Small Town Sinners (11 page)

I feel a flash of guilt, like I’m breaking this communal experience by peeking, by cheating, by not wholly trusting.

I’m about to throw my head back again, close my eyes, and give myself up to my own personal prayer language when I see another observer in the crowd. Ty is looking straight at me. He’s here because he’s a member of YL now, even though he still says he doesn’t want to be a part of Hell House.

He catches my eye and smiles. It’s warm and friendly, like we’re both in on a joke that no one else gets. He rolls his eyes a little, and I know he’s trying to make me laugh, to join him in mocking this moment. But the thing is, this is something that’s a big part of my life. I know that some people think speaking in tongues is a totally weird thing to do, but it’s actually meditative and cathartic.

I shut my eyes and let my chin drop down, feeling suddenly self-conscious. I start to chastise myself.
Is my worry about a boy watching me getting in the way of my personal prayer? Isn’t my love for God and my desire to feel His presence bigger than my fear of embarrassing myself in front of Ty?
I ask myself these questions, but I don’t add to the sounds of my friends’ fevered chanting. I stay quiet, still, praying that I’ll feel the spirit and be moved like I’m supposed to be. Praying that I can find my language of faith.

Rehearsal goes smoothly, but Tessa still has a stomach bug and Starla Joy has to take her home early. I run my scene without a lot of emotion—I’m sitting in the front seat of an old Toyota with Zack Robbins, who’s playing a drunk driver coming home from a party—and I can’t even work up the energy to scream, “Look out! Look out!” with any feeling. But I convince Pastor Frist that I’ll build up to it as we get closer to the performance next month.

When it’s time to go home, Ty offers me a ride. I’m about to accept, but then I feel Dad’s hand clamp down on my shoulder. “I’m almost done here, Lace,” Dad says. “I can take you.”

I shrug at Ty, but he’s not looking at me. His eyes are on my father.

“Pastor Byer, I’m happy to drive Lacey home,” he says. “I have a book I want to lend Lacey from our library—a spiritual tome—and I’d like it if she and I could swing by and get it before I drop her off.”

My dad looks down at me, and I can see that he’s torn. He doesn’t trust Ty, that much is clear, but he doesn’t want to be
that dad
, the one who’s overbearing and restrictive to the point that his daughter can’t pick up a book on a Sunday afternoon.

“All right,” he says. “I suppose that would be okay. But be back for dinner at six p.m. sharp.”

I’m surprised. And glad.

Ty bumps me gently with his shoulder as we walk out to the car. I can feel my father staring after us, but I don’t care. And that surprises me too.

Dad and I have reached a silent truce about the Dean incident, which basically means that we haven’t talked about it since that day on the porch. It’s unusual for me to feel this disconnected from my father, this unable to express how I’m feeling. But I haven’t brought it up again and neither has he. I still haven’t been able to forgive Geoff Parsons, though, and I wonder if Dad knows that and thinks I’m holding hate in my heart. I wonder if I care.

The BMW revs loudly as we head up the gravel driveway. There’s no sneaking around in this car. I’ve never been over to Ty’s house before, but I know which one it is—it’s a modern-style residence set back in the woods where the Geldings used to live. The driveway is long, and I see
PRIVATE PROPERTY
signs posted everywhere as Ty eases the car down the road. The front of the house is all huge windows that look out on the trees.

My own house is a modest ranch with just two bedrooms. As we walk into Ty’s I see that there’s an entrance hall. I don’t think I’ve even been in a house with anything you might refer to as an entrance hall before. The ceiling is vaulted—it’s at least twenty feet tall—and the walls are bright white, which makes it feel kind of cold and impersonal.

We walk up a couple of steps and Ty leads me to the living room, where one entire wall is a bookshelf. It’s so tall that there’s a ladder next to it, and Ty climbs up three steps to grab a book, which he brings down to me. I thought the book thing was an excuse to hang out with me more, but maybe Ty really did want to deliver this. Maybe that long day together in the park meant less to him than it did to me.

“Here,” he says.

I turn the book over in my hands.
Finding Purity.
I take a sharp breath in and my face flushes—it’s all about avoiding physical contact before marriage! I may start hyperventilating.
Is this why he hasn’t kissed me? Is he more conservative than I thought?

“Is this supposed to tell me something?” I ask quietly, looking down at the cover of the book.

Ty takes it from my hands and starts laughing. And I mean really laughing. He’s got tears in his eyes when I finally look up and face him.

“Oh, man,” he says, gasping for air, “I didn’t even look at which book I handed you.”

“You didn’t?” I ask, not understanding.

“No, Lacey Anne,” he says, tossing the book onto a love seat in the corner. “I just wanted to give you something to take home in case your dad asked about it. That shelf is the spiritual section.”

He reaches back up to the row of books and hands me one full of eighteenth-century prayers instead. “Here,” he says. “This’ll be better.”

I laugh. “So what did you want from me then?” I ask.

Ty turns more serious then. “I wanted to talk to you,” he says. “Alone.”

I stare up at him, hoping to read something in his eyes, to get up the nerve to tell him that I like him as more than a friend.

Suddenly my phone starts ringing. It’s a Katy Perry song, so I know it’s Starla Joy. I silence it.

“What did you want to talk about?” I ask. And then the phone starts ringing again. I push the “go away” button roughly.

“Do you need to get that?” Ty asks.

“No,” I say. “It’s probably just Starla Joy being obsessive about some new YouTube video.”

But then I think about what happened to Dean, and how things with my friends feel a little more intense now somehow. When she calls a third time, I sit down on the couch and answer.

“What’s up?” I ask, as Ty slides into the seat next to me.

“It’s Tessa,” says Starla Joy. I can barely hear her because she’s speaking so quietly, but I know her voice. I can tell she’s crying.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” I ask.

Ty looks over at me curiously.

“I can’t tell you on the phone,” she says. “Can you come to our spot?” I hear the strain in her tone.

“I’ll be there in five minutes,” I say.

When I tell him Starla Joy was crying, Ty insists on coming. I let him, partly because I want to stay with him, to let this afternoon linger longer between us. Besides, I reason, he seems like one of us now. He’s defending Dean, he’s philosophizing with me, he’s concerned about Starla Joy. We’ve become four.

Chapter Twelve

Starla Joy is already sitting on the log, rocking back and forth, when I get there. She’s no longer crying, but it’s clear she’s in some sort of shock.

“Hey—is Tessa okay?” I ask her. She doesn’t look up at me.

I grab her shoulders and make her look me in the eye. When she sees me, really sees me, a tear falls down her cheek.

“Oh, Lacey,” she says. “My sister’s pregnant.”

I gasp, my hand covering my mouth. I feel sick to my stomach, like someone just punched me and all my lunch is about to come up. Tessa the perfect. Tessa the smart. Tessa who held it together for Starla Joy when their dad left, even though she’s just a year older. Tessa who gives me advice on everything and is so, so beautiful.

I look over at Ty, and Starla Joy follows my gaze.

“What is he doing here?” she asks, turning on me angrily.

“I was at his house when you called,” I say. “I thought he could help. I thought … I didn’t know.”

Ty looks around self-consciously and puts his hands in his pockets, turning to go.

Starla Joy’s anger deflates quickly. “Well, everyone will know by tomorrow,” she says hopelessly.

Ty faces us again and perches gingerly on the edge of the log next to me.

“I’m so sorry, Starla Joy,” he says.

“Momma’s sending Tessa to Saint Angeles,” says Starla Joy, ignoring him.

West River has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the state—at least a few girls in town each year get sent to the Saint Angeles Home, which is a place where they can go for a few key months when they get in trouble. Some of them come back with babies, some don’t, but the home is what the church recommends, because we condemn abortion. And most of the girls who choose to give their babies up for adoption come back and slip right into their old roles as cheerleader or student council member or whatever. It’s a good ending to a bad story. At least, that’s what it seemed like to me, until it involved Tessa.

“When?” I ask.

“Tonight,” she answers.

“And this is why Tessa was sick …,” I figure out aloud, as the words spill from my mouth. Then I want to know something else. “Was it Jeremy?” I ask.

“Of course,” she says.

“I didn’t mean—” I start, realizing I made it sound like I thought Tessa was sleeping around or something. Of course she wasn’t. I guess I’m just surprised she was with anyone at all. She wears a purity ring too. We all do.

I don’t know what to say, so I just look at Ty, and he has so much sadness on his face that you’d think it was
his
sister who got in trouble.

I look over at Starla Joy and see that she’s resumed her rocking back and forth. I wonder if this isn’t the time to have someone new—even someone old-but-new—in our special spot.

“Um, Ty,” I say gently. “Maybe you could just let me and Starla Joy hang out for a while.”

“Sure, sure,” he says, standing up quickly and putting his hands back in his pockets. “Do you need—?”

“I can walk home from here,” I say.

“Okay then.” He heads off without saying more.

I put my arms around Starla Joy, who crumples now that I’m here—really here—and let her cry.

I kneel down in the dirt and hold her hands in between mine as I lift my head to the sky. I pray for Tessa, I pray for Starla Joy, I pray for Mrs. Minter. I pray for everyone who faces this challenge. And I pray for me.

Chapter Thirteen

After she broke down for a while, Starla Joy finally calmed enough to give me some details. Tessa’s already six months along, so she’s due in November. I’ve heard of people who didn’t know they were pregnant, like those stories about girls giving birth on prom night or in their bathrooms, but Starla Joy said her mom’s pretty sure Tessa was just hiding it from everyone. I try to remember if her clothes got looser in the last few weeks, but Tessa’s always worn a lot of free-flowing dresses so it was probably easy to obscure her stomach for a while.

When I get home from the woods I go right to my room. I’m not sure I’ll be able to sit at the dinner table and not share the news with my parents, so I fake an allergy headache—I get those sometimes when the seasons change. I crumple up tissues on my nightstand to be more convincing.

Mom brings me soup in a cup and lets me eat it in bed. She reaches up to feel my forehead, even though my allergies don’t come with a fever. I guess it’s a maternal instinct.

“Your eyes are red,” she says.

I sniffle. “Allergies,” I say.

It’s the only word I’ve uttered since coming back from seeing Starla Joy. Part of me wants to grab my mom and hug her and cry into her lap about how unfair it is about Tessa, how scary this is. I want her to kiss the top of my head and tell me it’ll all be okay, that Tessa will graduate this year and go to college and she’ll be fine, just fine as a mother, and that maybe she and Jeremy will even get married this fall, if that’s what they want. That this is a joy, not a sorrow.

But I don’t reach out to my mother, because a bigger part of me is afraid of how she’ll react. It’s safer to keep things to myself, at least for now.

“Honey, is there anything the matter?” Mom asks.

I shake my head no.

“I hope your father and I didn’t upset you about Ty,” she says, brushing a piece of hair off my cheek.

I shake my head again.

“You know I trust you, Lacey,” she whispers, leaning down to brush my forehead with a kiss. Then she leaves me with the soup and an aspirin, closing the door softly as she exits my room.

I feel a wave of sadness. I wonder when I stopped telling my parents everything.

When I wake up the next morning, I go into the bathroom and open the medicine cabinet for my toothpaste. I brush my teeth, and I’m staring into the mirror at my pale freckles and limp blond bedhead when something occurs to me: I get to take over the role of Abortion Girl in Hell House. I feel a rush of excitement and I watch the hint of a smile cross my face just before a twinge of guilt hits me.