My dad didn’t do long sermons on Saturday prayer meetings ordinarily, but he had a pet peeve about people overeating on holidays. “Friends, as we enter this traditional week of celebration, let us be mindful of our habits. In Proverbs 23:20, the Bible says, ‘Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh: For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.’”
I pulled my sweater around me in the chilly sanctuary and tuned him out, thinking instead about Billy Jack and rescue, and getting jealous knowing that Phoebe and Joel were probably hanging out while I was stuck here. It made my stomach twist with jealousy: over Phoebe, over Joel, over my friends being friends without me. I thought Phoebe had a crush on Joel, too, and that was a weird feeling. It wasn’t that I liked him, but I didn’t want her to like somebody more than she liked me. I hated that I had to be here, instead of with them.
If God was so great, why did he drop me into such an awful situation? It was a thought that came to me a lot lately.
Phoebe
Joel and I had to walk all the way round the bluff, which took us by the lit-up church where Suze no doubt sat. We could hear Reverend Ogden preaching, his deep, booming voice traveling easily through the windows. “Do you go to church?” Joel asked.
“My mom is an atheist, but sometimes I go with my grandma. Do you?”
He gave me a little sideways grin. “I’m Indian. We have other kinds of church.”
“Like what?”
“I’m teasing you. I don’t know. We never do anything, either.”
I eyed the brightly lit windows, with their colorful designs. “I wonder if it would be good. To like, believe in something.”
“Nah.” His face looked hard. “Her dad beats her, you know.”
I nodded, blinking back sudden tears. “I wish I could save her.”
“Me too. My ma says you have to be wary of men in power.”
I blinked. He’d used “wary” in a sentence! I didn’t know any other guy who would do that, and an electric sensation ran through my body. We kept walking, taking the cut between the dunes that led to the ocean. The sky was thick and heavy. I pulled up the hood on my raincoat in preparation for the rain that would almost certainly fall any second. “Do you have a hat or something?”
“No. I’m used to rain.”
“Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live somewhere the sun shines all the time. Like Arizona or California.”
“I like the rain. It gives me room to think.”
We made it to the beach and the crispy sand that was washed hard and flat. I’d been to other beaches, but none of them had this walkable, hard sand I loved. The waves were soft and ruffly, flowing flat and friendly this side of the stacks. “What do you think about when you think?” I asked, and was embarrassed instantly over how stupid it sounded.
But he didn’t react badly. “Lots of things.” He tucked his hands in his jeans pockets. “Space travel lately. I’ve been reading this cool science fiction book about other planets, and now every time I look up at the stars, I think about what planets might be around them.”
“Cool. What’s the book?”
“A Wrinkle in Time.” He looked at me. “Have you read it?”
I stopped in my tracks. “I love that book!”
His grin this time was big, making his eyes tilt. In the dark, you couldn’t really see his acne at all. “Right on. That’s right, Suze said you love to read.”
“I do. You can pick up a book and go somewhere else.”
“Yeah. I gotta say I didn’t really like Go Ask Alice, though. It seemed kinda fake. Like she gets addicted to drugs in five seconds and she’s peddling to elementary school kids? Who does that?”
I frowned. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“No big thing. Just didn’t make sense.”
“You’re right, though,” I exclaimed, retracing the narrative in my mind. “I mean, that’s hard core, right? Dealing to little kids.”
“Yeah.”
We drew up to the Starfish Sisters. The trees on top of the biggest sister were outlined against the clouds. I stopped to breathe it in, the moment, the sky, the trees, and the smell of the ocean. “When I’m in Portland, this is what I think about. This spot, right here.”
He stood next to me. “What about it?”
“The trees,” I said, pointing. “The tide pools. I love those tide pools with my whole heart. I’d like to be a starfish in a tide pool.”