Rising Class by Jennifer Miller

Author:Jennifer Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

Big Whiskey’s

Conner and Jacklynn planned their first date sophomore year, during rehearsal for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Conner was Augustus Gloop, and Jacklynn was his mom, which was super awkward since they had a crush on each other. Around that time, Conner learned that Jacklynn had never seen the original Star Wars trilogy. He was shocked. Such a lapse required immediate remedy. So in between scenes, he asked if she’d like to see the movie and get dinner that night. Jacklynn screwed up her courage and said, “Is this a date?” And Conner said, “Yeah, if you want it to be.”

But the timing was tricky. Jacklynn had never been on a real date, and she wasn’t sure how her mother would react. Sherry was incredibly protective—you might say overprotective. She was also out of town at a prayer conference and had put Jacklynn’s sister Crystal in charge. It did not feel like the best time for Jacklynn to tell her family that she was going out with a boy.

But a boy had asked her to dinner and she wasn’t about to turn him down.

So she lied to her sister and said that she was going home with a friend after school. Then she turned off her phone so as not to interrupt the romantic moment with an accidental butt dial.

They went to a diner chain called the Village Inn. It was two minutes from school, perched on a concrete hill overlooking the Pizza Hut and the Mitchun Tires. They’d just ordered their food when Jacklynn suddenly heard her sister’s voice.

“Yeah, I see her,” her sister was saying into the phone. Then Crystal all but dragged Jacklynn out of the restaurant.

It was mortifying. Even more so, because Jacklynn’s backpack was in Conner’s car, so she had to go back into the restaurant and ask Conner to come out and unlock it.

Apparently, Crystal had been trying to call, but since Jacklynn’s phone kept going to voice mail, she started to worry. She texted Sherry, to say that Jacklynn was MIA. At that moment, though, Sherry was at an internationally televised sermon. In a state of panic akin to cardiac arrest, Sherry jumped up and, in front of the packed church and Lord knows how many viewers around the globe, squeezed herself out to the aisle. Meanwhile, Crystal was driving Jacklynn home, saying, “You’re lucky Mom is at Jesus camp right now.”

With their date cut so rudely short, Conner sat in his car and listened to “The Sound of Silence,” feeling a little bit sad and a little disappointed. “I thought I’d never see her again,” he said. “I mean, outside of drama.”

When Jacklynn got home, she typed her mother an essay-style letter of apology, complete with a thesis and three discrete body paragraphs. Sherry still keeps the letter folded inside a prophetic prayer book called Jesus Calling.

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