Say a Little Prayer(36)

So I don’t listen when Julia says my name again. I don’t stop when the rest of our table turns in my direction or when Gabe steps forward, hand outstretched to pull me back. I just inhale a tight, painful breath and push my way out of the cafeteria, leaving the door swinging listlessly behind me.

The girls’ locker room is closer than my cabin. It’s blessedly empty, quiet except for the soft drip of the leaky faucet in the corner. I sag against the sink and squeeze my eyes shut, gripping the cool porcelain with both hands.

Don’t cry.

I won’t. I know that, at least. I didn’t cry when I left Pleasant Hills, or when I failed my driver’s test for the second time in a row, or when Leena dropped half a barricade on my foot during Les Mis rehearsal. In fact, I haven’t cried since Christmas break, when Mom brought Hannah back from Cleveland and found me wavering in the hallway outside her room.

Oh, Riley, she’d whispered, pulling me into a tight embrace. I’m so glad she has you. You really are her rock, you know. She pressed a kiss to my forehead, and I’d swallowed over the tears building in the back of my throat. I could be Hannah’s rock if she needed me to be. I could hold it together.

I spent the rest of that week in and out of Hannah’s room, watching her stare blankly up at the ceiling until I was half convinced she’d never speak again. When she finally got out of bed, I was there to hand her the homework she’d missed, help review choreography, and drag her on long, chilly walks where we talked about nothing but our favorite unhinged Taylor Swift theories for hours at a time. I was the one who narrowed down a list of in-network therapists, who told everyone at school that she had the flu, and through it all, I didn’t fall apart. I didn’t cry. Because I was her rock. She needed me, and that meant all of my own messy, unresolved feelings had to stay locked away. If I didn’t think about the past, I didn’t have to think about Pleasant Hills in anything other than broad, pleasantly neutral strokes. If I didn’t think about Pleasant Hills, I’d never have to confront the part of me that sometimes wishes I could close my eyes and go back to the way things were.

And even though I’m fine, even though I left a long time ago, that’s the feeling coiling in my chest now. Not my anger on Hannah’s behalf, not my frustration at Pastor Young’s cruelty or my disbelief at Greer’s lack of compassion, but the singular heartwrenching ache of loneliness.

Maybe Greer is right. Maybe I don’t believe in God anymore. Maybe I’ve been alone longer than I thought, floating untethered through a disordered universe with no higher power to guide me.

Footsteps crunch on the gravel outside. The sound trips some distant alarm bell in the back of my mind, and I whirl, hurling myself into the nearest stall. I fumble with the lock right as the door bangs open and hold my breath as someone comes to a stop exactly where I’d been standing a second before. Slowly, I sink onto the toilet lid and draw my knees into my chest.

I stay like that for one minute, two, listening to the ragged thump of my pulse in my ears. Then, right as my nerves are threatening to rattle their way out of my skin, the person outside lets out a soft, shaky sniff.

They’re crying. The realization roots me to the spot. Someone else had also ditched our imaginary breakfast to come in here and fall apart alone.

Their back is turned, but I can just make out the shadowy outline of hands gripping the edge of the sink. The faucet creaks, quickly followed by the sound of water splashing into the cracked porcelain, and it’s not until they step away to grab a paper towel that I finally catch a glimpse of their feet under the door.

Pristine white sneakers. Lacy ankle socks with two tiny pink sugarplums stamped over the ankle.

My next inhale catches in the back of my throat; I have to clamp a hand over my mouth to stifle it. Because I’d recognize those socks anywhere. Hannah has a pair stuffed in her drawer back home, a gift from her director after her last production of The Nutcracker. He got them customized for each senior, so Hannah’s came embroidered with a tiny silver snowflake, but there’s only one other girl from her studio who attends Pleasant Hills. The same girl who, after years of aggressively pursuing the part, finally got to play the Sugar Plum Fairy.

The same girl I’ve been actively avoiding since the day she landed me here in the first place.

It’s another minute before I hear Amanda’s breathing steady on the other side of the stall. Then, without warning, she tosses her wad of paper towels into the trash and storms back the way she’d come. The door slams behind her, leaving me alone in the dark once more. Slowly, carefully, I lower my feet to the ground. Only when I’m convinced she’s not coming back do I unlock the door and let myself out of the stall, wondering all the while what someone like Amanda Clarke could possibly have to cry about.





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    If You Read the Gallagher Girls in Middle School, You’re Gay Now


I don’t know how long I sit in the locker room, one foot propped on the bench and the echo of Amanda’s shaky exhale looping in my mind. At one point, I hear the faint crunch of gravel as people file out of the cafeteria and into their groups for the day, and still, I don’t move. Because this doesn’t make sense. Having a mental breakdown in a church camp locker room should be reserved for people like me, people with actual problems, and I happen to know for a fact that Amanda Clarke—heiress to the Miss Teen Ohio 1998 fortune—has nothing to cry about.