Taking Flight (16 page)

“That’s so much work.” I shook my head. “Not worth it.”

“Oh, yes he is,” she cooed, more to the horse than to me. She patted him on the head and he blinked in what I’m sure she assumed was a very loving way. “Anyway,” she faced me again, “today I’m gonna teach you how to do all of it.”

“Great.” I nodded, trying my best to look somewhat determined, but Cammie shot me an amused look as she moved toward Aerosmith with the currycomb.

“I’ll be honest,” she said, “I’m not so convinced you’re actually gonna make an effort. Did you and my dad make some kind of deal?”

I crossed my arms and feigned offense. “I resent that.”

That got a chuckle out of her and she made her way around the horse with the comb. “I mean, are you seriously going to church tomorrow? You were so against it. I don’t think you’re a bad person – the opposite, actually – but I’m still not really convinced you actually wanna do any of this.” She ran the comb over the horse’s back and explained, “I’m doing this to get the dust and dirt on him to the surface, to make it easier to brush out in a minute.”

“You think I’m a good person?”

She paused and shot me a strange look. “Of course. Lauren, if I’d lost my mother, I think not going to school would be the least of my problems. I’m sure my dad mostly only has you here because he wants you to get some time in with a functional family.”

I didn’t respond at first. I didn’t like her insinuation that my family wasn’t functional, but it seemed pointless to argue it. “I’m not broken,” I finally told her. “And I’m not out to hurt anyone. I just don’t want to be tied down or forced to do something against my will.”

“That seems to be a common theme with you,” she noticed. I watched her move on to a different brush. “Not being tied down. Tied to relationships, tied to a family…”

“I just want some freedom,” I insisted. “No psychoanalysis necessary. I’m walking on eggshells here just trying to prove I’m not about to go snort cocaine off of a stripper’s ass or something.” She laughed then, and I told her, “I figured maybe if I made an effort I’d get to have my own life here. I’m trying.” My eyebrows furrowed. “Anyway, where do you get off criticizing me? You have so many secrets you put the chicks from
Pretty Little Liars
to shame.”

She stood up straight and faced me, arms folded across her chest. She raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”

“Oh, c’mon. The perfect boyfriend you don’t like, the lack of virginity and the reputation you got after losing it, the obvious experience with partying, the fact that you can draw but you won’t do it unless you’re alone. The general discord between the way your friends and family see you from how you actually are, and all that. Like, I’m not stupid; I notice things. We’ve been roommates for nearly a month now.”

She tilted her head to the side and eyed me carefully, a thoughtful smile on her lips. Then she crossed to me and offered me the brush. “Congratulations, you’ve summed me up.”

“Oh, c’mon,” I murmured, accepting the brush with distaste. “All I’m saying is that maybe we can both admit we were wrong.”

“About what?”

“Our first impressions. I’ll admit you’re not the perfect little church girl.”

“Okay. But I still can’t be sure you weren’t your school’s token bad girl. Undeservedly or otherwise.”

“I’m brushing a damn horse and I’m here because of a death in the family,” I countered, rolling my eyes and approaching Aerosmith with caution. He blinked at me and I hesitated, pausing a foot from his face and then looking back at Cammie. She watched me with crossed arms and a knowing expression on her face.

“You forgot the part about the substance abuse.”

“Forgive me. Anyway, that was all before Mom died. The worst of it, anyway.”

“What changed?”

“It took effort to go buy pot,” I explained. “I lacked motivation. And the friends to encourage me.”

“I’m sorry that that was what it took for you to stop,” she said.

“Yeah, me too. But I’m not really that averse to starting again, you know. I just won’t do the harder stuff. It’s just pot.” I stalled, lingering a safe distance from Aerosmith. Cammie finally realized my hesitance, and sighed, approaching me.

“Well, maybe that’s what my dad wants to fix. C’mon, he won’t hurt you.” She passed me and gestured for me to move closer to Aerosmith even as she stood at his side.

“Why doesn’t he focus on you and Scott as much as he does me?” I asked, abruptly. I was thinking of when he’d taken Cammie and I home from Maddie’s house. He’d pulled me aside to talk, but he’d let Cammie go up to her room alone, even though she’d been just as upset as I’d been.

“Because he knows we’ve got it covered. You need it more than us. We’re fine,” she said, and tugged me over to her by my arm. I was too focused on her to be scared of the horse now, and she reached for my hand.

“But what if you’re ever
not
fine?”

Her fingers brushed mine and then stilled for a brief moment, her arm tensing, but then she took my hand and guided the brush to Aerosmith. I didn’t take my eyes off of her as, together, we ran the brush across his side. Her hand was gentle and soft on mine. “Like this,” she said, her voice a whisper. I pulled away abruptly and offered her the brush, ignoring the slight tension in my chest.

“You’re way better at this than I am.”

“Of course I am; I’ve had him for years. You’re learning.”

“Well, I’ve learned enough for today,” I decided. Cammie took the brush back from me, looking a little disappointed. “Will you tell your dad I tried?”

She nodded, her gaze lingering on me for a moment. I shifted uncomfortably, and she went back to Aerosmith, finishing up with the second brush and moving on to a third. I watched her as she worked.

“I didn’t know you knew I could draw,” she finally said, right around the time she was starting to pick the hooves.

“You had that briefcase on the first night,” I recalled. “And a picture you drew.”

She paused, then, halfway through her second hoof. “You saw that?” she asked, looking over at me.

“Yeah. It was really good, actually.”

She smiled. “Really? Thanks.” There was a brief pause as she went back to working, and then she added, “I’ve never told anyone about that before.”

“That seems to be a common theme with you,” I echoed, teasing her. She laughed as she moved onto the last hoof.

“Fair enough.”

*   *   *

I called Caitlyn later that night, in Cammie’s room with her reading the Bible on her bed beside me. I was exhausted, sleepy, dreading church, and a little homesick, and I surprised myself by tearing up a little when I heard her voice, despite the slight slur in her speech.

“I helped take care of a horse today,” I told her, sniffling a little, and I saw Cammie look over at me with concern as Caitlyn replied.

“Aw, Lauren. You’re almost a month down, okay? Just four more to go.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I admitted. And I didn’t anymore. I felt like I’d never fit in in Collinsville, and I wasn’t sure how far I was willing to take my deal with David. I didn’t know what else he’d want me to do in the future.

“Me either,” Caitlyn replied. “It’s so shitty here without you. There’s nothing to do. I’m literally sitting alone drinking at home right now.”

“But you still have parties to go to,” I reminded her.

“There aren’t any there?” she asked.

“Just one. Next week.”

“Is anyone listening on your end?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. On a scale of one to eight, how well are things going with the girl you’re trying to get with? The Physics one.”

“I don’t know. Six?”

“Does she wanna hook up?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

Caitlyn let out a sigh of relief. “Good. Okay, here’s what you’re gonna do, Lauren. I want you to do whatever you can to get to this party. Take her with you; have some fun there. And then go back to her place. You’ll feel like yourself again. That’s my advice.”

I sniffed again, considering what she’d said. Maybe she was right. When I was with Maddie, I felt more like I was back in Los Angeles than when I was with anyone else. Granted, I wasn’t particularly fond of L.A., but it was familiar. It was home. And I was my old, non-horse-brushing self there. “Okay.”

“Okay,” she echoed. “Call me again soon? When no one’s around, if you can. I want you to be able to tell me what’s actually going on with you.”

“I’ll try.”

“Bye, Lauren.” She hung up and I immediately handed the phone over to Cammie, who still looked concerned for me.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Just miss my best friend,” I mumbled, wiping at my eyes.

“You never told me who you’d been calling this whole time,” she said.

“Caitlyn’s been my best friend for years,” I explained. “She’s the only person I can call, and the only one I want to.”

“What about your dad?”

“No, I can’t call him,” I told her stiffly. I think my tone intimidated her, because she backed off and was quiet for a while. I laid down and stared at the ceiling, waiting for sleep, but she spoke again when my eyes were just beginning to struggle to stay open.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Mhmm,” I murmured, closing my eyes at last. I trusted that she’d leave the topic of my dad untouched, at least for now. Cammie, unlike her father, seemed to realize he was a subject I didn’t like to broach.

“What made you think I don’t like Peter?”

I smiled faintly, my eyes still shut. “You mean what gave it away?” She didn’t answer, and I told her, “I’ve never been in a relationship, but I think if I went through the trouble of getting into one, I’d call that person something other than ‘nice’.” She started to say something, but I added, “And I’d rather be sitting by him in the back of a truck bed than by a girl I hardly know.”

I heard her shift on her bed, and she finally replied, “He’s okay. I don’t hate him or anything. I just don’t…”

“Love him?” I finished for her. “That’s cool. Who
does
in high school, right?”

There was another moment of silence, and then her response came, quiet and subdued. “Right.”

Chapter Eleven

I took my first trip to church with the Marshalls the next day. I didn’t really have anything in my suitcase that Wendy deemed appropriate enough to wear, so Cammie had me try on some of her clothes. They fit, and they weren’t terrible, but I’d have never picked them out myself, so I was already in a bad mood before we were even out of the house.

As we drove to the church, Wendy and Cammie took turns prepping me in the car. Scott and David wisely stayed silent.

“You’ll be joining Cammie and Scott at their weekly youth group, which is in a separate part of the church,” Wendy explained from the passenger’s seat. I sat in the back, squashed between Cammie and Scott. “Pastor McKinley’s a very nice man, so be sure to show him some respect. He’s expecting you.”

“Just don’t say anything and smile at him,” was Cammie’s translation, which she whispered into my ear as soon as Wendy was finished speaking. “He’s pretty cool.”

“Doubtful,” I murmured back, and was unsurprised by the soft sigh she let out at my response.

“It’s actually fun,” she whispered.

“You’re crazy,” I hissed back to her, and she elbowed me in the side to get me to shut my mouth. I rolled my eyes to myself and felt Scott shake with laughter on my other side while David and Wendy chatted obliviously up front. I made a mental note to spend church with Scott instead of Cammie; it seemed to be an area in which she was distinctly less tolerable than her brother.

Our drive wasn’t long, and Scott helped me out of the car when we got to the church, then promptly turned away to greet Jill, who, as it turns out, attended the same church. Of course.

Frowning, I slunk over to Cammie and stood at her side, arms folded across my chest. Wendy and David were already making their way over to the large double-door entrance at the front of the church. I looked around. It was a pretty big place, and there were more people heading inside than I’d expected. There were so many churches in Collinsville it seemed impossible for any of them to have a lot of followers.

“C’mon,” Cammie demanded, gesturing for me to get moving. “We’ll be late if we don’t get inside.”

“Wouldn’t want that,” I agreed with another eye-roll. She sighed at me and tugged me along by my wrist, Jill and Scott just ahead of us.

We took a sharp right upon entering the church, and Jill told me more about it as we descended a flight of stairs, presumably heading for the separate teen service. The youth group, so it was apparently called.

“I think you’ll really like it here. Pastor McKinley’s very friendly and he’s always willing to answer any questions we might have. And every week he talks about something different. Last week it was the importance of giving and charity.”

“Right.” I tried my best to sound engaged. “Selflessness. That’s… good, I guess.” Cammie nudged me sharply, and I shot her a confused look. “What? It is.”

“Just… try to say as little as possible during the actual service.”

“Aw, Cammie,” Jill said, shooting me a sympathetic look. “She’s doing fine. It’s not every day a girl goes to church for the first time, you know.”

“I just want things to go smoothly,” Cammie sighed out.

“That’s because you’re a perfectionist,” I informed her. “Just go with the flow. I’m not gonna jump up in the middle of your youth group demanding we all kneel before Satan and shi—” I cut myself off at Cammie’s sharp look and corrected, “and crap like that. I know how to keep my mouth shut.” I looked to Scott to see that he’d turned to raise an eyebrow at me. “What? C’mon, I’ll be a perfect angel. Ha! Church humor.”

“Just c’mon,” Cammie mumbled, promptly grabbing me and yanking me down another hallway.

*   *   *

Pastor McKinley was a dorky guy in his forties with an ugly checkered shirt on that quite literally hurt my eyes, but I didn’t really care about him. We exchanged a couple generic greetings and he told me he hoped to see me back every week, and then I took a seat with Cammie, Scott, and Jill in this circle of chairs that surrounded the pastor.

The person that
did
catch my attention was an older boy I instinctively knew had to be Trevor. He noticed me too, while I was talking to McKinley, and I saw him watching me as I took a seat. I felt slimy just having his gaze on me after hearing Cammie’s story about him.

Cammie noticed me glancing his way and stiffened, then murmured a quiet, “Stop. Please.” That was enough to make me force my gaze to Pastor McKinley.

He stood in the center of the circle of chairs as they continued to fill, and when at last it seemed like everyone had arrived, he began his lesson for the day. I half-dozed through most of the opening remarks, and tuned in just in time to hear him ask, “So, a show of hands: How many of you know where exactly your name comes from?” He surveyed the circle as a few hands came up, then pointed to a small boy in a suit. “Joseph, go ahead.”

“All of the guys in my family are named Joseph. I think it goes back at least three or four generations.”

“Okay, so family tradition. How about you, Tina?”

“My mom was a big Tina Turner fan.”

There were some chuckles at that. Pastor McKinley swiveled around to Jill. “Yes, Jill?”

“My mother found it in a baby book.”

“Excellent. My point here is that we’re all named for some reason. Some more significant than others, but a reason all the same. How many of you are familiar with the story of Jacob?”

He went on for a while after that, telling the story of Jacob from the Bible and how he’d tricked his father at one point and his name basically meant “trickster,” and I honestly didn’t pay very much attention. I wanted to just get through church, especially on my first day, and more importantly, I wanted Trevor to stop looking at me.

McKinley ended, a while later, with the moral of his story: that names held important meanings, and that we should be careful of what we call each other and other people. I guess it was nice to know there was a positive message in there somewhere.

We went out to lunch with Jill afterward, and I stayed mostly silent. Cammie talked a mile a minute, running over every little detail of McKinley’s sermon with her mother, and I realized with a start that it was the first time I really saw any semblance of a bonding moment between Cammie and Wendy. So church was
their
thing.

We got back to the farm in the afternoon and I slept for a while, exhausted both after waking up early for church and actually attending it. All in all, the day was uneventful. I hadn’t magically become a Christian, and I hadn’t been pushed any further into Atheism. It all just…
was
, and then it was over and I was home. My Georgia home, that is. My home that didn’t feel much like a home.

Cammie spent a lot of time with her mother that day, but when she did finally check up on me, she found me curled up in bed after my nap.

“Thanks for today,” she told me, sitting down at the edge of my bed. Her voice was gentle, and I could tell she was being sincere. “I know you could’ve made things a lot more difficult.”

“Well, that’s what I do,” I reminded her quietly. “Avoid making circumstances difficult even when they make me unhappy.”

She fell silent after that, and eventually, she left me alone. I burrowed under the covers after that, hiding my face, and I think that right then, by myself in Cammie’s room after an unfamiliar day with unfamiliar people in an unfamiliar town, I felt more alone than I’d felt in a long time.

*   *   *

My next week with the Marshalls went by pretty quickly. I got a 60 on my first Physics test, which was pretty much amazing given my lack of confidence after taking it. With two tests to go, I now had to just make up ten points and I’d actually pass an AP class.

On Thursday, I leaned over to Maddie during class and muttered, “Please tell me you’re going to this football Homecoming thing tomorrow night.”

She looked up from her sheet of Physics problems – our assignment for the day – to grin at me. “I wasn’t planning on it. I hear there’s a big party afterward, though.”

“I thought only the cool kids had heard about that one,” I teased.

“My cousin’s throwing it,” was her response. “So I get special treatment.”

“Come with me to the game, and then we can go together,” I suggested.

She laughed and went back to her homework with an idle, “Uh, no.”

“Why not?”

“Let’s just say I’ve had some bad experiences with my cousin’s parties in the past.”

“You?” I raised an eyebrow. “No way, as cool as you are?”

“Shut up,” she murmured, barely containing a smile. “I’ll go the game and keep you company, okay? But I don’t know about the party.”

“I’ll convince you,” I told her, nodding confidently.

She laughed quietly and shook her head. “We’ll see.”

At lunch, I had a similar conversation with Nate and Fiona, but with opposite results. When I asked them if they were going to the game, they said no, but when I told them about the party they hadn’t been invited to, they liked the idea of crashing.

“I’ll get my friend to text you guys the address,” I promised them, and for the rest of the day, I actually felt a little excited. I’d had Caitlyn back in Los Angeles, which was nice, but now I was making plans with multiple people, multiple
friends
, for the first time in a while, which felt pretty cool, actually.

So Tiffany would pick up Cammie and me and drive us to the game, where I’d meet up with Maddie. I’d convince her to come to the party, where we’d join Fiona and Nate while Cammie went off with her friends and Peter. From there, I’d follow Caitlyn’s advice and try to go home with Maddie. And all I had to do after that was make sure I got home without David and Wendy realizing that Cammie and I hadn’t gone to the school-sponsored dance.

Simple.

*   *   *

“How do I look?”

Cammie turned away from her bathroom mirror to look at me, her outfit and makeup on full display. Her hair was straightened and I’d done her eye makeup, showing her how to make their blue color really pop. Then I’d let her finish the rest. She actually looked beautiful, but I wasn’t going to tell her that.

“Like a Homecoming queen,” I said instead, unplugging my hair straightener from the bathroom wall now that we were both finished getting ready. “Shouldn’t you be wearing your cheerleading uniform, though?”

“Yeah, I’m changing into it. But this is what I’m wearing to the party. You’re sure it looks fine?”

“Yes,” I groaned. “You’re hot. Is your friend gonna be here soon? No offense, but I need to get away from your family for a little while before I start reciting Bible verses from memory.” She rolled her eyes and turned away from me, biting her lip to hide a smile as she studied herself in the mirror. I watched her, one eyebrow raised. “What?”

“Nothing,” she replied. “Be nice to Tiffany, okay? She’s doing you a favor.”

“No, she’s doing
you
a favor. I’m just cargo. Gorgeous, unappreciated cargo.”

“I appreciate you,” she told me, and then patted me on the head and ducked past me, out of the bathroom. I trailed after her with a sigh.

Downstairs, Wendy, as it turned out, waited with endless compliments and basically screeched about how pretty we were until Tiffany arrived. I never thought I’d be happy to see Collinsville’s head cheerleader show up at my current residence, yet I was filled with relief the instant the doorbell rang.

As Tiffany entered and exchanged greetings with the rest of the Marshalls in a high-pitched, bubble-gum sweet voice, David pulled me aside and asked me, “Will you be okay tonight?”

“I’m fantastic,” I told him. “Never been better. In fact, I’m actually itching for a sleepover, and Tiffany seems like
such
a nice girl.”

“Uh huh. Nice try.” He shot me a knowing look. “I want you guys back by midnight, okay? Cammie knows her curfew. I’ll be up.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Alright. Go have fun. And stay out of trouble!” he called after me. I practically flew past Tiffany and out through the front door, she and Cammie hot on my heels. The front door shut behind us, and Tiffany immediately let out a breath.

“God, I hate catching up with your mom, Cammie. She wants to know everything about my life; it’s exhausting.”

I saw Cammie force a smile as she got into the passenger’s seat of Tiffany’s car, and I climbed into the back. I frowned openly, feeling strangely defensive. Wendy wasn’t my ideal mother, but she was nice enough.

“At least she cares,” I said. Tiffany turned around in her seat to look at me.

“So what’s your name? How long are you staying here, again?”

“Lauren. Until graduation.”

She pulled a face even as we backed out of the Marshall’s driveway. “Wow. So you have to share your room for that long, Cammie? That sucks.”

My lips parted in surprise and I stared in disbelief at Tiffany even as Cammie cleared her throat up front.