. She shakes her head in response and decides to test the water. “I haven’t heard from anyone who left. No one has that I know of.”
She watches Sarah’s face, looking for comprehension, but sees only a vague uneasiness. Sarah chews thoughtfully for a moment, then says, “Why would they just forget us like that? They know we’re dying for news. She posted the other day on the blog, but she could write me. How long does it take to send an email?”
Before Charlotte can probe further, her mother taps her shoulder and says, “Ready? The movie is starting soon.”
Charlotte brings her tray to the bussing station, where yet another of the endlessly cheerful young men takes her tray. It’s been a long time since her last pill and along with her clearer head, she has gained an appetite. Or maybe it’s only that the flavors are coming through without any chemical deadening of her senses.
They watch the movie, an old comedy that has everyone in stitches. Soon enough, it’s bedtime. She shuts the door to their connecting rooms, then sits at the computer to read the latest blog post. There are several each day, each one supposedly done by a different woman.
The latest describes in hilarious detail the travails of a plumbing mix up that has hot water going to the toilets in several houses. Charlotte would
