Faking Faith (14 page)

The smaller kids squealed in delight, jumping up and down. Chastity, holding Mercy, did a little dance and giggled.

“Come on, kids, let’s go change!” Abigail said.

We tumbled upstairs, chattering happily. The boys dressed themselves in swim shorts and T-shirts, while all of us girls put on old tops and work skirts with shorts underneath. There were certainly no bikinis in this family.

But everyone lost all sense of decorum on the rigged-up slip-and-slide. The kids threw themselves down it on their bellies, screaming happily. Abigail and I slid down it together holding hands, the soap seeping into our hair and clothes. The water felt wonderful and cool on my skin, and I finally stopped sweating.

I heard Abigail screech, and I looked over to see Asher with the hose pointed at her, laughing.

“Hey, no fair!” I said. He turned to look at me, grinning, and then sprayed me directly in the face.

“Asher, stop that!” said Abigail. She ran to grab the hose out of his hands and then threw it to me. “Get him, Faith!”

So I sprayed Asher back as he fought against Abigail, all of us giggling. He got away from his sister, yanked the hose away from me, and chased us both around with the hose, slipping on the wet grass and laughing.

“Truce! Truce!” Abigail called after a few minutes, and we all stopped in place, panting.

Then Luke called to Abigail to slide with him, so she smiled at us and walked away. “Don’t let him get you, Faith,” she said over her shoulder.

My hair was plastered to my head and neck as I bent over, hands on my knees, hardly able to breathe after running around and dodging the hose. My shirt was stuck to my body and I tried to pull it loose so it wasn’t quite so formfitting. I smiled up at Asher, seeing that he was watching me.

He smiled back, and it hit me once again just how unselfconsciously gorgeous he was. Especially when he was happy, with dimples in his cheeks and crinkles around his mouth, his blue eyes dancing in the sun. His shirt was also soaked and dripping, accentuating every muscle of his chest and arms. And his tanned skin glowed like he was lit from within.

I couldn’t help it anymore. It was time to admit I was crushing on him. And hard.

“Having fun?” he asked in a husky voice. Some part of my brain registered that there were noisy kids running all around us, but it suddenly felt like we were the only two people on the planet.

I nodded. “Lots of fun. We don’t do anything like this at home.”

He took a step closer. “Good. I’m glad you’re having a nice time here.”

I took a deep, gulping breath. Then I reached over and plucked a stray blade of grass off his shoulder. He jumped a little at my touch.

“You’re a good brother to set all this up,” I said. “The kids really adore you.”

He shrugged a bit. “I try. Everyone needs to let loose and play a little, I think.”

“You’re right.”

He was staring at me. “F-Faith, you … ” he said slowly.

“What?”

“You have some, um, dirt on your cheek,” he said. And then he licked his thumb and reached over, gently grazing my face.

I couldn’t look away from his eyes. They held me in place.

“Thanks,” I said softly, realizing that I was leaning toward him like a tree in a strong wind. He was leaning toward me, too.

Then it broke.

“Daddy’s home!” screamed some of the kids.

Behind me, I heard the sound of a truck door slam. Asher and I both blinked, the moment lost. He looked suddenly terrified and backed quickly away from me.

“What’s all this about?” said Mr. Dean in his jovial way, though I detected an edge to his voice. He was staring hard at me, and then looked at Asher, who was busy turning off the hose at a spigot on the house. “Asher and Abigail, please tell me what’s going on here.”

All the little kids were gathered around their father, dripping on his work boots.

“Asher set up a slide!” announced Luke.

“I see that, son,” said Mr. Dean. “But the question is, why?”

“Because it’s fun!” said Martha, wiping soaked blond wisps from her face.

“But did you all get your work done before you played?” asked Mr. Dean sternly, crossing his arms. “Were you faithful and productive first, before you turned to having fun?”

The children were all suddenly guilty-looking. Abigail, with little Mercy perched on her hip and a free hand on Martha’s head, looked particularly distraught.

“Oh, Daddy, we were just playing in the water because it’s so hot in the house,” she began to explain, but he held up his index finger to silence her.

“You did not have permission to do this. Asher, get over here right now.”

Asher seemed to brace himself as he walked over to join his siblings. All nine of them looked cowed and deflated, in a small herd around their father.

I hovered over by the porch, unsure of what to do or where to look, my clothes soapy and uncomfortable.

Mr. Dean was talking in a low voice to his children. I couldn’t make out exactly what he was saying, but his tone was harsh and angry. The words “obedience” and “duty” drifted over to me.

He sent all the younger kids into the house to rinse off and change, and then laid into Asher and Abigail for another five minutes. By the end, Abigail was crying, and Asher had his arms crossed so tightly against his chest that it looked painful, his fingers digging into his own skin.

Abigail was allowed to leave, and she came up to me with a tremulous look on her face. “Sorry you had to witness that, Faith. We shouldn’t have set up the slide without asking Daddy, of course. Let’s go change.”

As we walked up the porch stairs, I turned to see Mr. Dean with one hand on Asher’s shoulder and the other pointing angrily in my direction.

“Temptation” was the only word I heard.

Mr. Dean had seen Asher touch me. And I knew that was seriously bad news.

EIGHTEEN

D
inner was silent and awkward. Mr. Dean wouldn’t
look anyone in the eye, just sternly said grace and ate his food without talking. Mrs. Dean had returned from her doctor’s appointment looking tired and run-down, and no one filled her in on what had happened.

As soon as I could get away from the dishes, I escaped outside for some time alone. The tension was too much for me to handle.

At home, when there was drama, we could all just go hole up in separate parts of the house. But there was no place to retreat in a family of this size. No place for privacy or quiet.

I was standing on the far side of the barn, watching the quickly appearing stars over the back field, when Asher turned the corner and ran right into me.

“Shit, sorry!” I said without thinking, at the same time that he said, “Oh, excuse me!”

We both stood still, staring at each other.

“Wait … ” he said, trailing off, and then swallowed. “What did you just say?”

I bit my lip, distracted from my foul-language screw-up by the way his eyes gleamed in the fading daylight. All I could think about was how it had felt earlier in the day when his warm thumb grazed my face.

“Um, shoot?” I suggested after a moment. “I think I just said shoot.”

He kept gazing at me, his expression unreadable. And then slowly, surely, he started to smile. It was a mischievous, boyish sort of smile, and his tense face was transformed.

“You did
not
just say shoot, Faith,” he said.

I couldn’t help but grin back at him, even though the feeling of a magnetic pull toward his body unsettled me.

“Whatever, I totally did!”

“Did not. You cussed!”

“You can’t prove anything. No one else was here!” Without thinking, I reached over and gave him a playful poke in the chest, like I would have if I were attempting to flirt with a boy back home.

Well, back when I used to attempt flirting. Since Blake, I hadn’t felt comfortable enough around guys to even make much eye contact. Let alone touch anyone. But there was certainly something different about
this
particular boy.

As soon as I touched him, Asher turned away and leaned back against the barn. It was as if an invisible brick wall came down between us.

Oops.

“Sorry,” I said, glad for the dim, pinkish light so he couldn’t see the red of my face. “I didn’t mean to … ”

“N-n-no, it’s okay,” Asher said, tripping over his words and still not looking at me. “I mean, after all, earlier I … but you know, we really sh-shouldn’t—”

“We shouldn’t be out here alone,” I finished for him. “You’re right.”

Neither of us made a move to leave.

“Because if someone from my family came back here and saw us together, it w-wouldn’t … ”

“It wouldn’t look good,” I said. “You’re totally right about that.”

Still, neither of us moved.

I leaned back against the barn near him, not quite letting my arm touch his, and we looked at the stars together. It was a quiet moment, with no sound except the crickets in the fields, the sleepy clucking of a few chickens, and a dog barking somewhere far away. And, of course, my wild heart thumping in my ears like an accompanying bass line.

“Because the thing is, Faith,” Asher said in a sudden rush. “The thing is, you’re a really nice, sweet girl. And … I’m not.”

I chuckled. “Well, it’s true you’re certainly not a girl, at least!”

He turned to look at me, his eyes wide again, and laughed. I’m sure he wasn’t used to talking to girls in this playful way. Except for maybe the girls he’d met in his college classes. I hoped he liked smart-ass girls like me.

“We just really shouldn’t be out here alone,” he continued, and sighed morosely. “This is just what Dad yelled at me about. I really don’t want him to be right all the time, but he always is.”

“Right about what?” I asked.

Asher shrugged and looked at the sky again. “He believes it’s my duty as a Christian man to help keep good Christian girls on as holy of a path as possible, because otherwise they could become impure. And impure women are temptresses. And if I allow one into my heart, I could be defrauded.”

I turned my head and rolled my eyes to the dark. Yes,
obviously
it was the man’s job to keep us weak-willed women in our place, otherwise we might cause men’s downfall, just like good old Eve. Even in that moment, I couldn’t help but be disgusted by the stupid dichotomy—that there were some people who really believed women could only be sluts or saints. Delicate objects who couldn’t think for themselves, or evil whores out to ruin men. We couldn’t just be human.

And, well, I guess I already knew which category these people would put me in. If they knew who I really was, that is.

I looked back at Asher and, without thinking any further about it, decided to take a risk.

“Is that what
you
believe, though?”

He looked at me, his brow knitted together. “Well, we’re supposed to, right? Isn’t that following a Christian path?”

“I guess,” I replied. “I’ve been thinking lately, though. I can’t speak for every girl in the world, of course, but I believe we were given free will and I’ve decided that I feel pretty responsible for my own path.”

My own path that had led directly to naked webcam pictures and school suspensions and social pariah-hood, that is. Still, at least it was a path that was all
mine.

“I mean, I appreciate your concern and all, but I feel like my … ” I searched for the words from my bank of fundamentalist-speak. “I feel like
I
should be the primary one who should purpose to protect the sanctity of my purity. Not, you know …
you.
I mean, you protect your own purity or whatever, but mine is my own business.”

Asher gave me a grim smile, searching my eyes, and then looked down at his shoes and scuffed them in the dirt a few times. “But oh, Faith, if you only knew.”

“Knew what?”

“My doubts,” he said.

“Doubts?”

He paused, chewed on his lip for a moment, and then looked back at me darkly.

“All these thoughts I can’t seem to stop myself from thinking. And how weak I am. You’d be much more concerned for your purity, if you knew. You wouldn’t be standing out here with me where no one can see us.”

My heart began to pick up again, and my palms started to sweat a bit. It felt like all my common sense and self-preservation had fled the scene with that one dark, wanting look he’d given me.

“Why wouldn’t I want to be here with you?” I asked, allowing some flirt to creep into my voice.

“Because,” he said softly. “Because all I want to do … ”

I stepped closer to him, staring up at his face, every nerve ending in my body irrationally aching to touch him and pull him close.

“What do you want to do?” I asked softly.

He lifted one of his hands. It was trembling a little. I looked down at his hand, then back at his face, which was tense and distraught like he was in physical pain. I lifted my own hand and put it softly against his, allowing my fingers to slide between his fingers as I watched his eyes.