“And you think that was wrong,” Ambrose said.
“Definitely it was shitty of me,” Kim said.
“But I’m listening to you,” Ambrose said, “and what I’m hearing is more like bragging. Is anyone else hearing that?”
What Becky was hearing was more like statutory rape. Kim had long had a bad reputation, but at some level Becky hadn’t quite believed the rumors about her. Becky was three years older than Kim had been at summer camp, and she hadn’t even kissed anyone. What story could she tell when it was her turn? Behaving irresponsibly had never been her thing.
“I liked that I could have him,” Kim said. “Like, how easy it was. Maybe I was proud of that. But when I went back to my cabin and saw his girlfriend, I felt awful. I still feel awful. I hate that I was ever the kind of person who would do that to someone, just because I could.”
“That, I’m hearing,” Ambrose said. “Becky?”
“I’m hearing it, too.”
“Do you want to tell us something about yourself?”
She opened her mouth but nothing came out. Ambrose and the others waited.
“Actually,” she said, “right now I’m feeling bad about my friend Jeannie. I made her come with me tonight, and I don’t know where she went.”
She looked down at her hands. The church was very quiet, the other groups dispersed, their guilty disclosures a distant murmur.
“I think she might have gone home,” Kim said.
“Okay, now I’m feeling really bad,” Becky said. “She’s my best friend, and I … I think I’m a bad friend. Everywhere I go, I want everyone to like me, and this is my first time here—I want to be liked. But I should have been taking care of Jeannie.”
The girl next to her, whose back she’d scrawled on without learning her name, put a soft hand on her arm. Becky shuddered and sort of sobbed. It was more emotion than the situation perhaps called for, but something about Crossroads brought emotion to the surface. I want to be liked might have been the most honest words she’d ever uttered. Recognizing the truth of them, she bent forward and surrendered to her emotion, and now other hands were on her, hands of comfort and acceptance.
Only Ambrose held back. “What are you waiting for?” he said.
She wiped her nose. “What do you mean?”
“Why aren’t you looking for your friend?”
“Now?”
“Yes, now.”
The silver Mustang was still in the parking lot. As Becky approached the driver’s side, Jeannie started the engine and turned down the radio, which was tuned to WLS and playing “Save the Country.” She lowered the window.
“I’m sorry,” Becky said. “You don’t have to wait for me.”
“You’re staying?”
“Are you sure you don’t want to come back inside? I’ll stick close to you.”
Come on down to the glory river, the radio said. Jeannie shook her head. “I thought you were only doing this because Tanner dared you.”
“He dared me to try it. Not just go for one hour.”
“One hour was plenty for me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re forgiven,” Jeannie said. “I swear to God, though, Bex. You’d better not go religious on me.”
To her own surprise, she went religious. It began with being bored and wanting to be liked, but even on her first night she was forced into interactions with kids less fortunate than she was, forced to listen to them, forced in turn to account for the person she really was, undefended by status, and thereby, just as Tanner had promised, forced to learn things about herself, not all of them flattering. Crossroads didn’t look religious—there was nary a Bible in sight, and whole evenings went by without reference to Jesus—but here again Tanner had been right: simply by trying to speak honestly, surrendering to emotion, supporting other people in their honesty and emotion, she experienced her first glimmerings of spirituality. She could feel herself vindicating Clem’s long-standing faith in her, as a person of substance.
A hundred and twenty kids were in Crossroads, and only one exciting leader. In two hours on a Sunday night, every member could hope for one minute of Ambrose’s attention. Becky, in the weeks that followed, averaged a lot more than that. Ambrose twice chose her as a dyad partner, praised her for her guts in joining the group, and called her out in larger discussions, praising her honesty. She would have been more self-conscious about hogging him if she hadn’t felt a natural affinity with him. She, too, had been a person other people measured and compared their time with; she knew the pleasure but also the burden of that. Plus she’d come painfully late to Crossroads—she had two years of lost time with Ambrose to make up for.