Faking Faith (22 page)

Mom seemed to realize that maybe she’d gone a little far. She shrugged. “And going to a good college wouldn’t hurt, either,” she said with a smile. “And for that, of course, you need a good GPA and all … ”

That was more like it. “God, Mom, it’s summer. Get off my back.” I made a face and crossed my arms in a pretend huff.

We both laughed and linked arms to go greet the rest of our family.

“Dylan, you’re home early! I hope they didn’t kick you out,” Dad said, smiling, stepping over the stuff he and Scottie had dumped in the entryway. They’d been at a banquet for the end of Scottie’s soccer camp.

“Ha ha, Dad,” I said, rolling my eyes and giving him a hug.

“They, um, didn’t actually kick you out, right?” he asked, looking worried.

“No!”

“Does this girl have a story for you,” said Mom. “You won’t believe it.”

We sat around the island in the kitchen, eating chips, and Dad and Scottie listened with gaped mouths as I told them about the last few weeks.

Dad was somewhat less impressed with what I’d done. “Why would you want to go spend time with those sort of people?” he asked. “There’s a whole world of people out there, and you go hang out with the crazies?”

“They’re not crazy, Dad,” I said. “Well, not most of them. They just have different … priorities. And beliefs. And ways of living.”

“And chickens,” said Scottie, who thought living on a farm sounded kind of awesome.

“Yes, and chickens.” I smiled at him.

Dad looked at Mom. “So, are we going to punish her for this or what?”

Mom shrugged. “Well, you know, in the grand scheme of things she could have done, this doesn’t exactly qualify as horrible. Did you learn any valuable lessons?” she asked me.

“I think so,” I said. “Lying for that long is terrible and it hurts people.”

Mom nodded. “Anything else?”

I thought of Abigail. It was eight p.m. right now, which meant she would be cleaning up from dinner, whirling around the kitchen with her mom and Chastity. Beau would probably be there. I shivered.

“I’m really, really thankful for my life,” I said.

“You’re not going to want to go to church all the time, are you?” Dad asked nervously. “You weren’t, like, converted into a cult or anything, right?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think organized religion is for me. At least, not like that.”

Dad looked relieved.

“I mean, it would be nice to believe in something,” I said. “I was … jealous of that. I guess.”

Mom and Dad glanced at each other again.

“We believe in things,” said Dad, defensively.

“Such as?” I asked.

“Well … ” he looked uncomfortable. “Hard work and discipline and … ”

He trailed off, looking at Mom for help.

“Being an honorable and hardworking person,” she said. “And being loyal to your family. And accepting people the way they are.”

I nodded. “Those are all good things.”

“Love,” Mom said, putting her arms around both Scottie and me. “We believe in love.”

“Gross,” said Scottie, wrinkling his nose as Mom kissed his head.

“Don’t you feel like our family values those things?” Mom asked. “I mean, we don’t go around talking about it all the time—”

“I know,” I said. “I think maybe I just … forgot about it. Maybe we could talk about it more.”

Mom sighed. “We’ll work harder at it, Pickle. We’ll try.”

“It’s never too late to change, I guess,” I said, smiling at them.

TWENTY-EIGHT

M
om hadn’t been kidding about taking the summer off, and we started going regularly to a kickboxing class at the gym. After more than a week of bustling around at the Deans’, I was amazed by how awake I felt compared to before the trip. Even if my brain was wild and confused with everything that had happened, my body had certainly appreciated the time not spent sitting in front of a computer like an inert blob.

The class instructor yelled at us, urging us to work harder, to grunt and yell as we went through the routine. She told us to imagine we were fighting someone we hated.

I put Beau’s face in the line of my fist as I punched. I imagined Mr. Dean at the receiving end of my foot. It was very satisfying.

One day in early August, a few weeks after I’d gotten home, Mom and I were walking out to the parking lot after class, laughing as we compared notes.

And that’s when I saw Amanda.

She’d seen me first and was hanging back by her car, fidgeting with her keys and watching me with a nervous expression on her face.

A month before, I would have walked on by, acting like I hadn’t seen her. I would have been certain she was judging and hating me, remembering details of my appearance to gossip over with Kelsey. Or that she was scared to be seen with me.

Basically, I would have assumed the worst.

But this time, after telling Mom I’d meet her at the car, I walked right up to my old friend. Her eyes got bigger and bigger as I got closer.

“Hey, Amanda,” I said, smiling.

For a second, I was afraid she wouldn’t respond. But then she smiled back, looking just as amazed as I was that this interaction was happening.

“Oh, um, hey Dylan. What’s up?”

“How’s your summer going?”

She giggled nervously and then said, “It’s okay, I guess. You?”

“Well, it’s been mighty weird,” I said with a laugh. “To say the least.”

It was so bizarre, as if no time had passed between that moment and the last time we’d talked like friends. At the party, right before everything changed.

“You … you look good!” she said. “Like you’ve been … getting out?”

She cringed as she finished her sentence, as if realizing how it could be construed as bitchy. Anyone would be able to guess that since the Blake thing, I hadn’t been getting out much.

But I just smiled and nodded, letting it go. “You could say that.”

“So … ” she said, looking down at her feet.

“So … ” I said.

“Dylan, I just—” she said, at the same time that I blurted out, “Can I say something?”

We both stopped and laughed.

“You first,” I said.

“Well, I just … ” She hesitated. “I’m glad I ran into you, because I just wanted to say that I feel really bad about what you went through last year. Like, really really bad? Especially since school’s been out and I’ve had more time to sit around and think about it. What happened to you was awful and … I should’ve figured out how to be there for you. I’m just … I’m just really sorry, and I was wondering if … and I know it’s kind of a long shot … but if you’d maybe forgive me?”

She searched my face anxiously, obviously worried about how I would react. But in my head, there was only one possible way to respond to what Amanda had just said. I stepped forward and threw my arms around her. She laughed with relief and hugged me back.

“I’m sorry, too!” I said, surprised at how familiar it felt to hug her again. “I was terrible to you and Kelsey at that party. And I was terrible after it, too. I mean, you guys were so right about Blake and I didn’t want to listen to you because I was so stubborn and … and prideful.”

We stepped away from each other, and I was surprised to see tears in her eyes.

“After that happened,” she said, “I really wanted to have your back, but … well … ”

I remembered the time in the hallway. When Amanda had tried to make peace but I’d walked away and not allowed her to finish.

“I didn’t really want my back to be had,” I said, cringing. “I was pretty pissed off at the world.”

“Who can blame you?” she burst out sympathetically. “After what that pathetic excuse for a person did to you? Anyone would be angry, right?”

I nodded. “He’s basically the worst thing ever.”

“Totally. The absolute worst.”

We stood there for a moment, both sunny and smiling at each other in our moment of reconciliation, but then I had to ask.

“How does Kelsey feel about all of this? And me?”

Amanda’s face clouded a bit.

“Oh, you know her,” Amanda said. “She kind of—”

“Holds grudges?” I suggested. “Like an elephant?”

“Yep,” she replied. “But I know she misses you, you know? There have been all these times when we’re talking and she starts to say something about ‘remember when we … ’ and then she trails off and gets sad and I know she’s thinking about you.”

“I think about her, too. About both of you,” I said, finally letting a wave of longing for my old friends pass over me. I tried to push away the conflicted feelings I still had—where had they been when things were getting thrown at my head in class? When people were writing stuff on my locker and sending me cruel emails? They’d been avoiding me. Pretending I didn’t exist.

It was almost like Amanda was reading my mind. She’d always been so good at that, defusing the situation.

“Dyl, you should have seen how pissed Kelsey got at people who said nasty things about you,” she said. “After those pictures came out, I had to talk her out of going after Blake with a baseball bat, you know? She heard about some guys who were going to toilet paper your house, and told them she’d destroy them all if so much as one square ended up in your yard.”

She gave a short laugh. “One time, we came into school early to try and scrub some of that stuff off your locker that people kept writing. We almost got it all cleaned off, too.”

I stared at her, wondering how it was possible I hadn’t known any of this.

“But … ” I said dumbly, “why didn’t you … ”

“Kelsey didn’t want you to know about it,” Amanda said with a shrug. “She was … well, we were both still hurt and didn’t think you wanted us around. We were waiting for you to come back to us. To … you know, be honest with us?”

I pursed my lips, trying to process this new information. It felt like the world was shifting and things were becoming clearer.

“Can we fix this?” I asked Amanda. “I mean, for-real fix it, not just gloss it over and pretend-everything-is-okay-when-it’s-really-not fix it? I’ll totally take half the blame, too. All the blame, if I have to.”

She looked at me and smiled. “I’m sure we can figure it out.”

. . .

We arranged a peace summit for the next evening, at the diner where we used to hang out all the time back when things were normal. Amanda didn’t tell Kelsey I was going to be there, and when Kelsey walked into the restaurant and saw me sitting in the booth, I could see how much she just wanted to turn around and walk right out again.

“Kels, over here!” said Amanda brightly.

Reluctantly, like twenty-pound weights were tied to both her ankles, Kelsey trudged over and slid into the booth next to Amanda.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hi,” she replied, picking up the menu and pretending to be absorbed in it.

I left her alone for a moment, knowing she’d need some time to adjust to this turn of events. Kelsey didn’t do well with surprises even in the best of times.

Eventually she slammed her menu down on the table and openly glared at me.

“So what’s this all about?” she said, her dark eyes
flashing.

Amanda told her about running into me the day before and how we’d talked and made up. “It was all just a stupid, stubborn misunderstanding, right?” she concluded. “No one’s fault, exactly, just stupid. And it’s gone on way too long, hasn’t it?”

Kelsey and I were having a little impromptu staring contest. I blinked first, on purpose, and she looked momentarily triumphant.

“But you started it, Dylan,” Kelsey said. “You told us we were jealous when we were just trying to protect you from that douchenozzle. And then you ignored us, your best friends. It was like we didn’t exist. Seeing you walk through the halls with him was like … like … it was really awful.”

There was pain in her voice. And since Kelsey was not the type to ever show pain if she could help it, I knew it was a big deal. She meant it.

My first instinct was still to get defensive. To declare they hadn’t been supportive of me, and that they’d totally deserted me in my hour of need. An irrational part of me was still feeling betrayed and in pain and wanted to take it out on them, wanted to make them feel guilty about what had happened.

Then another part of me spoke, with something that sounded like Abigail’s voice.
Forgive.

I thought of all the times the three of us had stood up for each other, when we were our indestructible little force to be reckoned with. I thought about what Amanda had said, the covert ways they’d stuck up for me that I hadn’t even known about.

And I thought of Abigail, out in that garden, thinking she had no friends and no choices. And here I was, with all the choices in the world. And with friends who loved me and had my back, even when I’d been convinced I was alone.

I swallowed hard. “You’re right,” I told Kelsey. “You were just trying to protect me, and I blew you off. And I was too stubborn to back down, even when it was obvious he was indeed a … douche.”