Devoted (19 page)

I take another bite of pasta, but it tastes like cold rubber in my mouth. Lauren's face is reddening. She frowns at her reflection in the mirror.

“Sometimes I wish I could go right back and look at my dad's face and say, ‘Fuck you, Dad, I hate you so much,'” she spits. “And you know what? That would be my right.”

My eyes widen. I know Lauren's curse is maybe the worst curse a person can use short of taking the Lord's name in vain. She is clearly not trying to protect my ears right now.

Lauren slips off her bottoms and slides into dark denim jeans that hug every curve of her body, each one of her movements filled with a rage that sits just below the surface, about to pop. “Sometimes I wish I could go back to my parents' house dressed like this just to piss them off. They would be so
royally
pissed.” She takes a brush off her dresser and flips her head upside down and whips her brush through her blue hair so hard I'm sure it must hurt. When she swings herself back up she flings the brush across the room until it hits the baseboard with a thud. The redness of her cheeks has spread south, filling her neck with strawberry hives. There's a scowl on her face, but she's not looking at me. She's just staring off at her bedroom wall.

I sit for a moment in silence, my heart thumping. I'm frightened. Maybe I remind Lauren of everything she hated about Calvary. Maybe she won't want me around anymore because of that, but I'm not sure I know how to act around someone who gets so angry so easily. Actually, I'm not sure I know how to act around someone who gets angry at all. I'm just not used to it.

I carefully put my plate of pasta down on the bed. I stare at my sad little supper. And then I remember Lauren's words about telling people what you feel when you feel something. I take a breath. “I…” I start.

Lauren looks at me as if she's suddenly remembering I'm there.

“Yeah?” she says, not unkindly, only curious.

“I just…”

“Rachel, you can say it. It's okay.” Her voice is soft all of a sudden.

“I'm a little bit scared right now,” I hear myself saying, my voice like it's about to crack. “Because I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do when you get so angry.”

There. I said it.

I hear a long exhale, and when I meet Lauren's eyes, they're a little wet, like she might cry, too, but she isn't crying. She's just wearing a tiny, forlorn smile.

“Oh, Rachel,” she says, her shoulders slumping. “I'm sorry. I don't mean to scare you. I'm—I just … I get…”

“You get mad,” I say, my voice almost a whisper. “About what happened to you.”

“Yeah,” she says, nodding, her voice calm again. “I get really mad about everything. A lot. But you know what? My anger saved me. I really do believe that. If I hadn't gotten angry I would be married with three kids right now, and I would be out of my damn mind. For sure.”

I nod, but I'm not sure I feel the same way. I don't feel like I left my house in anger. In sadness, yes. In confusion and frustration and fear, definitely. But in anger? I don't know.

“Hey,” Lauren says, crawling onto the bed next to me, carefully, so she doesn't spill the pasta salad. She looks me right in the eyes. “Look, sometimes I blow off steam. And if it gets to be too much, you can tell me to shut the hell up. Or just tell me to shut up, you know.” She's trying to make me laugh again, and it's working. “Promise you'll tell me? If I get to be too much?”

“Promise,” I say, appreciating Lauren's directness even though it still feels so foreign.

“Okay,” she says. She reaches out and touches me on the forehead, like she's checking to see if I have a temperature, but the gesture comes out feeling nicer than that, somehow.

“What's this?” she asks, looking down to find the eight dollars I left for her.

“The money left over from my work today, after I did the groceries. It's for you.”

“No, it's for you,” Lauren says, firmly putting it in my hand. “You pay for your groceries and gas with that, okay? It's your money.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, absolutely,” Lauren tells me.

Grateful, I slip the money into my skirt pocket, and Lauren slides back off the bed.

“How'd it go today, anyway?” she asks.

“Okay,” I answer. “The work isn't too hard, but Diane's office is kind of a mess.” I pause. “I met her son. Mark. I'd seen him before, though. That one time I saw you at your work.”

“Oh my God, Mark Treats,” Lauren says, examining her face in the mirror carefully. “He's such a goofball.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Just, you know, goofy. He never stops moving around, and he's kind of loud,” Lauren explains. “When he hangs out at the office he's always asking everyone questions and just trying to crack everyone up or whatever. And Greg—that's Dr. Treats—is always after him to do better in school, like he's not working up to his full potential or something. You know, if I had parents like Greg and Diane, I would be so thrilled I would earn straight
A
s every day just to make them happy. I mean, I know Diane is a little bit of a control freak perfectionist, but still, they're really sweet people.” She finds her bathrobe and heads to the bathroom to take a shower.

Later, as she dresses, she tells me her date's name is Bryce and that she met him just that afternoon, when he brought his dog in all the way from Dove Lake because he'd heard good things about Dr. Treats.

“What are you going to do?” I ask as she checks her makeup for the tenth time.

“Who knows. I guess get a bite to eat. Maybe a drink. You don't have to wait up, okay?”

“Okay,” I say, although I'm sure I will because I want to make sure Lauren gets home all right.

“This is a little weird,” she continues. “My first date since moving back from the city. I don't know if these country boys are ready for me.” She puts her hands on her hips and shoots me a saucy look, then rolls her eyes and smiles. I can only smile back uncertainly, unsure about what it means to be ready for a boy.

When Bryce shows up he looks more normal than I expected. I guess he is a country boy. His hair is short and brown, and he's wearing a dark-blue collared shirt and jeans that even my older brothers would find acceptable. Part of me thought he would have green hair and a T-shirt with strange words on it.

“This is my roommate, Rachel,” Lauren says as she grabs her purse. Her voice sounds lighter, dreamier somehow, when Bryce arrives. “Rachel, this is Bryce.”

“Hey,” says Bryce, nodding his chin at me.

“Hi,” I say back from my spot curled up on the couch.

“Okay, I'm ready,” Lauren announces, and as she waves goodbye to me, I watch as Bryce puts his arm around the small of her back and they shut the door behind them.

Dating is practice for divorce. That's what Pastor Garrett and Dad always say. You have to guard your heart because if you give pieces of your heart away to every boy who comes along, when your future husband arrives, you won't have a whole heart to give him. That's why Faith courted Paul only after she had Dad's approval. That's why she never spent any time alone with him until they were married. So she didn't give her heart away by accident.

Mitzi the cat jumps up on the couch and starts kneading my stomach with her snow-white paws.

“But if a mother is supposed to have enough love for more than one child, how can a heart have to save up love for a future husband?” I ask Mitzi. “Isn't there an unending supply of love? How much love does one person contain, anyway?” Mitzi yawns and starts carefully licking her paws.

“Fine, ignore my questions,” I say. But I'm still thinking about them. It does seem odd to me that Faith and Paul went from never being alone together to becoming husband and wife, but going on dates with boys you met that day like Lauren is doing doesn't make any more sense to me. I wonder where Lauren and Bryce are, and I hope she's all right.

It's so quiet and I'm so eager for a distraction from my racing brain that I turn on the television. It's set to the channel that shows
Law & Order
episodes over and over again, but I click through until I find a program about the Sahara Desert. It's on one of the channels that Lauren never watches because she says it's boring, but the program isn't boring to me. The narrator's voice has a soft, foreign accent, and the glorious pictures are as soothing as her voice. After watching for a while, my eyelids start to feel heavy, but I'm alert as soon as I hear the sound of keys in the door.

“Rachel?” Lauren's voice is a loud whisper.

“I'm here,” I whisper back in the dark, sitting up and popping my head over the back of the couch. “How are you?”

“Fine,” she answers, tiptoeing over to me. “Sorry I smell. The bar we went to was smoky, but I don't smoke or anything. But I'm going to have to take a shower again.”

“Okay,” I say. “Did you have a nice time?”

“Yeah, it was all right,” Lauren says, sounding less excited than she did a few hours ago. “He was a super nice guy and a real gentleman, so of course I found him too boring. I swear to God, if I could afford it I would get some therapy or something.” I don't exactly understand what Lauren means, and I can't tell if she's joking or not. I would think a nice guy would be something good.

“I don't want to keep you up. We'll talk about it more in the morning.”

“Okay,” I say.

“Rachel,” she says, pausing, “you're not mad at me, are you? For earlier?”

“I was never really that mad,” I answer.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I was mostly just scared, like I said.”

“Okay,” she says. “Thanks. For not being mad.” She suddenly reaches down to give me a hug.

She does smell, but I don't mind. It's the first time she's hugged me and it's nice. It's a strong hug like my mom's, but she doesn't let go right away.

“Thanks for waiting up,” she says into my ear.

“I wanted to,” I respond, relieved she doesn't think I'm being too much of a snoop for staying awake until she got home. Finally, Lauren lets go and walks back to the bathroom, and soon I hear the shower running. Snuggling deep under my blanket, I feel cozy. Not exactly like how it feels to cuddle with Ruth, but close anyway.

 

16

Diane answers the door smelling
likes cookies again, this time dressed in a plum-colored suit and matching plum heels, her makeup carefully applied. She must spend a lot of time looking in the mirror, but I doubt it makes her worry about being vain. Her skirts are shorter than any mother at Calvary Christian would ever think of wearing, but her shoulders-back, head-up, big-steps approach to walking suggests a confidence I know I've never felt.

I think Diane likes being pretty.

After giving me a few instructions on my tasks for the day, she gathers her briefcase and a few files full of papers. “Please make sure you get yourself something to eat!” she adds as she runs out the door.

I stuff two hundred envelopes and get three paper cuts. I think it's good progress, but how should I know for sure if it is or it isn't? I just want Diane to be happy with my efforts. As I stuff another envelope, I hear a sound and jump out of my seat, half expecting Mark Treats to walk in the front door. But it's just Boots the cat, who saunters in and promptly falls asleep at my feet. I shake my head, grateful no one but a cat witnessed my reaction. After another hour or so of steady work, I realize how hungry I am and wander down to the kitchen.

Either side of the hallway is lined with built-in bookshelves. So far I'm only sure of three people who live in this house, and they have more books here than all of the books in my house combined. I stop and study some of the titles.

Siddhartha
by Herman Hesse

How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
by Dale Carnegie

The Stranger
by Albert Camus

Ariel
by Sylvia Plath

The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success
by Deepak Chopra

I see one Bible, but of course there are none of the homeschooling books and Bible study guides that make up the stacks of books back home.

And then I spot them. I gasp out loud when I do—
A Wrinkle in Time
,
A Wind in the Door
,
Many Waters
,
A Swiftly Tilting Planet
,
An Acceptable Time
.

My eyes wide, I run my finger down the spines. I remember Lauren mentioning there were more books about Meg Murry and her family, and here are all five of them. Five. Five!

I can't help it. I slip
A Wrinkle in Time
off the shelf and thumb through it, smiling at the names of familiar characters as they pop off the page like they're saying hello. I put it back and flip through
A Wind in the Door
, but I'm scared to open it to the first page. I can't. If I start reading it, I'll never stop.

All right. Maybe the first few lines. Just to see.

I stand there in the middle of the hallway reading, flipping through the pages. I walk toward the kitchen still reading, letting my eyes float outside the perimeters of the book just enough to make sure I don't bump into anything. I spot a bowl of fresh fruit on the fancy granite countertop, and I sit on one of the kitchen stools and eat an apple and keep reading.

I'll give myself twenty minutes.

I eat two apples and some saltines that I find in a cupboard and keep reading. Twenty minutes pass.

All right, just five more minutes
, I bargain with myself.

“Rachel! Are you here?” I hear Diane's heels as she makes her way down the hallway and I jump. Two apple cores and saltine crumbs are spread out before me on the counter, and I'm reading a book instead of working.