Taking Flight (13 page)

“So I’ve been told,” I said lightly, eyes still on my shake. “I just want to get through this. Now, if you can get me to agree to go to church regularly,
then
you’ve done your job.”

“I’ve wondered… do you think perhaps you feel so adverse to religion because you’re caught up in whether or not you have a belief in God, rather than making it more about what’s actually being taught?” he asked. “Because I do believe the teachings are the important part, and are what you and a lot of others could benefit from.”

“Here’s the thing.” I cleared my throat. “Say you tell me in church that it’s not good to steal things. Like, yeah, that’s right, that’s a good thing to teach me, and I agree with it. That’s cool. But you don’t say that it’s not good to steal because the action of stealing itself is wrong; you say it’s not good to steal because it’s one of God’s Ten Commandments and he came up with them and stuff. For me, like, no offense, but can you see how it’s cheapened? Like I’d be down with church and all the lessons if it wasn’t taught using a dude I don’t believe exists. I mean, I’ll avoid stealing because I believe the action is immoral, not just because God says it’s wrong or whatever and I think I’m going to hell if I steal.”

“Why do you think you take issue with believing in a God?” he asked me. It aggravated me that he hadn’t addressed any of my questions.

“I’m a logical person. I don’t see him, I can’t hear him, I can’t touch him, feel him, smell him. He’s just… not there. And if to someone else he
is
there and they get comfort from that, fine, but don’t use that belief to—”

I cut myself off abruptly, my heart rate picking up in my chest. I knew my dislike toward religion itself stemmed from the homophobia often attached to it, but I didn’t want him to know that. David, I had to admit, was an understanding person. But if Cammie’s attitude toward Maddie was any indication, he didn’t seem too invested in teaching his own children to accept gay people, so I couldn’t assume he accepted us himself.

He was watched me expectantly now. “To what?” he asked gently.

I reached for my straw and stirred my half-melted shake with it, letting out a deep sigh. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “I’ll talk and everything, but can it be about something else?”

“We won’t talk about anything you don’t feel comfortable talking about,” he agreed. “What would you like to talk about?”

I shrugged my shoulders, still stirring my shake. “I don’t know.” I paused. “Do Cammie or Scott ever go away anywhere? Summer camp or anything?”

“Not particularly,” he told me. “Scott did go on a three-day field trip in the seventh grade, but I think a weekend or so is the longest I’ve ever gone without seeing either of them.”

“Did you miss him?” I asked, not daring to look at him.

“Of course. Terribly. He missed us too. He’ll deny it if you ask him, but he burst into tears the second he got off the bus and saw Wendy and me waiting to pick him up and take him home.”

I hid a small smile. “I bet his friends teased him afterward.”

“I think most of them were the same way. It’s hard not seeing your family at age twelve.”

I tried to think back to myself in seventh grade. Not much was different than it was now, really. My mom had been alive. But working. Always working. “Yeah,” I agreed. I knew my voice sounded empty, lacking commitment. I had no idea what he was talking about. David wasn’t stupid, and it was clear he’d noticed.

“Do you think you’d like to try calling your father again today?” he asked. I knew he was trying to be encouraging, but he’d only reminded me of yesterday, and now I felt even worse.

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t think I’ll call him at all.”

“I think he’d like to hear from you,” David pressed. “His only daughter’s three-thousand miles away. I’ll bet he misses you.”

“You’d be wrong,” I told him stiffly. “He’s totally out of it. He had one last parenting hurrah right before I left to try and patch things up with us, and even that was just giving me shitty relationship advice I won’t ever end up needing. I’m starting to wonder if there’ll be anything left for me to come back to when this is all over.”

“I know it may feel like that,” he told me. “But I’ve had a lot of kids stay with me over the years. Their parents sent them here because they cared.”

“Those kids were messed up by drugs or serious depression or whatever,” I said. “You said yourself that I’m a nice change in that I don’t have anything bad. I’m just lacking good. So I put up with shit the others didn’t, and you guys all like me. Right? That’s the good part about me being here under the circumstances that I am.”

I paused, and he stared at me silently. “Now here’s the bad. I didn’t have a bunch of eventually-fatal baggage or life-threatening mental issues. At most, I was just kind of a drunken promiscuous stoner on my worst days. I’m here because I needed different parents. Like a temporary adoption: a court-ordered one. Not one arranged by anyone who actually cared about me. My parents didn’t and don’t care. In fact, sometimes I wonder if they ever loved me.”

He was watching me, still silent, and I knew in the back of my head that I was saying more than I’d ever intended to. I was telling him things that’d make him judge my parents, and that was the last thing I wanted him to do. But I couldn’t stop. He was here, and he was listening, and I couldn’t remember the last time anyone but Caitlyn had really listened to me.

“I mean, look at what happened to my
mom
. She spends most of my life away, like, trying to earn a living and everything, which I get, but she didn’t ever try to get my dad help even though he was always a total wreck. Instead, she let him go over a decade with an alcohol addiction, and then she fucking, like…” I swallowed hard, aware of an ache in my throat that usually meant tears were to follow soon, “…she died because
she
decided to drink and get behind the wheel. Why would she do that after seeing what my dad was like? And even worse, now look at
me
; I drink sometimes too. So how am I any better? Why is everyone here trying to act like I’m some exception, like I’m so nice? I laid in bed for three months straight before I came here; I think you’re mixing up friendliness with freaking not giving enough of a shit to put up a real fight with you guys.”

I finished, a little out of breath. I could feel my throat closing as David looked back at me. When he spoke, it was with more conviction than I expected. “Lauren, I’ve learned more about you in the past ten minutes than I learn about some of the kids during the entirety of their stay. That’s how I know you’re going to thrive here. And that’s how I know I can help you. You’re not a bad person.” He leaned forward, like he wanted to share a secret with me, and lowered his voice. “And you know what’s great about you coming here? From now on, you’re always going to have someone who’ll be there for you if you need them.”

I shook my head, wiping at my eyes hastily. “Who? You?” My voice was dripping with sarcasm. “How can you promise that?”

“Because I’ve promised it before,” he told me. “And I’ve also made good on that promise.”

“Yeah, well… you wouldn’t be the first middle-aged man to promise me something and not come through,” I told him.

“I can assure you that won’t be the case. But in return, you have to stop thinking about cooperation with me as a form of giving in, Lauren. You’ve spent seventeen years doing things the same way. Give seven months of something new a try. That’s all I’m asking. Make an effort for seven months. Do that, and have a little faith, and I know you’ll be surprised by the results. You just have to trust that I know what I’m doing.”

“But what if I cooperate and then don’t like who I am seven months from now?”

“That’s where you have to trust me,” he said. “And to trust yourself. I’ve said this before: I’m not here to change who you are at your core. I’m just the guy smoothing the edges over a little bit.” He laced his fingers together and leaned back, watching me. “So what’ll it be? Will you try things our way?”

I swallowed a lump in my throat. “What’s the alternative?”

“Well… I suppose we could keep doing things the way we have been. You can miss out on church, refuse to do farm work, and you can even slack off in your classes, and I have no control over that. But who really wins there? Yes, you’d prove coming here wasn’t any help. But then you also wouldn’t
get
any help, and where does that leave you?”

“What if I thought my life didn’t need any changing?”

“A week ago I’d believe you thought that. Now I’m not so sure you do.”

I sat quietly, thinking to myself. I wondered what Caitlyn was doing right now. I wondered what I’d be doing if I were still in Los Angeles. And finally, I looked up at him.

“If I give, I expect to
get
too, you know. I don’t want to be treated like a prisoner anymore.”

“Understood. To some extent, you can have more freedom. But over time.”

I swallowed hard. “I just don’t need any more disappointments.”

“I won’t let you down,” he said firmly. His eyebrows were tightly knitted, his mouth a straight line. I clicked my nails on the picnic table, worrying my bottom lip with my teeth. What he said made sense. I trusted that if I started to see a trait developing in myself that I didn’t like, I’d be able to easily squash it. And if things got
really
bad, it wasn’t like I couldn’t just eventually refuse anyway.

Still, Caitlyn was going to tear me to bits for this. I’d be giving up being difficult just for the sake of being difficult, and, even worse, I’d be resigning myself to the fact that there was no way out of Collinsville for the next five months. David Marshall was not going to give up on me, it seemed.

But there was also something oddly comforting about that.

“Shit, okay.” I let out a deep breath. “I’ll do it. Just… don’t tell anyone anything I told you today.”

“Of course not,” he agreed, breaking out into a warm smile. “First rule of the Marshall household, though, if you’re truly going to be a part of our family: no cursing.”

“I’m regretting this already,” I admitted, but he just laughed and stood to leave.

“Alright. Let’s try to get home before Wendy and the kids do.”

“Okay.” I downed the rest of my milkshake and followed him, wondering what the hell I’d just let myself be talked into.

Chapter Nine

My first Physics test was the following Friday, so as much as I hated studying, I knew it’d be a good idea to get a head start on learning the material if I was really going to give my all in Collinsville for the next few months. There were five tests total that each made up twenty percent of my Physics grade, but I’d missed the first two, so now each of my tests were worth a third of my grade. If I screwed this one up badly enough, my chances of passing Physics would be a solid zero.

Cammie didn’t study on Sunday night, but I could tell she was surprised that I did. Instead, she sat in her bed with her Bible, flipping through the pages while I chewed on the end of my pencil and tried to solve some of the practice problems I hadn’t bothered to do before. Things were tense between us. I sensed she still wasn’t over our earlier conversation about the prejudice in Collinsville, but maybe that was a good thing. Maybe it meant she’d given some thought to how truly un-cozy her cozy little town was.

I focused on Physics for as long as I could, but eventually, Cammie’s page turning became a welcome distraction. I reread the same Physics problem five or six times before I finally asked her, “Why do you read that every night?”

She lifted her head to look at me. “Sorry, what?”

“We have a routine,” I said. “Every night, you read your Bible, and I listen to music until I fall asleep. What’s in there that’s so fascinating?”

“You really wanna know?” she asked, disbelieving. I shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t, really, but I
did
want to know why she read it every night.

“I guess. I just mean, like, you went to church today already. Isn’t that enough?”

“It’s not an obligation to me.”

“I know, but… are you honestly learning anything from reading that every night?”

“Of course.”

“Like what?”

“Well… here. I’ll read you one of my favorite verses.” She flipped through the pages for a moment until she finally settled on one. “James 4:3.
But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.”

I was unsure how to react. “What does it mean?” I finally asked.

“It’s talking about prayer,” she explained. “When—”

“Wait, wait,” I interrupted abruptly. “Okay, so how can you not doubt something but then also not think you’re gonna get anything out of it? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“That not quite what it’s saying,” she told me, the corners of her mouth quirking upward in amusement. “You shouldn’t doubt that God’s listening to you. But you can’t expect him to answer your prayer, either.”

“And why not? Isn’t there another one: ‘Ask and you shall receive’ or something?”

“Yeah, but that’s kind of out of context,” she said. “It doesn’t mean we always get what we want. It means we get the things that God knows are good for us. If it’s in God’s will, we’ll receive it. He has a plan for us.”

I sighed, already feeling overloaded. “Okay.”

“Is there anything else you wanna know?”

My first instinct was to tell her there wasn’t, but another thought occurred to me. I knew I’d made her uncomfortable today, but I couldn’t get a clear read on how homophobic she was, yet. And if I was going to be spending the next five months with her, that was probably something I should try to investigate.

“Yeah. Tell me about the ones people use to discriminate against gay people.”

She swallowed visibly at my request, silent for a moment. I arched an eyebrow at her. “Um. Okay. I guess one of the more famous ones would be Leviticus 18:22. ‘Thou shalt not lay with mankind as with womankind: it is an abomination.’”

My eyebrow went higher. She hadn’t even touched the book in her hands. “Did you just recite that from memory? Wow.”

Her cheeks went visibly pink. “Oh… yeah, I guess. It’s a pretty easy one to remember.”

I tilted my head to one side, appalled, and at last asked, “Cammie, do you hate Maddie because she’s gay?”

“Of course not,” she replied, her eyes going wide. “No! I don’t hate her at all. We have gay kids at our school and they seem okay even if I don’t really talk to them.”

“Do they get picked on?”

She opened and closed her mouth for a moment, looking uncertain. “I mean… I- well, yeah, sometimes. Some of them.”

“If you see it happening, why don’t you stop it?”

She went pink again, and I could tell I’d disarmed her. “It’s… Would you?”

“I would,” I confirmed, nodding. “And I don’t even have a book telling me I’ll get into a land of eternal paradise for being a good person and helping others and all that.”

“That’s not fair,” she countered immediately, her eyebrows furrowing. “Seriously. You’ve grown up a lot differently than I have. And you can say that because you’re new and you’re from across the country, but I’ve grown up with the people here and I actually care about what they think.”

“Maybe a little too much,” I mumbled. Cammie stiffened on her bed and didn’t reply, instead going back to reading her Bible. She was clearly willing to pretend she’d missed my comment. But I knew she hadn’t, and, given the way the tone of our interactions had begun to shift toward the negative, I couldn’t help but think that as quickly as we’d built up our friendship over the course of the past week, it seemed possible we were headed for an even quicker destruction of it.

*   *   *

I walked into Physics the following day with a plan of action. I was eager to finally have some semblance of my life back in Los Angeles here in Collinsville, and all I needed to do to get it was to find a way to get some quality time alone with Maddie.

After what Cammie’d told me, I knew Maddie had to be pretty open about liking girls, and if she was open in a town like this, I had to imagine she was probably up for hooking up with an attractive girl. And if there were two things I did have, it was a talent for seduction and a big ego. I found it hard to believe she’d turn me down if I played my cards right. The harder part would be the letdown afterward, if she wanted a relationship.

But even that had to be done differently this time. I’d only slept with girls in Los Angeles, where there were lesbians and curious straight girls for miles in all directions. It was easy to avoid ever seeing a girl again, and it was easy to find new girls to hook up with. If things worked out with Maddie, I'd have two new dilemmas I’d never really had before. I had a class with her, and Collinsville wasn’t exactly full of out lesbians. So I wasn’t an idiot; Maddie was a unique circumstance. But I’d slept with Caitlyn and we were fine, for the most part. Maybe Maddie and I could be too.

I sat down next to her silently and waited for her to acknowledge me. I’d dressed up this morning, but not quite enough for Cammie to get suspicious and start wondering about my motivations. I was wearing a skirt that showed a tiny bit more of my legs, my favorite earrings, and a slightly lower-cut shirt.

Maddie was scribbling at something in her Physics notebook, and, finally, I cleared my throat and asked, “Stressing about the test this Friday?”

She gave a short laugh. “Yeah, seriously.” Then she looked over at me and paused, arching an eyebrow. “New outfit?”

“You like it?”

She grinned. “Hello, Los Angeles Barbie. Did Cammie pay you to wear that to impress Tiffany?”

My smile died slightly. “Um… no?”

“Oh.” She looked embarrassed. “Sorry. That was stupid. I just thought… I mean, you look good. Just even more like them than usual.”

“Ouch.” I tried to brush her comment off, but my ego had taken a hit, and it hurt. Maddie hated Tiffany’s little clique, and if I reminded her of them, it wasn’t a good sign. “Well, at least all the guys seem to like it. I’ve been getting stares all morning.”

“Don’t you get stares every day?” she looked amused. “The daily short skirts and the heels work for you; your legs look super long. I was just caught off-guard by the cleavage.”

I looked away from her, and my smile faded further. Cammie was watching us. I raised both eyebrows at her, as if to ask her what her problem was, and she turned away immediately, embarrassed. I made sure to keep my voice down when I spoke to Maddie again. “We should study together at your place tonight, if you’re free.”

She looked back at me, and for just a second, I saw her eyes flicker to the dip in the neckline of my shirt. And then they were back on mine, a playful glint in them. She wasn’t stupid. She knew. “Are you allowed? You haven’t been here long.”

“I think I can work something out with Cammie’s dad,” I said, still keeping my voice down. I did have somewhat of a plan, which mostly involved some begging and demanding and pointing out how compliant I’d been for the past week. And if I was going to get anything out of the agreement I’d made with David yesterday, this would be the prime time to play that card, while our conversation was still fresh in his mind.

“I mean, good luck,” she replied with a shrug of her shoulders. “You’re welcome to come over if you can somehow get permission. I’ll wait for you in the back parking lot near that exit by the gym for ten minutes or so today.”

“Okay. I’ll be there.”

*   *   *

Cammie was practically horrified by my idea, and I resisted the urge to punch her as David considered my pleas and she shook her head emphatically beside me.

“Seriously, ignore Cammie,” I told him. “She has personal issues with this chick.”

“I do not!”

“I did farm work.
Twice
. I’ve been going to all my classes. I’m trying to do well in them, with Maddie’s help! Why else would I be going over there?”

“Good point,” Cammie cut in, folding her arms across her chest and narrowing her eyes at me suspiciously. “Why else
would
you be going over there, Lauren?”

“I don’t know; that’s why I asked the question,” I retorted simply, and turned away from her to address David again. Cammie glowered at me as I continued, “I
agreed to go to
church
, for God’s sake—”

“You did?” Cammie interrupted again, but I ignored her.

“So the least you can do is let me spend an afternoon at a friend’s house so that I can study for a Physics test I’m going to fail if I
don’t
get the chance to study.”

David seemed confused. “I thought Cammie was helping you study.”

“She is. But Maddie’s been better at it than Cammie so far.”

“
Hey
!”

“She’s already helped me out a ton already. Can’t I just go? You can pick me up; I can call you from her place and give you the address if you give me your phone number.”

He sighed, and then shook his head. “I’m sorry, Lauren, but it hasn’t been long enough and there are certain precautions we need to take. I can’t let you go. Not alone, at least.” He glanced Cammie’s way, and she and I abruptly exchanged looks.

“Uh, no.”

“No way.”

“That completely defeats the purpose of going!” I exclaimed without thinking. David, understandably, looked confused again.

“I’m not sure how. All three of you could benefit from a good study session.”

I pursed my lips, unable to find a good retort to that. Cammie couldn’t seem to, either, considering she’d just claimed to have no problems with Maddie.

David smiled at us. “Great. Well, Cammie, just let me know when you two need to be picked up. I’ll see you both tonight.”

He left us there without another word, and I felt Cammie’s stare searing into my skull. I turned to glare back at her. “Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t ask for you to come.”

“I wouldn’t have to if you weren’t going in the first place. I’m starting to think you’re only hanging out with her because you know it bothers me.”

“I have to admit it does give her a sort of appeal,” I said, baiting her. If possible, her glare hardened.

“You know, you may not be getting into fights or arguing with my dad as much as the others kids who have stayed with us did, but I’m starting to wonder if I shouldn’t have given you the benefit of the doubt after all.”

“I’m crushed.” I placed a hand over my chest, pouting. “I know about your secret clearing and everything now, though. I guess you should’ve held off on showing me.”

The malice in her gaze dissipated slightly, replaced by hurt, and I realized I’d hit a nerve. I was surprised by how guilty I suddenly felt.

“Let’s just get today over with,” she snapped, brushing past me, and I let out a deep sigh as I turned and hurried after her.

*   *   *

The car ride with Maddie was one of the most awkward situations I think I’ve ever been in. And I’ve been in a lot of awkward situations.