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Emma
Mary Sue abruptly stopped laughing. “Isabelle,” she said without breathing, “don’t.”
Emma’s stomach fell out of her, and she felt dizzy. “What did you say?”
Isabelle smirked, and suddenly the campfire wasn’t pretty. Suddenly the firelight made Isabelle’s face look like a demon.
“I said, do you know that your father the pastor is boinking Alexis DeGrave?”
Somehow, Emma felt hot and cold at the same time. “No, he’s not.” She couldn’t breathe.
“That isn’t the question. The fact is that he is. The question is do you know?”
This wasn’t true. This was absurd. But then Emma looked at Mary Sue, and the tears streaming down her face told her she was wrong. This was true. Mary Sue couldn’t even look at her.
Emma got to her feet, her legs shaking.
“You haven’t answered the question. If you don’t answer the question, you get a double truth, and the double truth is, does your mother know?”
Emma walked away into the darkness with no idea where she was going. When the tears started coming, she turned to see that Isabelle wasn’t following her. But neither was Mary Sue.
It was true. It couldn’t be. But it was. And now that the idea was planted in her head, hadn’t part of her known it all along? Hadn’t she seen the way her father looked at Mrs. DeGrave? Hadn’t she seen the way she looked at him? All the clues were there. Her father’s many late-night ministry calls. The fact that Mr. DeGrave didn’t come to church. The fact that her mother slept in the guest room. Did her mother know? That idea filled her with more horror than the affair itself. Surely her mother wouldn’t let her husband cheat on her and not do anything about it! But no, her father wouldn’t do this. This was all some horrible mistake. Her father was a pastor, for crying out loud. Then she remembered Mary Sue’s face. And her tears.
This was true.
This was the most horrible truth she’d ever heard, and it had been delivered by the lips of Isabelle Martin. Of course it had.
She realized she had stopped walking. She was standing in the middle of the Puddys’ lawn, and the mosquitoes were biting her. She reached toward her back pocket for her phone, but who was she going to call? She couldn’t talk to either of her parents right now. What was she going to do? Where was she going to go? She would rather bleed to death in a mosquito field than go back to that campfire.
Her eyes landed on a bike lying in the grass a few feet in front of her. It was as good a plan as any. She went to it, stood it upright, and climbed on. Her mother would kill her for riding without a helmet, but the idea of making her mother angry felt mighty good right now.
Emma started pedaling and soon she was sailing down the bumpy driveway. The moon was bright, so she could see where she was going, and she pedaled even harder, going faster and faster, knowing she was in danger and not caring; the danger made her feel better, and she pedaled as hard as she could, until the sweat rolled down her back and the tears rolled down her face.
Not realizing she had reached the end of the driveway, she raced out into the dirt road and straight across it into the ditch. The front wheel of her bike crashed into the bank, and she sailed over the handlebars, too angry to be afraid. She landed in a crumpled ball, and then she wailed. She screamed in pain, not for her now-injured shoulder—she could hardly feel that pain—but for her heart, for her life. Everything she knew had just come crashing down around her. Her father wasn’t a strong man of God. Her mother wasn’t a strong woman. Her family was a sham, a joke, and the worst part of it was that everyone knew.
If Mary Sue Puddy knew, then everyone knew, because the Puddys didn’t know anything. They weren’t in any of the cliques, and no one gossiped to them. But Mary Sue had known.
Emma got to her hands and knees, threw up into the tall grass, and then rolled over again. She wanted to die. How could she face anyone ever again? How could she walk into her church? How could she face her friends? Did Raven and Natalie know too? Of course they did. No way would Isabelle not tell them. Emily realized she hardly cared about them. The real question was, how was she going to face her mother? Was she going to be the one to tell her? Should she tell her? Apparently, the whole town had decided she didn’t need to know. Maybe Emma should just go that route. It might be easier. But no, she wouldn’t do that. She couldn’t do that. If her mother didn’t know, then Emma couldn’t let her continue to be the butt of all jokes. And if she did know, well then, Emma hated her and couldn’t let her mother live without knowing it.
She realized that the mosquitoes were feasting on her again. She climbed out of the ditch, and her shoulder really started to hurt. She found the bike, climbed back on, and more slowly, started pedaling toward town. It hurt too much to hold on with her left hand, so she let it rest in her lap, and held on with only her right.
She wasn’t even sure she could navigate back to town, but she didn’t care. Maybe she’d end up in a different town, where no one knew her and her horrible lie of a family.
