Freedom's Child Read Online Free PDF Page B

never have to hear ZZ Top again. As always, I leave myself about half an hour to hang out in the back before my shift starts. I sit in the office where we keep the safes, computers, security cameras, accounting and inventory records, cluttered manuals, and magazines. It’s where I take advantage of the Internet, being that I don’t actually own a computer and the service on my cell phone sucks like an eager Vietnamese prostitute.
    Carrie stands behind me, but she isn’t the nosy type at all, just eyeballs the office.
    “What are you doing?” I ask. I already know the answer and sayit with her:
I’m moving things with my mind
. She’s always rearranging something. Carrie’s my boss, but a good boss. A husky lesbian, she’s one of my only friends here in Oregon. She’s rough around the edges but has a huge heart and never makes a pass at me, aside from the occasional “If you were a lesbian, my God!” She’s the gay pride–ish type, too, with tats of rainbows and naked pinup girls all over her thick arms.
    I return to the computer screen and open three windows after I log in to Facebook. On one page is Mason Paul, attorney-at-law. On the second is Rebekah Paul. The third is a young girl named Louisa Horn, but I suspect it’s a fake profile: one friend, and the only activity is random posts on Rebekah’s wall. My money is on Mason, since he and his sister aren’t Facebook friends. On Facebook maps, Louisa’s locations match Mason’s. And by the looks of things, Mason has little, if any, connection anymore with his adoptive family, with the church.
    I look up Galatians 5:19–21 in another tab. Above it, from yesterday, is a post from Louisa Horn that reads: “My sister in Christ, where have you been? I miss you.” It’s been a couple days since she’s posted anything or there’s been any activity from her account. It’s unlike her. “She hasn’t posted anything in a while,” I say to Carrie. I’m not supposed to talk to anyone of my past life, my life before I was Freedom Oliver. But I do. She knows who I am, who I was, who I’m looking at. I trust her. Nothing I disclose to her goes anywhere else. She even knows the things I can’t disclose to the whippersnappers.
    “You know how those young’uns are.” Carrie arranges magazines that don’t need to be arranged in the first place.
    “No, something’s wrong.” I don’t look away from the computer.
    “You don’t know that, Freedom.” She focuses on me.
    “I can feel it.” It’s true, something just isn’t right. “I hate that name, Rebekah.” I tap my nail on the screen. “Her fucking Amish Walton parents.”
    “They’re not Amish.”
    “No, but they might as well be.” We both smile a little as she leaves for her shift.
    I browse through her photos. There’s a certain purity about Rebekah, and I don’t think this just because she’s my biological daughter. And while I’ll throw a heap of sarcasm at how she was brought up, I’m happy with her upbringing. She was raised by a good family, raised in the church. I sift through her photos: long, curly hair of ginger with spots of rust across the bridge of her nose. She has a million-dollar smile that stretches between those cute dimples, the only radiance from very conservative attire: long denim skirts over old white Keds, frilly long-sleeved button-downs.
    As for Mason, it’s clear he’d found his own way, beyond the graces of God. Girls, bars, smoking, a form of rebellion that wouldn’t do too much harm, typical youth crap. With a full head of brown hair, Mason is incredibly handsome, as seen in the photos tagged to his page through Violet. Trips to Gatlinburg’s Smoky Mountains, tequila sunrises, washboard abs. Christ Almighty, he’s the spitting image of his father, that piece of shit.
    Mason and Rebekah were raised by an esteemed reverend in Goshen, Kentucky, Virgil Paul and his ever-so-obedient wife, Carol. I’ve seen him preach via the Internet: a very charismatic