Say a Little Prayer(8)
The crumpled camp pamphlet sitting on top of my suitcase proudly proclaims that “everyone has a place at Pleasant Hills.” If I could, I’d add “as long as Pastor Young lets you stay.”
I straighten and force myself to return Julia’s grin. “I know,” I say. “I can survive anything for a week.”
“That’s the spirit!”
Julia slings an arm around my neck, and I laugh as I stumble toward her across the floor. The three of us used to spend most afternoons sprawled in each other’s rooms like this, but without the extracurricular church activities binding us together, it’s become harder and harder to find the time. Now, however, Julia’s face hovers inches from mine. I’m close enough to smell her signature vanilla perfume, and for a brief, wild second, I imagine her dabbing it across her collarbone in the early morning glow of her bedroom.
“Yeah.” Ben stands, yanking my attention away from Julia’s throat as he wraps us both in a crushing embrace. “And you’ll have me, which is arguably more important.”
“Okay, okay!” I pull out of their collective embrace. “I get it. Maybe it’s not the end of the world.”
Julia inclines her head toward my suitcase. “It might be if you pack those Crocs.”
I groan and turn back to the closet. The thought of pulling into the Pleasant Hills parking lot on Sunday and boarding a bus to Kentucky still makes me want to suffocate myself in my pile of graphic Tshirts, but I don’t think there’s another way out of this.
Write about what you learn, Mr. Rider said when I’d left his office this afternoon. This is a great opportunity for you, Riley, and I expect that essay on my desk first thing when you get back.
I don’t know what, exactly, he thinks I’ll learn from a Midwest Baptist church, but I’ll go if I have to. I’ll spent time with Ben and Julia, make up a few teary stories about how God appeared to me through the trees, and spend the rest of the time praying for Amanda Clarke to fall on her face during capture the flag. I’ll keep my head down, grin and bear it through Pastor Young’s sermons, and leave knowing I have a community of people who actually care about me waiting back home, ready to put on a show.
And then, when I’m done, I’m going to put an entire year of AP lit classes to use and write Mr. Rider the best, most nuanced essay he’s ever seen about how I will simply never be returning to the state of Kentucky.
III
It’s Not Gossip If It’s in a Prayer Request
The thing about Pleasant Hills Baptist Church is that it has the worst parking lot in the state of Ohio. I don’t think that can be scientifically proven, but it takes Mom a full ten minutes to find an empty spot amid the potholes when she and Dad drop me off on Sunday morning.
It’s still dark when I climb out of the car, sky the same chalky gray as the asphalt under my feet, but the parking lot is already bustling. All around us, campers pull brightly colored sleeping bags from their trunks and hug their parents goodbye. A faded yellow school bus idles in the narrow alley alongside the church, and I can just make out the sharp outline of Pastor Young’s profile as he talks to the driver up front.
Good, I think, turning to retrieve my backpack from the floor of the car. That means Ben and Julia are already here.
“Whoa.” Dad groans as he helps me drag my suitcase from the trunk. “What on earth did you put in here?”
I glower down at the bag. “A spirit ready to receive the Lord. It was required.”
“Well, your spirit is throwing out my back.”
I let him pull me into a tight, one-armed hug as Mom tucks another breakfast bar into the front pocket of my backpack. I know they’re both still disappointed in me, but I also know how easy it would have been for them to stick me in the Youngs’ car this morning and call it a day. Instead, they’re here, standing shoulder to shoulder in the Pleasant Hills parking lot for the first time in months, and when Mom gives me one last rib-crushing squeeze, I feel my throat tighten, just a bit.
“Have fun,” she says, breath clouding in the cool early-April air. “And stay out of trouble.”
I grin. “Always do.”
Then I pull back, give them both one final wave, and join the crowd gathered in front of the church.
Pleasant Hills doesn’t have a particularly large congregation, but what it lacks in numbers, it makes up for with a healthy dose of righteous outrage. The church itself is a plain two-story building set against a flat backdrop of Ohio cornfields. The marquee out front is blank today—probably because someone took a picture of the time it said You Can’t Enter Heaven Unless Jesus Enters You and now Pastor Young is afraid of accidentally implying that we should canonically fuck the Lord—and the top of the Madison County highway cross is just visible over the line of trees out back.
I remain on the outskirts of the crowd, trying not to draw attention to myself as I scan the parking lot for Julia. I recognize about half the kids milling around me now, including Amanda and Greer, but I’m surprised by how many are strangers. Madison is the only public high school in the county, but there are a few private academies nearby whose students also pop into Pleasant Hills from time to time. Some families even drive in from the surrounding towns specifically to attend service here, either because they don’t have a home church or because they think Pastor Young is particularly fiery, so the youth group is always this weird collection of anyone who lives within a thirty-minute radius. There had never really been a difference between the Madison kids and everyone else, but now, standing between groups of people who all seem to know each other, I think the divide is clear.