ROSALIE
TUESDAY, JANUARY 9
Lily and I walk briskly home from the bus stop, although I’d rather take my time. The afternoon sun glints off stop signs and tractor sheds and the liquor store windows as we pass. It’s a cold kind of sun, all flash and no fire. I squeeze Lily’s hand and tuck my other glove up into the sleeve of my coat. At home, Dad will be waiting, watching the clock. In an hour, Carter will come to pick me up. I’d love to delay both interactions, but Sunday’s screwup is still fresh.
“Can we read more Anna, Banana tonight?” Lily asks.
“Course,” I agree. “I’m having dinner with Carter, but we’ll read it before bed, okay?”
“Do you like him?” I swear my heart stops. She’s looking up at me, her eyes big and lips parted just slightly.
I adjust my hand in hers, the fabric of our gloves scraping together. “Sure I do,” I say after a minute. “Don’t you think he’s nice?”
“That’s not what I mean.” Lily twists away from me as if I’m making her say something embarrassing. “I mean, do you like him?”
I have no way of answering this. A thousand rusty nails collect in my throat. The thought of lying to her face makes me sick. But much as I love my little sister, I can’t trust her with the truth. Not yet anyway.
“Sometimes you don’t know right away,” I say slowly, “if you like a person that way.”
“Why does it take so long?” Lily asks, and the nails twist and scratch against my throat.
“You know how when you started kindergarten last year, you really wanted to be friends with Claire Beech? And you tried really hard, but she never wanted to play the same games as you?”
“Yeah.” Lily pouts a bit at the memory. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“It can be hard to be friends, right? Even when you like a person and they’re nice, sometimes you still don’t have a lot in common. Well, dating is even more complicated. There’s a lot to figure out.”
“Oh.” Lily twists her lips back and forth, trying to decide if she’ll accept my shitty nonexplanation. I want more than anything to level with my sister. In my mind, I form all the sentences I can’t say out loud. No, I don’t like Carter that way because he’s a boy, and I like girls. The church believes same sex relationships are wrong, but the church isn’t right about everything. And they’re very, very wrong about this. I don’t want her to grow up with only the voices of the Fellowship and our parents in her ears. I don’t want her to grow up like I did, filled with prejudice and fear. Most of all, I don’t want her to grow up to be afraid of me.
I keep my mouth shut. I vow to have a real conversation with Lily someday. As soon as it’s safe. Whenever that will be.
• • •
When we get home, Lily scampers up to her room, and I wander toward the kitchen. I stop in the doorway; Dad’s fixing a sandwich and blasting WRPK 96.5, his contemporary Christian music station, back turned toward me. The music’s fine, at face value, but I can’t stop my whole body from tensing up. As I hover in the doorway, I realize it’s a Third Day song. I used to love them. I try to make my shoulders relax, afraid the Fellowship is crushing out of me everything I once enjoyed about being a Christian.
Mom’s closing tonight, which means a slow ride home on the bus from downtown Logansville. She used to be an assistant case manager at the Office of Family Support. After we moved, she spent a year looking for a job in state government before becoming a Fresh Food Associate for a lot less cash.
Her job wasn’t the only thing we sacrificed to move here. We gave up our house with only twelve years left on the mortgage, and I know my parents took a hit because we sold it in a rush. Our new house is smaller, darker; the listing said it “needed updating and plenty of TLC,” but we haven’t been able to give it much of either. I glance around our kitchen—peeling red-brown wallpaper trim, dinged-up and permanently stained linoleum floors, appliances that are relics from the eighties or nineties, whenever the house was built. It makes me sad and then furious when I think about it. How my family made so many sacrifices so they could save me. How we all believed I needed to be saved.
As I stand in the kitchen doorway watching Dad slather mustard on two slices of bread, I puzzle over the same question I’ve asked myself a thousand times in the last five years: What if I had just kept my mouth shut in seventh grade? It’s a useless exercise that always leads backs to the same answer. When you’re raised to believe that homosexuality is the fast track to hell, but that people can change, that we can be made new creations in Christ Jesus, silence isn’t an option. Not when you’re thirteen. Not when fear turns to broken glass on your tongue. Better spit it out.
Dad doesn’t see me hovering. I stand still for a moment longer, trying to unclench my muscles, music still pulsing around me, and my thoughts wander back to yesterday in the woods. The flash in the trees. The footsteps. Someone was watching me. I watch my father spear two olives with a fork and put them on his plate. Ever since Carter came into my life, my parents have been more relaxed than they’ve been since seventh grade. But that kind of deep, faith-based suspicion and fear doesn’t just go away. I know they’re still terrified for my salvation.
I wrap my arms across my stomach and let my head fall against the door frame.
Dad spins around. “Rosalie. Didn’t hear you come in.”
“Hey, Dad.” I give him a small smile. His eyes flick up to the clock above the stove, then back to the counter. He turns the radio down, and my shoulders drop.
“Want me to leave this out for you?” He gestures toward the sandwich fixings in front of him. I keep my eyes trained on his face.
“That’s okay. Carter’s picking me up soon.”
“That’s right!” His face opens up. “Date night.”
He wants, so badly, to believe his little girl is straight, cured, saved. The assurances of Counselor Michael and Camp Eternal Light only went so far. In his eyes, Carter is living proof, the salve for my parents’ fears. I scuff the toe of my shoe against my pant leg and try to smile.
“I’d like you to invite him to come to service with us on Sunday,” he says. “Your mom and I are eager to introduce Carter to our family at God’s Grace.”
My chest gets tight. “I think he has church with his own family.” It’s probably true, but that’s not the point. Carter can’t come to God’s Grace. Not ever, definitely not now that Amanda knows. There are too many people in the congregation. Too many eyes.
“They’d all be welcome,” he says. “We would love to meet his family. You’ll ask him tonight.” It’s not a question.
I nod, although there’s just no way. My parents and Carter’s parents will never meet. I can make up some excuse this time, but I have no idea how I’m going to put this off indefinitely. My heart hurts because I want to make my parents happy. And in the end, I can only let them down. They will never love me for me. The dark cloud always hovering at the back of my mind starts swirling and churning, making my vision go gray. It’s not my fault, but then why do I still feel like a failure? In the eyes of the church, that’s exactly what I am. My breath is getting shallow. The web is snapping, one thread, two.
“And, Rosalie?” He’s holding something out to me, a small box. “Your mom and I have been waiting to give this to you, but now that things are starting to get serious between you and Carter, we agreed the time is right.”
I reach out, take the box. It’s feather-light and fits in the palm of my hand.
“Well, open it,” Dad says, beaming.
I tear off the silver wrapping paper, then lift the cardboard lid. Inside, a ring. Its silver band is adorned with a cross etched into a small silver heart. Along the outside of the band, Psalm 51:10 is engraved: Create in me a pure heart, O God.
“Try it on,” he says, and I slip the band onto my finger.
I force a smile. “It fits.”
“This ring is a reminder of your self-worth, Rosalie. We want you to remember who you are, how important it is that you don’t give away any pieces of yourself.”
I swallow, hard. Dad reaches over and plucks a small piece of paper from the bottom of the box. It’s a pledge card. “Let’s read this together,” he says.
Heart pounding, I find my voice: “Today I make a commitment to purity—to God, myself, my family, and my future mate—until the day I enter into a biblical marriage relationship.”
My heart squeezes a little in my chest, and at the same time, a peel of laughter threatens to burst through my lips. I know how much this means to my parents, how much they care, no matter how misguided their thinking. But there’s no place for the love I share with Paulina in that pledge. I’ll never “enter into a biblical marriage relationship,” not the way the Fellowship defines it. It’s sad and infuriating and somehow wildly hilarious all at once. I choke the laugh into a cough that makes Dad’s eyes crease.
“I’m sorry,” I gasp. “I just need some water.”
“We want you to take this seriously.”
“I do.” I drain a glass at the sink, get myself together. In the most literal sense, I’ve just pledged my abstinence until the grave. “Carter feels the same,” I assure him. “We’ve already discussed it.”
Dad nods, appeased by my lie. He puts everything back in the fridge, then picks up his plate. “Be sure to send Carter in when he gets here,” he calls, pressing past me and into the den.
I stand frozen in the doorway for a minute, alone. The ring is snug on my finger.
Upstairs, I glance into Lily’s room. She’s curled up on her bed with a stack of library books. After I move out, I’ll keep up both lives as long as I can, but I have this terrible fear that someday, no matter what I do, I’ll lose her forever. I blow her noisy kisses from the doorway until she looks up and giggles, then I slip into my room and close the door, jamming the desk chair beneath the knob. I’d rather spend tonight goofing off with my sister, but Carter will be here in fifteen minutes. I open up my closet and take my shoe box down.
• • •
An hour later, Carter and I are seated in a booth in the far back corner of the Wheeling Eat’n Park. He keeps fiddling with his menu, even though he always orders the same thing: the Original Breakfast Smile with bacon, scrambled eggs, home fries, and white toast. I can barely think about food, but when the server comes, I ask for a turkey club and iced tea out of habit.
I can’t stop glancing around the restaurant. Of all the places we go, the Wheeling Eat’n Park seems safest. Logansville has its own Eat’n Park, plus another diner and a bunch of classy restaurants. Why would anyone in Amanda’s crew, or anyone from Logansville for that matter, drive almost an hour to get the same eggs and fried potatoes they could get right in town? Still, my entire body has been on high alert from the second I heard the crunch of Carter’s tires in our drive.
When the server leaves to put in our order and we’re alone again, I glance around the diner one more time, then look Carter in the eye.
“Something happened. We have to talk.”
A muscle twitches in his cheek, and he jams his fingers into his hair. “How did you . . . ? I mean, what happened?”
“Don’t freak out, but I got an email yesterday. From Amanda. I don’t know how she found out, but she did. And she’s not happy.”
“Oh.” Carter’s face gets hard, those boyish lines settling into something distinctly grown up. He starts tearing at the corner of his paper napkin. “Shit.”
“Yeah, shit.” I stare down at the table. I want to accuse him of lying to me, misleading me about their supposed “arrangement.” But I’ve been complicit in hearing only what I want to hear. And besides, now I need to ask him to lie. One more time. I take a deep breath, in and out, but the guilt clings tight to my insides. “Can you tell her we went out tonight, and I ended things?”
“Are you breaking up with me?” Carter asks. “Because if you met someone else, or changed your mind—”
“No!” My voice is too loud. I grip the tabletop until my knuckles turn white. “Nothing has to change, but she needs to think I broke it off, okay?” So she’ll stop digging. So she’ll never find out about Pau.
Carter looks up from the scraps of his napkin. He reaches across the table and takes my hands, prying my fingers from the table’s edge. “You’re a saint, Rosalie Bell, you know that? I wish I could be more for you. I’m sorry it has to be like . . . how things are right now. I’ll talk to her, promise.”
He runs the pads of his thumbs across my hands, across the ring. “What’s this?”
“Oh.” I look down at the cross etched into the little silver heart. “It’s a purity ring. Basically I’m engaged to God until marriage.” I crack a half smile.
“A gift from your parents?”
“Yeah. They want to make sure we don’t, you know . . .”
Carter smiles at me then, big and genuine. “You know I respect you a lot, right, Rosalie? Your parents don’t have anything to worry about.” I nod and pull my hands slowly away from his.
“What did you think I was going to say?” I ask, forcing a change in subject.
“Huh?”
“You started to say something, earlier. When I said that something had happened.”
Before he can open his mouth, our server is back with our drinks. I mumble thank you and slip the wrapper off my straw.
When she’s gone, Carter says, “Something happened at school today, and at first, I thought . . .” His voice trails off. I take a big gulp of my iced tea, no sugar, no lemon, lots of ice.
“Thought what?”
He shakes his head. “There was no way you could have known.”
I look at him, puzzled, and our food comes. When we first got here, I didn’t think I could eat, but now I’m starving. I sink my teeth into my turkey club, and it tastes amazing. Carter picks at his bacon.
“It’s about Amanda. Is it okay if I talk about it?”
“Oh.” Now I get why he’s being weird. “Yeah, sure. Okay.”
“Someone did something to her locker this morning. They poured fake blood on it; it was kind of scary.”
“Oh wow.” I didn’t think popular girls got bullied at school.
“I’ve been furious all day. Who would do something like that?”
I give Carter a small, sympathetic smile, then return to my sandwich.
“But now that I’m here, I’m thinking about it all different.”
“How’s that?”
“No one messes with Amanda. She’s not always the most”—he leans forward and lowers his voice—“generous person. But I literally can’t think of a single person at school who would do this to her.”
I can feel the color drain out of my face. I don’t like where Carter’s going with this. He can’t seriously think I poured fake blood on Amanda’s locker.
“Carter—” I start to say.
“But what if she did it?” he asks, cutting me off. “To her own locker?”
“What?” The blood rushes back all at once, whooshes through my ears.
“Hear me out. Amanda found out about us, right? You said you got that email yesterday. So she’s pissed, and feeling kind of down? You don’t know her. No attention is bad attention.”
My mind reels back to the anonymous texts she claimed to be getting. “So,” I say slowly, thinking it out, “what better way to get everyone’s sympathy, and especially your boyfriend’s, than to make the whole school think someone’s out to get you?”
“Exactly.” Carter piles a huge forkful of eggs onto a piece of toast, but leaves it sitting on his plate. “You think you really know someone, but then something like this happens. I just feel really confused.” A shadow passes over his face, something dark and fragile that I can’t penetrate. I stare down into my iced tea, not sure where he’s gone.
“I’m sorry,” I say after a minute.
Carter lifts his head and gives me a weak smile. Whatever was there a moment ago is gone. “I’m the one who should apologize. Laying all this Amanda shit on you isn’t fair.” For the second time tonight, he reaches across the table to give my hand a gentle squeeze.
When the server comes back with our check, Carter pays.
“I’ll talk to her,” he promises on the drive back to my house. “We’re having dinner tomorrow. I’ll tell her then.”
“Thanks.” It’s only seven o’clock, but outside, the world is a deep January dark. The moon plays hopscotch through the bare tree branches on the side of the road, casting a gray-yellow pallor across Carter’s face, the dashboard, my own hands. I shove them between my knees.
This too shall pass. A Sufi poet wrote that all the way back in the middle ages. Carter will say I ended things. Soon, this will all blow over.