Escape from Eden by Elisa Nader Page A

mortified, but I was too furious.
    The phone hit the receiver with a clank. “Report to the infirmary immediately, Mia.”
    “We’re telling the truth,” I said with steel in my voice. “We only kissed. And that’s if you really want to call what happened out there a kiss. It was more like being licked in the face by a dog. Except a dog would have had better breath.”
    Gabriel had the audacity to glare at me, insulted.
    “Mia.” Thaddeus stood, towering over us. “You are to go to the infirmary immediately. I’m sparing you Contrition, because this clearly wasn’t your fault. However, you are not to speak to each other. Don’t even look at each other. If you’re caught together before Mia attends her first Prayer Circle, you’ll both be seriously punished.”
    “I haven’t attended my first Prayer Circle,” Gabriel said, still slouched in the chair. “I’m getting the feeling I’ll never be popular. Throw me a bone, Thad.”
    “Why until after I attend Prayer Circle? What about him?” I asked, then saw that was a mistake.
    Thaddeus’s famous patience was beginning to disintegrate. He clenched his fists on the surface of the desk. “The canon of the Flock of the Promised Land is not to be questioned. Now, Mia, go. And you,” he turned to Gabriel, who lazily raised his eyebrows as if to say, yes? “You are going to learn that physical labor can cleanse the soul.”
    “I thought I was already learning that lesson.”
    “We are doubling your studies,” said Thaddeus.
    “See, Thaddeus?” Gabriel said. “We have such engrossing repartee.”
    Thaddeus banged the desk, once, and said, “Mia, go.”
    I backed out of the cottage under Thaddeus’s fierce gaze. Pulling the door closed behind me, the darkness of the Edenton night drew the shadows close. I felt the full weight of what had happened on my shoulders: the poisoned cookies, the secret town, Mama’s other life, Thaddeus’s cooled cottage, the mystery of Prayer Circle, Gabriel. And his searing—his faked—kiss.
    Determination rose in me like a tide. I was going to find a way to escape, with Max, and we’d leave Edenton behind to drown in its secrets.

Chapter Eleven
    The envelope was cradled in Mama’s hands. It was crushed in on one side, as if it had been snatched away in haste. On the front, my name was written with flowing cursive in deep indigo ink.
    “You got the call,” Mama said.
    She sat in the chair in the corner of her room, across from me. Inside her cottage it was stuffy and hot. A slow drip of sweat slid down my back. In her starched dress, she looked stern, like the schoolteacher she was–so unlike the naked, carefree woman from six nights ago.
    She leaned forward and handed me the envelope.
    I didn’t meet her eyes, and avoided touching her hand. On the back of the envelope was a waxy seal, that familiar symbolic tree of Edenton, pressed into the shiny gold, metallic wax. I cracked open the seal. Handwritten in small letters, I saw my name—Mia Eden—along with a date and time. Below that, The Cottage of the Reverend Elias Eden was scrawled larger than the rest. The paper itself was beautiful, thick and pulpy. But I wouldn’t save that paper, even as my own supply disappeared under layers of pencil lead or disintegrated by an eraser.
    “When?” she asked.
    “Tomorrow night.” I folded the envelope, threw it on the dresser, and focused my eyes on my feet.
    Tears of anger and frustration welled in my eyes and I blinked them back. She was a liar, more deceitful and manipulating that I ever imagined. I studied my boots with more focus. My brown utilitarian boots, dusted with flour from this morning’s baking. I’d been given the early shifts for food service this past week. Punishment, I guessed, for my transgression with Gabriel.
    “So soon.” I heard her get up from her chair. “You’re still so young.”
    “I’m sixteen,” I said, willing my tears away. I needed strength to face her. “Almost all the