Small Town Sinners (10 page)

“You guys don’t see!” he says, yelling, I think, to block the tears. “You didn’t hear him and his friends last year when I got fat. You didn’t watch them stick out a foot as I walked by or whisper ‘Boom!’ under their breath in class when I sat down. You didn’t hear them laugh. Laughing all the time behind my back. And then in front of my face.”

We’re all silent for a few seconds as things sink in. I knew Dean was having a rough year—that he’d changed his clothes and grown his hair out and maybe was trying to hide from the world. But I figured it was just normal stuff. I mean, he
never
talked about it with me and Starla Joy. We’re his best friends.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” asks Starla Joy, her thoughts echoing mine.

“I don’t know,” Dean says, done talking. What he just said is probably the most he’s ever said to us about anything serious. He’s always joking around or making fun of us or just, you know, being Dean. Kind of dark sometimes, but a good best friend.

And I realize that I haven’t been the same for him. Sure, I knew he got picked on, but I had no idea it affected him so much. Or that it would turn into this awful 666 thing. A better friend would have seen it. Ty’s known Dean for like two weeks, and he saw it. He knew. I feel my lower lip start to quiver.

But then I stop, and I find my voice. It’s low and strong, with a tinge of anger that surprises even me.

“Don’t worry, Dean,” I say. “Geoff won’t get away with this.”

When Ty drops me off, I rush into my house, looking for my father.

Mom’s in the kitchen, apron in place with the mixer on high, no doubt making a dessert to take to someone else’s home. “Where’s Dad?” I shout over the machine’s whirs.

She stops the mixer and looks up with concerned eyes. “Honey, how’s Dean?” she asks.

“He’s okay,” I say. “Where’s Dad?”

“He’s out back on the porch,” she says. “But tell me—”

I’m already through the sliding glass door. I see my dad in his porch chair reading the newspaper, and I walk right up to him.

“Dad, you have to take Geoff Parsons out of Hell House,” I say. “He doesn’t deserve to be in the show after what he did to Dean!”

He lowers his paper and raises his eyes above his half-glasses. It makes him look quizzical, but I know he can’t be questioning me on this point.

“He defaced church property!” I continue. “He really hurt Dean!”

“Sit down, Lacey,” Dad says, patting the plastic-cushioned couch next to him.

When I sit, I hear the
squish
noise that used to make me laugh when I was a little girl, sitting out here and listening to my father practice his children’s group sermons on me. But today the
squish
doesn’t sound funny.

“I’m really sorry about what happened to Dean,” he says. “Boys can get a little rough sometimes.”

“A little rough?” I ask. “Dad! He pushed Dean onto the ground and hurled a line from Hell House at him—he practically accused Dean of being a sinner.”

“Now that’s not quite what happened,” says Dad. “I’ve talked to the Parsons, and they say Geoff and Dean have been trading barbs since last year. Everyone’s excited about Hell House, so of course the script is on people’s minds—it was carried into their argument, and things just got a little out of hand this morning.”

“Hold on,” I say. “Are you giving me a ‘boys will be boys’ line?”

“Lacey Anne, watch your tone,” Dad says, and I can see his face getting more serious. “This isn’t a big deal. Geoff has been going through a hard time lately. And Dean’s fine, right?”

“Well, he’s not going to
die,
if that’s what you mean,” I say. “But I don’t think I’d call him fine.”

“Boys are more resilient than girls,” says Dad. “Dean will be at the first day of school tomorrow with a crazy story, an exciting lunch topic. And we don’t need to go recasting Geoff’s role in Hell House. He’s perfect for the part of Suicide Boy—you should have heard his audition. It was inspired.”

Dad’s looking up to the sky, like it was God Himself who “inspired” Geoff’s performance. I feel a flash of real anger, not at God, but at my father. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt this way, so upset, so sure that my dad is … wrong.

“Dad, Geoff
hurt someone physically
,” I shout. “Dean! My friend, who you’ve known forever. A fellow church member. And he did it at church!”

“Lacey, I’ve told you,” Dad says, his tone getting harsher. “This was a back-and-forth situation between the two boys that’s been going on for a while. Dean isn’t innocent here. If we take Geoff Parsons’s role away, Dean will have to be banned from working on Hell House too. And I hear he’s got some great ideas for set design.”

Dad rustles the paper back into position in front of his face as my head drops down.
He’s not going to hear me. He thinks what happened is okay.

I stand up and walk back into the kitchen in a daze.

“Lacey, are you all right?” Mom asks.

I look at her. Bright smile, purple polka-dot apron, blue flowered mitts on her hands as she gets ready to take a cake pan out of the oven.

“No,” I say, grabbing her car keys off the pegboard by the kitchen phone. “I’m not.”

“Lacey!” she shouts as I stomp toward the front door. I want to go talk to Ty.

My mother stops me in the entryway and holds out her hand.

“You can’t just take the car,” she says. “I need it later today to go see Mrs. Harrison.”

Mrs. Harrison is in my mother’s Bible study group, and she’s been in the hospital for foot surgery, but she got home this week. That must be why Mom’s baking like crazy today.

I hesitate for a minute, considering just leaving anyway. What will my mom do—physically stop me? But then I realize that I’m not mad at Mom, and I’m not mad at poor Mrs. Harrison, who maybe needs a homemade cake after her ordeal. I feel some anger leak out of me and I hand my mother the keys.

Then I stomp upstairs to my room. I turn the radio on my clock alarm up all the way—Dad hates loud music—and I tune it to the heavy metal station. I never understood the rebellion that teenagers feel toward their parents, but in this moment I’m ready to break something.

Chapter Eleven

The next morning, Tessa and Starla Joy pull into my driveway and I hop in the back of their big old truck. Tessa’s been driving us to school since last year when she got her license.

“Nice shoes,” says Starla Joy.

“Thanks,” I say, glad that she noticed the one new thing I’m wearing.

Even though I consider reinventing myself somehow each year, I never actually do it. Today, I’m in my favorite jean shorts and a yellow tank top for the first day of school. Nothing’s new, except my leather sandals.

I notice Tessa’s flowing orange-print sundress. It sits up on her tanned shoulders with a braided halter neck and then falls down almost to her feet in a graceful wave. She always looks fresh as a daisy.

When we get to school though, everything looks stale at West River High. Same brown metal lockers, same gray-green linoleum, same indescribable but completely distinct smell in the main hallway. The same groups are gathered in the stairwells before the first bell, the same loud kids toss balls down the hall and knock into the same smaller, nerdier kids who duck and weave to avoid the fray.

“Hi, Lacey,” says Laura Bergen. She’s a YL member who’s also a violin player, and she’s always in at least four of my classes.

“Hey, Laura,” I say.

“How was your summer?” she asks. She’s always asking boring questions like that—expected questions—which maybe is why we’re not closer friends.

“It was …,” and I pause.

Normally, I’d say, “Nice. It was nice.” But something’s different for me today. I’m not feeling very nice.

Laura assumes I said “nice,” though, and starts chatting about how
her
summer was incredibly fulfilling because she went to music camp up in New England and it was amazing and she learned a new bow position and blah, blah, blah. I smile and hope our schedules aren’t as aligned this year as they’ve been since seventh grade. I don’t know how much of this I can take. Funny that earlier this summer I defended Laura to Starla Joy and Dean, who like to pick on her and call her “Bore-a.” That nickname springs to my thoughts now and it’s a wonder I don’t say it out loud.

Just as I think I can take no more of Bore-a Bergen’s “nice” talk, I spot a familiar silhouette coming down the hallway behind her. Tall, blond hair, bold purple polo for the first day of school—a strong statement. Everyone knows who Ty is by now, that he’s the Tyson Davis who moved away way back when, and as he walks toward us he smiles and slaps a few hands along the hallway path, like he’s a West River fixture who never left.

He’s so good with people
, I think, as he swoops in and puts his arm around my shoulder, a move I’ve grown to love despite the fact that it confuses me to no end. I turn around and leave Laura Bergen with her mouth hanging open. Music camp, schmusic camp. I smile as we walk down the hall together, knowing that my summer—at least the tail end of it—was the one that was really special.

When I see Dean after first period, though, that I’m-actually-maybe-with-a-guy high plummets. His eye has a purple-and-green bruise around the edge. And when I notice Geoff Parsons walking by with a smirk, I feel like smacking his face.

“I’m gonna go say something!” I tell Dean. I’m leaning against his locker and waiting for him to grab a Fiber One bar. We’ve got second period precal together.

“Don’t,” he says, grabbing my arm tightly, like it’s very important to him that I not say a word. “Please let it go.”

I look down, feeling embarrassed. For me, for Dean, for my father. Things just seem wrong right now. But it’s not fair to put that on Dean, and I know God works in mysterious ways.

I think of Hebrews 11:1: “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”

I lift my head up and smile at Dean, linking arms with him as we walk to class. I know that things will be okay.

By Sunday’s Youth Leaders meeting, my confidence is fading. All week I waited for some sort of discipline to fall on Geoff Parsons, for my father to apologize to me and tell me that of course Geoff was out of Hell House. For something,
anything
to show me that life is fair and just.

But nothing happened. And now I’m in church with all of them, and it’s the first rehearsal of the show I’ve been looking forward to since I was a little girl. I finally have a bigger role to play, I’m finally going to help save souls directly. But it doesn’t feel like I expected it would.

Pastor Frist is leading us through a warm-up before rehearsal. We’re doing a personal prayer to rile up our energies, and everyone’s eyes are closed. I hang my head back as the pastor starts us off, slowly letting his personal prayer language take over his tongue and waiting for the spirit to move us.

It begins as a soft rumble, and I can’t tell who goes first. Once the silence is broken, though, more and more people join in with wild yelps and joyous shouts and tangled cries. This is speaking in tongues, finding our own connection to the Holy Spirit through a language known only to us.

I’ve often been moved by these moments—where I’m gathered among my friends, my pastor, my father—and we’re all unselfconsciously conversing with the Lord, letting him truly hear us. I’ve joined in myself many times, always wondering if I was doing it right, if what I was feeling was real and true and genuinely His presence. Starla Joy and Dean and I, we talk about everything, but we’ve never talked about our faith. It doesn’t seem to be something to ruminate on or ponder. It just is.

But today, as everyone around me feels the spirit, I’m silent. My face is raised to heaven, and the voices of my peers rain down on me, but my mouth isn’t moved to open. The sounds seem strange, somehow foreign, and instead of comforting, they menace. I let a little light creep in between my eyelids, and I lower my head so I can look at the faces of the other Youth Leaders. Starla Joy is singing through nearly closed lips, but definitely holding a tune and vibing with everyone else. Geoff Parsons is thrashing wildly, his head going back and forth until little bits of spit fly out of the corners of his mouth as he howls in the name of God. Dean, far across the pews from Geoff Parsons, is whispering softly, finding his own quieter personal prayer language for today’s warm-up.

When I spot Laura Bergen, I feel guilty for calling her “Bore-a” in my head all week, and I quickly, silently ask for forgiveness. Her mouth opens and closes very rapidly as she shrieks nonsensically, and it amazes me that she’s never this loud in school. I peer at Tessa, who’s right next to me, getting ready to speak her first lines as Abortion Girl, and I feel less envy than admiration for her golden glow, the way her rosebud lips move around the words she’s found, the spirit she feels. Even with the hint of a tear in her eye, she looks lit up from within, and I wish I could get to that place.

I scan the room once more. Not a single mouth is still, not a single eye is open.