Say a Little Prayer(34)
Because I know what it looks like to write things you don’t want anyone else to see. I recognize the careful way Julia had guarded her page, shielding the paper with her forearm. It’s the same way I’ve been making notes about Pastor Young all week, but I can’t, for the life of me, figure out what she could be writing. Or why there’s a small obstinate part of my brain that thinks it has something to do with me.
* * *
? ? ?
The thing about waking up to a song where a twenty-three-year-old YouTube celebrity rhymes the word “sleek” with “Snapchat streak” is that eventually, the novelty of it wears off. When our alarm sounds the next morning, I’m so used to the screaming guitars and bone-rattling bass that I don’t even jump. Maybe it’s not so bad, actually. Maybe if I pull my blanket over my head and close my eyes, I can pretend it’s one of those cool, edgy EDM songs Ben sometimes adds to our group playlists.
I’m right in the middle of gaslighting myself into believing that “Flexin’ on That Gram” might be the greatest song of our generation and possibly of all time when Greer hauls herself out of bed and slams a hand into the power button. The room goes unnaturally silent as she glares down at the alarm, hair sticking up in a frizzy cloud around her head. Then she collapses deliberately back into bed, shoves a pillow over her face, and groans, “Fuck Mike Fratt,” loud enough for the entire cabin to hear.
Delaney bursts out laughing, voice gravelly from sleep, and I have to bite my lip to keep from joining in.
Despite our rude awakening, the rest of the morning passes in relative normalcy. I decide very early on that I’m not going to think about Julia or her secret prayer book ever again. I’m not going to consider what had been more important than finishing her assignment, and I’m absolutely not going to wonder if it had something to do with me. That would be ridiculous. I have enough to worry about this week, and whatever Julia’s telling God is none of my business.
Dew sparkles under my feet as I make my way toward the showers. The sky is a picture-perfect blue, the cool air a welcome relief after yesterday’s heat, and I wonder if Ben has ever thought of painting the camp like this. The open field, the ring of trees, the soft, sloping lines of the cabins. I want to capture it now, to remember this strange, singular moment where I can almost understand what the others see in this place. Where I think I might be able to like it, too, if the circumstances were different.
Julia’s still in the cabin when I return. I skip up the steps two at a time, absentmindedly humming our act one finale, and it’s not until I drop my shower caddy next to my bunk that I realize she’s staring.
“Good morning!” I say.
“Good morning.” Her eyebrows lift a fraction of an inch. “You look like you’re in a good mood.”
I shrug and pull a faded sweatshirt from the bottom of my suitcase. It’s not like I’m thrilled to be here, but something about this morning feels different. I’ve successfully committed two of the supposedly seven deadly sins. I can prove they aren’t black and white, that they don’t necessarily have to be bad, and Mr. Rider’s plan to community-service me into a good, productive member of society is backfiring.
“I don’t know,” I say, falling into step beside Julia as we head toward the cafeteria. “I just have a good feeling about today.”
She blinks. “You do?”
“What, is that not allowed?”
“No, it’s totally allowed. I love this for you, but you’ve never had a good feeling about anything in your life. Last week you thought your math substitute was planning to kill you.”
“Well, yeah. He was suspiciously interested in whether I turned in my homework.”
“Right,” Julia says, flinging an arm over my shoulders. “Because he was your math substitute.”
It’s actually pretty difficult, I realize, to not think about Julia when we’re pressed together like this. We’ve always been comfortable—fingers interlocking, arms draped casually over each other’s waists, hands almost brushing as we walk. It’s one of the things I worried about when I came out, that the mere thought of me liking girls would be enough to make her second-guess reaching for me, but nothing’s changed. She still puts her head on my shoulder when we watch TikToks during sleepovers, and I still pretend like it doesn’t make my heart feel like it’s beating somewhere outside my chest.
I used to think it was like this for everyone, that straight girls just got the luxury of not overthinking it every time their friend pulled them in for a picture, but I don’t think that’s true. Hannah and Amanda were close. It’s impossible not to be when you spend that much time in the same studio, but even they never reached for each other the same way Julia does for me. They didn’t lie together on the same mattress, bodies fused along one side, and stare contentedly up at the ceiling as the other talked about their day.
In a perfect world, I think that would mean something. In a perfect world, I think Julia would feel the same way about me.
I’m sweating by the time we enter the cafeteria, desperate for a tall stack of pancakes and some very strong coffee. I detangle myself from Julia, anticipating the familiar smell of frying bacon and overcooked eggs, but the air is abnormally cold, almost stale. I stumble to a halt, glancing toward the kitchen where a line of campers is usually already snaking through the assembly line. But that’s empty, too. No one’s grabbing a drink, no one’s making coffee, and no one’s piling their plate with this morning’s breakfast options. Because there are no breakfast options.