The night before she turned eighteen, after her shift ended, she stood in the doorway of the back room and listened to the last song of the Bleu Notes’ first set. Tanner’s voice and mustache resembled James Taylor’s, and he wore a fringed suede jacket. His hands were strong and lanky from playing guitar, his mouth full-lipped and fascinating when he sang. After the song ended and Becky had turned to leave, she heard him call her name. He came weaving through the bar tables and motioned to her to sit down with him. Laura Dobrinsky had disappeared somewhere.
“There’s a question I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said. “Why aren’t you in Crossroads?”
Becky frowned. “Why would I be?”
“Um, because it’s an incredible experience? Because you’re a member of First Reformed?”
She was not, in fact, a member of the church. She was so obviously not a religious person that her parents hadn’t bothered to pressure her to join.
“Even if I wanted to be in Crossroads, which I don’t,” she said, “I wouldn’t do that to my father.”
“What does your father have to do with it?”
“The group kicked him out?”
Tanner winced. “I know. That scene was messed up. But I’m asking about you, not him. Why don’t you want to be in Crossroads?”
It was true that Clem had joined the youth group, before it was called Crossroads, and that he was even less religious than she was. But Clem enjoyed service to poor people, the Arizona trip especially, and was naturally generous （or willfully perverse） in his choice of companions. Becky was turned off by the Crossroads look, the painter’s pants and flannel shirts, and by the superior air of Crossroads people at their tables in the high-school cafeteria, their ostentatious closeness, their indifference to the hierarchy. Though Clem had dismissed the hierarchy himself, he’d never seemed smug about it. The Crossroads people did.
“I just don’t,” she told Tanner. “It’s not my kind of thing.”
“How do you know it’s not your kind of thing if you haven’t tried it?”
“Why do you care if I try it?”
Tanner shrugged, stirring his suede fringes. “I heard Perry’s been going. I thought, ‘That’s cool, but what about Becky?’ It seemed weird that you weren’t in the group.”
“Perry and I are very different.”
“Right. You’re Becky Hildebrandt. You’re the queen of the soshies. What would all your friends say?”
It was nice that he’d paid enough attention to know her social standing. But she’d always hated being teased. “I’m not going to Crossroads. I don’t have to tell you why.”
“It’s not because you’re afraid of what you might learn about yourself.”
“Nope.”
“Really? It sounds to me like you’re afraid.”
“I am what I am.”
“That’s what God said, too.”
“You believe in God?”
“I think so.” Tanner leaned back in his chair. “I think He’s there in our relationships, if they’re honest. And the first place I ever had honest relationships, and felt close to God, was in Crossroads.”
“Then why did it kick my dad out?”
Tanner seemed genuinely pained. “Your dad is great,” he said. “I love your dad. But people couldn’t relate to him.”
“I can relate to him. So I guess there’s something wrong with me, too.”
“Whoa. That is, like, textbook passive aggression. You wouldn’t get away with that for five minutes in Crossroads.”
“Perry’s a total bullshitter, and he seems to be doing great there.”
“When I look at you, I see the girl who’s got everything, the girl everybody wishes they could be. But inside you’re so scared you can hardly breathe.”
“Maybe I’m holding my breath until I can get away from this town.”
“You were chosen for bigger and better things.”
She wasn’t accustomed to being mocked. Everywhere at New Prospect Township, the mere threat of her disdain carried weight. “Just so you know,” she said, in a frosty tone she rarely found it necessary to use outside her family, “I don’t enjoy being teased.”
“Sorry about that,” Tanner said. “It just seems like a waste, to hold your breath for a year. You’re supposed to be living. That’s the way we honor God—by being present in the moment.”