It’s not all that complicated. A cult needs control to function; people are easier to control when they’re isolated. Remove natural allies—parents, siblings, friends. Make people distrust authority. Convince the kids if they say anything, their parents will go to jail. You speak a different language. Never mind that you’re in a foreign country. Even if you speak the language, you don’t. You use the cult language now.

An entire war is being waged to make you fearful and avoidant of anyone or anything that causes doubt—“Come out from among them and be ye separate.” It’s why evangelicals avoid secular books and movies and TV. You don’t have to be in a cult. There’s an entire society built to insulate those with faith—bookstores and music and movies, everything.

Even our fundraising methods served a purpose. You knock on doors or block pedestrians all day, try to sell them posters or tapes, try to save their souls, people don’t always take it well. Any evangelical kid who was told to try to lead their friends to Jesus can tell you how popular that’ll make you. People get annoyed because you’re fucking annoying. How do you react to Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking on your door, the “God Hates Fags” assholes at the Pride parade? You ever notice their kids are watching you? It’s by design. Every shitty interaction with an outsider reinforces what you were taught. They, those others, those Systemites, are mean, sometimes cruel. You’re different. You don’t belong out there.

   So I worked at trying to fit in, and failed, because the very act of trying is the definition of uncool. I read my books and lived in my head, and my past faded into something like a movie I’d seen once, of someone else’s life.

In the years prior, when we were homeschooled, when my brother and I weren’t “studying,” Gabe would order us to go play outside. Sometimes we’d walk to the library. Or we’d walk to Albertsons and buy a Coke from the vending machine and walk back home.

We used to climb the dogwood tree in the backyard, scoot down the branch that overhung the sunroom, and drop onto the roof, where we’d read and talk.

I was picking at the splinters the cedar shingles left in my legs. We’d carried our little radio up with us and played the Top 40 station just loud enough for us to hear—quiet enough so Gabe wouldn’t hear it if he stepped outside to check on us.

Mikey asked, “What do you want to be? When we’re older. What do you want to be?”

I was sixteen years old and I’d never considered the question as anything more than an abstraction. One of the things that had been my saving grace during all those years in the Family was that my bed was on the top bunk, where I was usually safe from the pervy uncles. I’d hide books under my mattress, a radio for a time, and I’d tell myself stories about who I really was—a secret agent, a spy, a lunatic locked away, a normal girl. I’d escape. I’d grow up and live the life I’d seen in movies. I’d be a cop. I’d be a soldier. I’d have friends. I’d have a whole shelf full of books. I’d have a dog.

   But I’d never thought about what I wanted to do with my life. We were told the world was going to end. I hadn’t known I would grow up. Far as I can tell, my brother was the first to ask me.

“I don’t know. What are you going to be?” I asked him.

“An artist, I guess.” He studied his abs. Douchebag was a more likely career path. “I could probably be a bartender. That looks like fun. People have to talk to the bartender.” He had a point.

“I think I want to be a writer. Maybe a reporter,” I said. Reporters got to travel wherever they wanted. And they didn’t have to work in offices. They could eat whatever they wanted. I’d seen them on CNN. “I guess a writer.” It seemed like a less competitive field.

He said, “We’ll probably both be bartenders.”

* * *

—

One morning, during senior year, Mikey got to the newspaper before me and stripped out the comics section. Left with the rest, I flipped through the A-section and saw David Berg’s face. David Berg, Moses David, Mo, Dad, Grandpa—the insane prophet of God. He looked like a taxidermied opossum in one of those tourist trap junk stores off Route 66, pointy and beady-eyed. I realized I’d never seen his face. I’d never even met anyone who had met him. He lived in undisclosed locations with an inner circle. In all our books, they always covered his face by pasting on a cartoon lion’s head or a cartoon version of him that didn’t look a damn thing like him. I felt like I was underwater. I couldn’t hear Mikey chewing his cereal. I couldn’t hear anything.

   He didn’t look much like a prophet. He looked more like one of the guys who hung out at the library during the day, smelling like booze and boiled sweat. When the words stopped fluttering on the page, I read them. They said he died in his sleep.

I took the entire page, folded it, and stuffed it into my backpack. Told Mikey we’d leave in five minutes. My voice sounded weak behind the sloshing sound of my pulse. I walked to the bathroom and quietly closed the door. I read his obituary again. And again. They said he died. He was dead. They said his wife, Maria, would lead the cult. He was dead.

The only thing I remember about school that day was that David Berg’s obituary was in my backpack. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And what I thought, after the initial desire to find his grave and piss on it, was that everything I remembered was real. I was real. You can forget after a while, when no one sees you. I felt like a ghost, wandering the halls, sitting in class, memorizing facts to pass tests, wishing someone would just talk to me, just for a moment. But now I had proof—a page from the Amarillo Globe-News that said I was real.