Say a Little Prayer(28)

Ben keeps tossing furtive, knowing looks over his shoulder as we disembark, completely oblivious to the vibe shift happening behind him. “Wow,” I say after he nearly trips down the stairs. “He’s really bad at this whole secret thing.”

To my relief, Julia’s expression finally softens. “Terrible,” she confirms. “I’m surprised the whole camp doesn’t know by now.”

“Maybe they’ve just decided to let you have this.”

She snorts out a soft, delicate laugh, and when she steps onto the asphalt behind me, she almost looks like her old self. “Maybe,” she says, throwing an arm around my shoulders. “Let’s go find out.”





VIII


    When God Closes a Door, He Opens a (Thrift Store) Window


When Ben and Julia said their secret thrift store was “just across the street,” I kind of assumed there’d be a sidewalk or, at the very least, a gravel path snaking from the back of the Walmart over to the strip mall. You know, the kind of thing a girl in Birkenstocks could theoretically cross without fearing for her life. I had not, however, been expecting the acre of knee-high grassy weeds stretching between us and our destination, littered with trash and humming with unseen insects.

“This better be worth it,” I say, brushing dirt from my legs as we emerge into the parking lot on the other side. “Or I swear to god, Ben, you’re carrying me back.”

He laughs and hops onto the sidewalk. “Told you not to pack Birkenstocks.”

The strip mall is relatively empty, just a few cars parked between a smoothie shop and a vet clinic, but the building on the end looks deserted. A fine layer of dust covers the door, and the only indication it’s not completely abandoned comes from the handwritten sign taped inside the front window that reads Threads Secondhand Clothes.

Ben steps around me and opens the door. “Smell that?”

I inhale, then almost choke on the thick pine-scented air. Or at least, I think it’s supposed to be pine. I also detect hints of Febreze and mothballs and something that may or may not be dead. “What is that?”

Ben pats my shoulder as the door falls shut behind us. “Possibility.”

It takes a minute for my eyes to adjust to the gloom, and when they finally do, it takes another for my brain to fully process what I’m seeing. The store is larger than I expected, rows of tightly packed garments stretching from wall to wall. There’s hardly room to walk, let alone browse, and there’s a different disheveled display everywhere I turn. Racks of sequined evening gowns, piles of frayed denim, dusty bookshelves stuffed with Hawaiian shirts. After years of tearing my way through frustratingly generic Midwestern Goodwills, this place feels like a gift.

“Holy shit,” I whisper. “This is incredible.”

Julia’s lips twitch in a tepid smile. “Told you.”

But when I turn to follow Ben down the first aisle, she doesn’t move. Instead, she wavers in front of the door, watching his retreating back with a mixture of longing and concern. I tip my head to the side. “Are you coming?”

“I don’t…I shouldn’t.”

“Why? Because Cindy might think you’re a bad person?”

Julia’s shoulders stiffen. “You don’t always have to be like that, you know.”

“Like what?” I ask.

“That.” She waves a hand in my direction. “Scornful and dismissive. You don’t know everything, Riley.”

I bite back another instinctive, snappy retort. Julia has the end of her braid twisted around a finger, knuckles whitening with each anxious tug. Maybe I don’t know everything, but I know her. I know when I’ve hit a nerve.

“I’m sorry,” I say, stepping back into the aisle. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.” Julia releases a breath. Her hand falls back to her side, but her fingers still scratch nervously at her jeans. “And it’s not Cindy. It’s…I’m an example, Riley. I can’t just do whatever I want. People look to me here.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know.” She gives a half-hearted shrug. “Guidance?”

A memory stirs in the back of my mind, hazy and slightly out of focus. Ten-year-old Julia standing at the pulpit during Christmas Eve service, reading from the Bible in a clear, strong voice. She barely looked at the book open before her. She didn’t need to. Someone else took her place after that, another youth group girl I can’t quite recall, but Julia was the one everyone talked about. She was lovely wasn’t she? Such a wonderful speaker, just like her father.

She was wonderful, of course, but I also remember how she’d paced my room the week before, reciting her assigned lines over and over. She’d taped the passage inside her textbooks so she could practice between classes, muttered it to herself on our walk home from school, and tried so many different inflections that the words started looping through my mind, too, a constant, anxious refrain.

And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.”

And the angel said to them, Fear not.

Fear not, fear not, fear not—

I hadn’t thought anything of it at the time. Even then, I knew how particular Julia could be, especially when it came to church activities. I’d brushed it off as another one of her perfectionist tendencies, but now, when she finally meets my gaze through the dust motes swirling between us, I’m wondering if it’s always been deeper than that.