Page 25 of People Like Us

He sat slowly. “You know I don’t care about your family’s financial status, right?”

I smiled sweetly, the smile I had perfected before I was old enough to drive as I picked up our son, and slid him into his chair.

“Of course,” I said. “It’s just not safe.” Which was not entirely untrue. The steps sagged and the bathroom floor dipped near the tub like soft earth near a grave. But that wasn’t the real reason either. He studied me another beat, then let it go.

“Do noodles count as a vegetable?” asked the tiny voice between us.

“No,” we said together.

“I made your favorite.” I said gesturing to the plate my husband still hadn’t acknowledged.

He looked down at it, then up at me with a grin that still managed to be boyish after all these years. “Oh no.”

“What?” I frowned.

“The last time you made my favorite meal, you bought a hot tub.”

I laughed on cue.

“What’d you do this time?” he chided.

The kitchen seemed to narrow. For one terrible second I thought of the notebook in the cabinet. Of August’s name nowhere on its pages and everywhere in them. Of spending the entire week thinking of a boy I had not seen in years while chopping onions, folding laundry, answering emails, mothering a child.

Guilt rose swift and sour in my throat.

I hadn’t done anything wrong. Not really. Not yet.

Yet? I echoed my own thoughts. What did my subconscious think I was going to do? I had only remembered. Still, it felt like betrayal. I pressed my hands to the edge of the table so no one would see them tremble.

“Nothing,” I said, smiling tightly. “I just love you.” The sentence tasted strange. Not false exactly. But handled too many times. Like a ring beginning to varnish from too much wear.

He reached for my wrist and kissed the inside of it absently before beginning his dinner.

Chapter Eleven

Youth group met every Wednesday evening in a squat cinder block building behind the church, while the mothers had their women’s studies in the main building.

The yellowed lights buzzed overhead, our folding chairs arranged in a crooked circle. On the far wall, a hand-painted mural of the Jordan River had begun to chip at the center, exposing gray concrete beneath the blue water. Sometimes I wondered if it was from age, or if someone had been brushing against it on a regular basis.

I sat beside Andy, our knees touching. His leg swung back and forth with a restless energy that shook my chair every few seconds. He’d been in a mood since the parking lot after school.

I was eternally grateful my stepmother worked the evening at the salon on Wednesdays so I only had one adult to perform for here, if Pastor Sam could even be considered an adult. He was younger than most of the church men, which made the adults think he was cool by default. He wore band t-shirts and called us guys like he was one of us.

He stood in the center of our chairs with a Bible tucked beneath one arm and a styrofoam cup of orange soda in the other.

“Peer pressure,” he said, pacing slowly. “That’s one of Satan’s favorite tools.” He paused there, spinning on his heel slowly to look at each of us, letting the sentence breathe like it deserved applause.

“You have to be careful who you surround yourselves with. If your friends are drinking, partying, sleeping around, disrespecting authority—those influences rub off. Bad company corrupts good morals.”

A few heads nodded solemnly. I stared at the stain creeping across the ceiling above him. It looked like a country on a map, jagged and spreading.

What he meant, of course, was don’t make friends with anyone interesting.

Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding because people were bored. That seemed relevant. Nobody ever brought that up in these discussions though. They acted like alcohol had been invented in 1987 by devil worshippers in a basement listening to Nirvana somewhere far away from here.

Jesus also spent time with Mary Magdalene, who they talked about in tones usually reserved for hurricanes and disease. So why exactly was it scandalous if I was friends with girls who snuck vodka into Sprite bottles or slept with their boyfriends—or other girls—I didn’t know.

The church loved to pick which verses to shove down our throats and which ones to chew up privately and spit out.