So, just like that, after years of service, Grace’s mom was out of her job as director of women’s activities and guest speaker at Great Redeemer First Baptist megachurch, instantly reviled and hated by nearly seven thousand parishioners from Adeline and the neighboring three counties. Dad had just started his online marketing business and wasn’t making any money yet. But worse than being suddenly poor was being suddenly friendless in a small town where everybody was friends. No one would sit by Grace at lunch. Graffiti started showing up on her locker, the strangest of which was “Slut” and “Whore,” since she was, and is, still very much a virgin. That’s just what you call girls when you want to shame them. So Grace spent what remained of the school year eating lunch alone in the gym bathroom, talking to no one throughout the day except the occasional teacher, and her parents had no idea. Mom was too busy trying to find a new job and Dad was too busy trying to find clients; Grace knew her pain wasn’t something they needed to talk about.
Grace isn’t quite sure how to define what she’s feeling right now, but she at least knows it’s not sadness about leaving. Adeline made itself very clear that it no longer had anything to offer Grace and her family in terms of friendship or feeling welcome. And even before that, when Grace was comfortably lodged in her low but stable place in the social hierarchy, with a set cast of friends and acquaintances, with well-defined rules of behavior and speech—even then, with all that order—Grace suspected something was off. She knew her role well and she performed it brilliantly, but that’s what it was: a performance. Some part of her always felt like she was lying.
Maybe she always secretly hated Christian music and the cheesy, horribly produced Christian-themed movies they always watched in Friday night youth group. Maybe she secretly hated her social life revolving around youth group. Maybe she hated sitting at the same lunch table every day, with the same bland girls she never really chose and never particularly liked, who could be both timid and insufferably hostile to anyone outside their circle, whose gossip cloaked itself in Christian righteousness. Maybe she secretly wanted a boyfriend to make out with. Maybe she was curious about all sorts of things she was not supposed to be curious about.
Grace had always yearned for something else. Different town, different school, different people. And now that she finally has the opportunity to possibly get it, she realizes she’s terrified. She realizes she has no idea what she actually wants.
What’s worse? Lying about who you are, or not knowing who you are at all?
Right now, faced with the uncertainty of starting a new school year at a new school in a new town, Grace would give anything for the simplicity of her old life. It may not have been satisfying in any meaningful way, it may have not been true, but at least it was safe. It was predictable. It was home. And those things sound pretty good right now.
But instead, here she is—in this weird place that doesn’t know if it’s a small town or a suburb, stuck in this purgatory between an unsatisfactory past and an unknown future. School starts tomorrow, Sunday is Mom’s first sermon at the new church, and nothing feels close to being okay. Nothing about this place feels like home.
Grace suspects she should be praying or something. She should be asking for guidance. She should be making room for God. But right now she has bigger things to worry about than God, like surviving junior year of high school.
Grace realizes what she’s feeling is homesickness. But how can someone be homesick for a place that doesn’t even exist anymore?
And how can someone start a new life when she doesn’t even know who she is?
ROSINA.
Fuck cousin Erwin and his useless boy existence, fuck all the uncles of the world, fuck Mami and Tía Blanca and Tía Mariela for thinking Rosina’s their slave, fuck old-school tradition for agreeing with them, fuck this bike and its crooked wheel, fuck this town for its potholes and crumbly sidewalks, fuck Oregon, fuck rain and rednecks and football players and people who eat at La Cocina and don’t tip and throw their greasy napkins on the floor for Rosina to clean up.
But Abuelita’s okay. Rosina both loves and likes her grandmother, which is no small thing for Rosina. Even though Abuelita thinks Rosina is her dead daughter, Alicia, who never made it out of their village in Mexico. Even though Abuelita wandered off Tuesday night when no one was looking and made it all the way to the slightly nicer and much whiter neighborhood nearly a mile away, and that pretty cheerleader named Melissa who Rosina’s been crushing on since sixth grade had to bring her back. After crying for an hour, after riding her bike through the neighborhood searching for Abuelita, Rosina heard a knock and opened the front door, her face blotchy, her hair a mess, her nose wet with tears and snot, to a vision of beauty and kindness: Melissa the cheerleader holding Abuelita’s hand, a warm smile on her face, her eyes radiant with sunlight. “Look who I found,” the cheerleader said, and Abuelita kissed Melissa on the cheek, said, “Eres un ángel,” walked inside the house, and Rosina was so embarrassed, she shut the door in Melissa’s beautiful face after only barely managing to say thank you.
Rosina cringes at the memory. Never has a girl made her feel so un-Rosina-like. Never has she felt so bumbling. She thinks of the stupid expression “weak in the knees,” how she always thought of it as some gooey romantic nonsense, but now she realizes she has experienced scientific proof that it’s a real physical condition, and she hates herself for being such a cliché, for having such a crush, for being such a girl about it.
She pedals hard, hoping the burn in her legs will wipe away this unsettling feeling of wanting something, wanting someone, she knows she cannot have. Even on her bike, riding as fast as she can, Rosina still feels caged, trapped. She can’t ride to Eugene. She certainly can’t ride to Portland. All she can do is wander around the streets of this tired old town, looking for something new. Sometimes after a rain there are sidewalks full of half-drowned worms. Sometimes lost mail. The usual empty bottles and candy wrappers, receipts, a couple of crumpled-up shopping lists. Roadkill. The only new things in this town are trash.
Rosina races through the streets of Prescott, an eternal loner, the only brown girl in town who doesn’t hang out with the other brown girls, as if she’s trying to stand out on purpose, her spiky black hair snaking through the air, earbuds in her ears, listening to those wild women that made music in towns and cities so close to here but practically a whole generation ago, those brave girls with boots and electric guitars, singing with voices made out of moss and rocks and rainstorms. Relics, artifacts. Everything worth anything happened a long time ago when new really meant new.
Why does she always end up on this street? There’s nothing here but cookie-cutter houses that were new in the fifties, a few scraggly trees, small front lawns with browning grass. This street isn’t on the way to anywhere Rosina wants to go. It’s not on the way to anywhere.
But there it is. The house. Lucy Moynihan’s house. Faded white paint peeling like on every other house. From the outside, it’s nothing special. It housed a girl Rosina barely knew. It’s been empty all summer. It shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t. So why does she keep coming back here? As if it’s calling her. As if, even though Lucy’s long gone, she’s not done with this town quite yet.