My cheeks flushed. “Right, sorry.”
I dusted my palms off on my dress, lowered my head, and hurried the rest of the distance to the church’s lead pastor. He ushered me into a small room where I took a seat on a yellow couch and pinned my knees together. Pastor Long pulled up a chair opposite me, crossed his legs one over the other, and leaned back.
“Tell me why you’re here, Cassidy.” Pastor Long was a man old enough to be my grandfather. He had long earlobes and grooves etched into his forehead so deeply they might have been irrigation ditches.
I twisted the hem of my skirt between my fingers and shrugged.
Pastor Long waited. “What I mean is, why did your parents arrange this meeting?” Another long pause. “Do you think … in your own words…” He twirled his hand as if to say, go on.
I chewed the inside of my lip until the skin lifted and I could feel the salty sting underneath. I pressed my tongue into the small gouge. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “I told them everything was fine. I’m just tired. I’m not … sleeping very well.”
Pastor Long nodded and folded his hands in his lap. He’d always been a kind man. One time he’d even given Paisley and me bite-sized Butterfingers that he kept in his robe pockets when he caught us sneaking out of Sunday school. I’d, of course, given mine to Paisley, but I had associated the reverend with chocolate and peanut butter ever since and, as far as I was concerned, there were worse things to be reminded of by a person.
“Let’s try another tactic. How’s cheerleading going? What do you kids call yourselves, the Oilerettes?” His patience didn’t waver.
I sighed. “I’m not on the squad anymore.”
I watched for any flicker of surprise. A raise of the eyebrows. But instead, Pastor Long leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. His robes and pant legs hiked up so that I could see maroon socks with a pattern of bears marching across. “Cassidy,” he said. “You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want. I’m not here to make you.” I shifted in my seat. “But there’s one person you can and probably should talk to.” Pastor Long lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “God. He sees everything, Cassidy.” An uncomfortable wad of spit worked its way up my throat at the mention of “everything.” “But he also forgives everything. Do you understand?”
His eyes were gray and comforting. What would Pastor Long say if he knew who I really was? What I’d really done? A thousand truths piled up on my chest and it felt like I was being buried alive. Every choice now twisted around me like a straitjacket. The drinking. The kissing. The flirting. The boys. Dearborn. Sunshine. Teddy Marks. And all the frightening blank spots in my memory too dark for me to see.
I tried to open my mouth, wondering if I did, what might come out, but my tongue stuck to the roof and the words stuck in my saliva like it was a fly trap. Don’t tell him. The voice that had winnowed its way to the surface moments earlier now bubbled up again. My teeth ground into each other. My jaw twitched.
Even if someone would believe me about that night in Dearborn, that it had all happened and that I’d wanted none of it, the truth wouldn’t set me free. It didn’t take a mathematician to know that, if I confided in anyone about the night in Dearborn, it wouldn’t take long for the cops to solve for y—and that y would be me.
“I promise, your problems may seem big now, but I’ve been working with kids your age for a long time and I can tell you that the problems of high school—the gossip, the boys, the cheerleading—they are never as cataclysmic as they seem.” The pastor’s office was hot and stuffy. I needed him to open a window before I suffocated. “Another year and you’ll graduate, then—poof—all these problems will disappear.”
Disappear. Poof. Gone. I was having trouble breathing.
He winked at me and leaned back again, probably confident that he had told another teenage girl exactly what she’d needed to hear.
And for the first time ever, I kind of hated Pastor Long. Because it never occurred to adults that we might be capable of having real problems, too.
*
THERE WERE NO waffles after church. My parents and I hardly spoke a word and Honor and I spoke none. I wanted desperately to make things better for Honor, but what could I say to fix things? I’d be repeating the same advice as Pastor Long and I couldn’t bring myself to do that.
I kept staring at the two lines tattooed into my wrist, becoming more and more fearful that I might go to sleep and wake up to another one. The black marks felt like explosives, counting off seconds, hours, minutes of the time I had left. With every new one, I understood that another part of who I was would be lost forever.