Mind the cameras, Casey tells them, nodding to various camera crews. Bea eyes them warily, imagining tonight’s news reducing these protests to millennial burnouts looking for a day off work rather than presenting it as it really is. The media loves to distort the truth, but like Lev says, The world is falling around them—and they will fall with it.
Bea takes in the protest signs, loves them all.
OCCUPY WITH ART!
TAX THE MILLIONAIRES!
WE ARE THE 99%!
She bumps into a woman dressed as a zombie.
What do you represent? the zombie asks, though Bea thinks the question should be the other way around. Bea clumsily shoves a pamphlet in the zombie’s hands. The zombie sneers and tosses it to the ground and Bea feels like an idiot as she watches it get trampled by protesters. She feels even worse when her next few encounters prove to be as fruitless. She can’t seem to find the words to make people listen to her for long. She should be able to connect with their skepticism, to break through it, because she too was once a skeptic—but she can’t remember what that felt like. If they could see inside her heart, they’d run to her, ask her to speak it.
She watches Casey and the others work the crowd effortlessly, handing over as many pamphlets as they’ve brought. They seem to know exactly who to approach and how. They preach Lev’s gospel without making it seem like preaching. Bea spends more time watching Casey than doing anything herself.
Have you heard of Lev Warren?
We’re a group based out in the Hudson Valley …
I like your sign. I know someone who’d agree with it …
What The Unity Project offers is a lot like this …
How is Bea so bad at this?
Doesn’t she believe enough?
She can feel Casey’s eyes on her, assessing her, so Bea folds herself into the crowd, moving toward two girls who look as uncertain as she feels. They’re holding hands.
Here, Bea says stupidly, thrusting a pamphlet at one of them.
They don’t take it. They wordlessly move away from her.
Hey, what’s that? Can I have one?
A man materializes from nowhere and Bea can tell by the way his eyes greedily roam her body there’s only one thing he’s really interested in. She wordlessly hands a pamphlet to him. He studies it for a moment and then makes a face.
Lev Warren? That cult asshole who thinks he’s God?
Bea takes a step back, as pissed as she is embarrassed and then ashamed for being embarrassed. Embarrassment is supposed to be beyond those who know God’s truth.
He’s not an asshole, Bea snaps. He’s real.
Sure.
The man rolls his eyes. Casey moves toward them and Bea feels her face get hot in the wake of still more failure. She ends up blurting out, He brought a girl back from the dead!
The man stares at Bea and then bursts into raucous laughter, reaching out and grabbing someone as they pass.
Hey, you’ll never believe what this chick just told me …
It’s true! The hot fury invading Bea’s body is greater than all common sense. Lev Warren brought a girl back from the dead!
Bea, Casey says sharply, grabbing her by the elbow. They move away from the immediate crowd and Bea’s anger disappears, a series of apologies falling from her lips, which feels worse than anything has felt so far—like she’s denying Lev.
Do not give them a reason to discredit us, Casey says.
But it’s true, Bea replies weakly.
People aren’t ready for the truth.
During the march to Union Square, Jenny gets trapped in a wave of protesters and the push and pull of the crowd sends her to the ground. She lands hard on her wrist. She says it’s fine, but by late afternoon, is surprised to discover it swollen and purple—broken. Bea volunteers to take her to the hospital, hoping to seize at least one opportunity to be useful before the day is over. Casey is happy to let her have it. In the taxi, tears stream silently down Jenny’s face and Bea realizes Jenny probably knew her wrist wasn’t fine long before she ever said something. Bea asks her why she didn’t say something.
The work is more important, Jenny whispers. And then, Maybe it’s because we’re too far away from Lev. Something bad was bound to happen.
A chill courses over Bea’s body. Jenny has articulated something that cuts straight to everything Bea’s been feeling. The inherent warmth, love and safety of Lev’s presence is absent here. She felt something akin to it in Bryant Park, but it was incomplete and in its incompleteness, they were left vulnerable and harm happened to them.
She wants to go back home.
The feeling intensifies at the hospital. She hasn’t stepped foot in one in what feels like a longer time than it’s actually been. Her body rebels; she’s instantly nauseous, overcome with sense memories. The antiseptic smell, the crude overhead lights, the almost-music of the place; the oddly respectful hustle of it interrupted by moments of chaos signaling someone’s worst nightmare, followed by the altogether surreal reconstruction of peace once the emergency has passed. Her soul moves back through time and ages another thousand years. She splits in half. The Bea of her present, the Bea of her past.
When they admit Jenny, Bea sits in the waiting room, lacing and unlacing her fingers, breathing slowly in through her nose and slowly out through her mouth, trying hard not to throw up. She’s thinking of Lo again, but in a way that’s crushing her. She leans back in the uncomfortable plastic chair and hears her sister’s plaintive, drugged voice in her ear.
I’m here. Why aren’t you here?
Bea hasn’t spoken to Lo since that call in February, but Lo has called for her since. Each time, Casey answers the phone. Bea hid in the hallway once to eavesdrop and found Casey’s cold rebuffs so devastating, she vowed never to eavesdrop again.
It’s part of God’s plan, Lev promised her.
It is all a part of God’s plan.
You are transitioning into faith. You must become secure in it. You cannot be weak. I’ll tell you something now: your sister will join The Project. I’ve seen it. Her path to us cannot be known to you, but I promise you’ll be waiting for her at the end of it—but only so long as you do not intervene. Her faith depends on yours.
Would it be intervening to call Lo just to hear her voice? Bea wouldn’t have to say anything herself. Her hand slips into her pocket for the cell phone Casey issued her and she has Patty’s number half-dialed when a flurry of orderlies hurrying past shock her back to her senses. She’s horrified with herself. She lets go of the phone and buries her head in her hands. She shouldn’t have been the one to bring Jenny here. She didn’t realize how close to the surface everything would be here—that every hospital would become that hospital.
She clasps her hands together and prays to God to give her strength.
Please.
The words of her prayer are fraught, desperate, as she awaits God’s hand to lift her past her weakness. When it doesn’t happen, she gets to her feet. She paces the waiting room until such restlessness gives way to roaming and she roams the halls until she reaches areas of NO ADMITTANCE at which point she forces herself to carve new paths back to where she came. She presses her palm to her chest, feels a curious fluttering there, a lightness taking hold, one she typically attributes to Lev, to being close to his grace. She closes her eyes and listens to her heartbeat. The hospital sounds slowly fade away until it’s only her heartbeat and then—another, resonating somewhere beyond her own.