Unwind

Lev begins to dial, but stops himself. It's not his parents he wants to talk to.

He erases the numbers and keys in a different one, hesitates for a moment, then hits the send button.

It's picked up on the second ring.

"Hello?"

"Pastor Dan?"

There's only a split second of dead air, and then recognition. "Dear God, Lev? Lev, is that you? Where are you?"

"I don't know. Some school. Listen, you have to tell my parents to stop the police! I don't want them killed."

"Lev, slow down. Are you all right?"

"They kidnapped me—but they didn't hurt me, so I don't want them hurt. Tell my father to call off the police!"

"I don't know what you're talking about. We never told the police."

Lev is not expecting to hear this. "You never . . . what?"

"Your parents were going to. They were going to make a whole big deal about it—but I convinced them not to. I convinced them that your being kidnapped was somehow God's will."

Lev starts shaking his head like he can shake the thought away. "But . . . but why would you do that?"

Now Pastor Dan starts to sound desperate. "Lev, listen to me. Listen to me carefully. No one else knows that you're gone. As far as anyone knows, you've been tithed, and people don't ask questions about children who are tithed. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

"But... I want to be tithed. I need to be. You have to call my parents and tell them. You have to get me to harvest camp."

Now Pastor Dan gets angry. "Don't make me do that! Please, don't make me do that!" It's as if he's fighting a battle, but somehow it's not Lev he's battling.

This is so far from Lev's image of Pastor Dan, he can't believe it's the same person he's known all these years. It's like an impostor has stolen the Pastor's voice, but none of his convictions.

"Don't you see, Lev? You can save yourself. You can be anyone you want to be now."

And all at once the truth comes to Lev. Pastor Dan wasn't telling him to run away from the kidnapper that day—he was telling Lev to run away from him.

From his parents. From his tithing. After all of his sermons and lectures, after all that talk year after year about Lev's holy duty, it's all been a sham. Lev was born to be tithed—and the man who convinced him this was a glorious and honorable fate doesn't believe it.

"Lev? Lev, are you there?"

He's there, but he doesn't want to be. He doesn't want to answer this man who led him to a cliff only to turn away at the last minute. Now Lev's emotions spin like a wheel of fortune. One moment he's furious, the next, relieved. One instant he's filled with terror so extreme, he can smell it like acid in his nostrils, and the next, there's a spike of joy, like what he used to feel when he swung away and heard the crack of his bat against a ball. He is that ball now, soaring away.

His life has been like a ballpark, hasn't it? All lines, structure, and rules, never changing. But now he's been hit over the wall into unknown territory.

"Lev?" says Pastor Dan. "You're scaring me. Talk to me."

Lev takes a slow, deep breath, then says, "Good-bye, sir." Then he hangs up without another word.

Lev sees police cars arrive outside. Connor and Risa will soon be caught, if they haven't been caught already. The nurse is no longer standing at the door—she's chiding the principal for how he's handling this situation. "Why didn't you call the poor boy's parents? Why haven't you put the school in lock-down?"

Lev knows what he has to do. It's something wrong. It's something bad. But suddenly he doesn't care. He slips out of the office right behind the nurse's and principal's backs, and goes out into the hallway. It only takes a second to find what he's looking for. He reaches for the little box on the wall.

I am lost in every possible way.

Then, feeling the coldness of the steel against his fingertips, he pulls the fire alarm.

16. Teacher

The fire alarm goes off during the teacher's prep period, and she silently curses the powers that be for their awful timing. Perhaps, she thinks, if she can just stay in her empty classroom until the false alarm—and it's always a false alarm—is dealt with. But then, what kind of example would she be setting if students passing by looked in to see her sitting there.

As she leaves the room, the hallways are already filling with students.

Teachers try their best to keep them organized, but this is a high school; the organized lines of elementary school fire drills are long gone, having been replaced by the brazen hormonal zigzags of kids whose bodies are too big for their own good.

Then she sees something strange. Something troubling.