The mural wasn’t perfect, and working on it ate up most of Mia’s free time for the next few weeks, so that she had to skip reading, but she actually enjoyed herself. Tim, the building manager, allowed her some leftover paint, cans of blue and yellow and green, and if you were a small child and had never seen a mural before, you might stare at the painted wall in a state of awe when you recognized Hightop Mountain and the fields where the corn grew in neat rows. Even Evangeline had to admit that Mia had done a decent job. The little watercolor by Carrie Oldenfield Starr was forgotten by everyone but Mia, who kept it hidden in the barn along with her library card. She often took it out to look at it, imagining the land where they lived as the painter had presented it, back when there was only a single white farmhouse alongside a small barn, before the Community had been built. Mia wished she was in that place right now, in the field where sunflowers grew, where it might be possible to be who you wished to be and you could read books all day long and no one would say a word about it. A place where no one would punish you for being who you were.
* * *
TAKE ONE RISK AND you’ll soon take more. It’s an addiction or it’s bravery, it’s foolishness or it’s desperation. Mia went beyond the confines of the gate at the end of their long dirt driveway more and more often. She wondered what would happen if she were to travel west on Route 17. Would she reach the moon? Would she find city streets where there were bookstores and coffeehouses where she could be invisible and do as she pleased?
The best time to break the rules was during contemplation hours, Saturdays between four and six, when people were supposed to meditate and look inward, then get down on their knees, wherever they were, and be thankful for all that they had and all the Community had given them. That was usually Mia’s reading time, but after searching for the original book, the one with her name in it, she had become restless, and that was when the wandering began. She went down to the athletic fields and watched a soccer match played by local children, excited for the winning team, even though she didn’t understand the rules. She went into the bakery and stared at the gorgeous three-tiered cakes named after the deadly sins, including Gluttony, Envy, and Wrath. She sat outside the police station on a wooden bench. “Everything okay?” an officer coming out of the building asked her, a puzzled look on his face. People in the Community never approached the police, not for any reason. “You have a good view from here,” Mia said. The building was directly across the green from the library. “I guess we do,” the officer said. Mia took off quickly, not wanting to draw any more attention to herself. I need help, she’d wanted to say. I need to find a way out.
One afternoon while out hiking Mia found herself at the Jack Straw Tavern. People from the Community were not allowed to frequent the bar; consuming alcohol and mingling with townspeople were both forbidden. Still, Mia found the nerve to peer through the window. A handsome young man bringing out the trash spied her lingering there.
“I don’t think you’re old enough to drink,” the bartender teased. He could tell Mia was one of the commune kids, they all had a wild, underfed look, and he pitied anyone who lived out on that run-down farm where he’d heard everything was regulated, what you ate, how many hours you slept, who you could speak to. “How about some French fries?” the bartender asked.
Mia had never heard of them, but she said, “Sure,” and followed him inside. The tavern was dark and comforting, with booths that had leather seats.
“Coming right up,” the bartender told Mia.
There was an old gentleman at the bar, having an afternoon beer. He was Max Starr, from an old Blackwell family, and he could never figure out why his cousin Carrie had given away such a large portion of their land. He gathered this young girl was one of the squatters who’d taken over the farm. She had her hair braided in an old-fashioned style and was dressed plainly. Still, she was a pretty girl, and she smiled at him when she caught him staring.
“My cousin owned land where you live,” he told Mia. “It was in the family for close to three hundred years.”
“Carrie Oldenfield,” Mia said. “She was a painter.”
The old man sat back in his chair, surprised by the girl’s knowledge and charm. She didn’t look blank the way most of the Community kids did. “That’s right. She went to the Museum School in Boston, and she studied in Paris, for all the good it did her.”
“Why didn’t it do her any good?” Mia wanted to know.
Max Starr snorted, disgusted. “Because she married him.”
“I’m sorry she died,” Mia said, feeling guilty for reasons she didn’t quite understand.
“Everybody dies,” Max Starr said. “It was the way she wound up living that was the problem. Lovely girl,” he said. “Second cousin once removed.” He shook his head. “Just goes to show, one man can ruin a good woman’s life.”
Mia wondered what her mother’s life might have been like if she hadn’t married Joel Davis. She might be west of the moon, someplace where she didn’t have to make herself so plain. At the last Sunday meeting, there had been a complaint about Ivy from the other women in the sewing circle and she had been made to apologize for her misdeeds. Ivy’s crime was to have recited an Emily Dickinson line while they were working on a quilt. I am out with lanterns, looking for myself. Ivy had to walk up to her husband, in front of a gathering of the entire Community, so he could tie a badge on a rope around her neck. It was the letter V, for vanity, to be worn for seven days. As far as Mia was concerned, it hadn’t made Ivy any less beautiful. It just made her hate her father more than she already did.
When the bartender brought over a plate of fries, along with a bottle of catsup, Mia sat down and proceeded to eat like a starving person. The food was heaven.
“Slow down there,” Max Starr said as he watched Mia wolfing down the fries. “Don’t they let you eat at that farm?”
“Boiled potatoes,” Mia said between ravenous bites. “We absolutely don’t have this.”
“Are they crazy out there?” the old man said.
“Maybe,” Mia said. She’d never thought of the Community that way before, but now that Max Starr had suggested it, she stopped to consider the way they lived. “I think so.”
“Well, you don’t seem like one of them,” Max decided, having taken a liking to the girl.
“What do I seem like?” Mia asked, truly interested in what his answer might be. This was the longest conversation she had ever had with an outsider.
Max carefully thought over her question before answering. “You seem like a girl who likes French fries.”
Mia grinned. That’s what she was. An ordinary girl who asked for a second helping and was granted her wish on this one day when she broke the rules and was just like anyone else in town.
That was when Mia began to think about the other life she might have if she ran away. She thought about it while she weeded the gardens, and in the laundry, where she steam-ironed clothes; and at the preschool, where she worked in the afternoons; and in the office, when she filed bills. She thought about it in the vegetable garden and every time she collected Look-No-Furthers in the orchard. She had begun to plot her getaway, and every time she saw her mother, across a room or on the other side of the field, she would think, Let’s do it together. When the night is dark, when no one can hear us, we will run down the road, we will stop the first car we see, we will never even look back, not once, not for a minute, and before you know it we’ll be west of the moon. Let us walk invisible and disappear.