Say a Little Prayer(32)
“Oh shit!” I yank the curtain closed, suddenly grateful for my years of backstage quick changes. It takes less than thirty seconds to kick off my dress, shimmy back into my street clothes, and grab my things. “Julia, we have to go!”
“Coming!”
Her voice is muffled, head stuck somewhere in the sleeve of her T-shirt. I help her tug it the rest of the way on before racing toward the counter, fumbling with my wallet as I go. Schedule or not, I still have a sin to commit. By the time the silver-haired woman sitting behind the register folds my purchases into a plastic bag, Ben is hovering by the door, eyes peeled on the parking lot across the street.
“They’re boarding,” he says, one hand pressed against the dusty glass.
I shoot him a glare as I snatch my bag from the counter. “Would it have killed you to give us a time check any sooner?”
“First it was ‘How dare you interrupt me?’ and now it’s ‘Wow, Ben, why didn’t you interrupt me earlier?’ There’s no winning with you.”
Julia skids to a stop between us. She still has that green dress slung over her arm, but I feel her hesitate when she reaches the counter. Every line in her body is tense, clearly torn between her desire for the dress and her prior obligation to God, and for the first time all morning, I hesitate, too. The plastic bag dangling from my elbow feels absurdly conspicuous now. Pastor Young would notice it immediately. He’d notice Julia’s, too, and that would be all the confirmation he needed.
Bad influence. Sinner. Wrong.
“Here.” I stuff my shopping bag into the bottom of my tote, making sure my workbooks cover the plastic. “Put your dress in my bag.”
Julia’s eyes widen. “What? No, Riley, I can’t—”
“No one has to know, Julia. I promise.”
Her teeth skate over her bottom lip, and I want, more than anything, to reach out and tell her it’s okay. It’s okay to want things, to take them when she can. It’s okay to be greedy, regardless of what her father says, and it doesn’t make her a bad person.
Slowly, Julia tugs her wallet from her back pocket. She runs her thumb back and forth across the faded leather until her jaw sets, and she rips it open.
Ben pumps his fists into the air, and I bite back a grin as the cashier rings her up. When she’s done, I stuff her dress into my bag. Let Julia think my offer is generous. Let her think I’m being a good friend. She doesn’t need to know I’m still thinking about the way Pastor Young’s gaze had narrowed on me yesterday or the very particular way his lip had curled when he said the words bad influence.
He’s looking for reasons to write me off. I won’t give him this one, not before I finish what I came here to do.
“Let’s go.”
I pull Julia toward the door, ignoring the awkward thump of my tote bag against my back. Ben stuffs his phone back in his pocket. He has just enough time to shout, “Thank you!” over his shoulder to the cashier before the three of us spill back into the sunny afternoon.
IX
I Seriously Consider Cannibalism
I keep our purchases tucked in the bottom of my bag for the duration of the trip home, but the minute we file back into the cafeteria, it’s clear that Ben, Julia, and I aren’t the only ones who sinned this morning. When Torres joins us in line for food, she glances over both shoulders before surreptitiously slipping a tube of lip gloss into Delaney’s palm.
“Here,” she whispers. “I could only grab the one.”
Delaney nods and tucks it safely into her back pocket. “Thanks. Remind me to show you the eyeshadow palette tonight.”
I hate how guilty Torres looks when she turns back to the front, like she thinks Jesus is going to rip himself off the wooden cross on the wall and call a plague upon her house or something. Even Cindy—God’s favorite counselor and Heaven’s chosen mouthpiece—is sporting a shiny silver charm bracelet I know she wasn’t wearing this morning. She keeps tucking her hair behind her ears, flashing it in Gabe’s direction like she wants nothing more than for him to tell her it looks nice.
So much for ignoring the false promise of material gain.
Pastor Young stands at the end of the kitchen assembly line, wearing an oversized apron with the words Grill, Pray, Love stitched across the front. It’s his Sunday Game Day Outfit, the same one he’s worn every weekend for as long as I can remember, and the sight of it sends an unexpected pang through me now. Hannah and I hadn’t been invited to this year’s Super Bowl party. It used to be a tradition. We used to huddle together on the Young’s patio, pretending not to feel the biting February chill as Pastor Young flipped burgers in this very apron. He’d felt like a second father back then, someone we could trust, and it wasn’t until last year that I realized how impossibly naive I’d been.
When I came out, my own father bought a shirt that said Gay Dad in rainbow letters and only dropped it at Goodwill because I told him wearing it would probably send the wrong message. When Mom brought Hannah back from Cleveland, he’d sat in her room for hours, pointing at the different birds outside her window and reading stories from the local paper so she wouldn’t have to be alone. Mom might have taught me how to throw a punch, but Dad’s the one who told me it was okay to cry about it. I can’t imagine Pastor Young crying over anything except the majesty of the Lord, and I’m fairly certain he’s never worn a rainbow in his life. That’s not someone I want to miss, and I hate how even now, when I’m fully planning to destroy his life, part of me still feels a little bad about it.