Say a Little Prayer(59)
The pointed looks and whispers from people who didn’t know why I left Pleasant Hills in the first place. Being back here after all this time. Listening to Cindy run through a list of abstinence talking points and pretending not to notice every time her gaze slides surreptitiously toward me. Watching Julia leave last night, wondering if I’d somehow broken the last thing holding us together.
How is anyone supposed to endure it? Why was I so convinced I could escape this place unscathed?
My fingers wrap instinctively around the corner of my prayer book. I start to tuck it away, then freeze, realization zipping up my spine. This is how. My original plan might be built on the impossible notion that people might actually listen to me, but it’s still something I can control. A way to keep Julia, to shatter the shiny, impenetrable facade of this place wide open, and finally prove I was right.
I just have to see it through.
I open the book, reading page after page until the words stick behind my closed eyelids. There’s more here than I thought, a collection of scribbled notes and observations from the week. Sitting under the picnic table with Greer and Delaney. Smashing decorative glass into the forest floor. Watching Julia try on vintage gowns in the back of a rural thrift store, wanting more, wanting her. Small things. Deceptively simple things. Things Pastor Young had told us, in no uncertain terms, were the worst of the worst sins.
“You with us, Riley?”
I look up to find Cindy standing at the end of my row. Her PowerPoint is still running behind her, now paused on a slide that reads Lust: Not So Lit. I hastily close my prayer book and set it aside. “Sorry.”
“That’s better.” She hands me a stack of sticky notes and a box of dull golf pencils. “Take one of each and pass it down.”
I swallow my unease and take one of each. When I pass the supplies down, I finally spot Julia a few rows above me. She’d taken an early breakfast, so I haven’t really seen her since last night’s bonfire, but the minute our eyes lock above the crowd, I feel the pit in my stomach start to close. She unfolds her sticky note to reveal a giant frowny face already sketched in the middle, and I choke back a laugh.
“Okay,” Cindy says when she returns to the mic. “Time for a little activity. Everyone write your name in the middle of the sticky note.”
She looks pointedly around the room, waiting for everyone to complete the task. I bite back a sigh and scratch out my name in the tiniest, most illegible letters I can manage, just in case it’s a trick.
“Good,” she says. “When you’re done, I want you to crumple the note in your fist.”
I half-heartedly scrunch the paper and when I look up, Cindy’s beaming triumphantly, like we’ve all fallen right into her trap.
“Now try to smooth it out. Put it back to the way it was before.” There’s a faint rustle as everyone smooths their hands over their sticky notes before giving up. Cindy gives us a knowing grin. “It doesn’t work, does it? See how a part of it will always be crumpled? That’s what lust does, ladies. It tarnishes. It changes you; it wears you down. It means you won’t be able to give your future husband the best version of yourself, and that’s not something you can take back.”
The bleachers let out a soft groan as people shift uncomfort-ably in their seats, but for once, I don’t move. When I uncurl my fist, the pink sticky note sits right in the center of my palm. Bold of Cindy to assume there’s a best version of myself to give.
I turn my hand over and let the crumpled paper fall to the floor.
* * *
? ? ?
It’s still cloudy by the time we break for lunch, humidity hanging thick between the trees. Cindy had called Julia to the front on the way out, so I hang back as the rest of the girls stream past me, waiting for her to catch up. I want to see her. I want her to look me in the eye, to tell me that last night was nothing more than a silly, inconsequential fluke, and I want, more than anything, to believe her when she does.
I lean against the side of the chapel, tossing my crumpled sticky note from hand to hand. I’d grabbed it on my way out the door as a physical reminder of what I’m fighting against, but the longer I stand here, waiting for Julia to emerge, the more it starts to feel like an omen. I’m about to give up and toss it in the trash on the way to lunch when I spot Ben walking toward me down the path. His face lights up when he sees me.
“Congrats on surviving lust day,” he says, breaking away from his group of friends. “How do you feel?”
I roll my eyes and toss the wadded-up paper in his direction. “Here. Take my virginity.”
“No thank you!”
Ben swats it away with surprising accuracy, and despite everything, I feel myself lighten. I turn to face him, one shoulder propped against the wall. “What was your lesson? I’m assuming you didn’t write your name on a sticky note to learn about purity?”
“Oh.” Ben immediately looks guilty. “No, that’s definitely what we did.”
I lift a brow, and it takes exactly half a second for him to break.
“Okay, fine. It was, like, twenty minutes of Gabe monologuing about a time his girlfriend’s bikini almost caused him to stumble, and then we got to wander the woods to journal about our urges.”
“What kind of urges?”
“Sexual, I’m assuming.”