Cage of Stars by Jacquelyn Mitchard

Author:Jacquelyn Mitchard [MITCHARD, JACQUELYN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9780759515581
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

You should go with us, Ronnie,” Mama told me. “You of all people need to be released.”

I didn’t answer her. I just kept working on the scarf I was beading for Clare’s birthday. Hobbies. I had about four hundred hobbies all of a sudden. Jade shone like her name. I made earrings. I whittled. I made brooches from antique buttons, taken from the box that was to have held Becky’s dolly clothes. My Christmas presents were almost finished.

“Veronica Bonham,” Mama said.

Ignoring her was not okay. In the rest of the world, our teaching at Family Home Evening had said just the week before, it was wrong that young people set the rules for everything—what people wore, what they said and how they said it—that ours was a culture of young people. My father said that people used to want to grow up, and now they want to grow young. I could lip off to my mother, but not like a kid on TV. I couldn’t say what I thought, which would have been, “This sucks.”

She didn’t know that was why I wasn’t opening my mouth.

“Ronnie?” Mama finally said sharply. “Answer me.”

“You didn’t ask me a question.”

“All right, miss. Why are you refusing to do something that is so important to your father and me? Except that it will make you uncomfortable? Do you think we’ll be comfortable? Do you think it will be like a picnic? This is going to be the hardest day of our lives.”

“Honestly, I’m sorry for that. But I can’t go,” I said. “It would be a lie. It would violate my beliefs, as I understand them. You didn’t raise me to be a liar, even to make you happy. And on top of that, I’m afraid.”

“There’ll be an armed guard in the room at all times.”

“I’m not afraid of him,” I said, shaking my head. My mother was so wise, but she could be dense. “I’m afraid of seeing him. I’m afraid of the memories. The dreams are bad enough. They had stopped, but now they’re back. You were not there. You were not there alone at first.”

“Darling, that hurts me. Do you think we want you to suffer? It’s just the opposite. Don’t you think we fear the same things?” my mother asked me. “But we think that this is the only way that we can get rid of some of those feelings. Clean them away.”

“Mama, every person carries things in a different way,” I said, my scalp tightening. “They say you don’t dream in color, but I do.” I decided, for the first time, to tell my mother about the nightmare. “Like last night. It was the same as that day, only I got the chance to save Becky and Ruthie. Scott Early comes walking across the lawn, and he’s shivering. I throw him that old coat we keep for going to shovel in the stable. Then I point Papa’s gun at Scott Early, and though in all the other dreams I’ve shot him, this time I just hold the gun on him until the sheriff comes.

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