Beyond Belief by Jenna Miscavige Hill Page B

firsthand what the kids did. Even so, I assumed that neither of my parents knew the full scope of how difficult the conditions were for me, and I figured that once they had heard, they would immediately correct the situation. I mean, if they knew how bad it really was, how could they possibly allow me to stay there?
    Still, something prevented me from telling them. As much as I wanted to tell them the truth, I was hesitant, not because I was afraid of getting in trouble, but because I was terrified that the problem wasn’t with the Ranch, but with me. All around me, other kids were completing their decks and clearing their words, and the fact that I, along with a few others, was struggling made me feel like there was something wrong with me. I had no one around me to reassure me, or to tell me that kids weren’t meant to do work like this. My fear was that if I went straight to my parents and told them what was happening I would only disappoint them. I didn’t want to let them down, so I did the only thing that made sense to me: I kept quiet and decided to run away.
    B Y THE TIME I ’D BEEN AT THE R ANCH FOR A YEAR, I WAS DONE. Luckily I wasn’t alone in my unhappiness. My friend Rebecca didn’t like it, either. She had arrived a short while after me. Her mother worked in the Religious Technology Center at an administrative job and lived at Int. About a year older than I, with straight dark hair and light eyes, Rebecca had a true love of animals, which made her perfectly suited for her post of taking care of all the various animals on the Ranch. She tended to the goats, the ducks, the hens, and the horses that lived in a corral on the property. Even though she had a post that she was well suited for, everything else about our routine—the decks, the course work—was intolerable to her as well.
    One day in early May, Rebecca and I crafted a plan to escape. For at least a week, we strategized about what we needed and where we’d go. One thing we did know was that we couldn’t go to the base. If I made it the twenty miles to the Int Base, my parents most likely would have to turn me in, so I had to find a new place to settle down. The rough plan I had was to live in an underground cave/mansion that I was going to dig myself, and I was going to eat croissants, which I planned on stealing from an imaginary bakery, which were undoubtedly everywhere in the Wog world.
    On Thursday night, May 1991, the time had come for Rebecca and me to make our move. I packed my clothes and the kangaroo sweater that had once belonged to my mother. Earlier that day, I had stolen some vegetables from one of the gardens we maintained and some eggs from the chicken coop. These eggs were hatched specifically for Uncle Dave. Chickens were brought to the Ranch and kept in a special coop with a caged outdoor area. The kids gave the hens feed and cleaned their cages. When the hens laid the eggs, we gathered them to be taken to Uncle Dave at the Int Base for his consumption only.
    It was actually not my first time stealing Uncle Dave’s eggs. I had snatched some a few months back because I wanted to hatch the chickens in my drawer at the Ranch. I’d gotten into trouble when somebody caught me. Mr. Parker and Mr. Bell were furious when they found out. They made it clear that when my uncle found out, I was going to be in serious trouble. I was told to write him a letter to confess that I was the one who had taken his eggs, but to my surprise, and I think the surprise of Mr. Parker and Mr. Bell, he was very nice about it. He wrote me back and explained that my drawer was probably not warm enough for the eggs, and that I would need an incubator if I wanted to succeed in hatching them. Now I’d stolen eggs again. I knew I was taking a big risk, but I didn’t have many other options. We were going to need food.
    Rebecca hated Mr. Parker in particular. The woman could be intimidating, but she didn’t seem to be as difficult with me as she was with