Page 11 of Taken By the Bounty Hunter

So I guess we’re arguing after all.

My father looks down at the table and clears his throat.

“I’m sorry, Georgie.”

He’s right about one thing. He was much more lax with me than many other elders with their children. I’ve never shied away from saying what everyone was thinking.

So I say my peace. “I love you, Dad. But you’re pathetic. All of you who have the slightest bit of guilty conscience since letting The Prophet take charge are pathetic.”

“Now, Georgie, you know why we have rules.”

“You let them burn the library.”

He nods. “That, also, wasn’t up to me. If Louisa had not secretly filled the shelves with utter smut and content not fit for children…”

I pound the table again. “They took all my notebooks from the greenhouse. Did you know that? Everything I need to go back to work is gone. Probably burned, too. Everything Goldie did, years of work, is all gone.”

He nods. “I’m sorry. But the good news is, you won’t need to go back to work if?—”

“I don’t want to hear that.”

People are blatantly staring now.

My dad backs down, holding out his open palms in surrender.

“If you want, we can go and buy you a notebook to replace what you lost.”

A notebook. A single notebook. Lord almighty, he has no concept of what I’ve lost.

“Dad,” I say slowly. “What I really want is a phone.” For one month, I had a burner phone that I used to keep in touch with my friends. I miss it.

He lifts an eyebrow. “You know you’re not allowed to have those.”

I know, but I ask anyway. The last time I used one, it was a stranger’s phone at the grocery store when my chaperone was having a bathroom emergency. I’d called the phone number in the candy wrapper, and later that night, Olivia, Louisa, and Goldie came to get me with a whole cavalry of people.

“I just want to let Olivia know that I’m okay. Why am I not allowed to have a phone?”

“It’s better if you don’t question it,” he says.

I sigh. “Then let me use yours.”

He purses his lips. “Why?”

I arch my eyebrow. “It’s better if you don’t question it.”

“Georgie.”

“Dad. Don’t you want a better life for me?”

He shakes his head and scrunches up the paper napkin. After a few seconds, he drops the napkin into his abandoned basket of fried food and then gets up to go to the bathroom.

He leaves his phone face down on the table.

I look around, wondering if we’ve been accompanied by any spies from the church.

I pick up his phone and to my surprise, it’s been left unlocked.

Did he do that on purpose?

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