Random Acts OC-epub by Julia Kent

Author:Julia Kent [Kent, Julia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-05-31T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Darla

Jane had been my best friend since, well, hell, I don’t remember when, but she definitely became a better best friend when Josie went and graduated high school and wasn’t around much. People used to call us Darla and Jane like it was all one blended word – DarlanJane – and for years we were...inseparable, I mean. You couldn’t separate us, you couldn’t part us, you couldn’t anything us. There were no wedges and no divides until she got pregnant two years ago.

Now, twenty, around here, is actually pretty young for getting pregnant. I didn’t even object to the fact that she got pregnant. Plenty of people do – whether they mean to or not – but it was the guy she got pregnant with. She picked this dumbass named Jared. He was five years older than us and he was somebody’s brother from our class. All I knew is that I’d never liked him, even when we were little kids, and I sure as hell didn’t like he was the father of Jane’s baby. And then, shortly after the birth, it got worse. He became her husband.

Somehow Jane had managed to get pregnant, fall in love with Jared, and find Jesus all at once, although I don’t think the Jesus part came easy. It was driven by Jared, who had become like some sort of truck bed preacher. He’d convinced a bunch of people to go in on renting an old, deserted store front in a little chain of three or four stores attached to a house. The other three stores were an orthopedic specialist, some kind of nutrition and supplement place that I’d never set foot in, and of course, a liquor store. The Renewed Life Fellowship Church was what he’d called it and he was out there for every Sunday, preaching away, into the wind as cars drove by.

Now, I don’t have a problem with anyone finding religion – hell, I’m still searching for mine – but what I do have a problem with is hypocrites. When Jane started showing up to work with little bruises here and there, that’s when I lost my faith – or, at least, my faith in Jared.

I pulled into work and there she was, stocking the pop, putting it all in the cooler one by one, mindless motions so ingrained in us we could probably unload a shipment on our deathbed. We’d been working there since high school. I’d gotten the job first and then, when there was an opening a few months later, helped Jane get hired. We hardly ever got to work the same shift; the owner was cheap and tried to keep only one person on. Only on midnights did he have two working, that way in case there was a robbery at least there was a modicum of safety in place. Today I’d take over for her – we would overlap by an hour – and she didn’t look good. She kept hiding her head and just said, “Hey, Darla.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.