The Program

Chapter forty-three

Though the storm had quieted, the sky stayed murky, like churned-up water. Leah followed Randall down the curving trail, her adrenaline quickening.

Every step brought her closer to TD's bed.

Her mind was clear, but her body had shown itself willing to betray her. In the Growth Hall, her breath had moved through her as if directed by another entity. She'd grown sweaty and languorous, desirous of dissolution. Swept off by the rising trumpets, she'd almost surrendered to the thunderous chants, the lulling monotone. The stronger she'd fought, the more painful it had felt, like flailing offshore with a cramped leg.

After dinner she'd managed only a few minutes alone with Tom in their room before Randall's summoning knock.

Walking down the corridor of brush, she willed herself under control.

The Teacher's cottage drew into view. Across the clearing, the usual smoke twisted up from the stovepipe of the shed. Through the open door, she saw the soles of Skate's feet, bare and stained, pointing up from the cot. The dogs arose with ferocious snarling, startling Skate back to life. Leah froze, but Randall's hand grasped the back of her neck, squeezing gently as he steered her forward. Wearing a stretched pair of underwear, Skate hunched over the dogs in the shed, ordering them into submission. They yelped and snatched at each other.

Randall delivered her to the front room of the cottage and left her with trembling legs. She heard TD's raised voice above the deafening blast of the four-nozzle shower, dictating orders to Stanley John. Lorraine was probably in there with them, either extracting hair from the soap between latherings or on her knees beneath the spray, prepping him for Leah.

In its place beside the door sat the white plastic bucket, U.S. POSTAL SERVICE emblazoned on it sides. She raised the top envelope from the stack, reading the return address: Office of the U.S. Marshal. 312 N. Spring St., G-23. The envelope was a Day-Glo, yellow – hard to miss.

She ran to the door and called for Skate across the clearing, not too loudly. Putting the dogs on a sit-stay, he came grudgingly, buttoning a pair of tattered jeans on his way. The Dobermans snarled at her, rising on their haunches. Skate paused before the porch, his face blank.

"The mail's here." She held out the tub, praying the next step would be self-evident.

Skate tugged his underwear out of his ass. "I know. I just brought it."

Whatever response she'd been expecting, it wasn't that. "Uh, TD just told me to tell you."

"He done sorting it?"

Behind her she heard the shower go off, and her stomach turned to ice. "Yes."

With a grunt he lifted the crate from her hands and headed back across the clearing.

Her heart racing, she watched to see where he was going. She recalled that the mod had a paper shredder.

A hand closed on her shoulder, and she yelped. Dripping and naked, TD smiled down at her, his erect penis brushing her stomach. "I missed you."

TD had only to raise his eyes and he'd see Skate with the postal bucket.

By the bathroom door, Stanley John scribbled down a few more notes and Lorraine wiped her mouth and glared at her, TD's towel folded over an arm.

The sight of TD up close unsettled Leah further.

She forced herself to look into the hypnotic eyes. Across the clearing she heard a door close, but she couldn't tell if it was the shed's or the mod's. She moved away from the door, smiling mechanically. "I missed you, too, TD."

Lorraine presented Leah with the towel. Her stomach roiling, she dried TD off as he stretched and yawned, seemingly impervious to the icy breeze seeping through the screen door.

He strode to the bedroom, Leah still toweling his legs as he moved, sorting through the jumble of her thoughts. He closed the door behind them. Leah continued to dry his back, hoping to buy a few more minutes, but TD pulled the towel away from her and dropped it on the floor. He placed his hands gently on her shoulders and walked her back until the bed pressed against her legs, until she fell on the mattress. He ran a hand up the inseam of her jeans, splaying his fingers near her crotch to part her legs.

"You never yielded to me," he said. "Sexually. Don't you think it's time?"

"No."

His eyebrows twitched upward, the slightest show of surprise. "What did you say?"

"I don't feel ready."

"You don't want to say that to me." He made a tsking noise with his tongue, his muscular hands gripping her forearms, steadily moving them down to either side of her. "Don't you want to give up your need to stand out? Don't you want to fit in and be part of a family for once in your life?"

He crouched over her, his smooth-skinned face looking impossibly youthful, the unlined visage of a Renaissance angel.

She felt revulsion pressing at the back of her throat like vomit. "No."

"Yes." A smile lit his face, showing off the perfect line of his teeth. "Yes, yes, yes."

She resisted, but he was sufficiently overpowering to make clear she had no options. He manipulated her body with a calm forcefulness, guiding her through the motions of undressing, navigating her arms from the shirt as if changing a doll with stiff limbs. Then he pushed down on her knees, forcing one leg straight, then the other, and pulled off her jeans.

Wearing a soft, paternal smile, he kept his eyes on hers. "There you go. Let me show you."

He sank on top of her, his right knee pinning her left leg down, the kneecap boring into the soft flesh of her inner thigh. She was trapped – she couldn't react violently without giving away her greater deception. TD secured her arms, vise-gripping her wrists in one hand. Through her panic Leah felt his left knee dig between her clenched legs, forcing them open. It rolled up the curve of her right leg, trapping it, too. His practiced dexterity was all the more sickening.

"You're all alike. You think your virginity is so cosmically important, as if God and mankind have nothing better to do than worry about girls keeping their cherries intact. As if your body is some holy shrine. As if it matters at all when you let a man inside you. It doesn't. You'll see. This will be so good for your growth, Leah. You'll learn so much."

His face had darkened with blood, accenting the chestnut square on his chin, the whites of his eyes. He twisted a finger in the side of her panties.

For a moment she thought she'd started screaming out loud, but then an idea sailed into her head, cutting through the imagined noise. "You're right, TD. But that's not why I don't want to be with you. It's because…well, when I changed this morning, I noticed…uh, some midcycle spotting and -"

He stiffened. Panic touched his eyes, and he scrambled off her. "Out now. Off my sheets." He stumbled backward across the room. "You should never come into my cottage this way."

Leah's thighs and wrists throbbed. TD's face burned with rage; Leah's rash seethed. As she tried to dress quickly, he shooed her out, carrying half her clothes.

"Leave. Now."

Over the din of the crickets and the bang of the screen door, she heard him crying out for Lorraine, his voice holding a jarring note of distress.