Leaving Fishers

  Seven others went, falling and being caught in turn. Then Pastor Jim called Dorry’s name. Blood pounded in her ears. Brad and Angela stepped up behind her. Angela put her hand on Dorry’s back, gently guiding her forward. Dorry wanted to protest, to say no. But how could she? She’d look like a coward. Brad and Angela would think she didn’t trust them. She stumbled toward the stairs. Her legs trembled as she climbed. Brad and Angela were on either side of her, each holding an arm to steady her. Then they let go, and Dorry realized she was at the top. Brad and Angela backed away. She couldn’t see them behind her.

  I hate heights, she wanted to say. I don’t have to do this, do I? Maybe she could make it into a joke, say something like, “I’d rather have chocolate.” But everyone else had been totally serious. The somber mood in the room felt like a weight on her chest.

  Angela’s clear voice asked behind her, “Do you trust us?”

  “Yes,” Dorry mumbled.

  “Are you willing to stake your life to prove it?”

  “Yes,” Dorry mumbled again.

  Also by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Because of Anya

  Don’t You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey

  Escape from Memory

  Just Ella

  Running Out of Time

  Takeoffs and Landings

  Turnabout

  The Shadow Children Sequence:

  Among the Hidden

  Among the Impostors

  Among the Betrayed

  Among the Barons

  Among the Brave

  Among the Enemy

  Available from Simon & Schuster

  www.SimonSaysKids.com

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware

  that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and

  destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher

  has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events,

  real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names,

  characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s

  imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or

  persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  This Simon Pulse edition June 2004

  Copyright © 1997 by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  SIMON PULSE

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  All rights reserved, including the right of

  reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  eISBN: 9781439115848

  The text of this book was set in Berkeley Book.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Haddix, Margaret Peterson.

  Leaving fishers / written by Margaret Peterson Haddix.

  p. cm.

  Summary: After joining her new friends in the religious group called

  Fishers of Men, Dorry finds herself immersed in a cult from which

  she must struggle to extricate herself.

  ISBN-10: 0-689-81125-X (hc.)

  [1. Cults—Fiction. 2. Fanaticism—Fiction. 3. Christian life—

  Fiction.]

  1. Title.

  PZ7.H1164Le [Fic]—dc21 96-47857

  ISBN-13: 978-0-689-86793-4 (pbk.)

  ISBN-10: 0-689-86793-X (pbk.)

  For Meredith and Connor

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Leaving Fishers

  Chapter

  One

  DORRY WAS EATING ALONE. AGAIN.

  She slouched in the hard plastic chair as if that would make her invisible. Which was ridiculous because, of the hundreds of kids crowded into the Crestwood High School cafeteria, not one seemed to care if Dorry was there or on Mars. Three guys in striped polo shirts sat on her right, and two girls in T-shirts sat on her left, but none of them had glanced at Dorry even once since they sat down.

  Grimly, Dorry peeled the waxed paper off her peanut-butter-and-cheese sandwich. She took a bite and chewed automatically. Peanut butter and cheese used to be her favorite sandwich, but now it tasted like sadness, like tears held back because she was too proud to cry in front of people she didn’t know.

  The first week she’d gone around like some robot with a one-message computer chip: “Hi. I’m Dorry Stevens. I’m new.” She had grinned fanatically with every greeting, so much that her smile muscles ached by the end of each day. Usually people said “Hi,” and then turned back to their friends. Sometimes all she got was a shrug. The worst response had come from a girl in the bathroom that first Friday, a punk-looking girl with triple-pierced ears and an Army jacket. Dorry shouldn’t have tried, but the girl didn’t look like she fit in either.

  “Hi. I’m Dorry Stevens. I’m new,” Dorry had said hopefully.

  The girl looked at her through mascara-clumped eyelashes. “Oh, God,” she said, and broke out laughing. Then two other girls with heavily pierced ears—one also had a nose ring—came out of the bathroom stalk and laughed with her. Dorry caught a glimpse of her own face in the mirror, her horrified smile frozen like a Halloween mask.

  It took every bit of nerve Dorry had not to run straight home—not to the tiny apartment her parents had rented while her father worked in Indianapolis, but the three hundred miles back to Bryden, Ohio, where she’d lived all her life until now. She had plenty of friends there, friends she’d never had to introduce herself to because she’d known most of them practically since she was born.

  “Send me home,” Dorry begged her parents that night. “I can live with Denise. Or Donny. Or maybe Marissa’s parents won’t mind—” Denise and Donny were her brother and sister, both about twenty years older than Dorry. Marissa was her best friend.

  “Oh, Dorry, you know we can’t do that,” Dorry’s mother said. She didn’t add all the reasons they’d hashed out last spring when they found out Dorry’s father’s factory was closing. He was one of the lucky workers who could transfer to other plants to get their last few years in before retirement. He only had three more years, but that meant Dorry would have to spend her last two years of high school in a strange place. Donny and Denise had actually kind of offered to take Dorry, but they each had three kids and already cramped houses. Dorry’s parents kept saying they didn’t want to impose on anybody and, besides, what kind of parents would miss their daughter’s last two years of high school?

  “Mom, this isn’t going to work. Nobody likes me, the school’s too big—” Dorry stopped because she couldn’t go on without crying.

  Her mother sighed. �€
œI’m sorry, honey. This is tough on all of us. Give things a little more time. You’ll adjust.”

  But it had been three weeks now, and Dorry hadn’t adjusted. She’d given up. She took another bite of her peanut-butter-and-cheese sandwich. The food stuck in her throat, gagging her. If she swallowed again, she was sure she’d choke. And you could bet nobody would bother giving her the Heimlich maneuver. She’d die, and nobody would notice.

  “Excuse me. Are you alone? Would you like to eat with us?”

  Dorry gulped down the bite of sandwich and looked up at a very pretty blond girl. No matter how much she’d wanted friends before, her first instinct now was denial—no, I’m just waiting for someone. I don’t look pathetic enough to eat alone, do I? But someone was actually speaking to her. Dorry decided she wouldn’t give up after all.

  “Sure,” she said. “Thanks.”

  “My friends and I are over there,” the girl said, pointing. Dorry couldn’t see where she meant in the sea of other kids, but she shoved her sandwich back into her sack, picked up her milk, and stood up.

  “I’m Angela Briarstone,” the girl said, leading the way.

  “Dorry Stevens,” Dorry said. She hoped all the people who hadn’t noticed her before would see her now, walking and talking with a friend. Well, a potential friend.

  “You’re new, aren’t you?” Angela asked.

  Dorry nodded. “We just moved here,” she said. “My dad had a job transfer.”

  Dorry thought that sounded better than explaining about the factory closing down. From what she’d seen and heard at Crestwood, all the kids she’d want to be friends with had parents who were doctors or lawyers or at least presidents of their own companies. And Angela seemed to be one of those kids, judging from the designer labels on her purse and jeans. Dorry’s jeans came from K-Mart. But she wants you to eat with her, Dorry reminded herself.

  Angela nodded sympathetically. “That’s got to be hard, moving,” she said. “Have you had to do a lot of it?”

  “What? Oh—no. This is the first time. Before this year, we always lived at home. I mean, back in Bryden. Ohio. And we’re going back in three years, so my parents didn’t even sell the house. So it’s not really like we moved, moved. We’re just here . . . temporarily.”

  I’ve got to shut up, Dorry thought. Angela’s going to think I’m one of those people who only talk about themselves. “What about you?” she asked. “Have you always lived here?”

  Angela shook her head no, but didn’t elaborate, because they had evidently reached her group of friends. She pulled out a chair for Dorry before sitting down in front of her own tray.

  “Everybody, this is Dorry,” Angela announced. “She just moved here. Dorry, this is Brad, Michael, Jay, Lara, and Kim.”

  Dorry sat down, nodded and said “Hi” to each of the others. She was careful not to smile too wide, even though, for the first time in three weeks, she really wanted to. She could have six friends by the end of this lunch and three of them were even boys—cute boys, if you ignored Jay’s acne. Of course, they were probably all in couples. Dorry tried to figure out which one was Angela’s boyfriend.

  “Did you already pray over your meal?” Brad asked. “We were just going to.”

  “Er—no,” Dorry said. “I—”

  “Brad, she’s going to think you’re some kind of religious fanatic,” Angela said.

  Brad winked at Dorry and bowed his head. “God is great, God is good,” he began. “Now it’s time to eat this food. Please, God, don’t let it kill us.”

  He looked up, grinning. Dorry thought of her six-year-old nephew Travis, whose most angelic smiles meant he’d just done something like feed his dog blue Kool-Aid so he’d have psychedelic dog droppings.

  “Dorry, I ask you—is that the prayer of a religious fanatic?” Brad said.

  Dorry turned her head just in time to see Angela giving Brad a slight frown. Something was going on that she didn’t understand. “I don’t think I know any religious fanatics,” Dorry said carefully

  “Really?” Brad said. “No Seventh-Day Adventists? No Mormons? No snake-handling fundamentalists? Where are you from?”

  “A small town you’ve never heard of,” Dorry said, a little nervously. She remembered her dad saying, more than once, that you should never talk about religion or politics with people you didn’t know.

  “Ah, a mystery woman,” Brad said in a fake French accent. “She won’t reveal her secrets.”

  Dorry laughed with the others. Brad, she decided, was like Joey Van Camp back in Bryden. Everything was a joke to Joey, and he could make anything sound funny. He was a lot of fun if you remembered never to take him seriously. She decided the religious stuff didn’t mean anything to Brad. She relaxed in her chair and started pulling her lunch back out of her sack. Then she looked up and saw Brad grinning at her. He was a lot cuter than Joey Van Camp, she thought, with those blue eyes and straight black hair that fell perfectly across his forehead. Even if it was just a joke, Dorry liked him calling her a mystery woman. Nobody back in Bryden would have even thought of putting her—plain old, dull, dumpy Dorry—in the same sentence as “mystery” or “secrets.” Maybe moving wasn’t such a bad idea.

  “And she still won’t talk,” Brad announced. “What will it take to get her to crack?”

  “I’ll take my secrets to the grave,” Dorry said, imitating his tone of mock seriousness. She felt foolish and thrilled all at once.

  “Oh, but you already told,” Angela said, with an odd laugh. “She’s from Bryden, Ohio, folks.”

  Dorry felt a little hurt. Were Brad and Angela dating? Was Angela jealous of him clowning around with Dorry? Brad didn’t seem to notice.

  “Ah, but you see, that is a mystery, too. Where is this Bryden?” Brad asked. His faux French accent was actually improving.

  “Way over in eastern Ohio,” Dorry answered. “It’s really tiny. Pretty dull place, actually.” She got a familiar lump at the back of her throat thinking of Bryden: its tree-lined streets, its stately courthouse, and its four traffic lights, which you could whiz through one after the other if you caught the first one just turning green. Bryden didn’t even seem part of the same universe as Crest-wood, which was one apartment complex after another by the interstate exit ramps, then rich neighborhoods with security guards and gates farther on. Crestwood didn’t have a downtown, just fast-food strips and the mall. And except for the signs that said, “Welcome to Crestwood” and “Leaving Crestwood,” Dorry would have no idea where Crestwood ended and Indianapolis began. All Dorry’s friends back in Bryden had been jealous that she was moving to the big city. “You’re going to come back so sophisticated we won’t know you,” Marissa had joked. And, in brave moments, at first Dorry had thought Crestwood would be exciting. She had imagined hanging out at the mall or going to downtown Indianapolis with friends. Maybe that was still possible.

  “So what do you think of Indianapolis?” Angela asked now.

  “Um—I guess I like it,” Dorry said.

  “Such certainty,” Brad joked.

  “It probably seems overwhelming to you, doesn’t it?” Lara said in a quiet voice.

  Dorry nodded gratefully. She’d barely noticed Lara when Angela was introducing everyone. Lara had straight brown hair and a plain face. Beside Angela and Kim—both well dressed and carefully made up—Lara faded into the background. But Lara seemed to understand how awful the move had been for Dorry.

  Angela gave her a perky smile. “Oh, it’s not that bad. You’ll fit in in no time.”

  Dorry wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she took another bite of her sandwich and drained her milk carton. She wished the others would keep talking, but they were all grinning at her, expectantly. Dorry tried to think of something else to talk about.

  “Do people go to the football games around here, or is this the kind of school where no one’s big on that?” she asked.

  “Oh, none of us are really into football,” Angela said. “What about you?”
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  “Back in Bryden, everyone went to the football games, kindergarten on up. We made it to the state finals last year. Talk about exciting! We filled six buses for the trip to Columbus—” Dorry felt like she was babbling. But it was hard not to when all the others were looking at her and nodding so attentively How could it be, Dorry thought, that for three weeks nobody knows I exist, and then I suddenly find five people who act like I’m the most fascinating person in the world?

  She went on telling about the state championships: the tied score with three minutes left, the other team’s last-minute touchdown, the disappointed Bryden crowd, and the long, sad ride home. “Lots of people said that was the worst moment of their lives,” Dorry said.

  “I don’t mean to interrupt, but I’ve got to go now,” Jay said. “It was very nice meeting you, Dorry.”

  He stood up. Dorry wondered why he hadn’t said anything until now, if he really enjoyed meeting her. Maybe he was shy. Maybe he was just being polite. She smiled back, hoping he really meant it.

  “Thanks. You too.”

  The others began scraping back their chairs and gathering up crumpled napkins and empty milk cartons. The bell was going to ring in a few minutes. Dorry wanted to ask, “Can I eat with you guys tomorrow?” but she thought it would sound too childish, like a little kid on a playground begging, “Let me play with you.” All the others had a school lunch, so they had to go to the tray-return window while Dorry walked over to the trash can. She watched Brad and Angela whispering, their heads together. Were they talking about her? Were they making fun of her? She shouldn’t have talked so much about the state championship. What other stupid things had she said? Dorry felt lonelier than ever. She dropped her lunch sack into the garbage and turned around.

  Suddenly Angela was by her side. “Oh, good, Dorry, I was afraid you might have gotten away. I just wanted to say we’d love to have you eat with us again tomorrow. That is, if you don’t have other plans.”

  “No, I don’t. That’d be great,” Dorry said.

  “Okay!” Angela said, cheerleader peppy. “See you then!”

  The bell rang, and Dorry watched her new friends disappear in the rush of kids stampeding out of the cafeteria.