This Is What I Want to Tell You by Heather Duffy Stone

Author:Heather Duffy Stone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: teen angst, friendship, love, betrayal
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD.
Published: 2009-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

Come with me to the soup kitchen, I said at breakfast.

Noelle looked up from her coffee mug. She pushed her hair back and stared at me.

Keeley, who’d just come in the side door, turned from the tea kettle she was watching on the stove.

Okay, they both said at the same time.

I don’t know why I was surprised. I was the one who asked. But I wasn’t sure where it had come from. I hadn’t been there since Molly left, since before the summer. I’d definitely never brought anyone with me. But that Saturday morning it felt like what I wanted to do. I wanted to remember all of the things I’d spent my time on before.

Cool, I said. We leave in twenty minutes.

In less than an hour we were climbing the stairs at the St. Francis Community Center. It was still early and folding tables lined the back wall. A few volunteers were placing chairs at round tables around the room and Ben, who was the pastor who ran the soup kitchen, was lifting a steaming dish onto the back table. His gray beard swam behind the steam coming up from the dish. Keeley and Noelle stood next to me, hands pulled up inside their sleeves. I’d never noticed they both stood that way, kneading their fingers into the ends of their sleeves.

Hey, I said. Carol.

Carol looked up from the back of the room. Her glasses slid low on her nose. Carol was in her sixties and she and Ben had helped start the soup kitchen after the Vietnam war about a hundred years ago when, she’d told me once, there seemed to be a flood of men who couldn’t keep a home and needed a hot meal. She waved to me and walked slowly over.

We’ve missed you, young man, she said.

I’m sorry. This year has been …

But we’re glad you’re here now.

Carol was never one for excuses. She wanted volunteers however she could get them.

You must be the twin sister. She held her hand out and Noelle took it.

And the best friend, Carol said, each of her hands holding one of theirs. Come this way and we’ll get you two started on the biggest vat of fruit salad you’ve ever seen.

As the three of them walked away I could see them laughing. I hadn’t seen that in such a long time—Noelle laughing and Keeley laughing and all of us in one place doing something that felt like normal and wasn’t about all of these things we were trying to keep from each other.

Well, he’s back. Ben handed me an oversized dish of lettuce and pale tomatoes and pointed to the end of the table.

I’m sorry I haven’t been around this year, I said. I hadn’t anticipated all the guilt I was suddenly feeling. We had never attended church once in our lives and Lace had raised us without a suggestion of religious faith, but two years ago I’d answered a call for volunteers on a sign posted outside the

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