Faking Faith (9 page)

In the half hour while dinner was cooking and everyone was busy with other things, Abigail beckoned me over to the little wood-paneled computer room off the kitchen.

“Come on, Faith, I have a surprise!” she said.

We sat down in front of her computer, a lumbering old PC my school would have junked years ago.

“I posted an ordinary update early this morning before you woke up, but now I’m going to tell everyone in blogland that you’re here for a visit!”

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “Is that really a good idea? What if people … think it’s strange?”

“Oh, you’re silly! We’re having such fun together, aren’t we? They’ll be happy for us.” She nudged me with her elbow. “Let’s take a picture.”

A thrill of fear went through me. Except for the one picture I had Scottie take when I first started my blog, I hadn’t posted any further photos of myself. And I was sure I had nowhere near the traffic that Abigail had. Thousands of people would see this post.

What if someone saw me and recognized my face?

Abigail took a digital camera from a drawer in the desk. “Say cheese!”

She put her arm around me and her face next to mine, and I tried to smile as normally as possible for the camera. We looked at the resulting picture, and I thought the fear in my eyes was a little too obvious. I looked tense and awkward next to the sweetly smiling Abigail.

“Um, sorry,” I said. “I’m not very photogenic.”

“Shush, you’re lovely. Let’s take some goofy ones, too!” she said, wiggling in her seat.

So we both stuck our tongues out and made stupid faces, and then loaded them into the computer and laughed at the results.

“Do you want to help me write my blog entry?” she asked.

I smiled, thinking how bizarre it was to be helping my online hero write her blog. I tried to imagine telling me-from-six-months-ago what lay in the future, and totally failed. I wouldn’t have believed myself. Wouldn’t have believed I’d ever have the guts to do this.

“Sure!”

We worked together for a while, typing out a scripted conversation about how we had “met” and what we were doing while I was visiting. I tried to help Abigail liven it up a little bit and include some tasteful jokes. As much as they fascinated me, I’d noticed that a lot of girls from these families rarely read anything other than the Bible, cookbooks, and Jane Austen novels, and their prose was often a little stilted and strangely formal as a result. Plus they used a lot of weird made-up words like “convicting” and thought that “purpose” was a verb. Abigail seemed to appreciate my help.

“You’re so clever!” she said, giggling. “How did you get so clever?”

I just shrugged. “Oh, you know … a God-given talent, I suppose!”

“Mama will get such a kick out of this,” Abigail said. “She reads it before I’m allowed to post it, of course.”

“Of course,” I said.

“Your parents read your blog posts before you publish them, right?” Abigail asked.

“Well … sure,” I said awkwardly. For some reason, this lie hit me a little harder than all the others. If there was one thing my parents were completely oblivious about, it was my online activity. I could be running an illegal gambling operation for all they knew.

“I’m glad they keep such good watch on us, aren’t you?” Abigail said. “It’s scary how big the Internet can be. I’m glad to just have my nice little corner where we found each other.”

“Right,” I agreed. “It is a pretty nice corner.”

As Abigail was uploading a goofy picture of us to the blog post, she glanced at me.

“Faith, do you remember the first question you ever sent to me?”

Uh oh.

“Hmm, I don’t know,” I said. “It was such a long time ago.”

“About the being-very-lonely thing,” she prompted. “Because you did something wrong?”

I started playing with some paperclips on the desk, compulsively hooking them together and taking them apart. “Oh, yeah, I guess I remember that.”

She put her hand on my hands, gently ending my fidgeting.

“Will you tell me what that was about?” she asked. “I mean, now that we’re real-life friends.”

Well, this was great. Time to come up with something tame and logical on the spot. I’d never really filled in this part of Faith’s back story in my mind. I’d hoped that somehow Abigail had forgotten about it. What a total mistake.

“It’s kind of a long story,” I said, stalling for time. “And aren’t we eating dinner soon?”

“We have a few minutes,” she said, looking at me worriedly. “But … you know, it’s perfectly okay if you don’t want to talk about it.”

I sighed. Her being so sweet and understanding made me feel even guiltier. I’d just have to wing it.

“Um … so, I used to have these two friends. At … church. And we were super close and did everything together for a long time … ”

“And what happened?”

“Well … I started hanging out with … another friend. Who they didn’t like very much. They thought my new friend wasn’t very, um, virtuous or faithful. So my old friends got really angry and yelled at me and then stopped talking to me.”

Abigail’s mouth was hanging open.

“They yelled at you? That’s terrible!” she said.

And also not very fair. To my friends.

“Well, I mean … I stopped speaking to them, too, I guess. Because I was mad at them for not trusting me. So it was sort of mutual.”

“I see,” she said, looking confused. “But … what did you mean when you said you did something bad?”

I shrugged awkwardly.

“The thing is, they were totally right about the new friend and I should have listened to them,” I admitted. “The new friend was … not a kind person. At all. We aren’t talking anymore either, which is definitely a good thing.”

“But your old friends still don’t want to be friends with you? Even after you realized you’d been wrong?”

“No,” I said miserably. “But it’s okay. I don’t deserve it anyway.”

“Faith!” Abigail admonished. “Of course you deserve it. Did you ask their forgiveness?”

I shook my head, folding and refolding a paperclip, not looking at her.

“Did … did you ask the Lord for forgiveness?” she asked softly.

“No,” I said, suddenly feeling like I might cry.

“ ‘If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,’ ” she quoted. “You know, from John. God knows that we all make mistakes, and we all deserve forgiveness if we own up to our failings and always strive to be better. Right?”

For once I felt like the flowery words actually spoke to me. Not that I was going to immediately call up my old friends and admit that I’d been wrong and they’d been right all along. But the concept of accepting that I wasn’t perfect, and then asking for forgiveness, being cleansed, and moving on—instead of stewing around and then pretending it hadn’t happened—was … something to think about.

Though in the more immediate sense, the guilt I felt about lying to Abigail was starting to grow and fester and become a heavy anvil hanging precariously over my head. She was so good and kind and believed all this stuff with her whole heart. And I was such a dirty liar who in no way should be here polluting her.

My mistakes were obviously not entirely in my past.

Abigail smiled at me and put her hand on my shoulder. She had absolutely no idea what was happening in my head, and that somehow made it worse.

“Come on, Faith, let’s go set the table,” she said, with a soft squeeze.

ELEVEN

I
was avoiding eye contact with Asher as much as possible. Whenever he was around, I felt like a ball of exposed nerve endings, waiting for something to jump out and hurt me.

However, I found there was no way I could avoid watching him when he wasn’t looking at me. And not just because he was total eye candy.

I couldn’t help but notice how sweet and gentle he was with his younger siblings, and how he seemed to take his role as a big brother very seriously. Whenever he was around, he was forever giving piggyback rides or answering endless questions or quietly instructing. He would listen patiently to the little kids, not once laughing at them or shrugging them off.

It was undeniably adorable.

As Abigail and I did the dishes after dinner the next night, I decided to take a risk and ask about him.

“So what does Asher do all day? Does he have a job or something?”

Abigail shook her head. “He used to take classes at the community college in Carbondale. But that turned out to be a bad idea, so he works a lot with Daddy and around the farm. He’s going into the house-building business with Daddy officially, as soon as he saves up enough money to invest.”

“Why was community college a bad idea?” I asked, as casually as possible.

Abigail gave me a sidelong look, as if assessing me. I tried to look innocent, wondering if I’d taken my questioning too far.

“I mean, not that I—”

“Honestly, it’s a little bit of a scandal,” she whispered, interrupting me.

“Really?” Now this was interesting. Asher had a scandal, too? Was this the mysterious “trouble” that Abigail had asked her readers to pray about?

“You have to promise you’ll never breathe a word to anyone about this! Not ever ever!”

I solemnly promised.

“Okay, I’m only telling you because I trust you completely.” Abigail took a deep breath and leaned in toward me, speaking softly. “Last year, Asher met a girl from town in one of his classes and he claims that they
fell in love
.”

She said it like it was the worst, most shameful thing that a nineteen-year-old guy could do. As if it were on par with throwing puppies in a river or running over a little old lady.

“Really?” I said, trying to look shocked. “In love?”

“Yes.” Abigail went back to scrubbing a pan. “Daddy was so furious. This girl was a total stranger—she wasn’t even a real Christian! She went to public school and goes to a Catholic Church. Can you imagine? Daddy told Asher that clearly the devil had gotten into him. That he had been tempted, and he’d been weak and had fallen, and now his soul is tainted.”

“Wow,” I said, blinking rapidly, trying to assemble all this information in my head. “You said he met her in one of his classes?”

“They were assigned to work on a project together, which Asher never even told us about, and they spent time alone.” I knew that I was supposed to gasp in a horrified manner at this, so I did. Asher spending time alone with an unrelated and unmarried girl was highly forbidden, of course. It’s as if everyone thought teenagers would start bonking like bunnies if they didn’t have constant supervision. “And he told me that one thing just led to another and they talked about all sorts of things and he really liked her. Apparently, even though she wasn’t a
real
Christian, she was actually very nice.”

Imagine that.

“Well, what happened next?” I asked, wincing as I rinsed a pot in the scalding hot water.

“Asher snuck around with her for weeks, and then Daddy found out. This was, oh, six months ago or so. One of the men from our church saw them together at a park. Holding hands and kissing, right out in public! Daddy got in such a rage, it was scary. He told Asher he had to quit school and come work for him, and that he wasn’t to be trusted alone with any girl except his sisters until he was married.”

“Oh my word!” I said.

She sighed. “Daddy said that none of his children would ever set foot in a government institution again, if that’s the sort of thing that went on there. Asher was heartbroken. He said that he really cared about this girl, and she cared about him. But Daddy threatened to throw him out of the house if he ever spoke to her again. I mean, of course I understand why Daddy did that, but it was awful to see Asher take it so badly. ”

Gross. It seemed so controlling and cruel. As if a nineteen-year-old guy should be ashamed of being attracted to someone, and made to feel guilty for having a normal desire to hold hands and make out. And it was just unfair that jackasses like Blake were free to be awful to girls, while a guy like Asher, who seemed decent and kind (if disturbingly cute), was kept under lock and key.

The world needed more guys like Asher.

“Daddy was a little doubtful about you coming to visit,” Abigail continued. “Because he still thinks the devil has a hold inside Asher. We all had a big talk about it, though, and I think you’re even a bit of a test for him, to see if he can act appropriately around you.”

So that’s why he’d been so awkward around me. That’s why the whole family got weird and silent the night Asher said he was thankful for meeting me. They were afraid he was going to lose all control and try to defraud me or something.

Too bad I was coming to the uncomfortable realization that part of me wouldn’t mind getting defrauded by Asher.

“How does Asher feel about all this? Does he ever talk about it?”

Abigail looked sad. “He really hates to talk about it, and I think he still feels awful. Daddy told him he’d visited sin upon the family. Asher is pretty sensitive, for a boy, and Daddy’s always been on him about being a real man. Asher prays and tries to be upbeat, but I think he’s still confused. It probably would have been better if he’d never gone to college at all and never even had those thoughts put in his head.”