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Chapter 1

April

You’re just like your mother

Those words have echoed in hteen hours

If I were still a little girl, the words wouldn’t have as o, I had a norle parent with two daughters My dad was just… gone Mo back, I think that hadelse

There was never any obvious veheer nor animosity When she spoke of his parents, she said they were kind and loving

After the argurandparents yesterday, I have to wonder if she was lying They spewed hate, and there wasn’t an ounce of civility wasted on me

I could lie to myself and say it was completely out of the blue, but it really wasn’t When I arrived severalcouple would be with allowing an escaped former cult member to live in their horowing up, nor birthday cards They never planned a trip and visited There was no relationship to speak of before that day, but they opened their ho as the ones that were deanization my mother joined when I was barely ten years old She married the leader She didn’t bat an eye nor open her ue when she discovered that all fee woirls on their eighteenth birthday

I shakeup toin the cab of this truck I don’t want to explain to a stranger why I don’t have a handle on e risk withfroerous, I’er in California with a cult anyway I’ve been warned for as long as I can remember thatfro his ser as well, only he hides it under the guise thathis children, is hoe atone for our sins, enabling us a righteous path to Heaven

Fuck Heaven

Fuck a god that says you have to sleep with a do

I’d rather roll around in a pile of ants

I kno that Charles Knight is a psycho, a et years of indoctrination out oflike a pri to take my place by Charles’s side

My stoI don’t puke in this guy’s vehicle He hasn’t given ers tap out the rhythh with more static than music from the old radio in the dash

You’re just like your mother

My randparents’ several ht it would be There was no freedom, no ability to make my own choices Southern etiquette is just as antiquated as the Draconian guidelines Knight had at his compound

But since I was going to be required to marry a creep if I stayed in California, I followed their rules I finished high school, keeping hed and jabbed and made fun of me

See, the Holood graces for welco their church friends and the wo the details out in a coossip, wouldn’t do

Therefore, ht Whispered over sweet tea, heaping plates of fried chicken, and liroup of friends the details of why I came to live with her What she didn’t know, she filled in with minutiae derived from her own head, or more likely details she pulled from antiquated documentaries on PBS

Those whispers became a roar in my ears as I walked the halls for class, but honestly, they didn’t bother me as much as they probably should have