All Eyes on Us by Kit Frick

Author:Kit Frick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books

18

ROSALIE

SUNDAY, JANUARY 14

She knows I’m lying. When Carter and I didn’t actually break up at Eat’n Park, someone was listening. Either Private tipped her off, or Carter Shaw is a very bad liar.

Amanda has the photos and Private has the photos. It’s only a matter of time before everything rips to shreds. A thousand threads, snaaaap. In church, the shell of some other girl sings the hymns and recites the prayers while I sink into my chair and the long, cold fingers of my parents and the congregation and the Holy Spirit Himself squeeze tighter and tighter around my throat until there’s no air left.

Richard and Julia are fully absorbed in the service, but Lily sees me shrinking in my chair, body caught somewhere between suffocating and disappearing altogether. She reaches over and slips her hand into my hand. Our fingers weave.

“Jesus loves you,” she whispers. “His love is all around. Can’t you feel it?”

I smile weakly at my sister, and tears well up in my eyes. All I can feel is the pulsing bass, which reverberates through the church’s sound system. It pounds against my lungs, thud, thud, thud, until finally the tears spill over.

After service ends, I nibble cookies and try my best to make small talk with Ivan Brophy, one of the FOC kids I mind the least. From the seats behind us, I can feel Mom’s eyes fixed on my back. She’s deep in conversation with Mrs. Hagan, and their voices carry.

“You know he and Cecilia had a terrible go of it when he was growing up,” Mrs. Hagan is saying. “She let him run wild, and now look what’s happened.” They’re talking, it seems, about the Hagan’s next-door neighbors, Philip Ireland and his mother, Cecilia. Before service, I’d overheard Beth Clark murmuring to Emily Masters that Philip had “run off to Dayton, with a man.” He’s a grown adult. I’m not sure leaving home to move in with your boyfriend qualifies as “running off,” but this is the kind of occurrence that makes waves in Fellowship circles, even though the Irelands aren’t FOC. It’s gossip fueled by equal parts fear and disgust. The purity ring feels tight and hot around my finger.

“He was exposed to too many of the world’s sins,” Mom agrees. “And he doesn’t have Jesus in his heart. It’s people like that who ruin godly marriages.”

The words crash down across my back. I’m not sure if they’re for my benefit, or despite of me. I try to block them out, focus instead on Ivan Brophy’s mouth. He’s regaling me with an animated description of his volunteer plans for tomorrow’s day off from school. When he asks if I want to join the outreach day trip for Mission Driven, I politely decline.

And then finally coffee hour is over, and the Bells are going our separate ways: Dad and Lily take the car home, Mom stays for her shift in the church office, and I take off on my bike. The road stretches out like a wide gray ribbon.

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