Losing Faith (11 page)

“It is.” He nods. “It’s the smile.”

Suddenly, I miss Faith. Like, really miss her. And a tear escapes from my right eye.

“I know,” he says, like he can read my mind. “I miss her too.” He doesn’t
look away and let me save face, but keeps his warm eyes right on me.

I sit down and wipe my cheeks with a tissue from his desk. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“You said something at the funeral. Or maybe I heard something wrong. I don’t know.”

“Go on.”

“You said Faith hadn’t been in youth group for a while.”

“Yeah, it’s been pretty crazy, I guess. I was supposed to meet with her—” He pulls a day planner from the bottom of his stack of papers and opens it. At first, he thumbs through, but then he picks up the book and fans it. Stops in the middle and fans it again. Finally, he puts it down. “Well, I can’t find it right now, but we were supposed to meet, and then she had to cancel. I thought maybe the group was getting too big for her, maybe the music was getting too loud, and I thought we should talk about it.”

“But she went to youth events all the time. Like six nights a week. Why didn’t you just talk to her there?”

Pastor Scott crinkles his forehead. “Well, she hadn’t been coming to my Friday night meetings. Maybe she was going somewhere else. I know Grass Roots has a pretty big youth group, and they meet at least a couple times a week.”

I think about this, but it seems so strange that she wouldn’t mention it if she’d changed youth groups.

“I don’t know about six nights per week,” he goes on. “The home groups only meet once a week. And Faith’s was held at your house, right?”

I shake my head. “I’ve never met her home group.” In fact, she never mentioned one.

He looks up to the corner of the room, his face contorting. “I’m sorry, Brie. I have no excuse, I should know what was going on with their small group.” He pauses for a minute, squinting. Suddenly, he snaps his fingers, remembering something. “Celeste was in it.”

Well, duh. But with the mention of her name, I wonder if she’s back in town yet. Maybe I should e-mail her, since I haven’t seen her at school.

Pastor Scott’s eyes droop a little. “I’m afraid when the youth group expanded so quickly, I just lost track.”

“Oh. That makes sense.” I can’t blame him. I’d completely lost track of my sister too, and we lived in the same house.

Pastor Scott stares down at his desk.

“Do you think,” I say, “I mean, when you did know her better. Do you think her death could have been …” I can’t say the word
suicide
, it gets stuck in my throat. “… um, intentional?”

Pastor Scott stares at me for a few seconds, tilts his head
as though he doesn’t understand the question. Finally, he shakes his head. “No, Brie. Faith didn’t kill herself. That’s one thing I’m sure of.”

His words make me feel so relieved I want to jump out of my chair and hug him. I didn’t know how badly I needed to hear this. “How do you know?” I venture.

“I don’t have all the answers,” he says, “but she loved the Lord. She trusted Him.” He stops and takes in a big breath through his nose. “What I do know is He has a plan and a grace for all of us and what we’re going through.”

He who? What plan? I scan Pastor Scott’s face and quickly catch on. Right. The Big Plan. The Big God Plan. “Yeah, I know,” I say, standing to leave.

“If you ever want to talk again, Brie … Just wait, I want to give you my phone number.” He just stares at me though, and after a second I realize that finding a scrap piece of paper would likely upset his whole world. So finally I pull out my cell phone and punch in his number as he rattles it off. “You don’t have to do this alone. …”

He goes on, but I tune him out, force a smile and nod. Here it comes, his Christianese spiel. I’ve heard it, and I just don’t want to hear it again.

“Don’t lose that smile,” he says, as I back through the door and shut it behind me.

chapter
TEN

a
ll evening I watch movies with one eye on my cell phone, but Dustin doesn’t call. This relieves me and freaks me out at the same time. Does he see through me and know I didn’t really want to meet up with him?

But as worried as I am, I can’t bring myself to pick up my phone and dial. After Dad’s fit about me coming home late from school, I can’t even imagine what would happen if he found my room empty at midnight. I have woken up a few times to my door cracking open and one of them checking on me in the middle of the night. And part of me likes that.

I dial Amy, ready to apologize, say whatever I have to in order to set things straight. But when her voice mail clicks on, I chicken out and decide it’s much better to talk to her in person.

Sunday morning, I don’t know how Dad does it, but he prods Mom out the door and they look just as fixed up as they always did for church. I spend the whole day feeling like a stranger in my own home. Feeling like our house has been taken over by ghosts.

Plan J: Back to school. Talk to whoever still wants to talk to me.

Tessa eyes me as I open my locker beside her on Monday. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks.” I reach up and smooth my hair, but several of the wisps won’t stay. “It’s been a long weekend.”

She pulls wrinkled papers from behind her books, straightens them out, and reads them one at a time, like she’s looking for a specific one. “Your parents acting weird?”

Amazing how much she knows, without me having to say a word. I nod. “They freaked out when I didn’t come home right after school last week. Then they sent me to talk to this guy at my dad’s church.”

Tessa muffles a laugh. “My parents sent me to some preacher a few years ago too. I told him a thing or five.” She
shoves the crumpled papers back into her locker. They almost fall out but she shuts the door on them.

I smile. So this is how it is. The most normal conversation I can have is with Terrifying Tessa. She’s the closest thing I have to a friend.

“See you later?” I ask as I shut my locker door.

“Yeah.” She nods. “Later.”

Just as I leave my locker, I spot Amy at the other end of the hallway, but when she sees me she ducks into the girls’ bathroom. I can tell she’s avoiding me, but I don’t care. I pick up my pace and push through the door.

The bell rings and the five or six girls inside disperse out the two end doors, but none of them are Amy. Two stall doors remain shut and I lean against the counter waiting, not caring that I’ll be late for class. The first girl to emerge is my friend Steph.

“Hi!” I try to sound chipper.

She doesn’t respond and looks away as soon as she sees me, which makes the few seconds while she washes her hands incredibly uncomfortable. I guess if I’d known there were sides to choose, it would have been obvious she would take Amy’s. They were friends first, and Steph truly belongs in the makeup-and-fashion-fanatics club. Or maybe she’s just playing it cool because Amy can hear us.

Obviously I’ll need to put things back together with Amy first.

While I’m thinking this, the other stall opens, but it’s not her. Steph and the other girl skirt out the far door and I can visualize Amy having made a beeline through the bathroom just to escape me.

Right. So maybe she needs another week to get over her PMS.

I track down Dustin outside the gym before I leave for the day.

“You didn’t call.” The moment it leaves my mouth, I know it sounds like an accusation. “I mean, it’s probably a good thing because I ended up having to do this … stuff.”
Like meet with the church pastor, watch old movies I couldn’t even concentrate on, phone ex-best-friends and hang up on their voice mail.
Obviously I can’t elaborate.

He glances into the gym like he’s in a hurry. “Well, no worries, then, right?” He looks back at me and flashes one of his sweet smiles. My anxiety from last week almost totally subsides, and I hope he’ll pull me close again. Give me another chance to prove I can be a good girlfriend. But I can tell he needs to go.

“Well, next weekend for sure,” I tell him. His sexy face is pulling me in and I can’t seem to help making promises. Besides, it’s a
whole week away. My parents can’t expect me to stay home forever.

He offers a nod, a peck on my cheek, and then disappears through the door.

At home I’m glad to hear Mom puttering in the kitchen again. When I walk over to see what she’s making, she meets me on the opposite side of the swinging door.

“I just need a little time to myself,” she says.

I’m so happy she’s back to cooking, I decide not to push it. Instead, I head toward my room to start on homework—something I haven’t been able to concentrate on for a while. Maybe life
is
getting back to normal. Or at least as normal as it can be. The thought makes me stop in place on the stairs and wonder. What will life be like for us in a year? Will we be over this and used to living without her? Or will our house always feel empty? Will we have to move somewhere else to get away from the holes?

An hour later, I haven’t solved any of life’s questions or a single math problem. I tidy up the living room, but when I dust the bookshelves, I notice half of them are empty. My first assumption is that Mom started to clean out some of Faith’s things. But when I read the spines, all I see are Faith’s Christian novels. It’s the rest of our books that are missing.

I squint to try and figure out the logic in that.

When Ol’ Granny rattles into the driveway, I peer out the window and watch Dad get out. His shoulders are straight; his jaw isn’t in that tense, forced smile he usually wears.

Plan K: Talk to Dad.

“Can I talk to you for a sec?” He hasn’t even hung up his coat yet.
Down, Brie, down.

“Sure, honey. I just have to make one call. …” He trails off when he sees my face.

Do I look too serious? I blink hard to reset my expression.

He walks over and puts his hands on both my shoulders. “What’s up, sweetie?”

“Oh, no big deal,” I say too loudly. “I was just, well …” I have no words. I can’t say her name. Not to him. “It’s about youth group,” I say finally.

Dad looks confused, but only for a second. “Did you talk to Pastor Overly about it?”

Right. He thinks I want to join the youth group. And that may not seem like the safest place in the world right now. “Well, mostly I wanted to clear something up.”

Dad tugs me over to the couch and sits down with me. “Oh, okay. You have some questions?”

Great, now he thinks I want him to lead me in some
special salvation prayer. He must not remember I said that whole spiel when I was eight.

“It’s about Faith,” I say.

Dad’s face immediately adopts the tense, rigid look. I go on anyway.

“I don’t know what I’m asking, Dad. I guess I just don’t get her, and maybe I never got her, but now that she’s gone, I need to and I don’t know if I can figure this out on my own.” When I finally shut my mouth, the seconds ticking on the wall clock sound amplified.

His voice is quiet. Controlled. “I think you’re looking for something that isn’t there because you’re having trouble letting go, Brie.” He loosens his tie. “We have to try to move on.”

“I’m moving on, Dad, believe me, I’m trying.”

“There are things we’ll never know, honey. But God knows everything. That needs to be enough.”

Mom opens the kitchen door. “Dinner’s ready,” she says.

Both of us stop and turn in her direction. It’s like we’ve gone back in time. We stare at her, stunned for a moment.

It must be the uncomfortable silence that makes me speak. “We were just talking about Faith.”

Mom drops her eyes to the carpet in front of her and then backs through the door into the kitchen without another word.

Dad lets out a loud breath through his nostrils, then pushes
himself up with both hands and marches for the kitchen.

Several minutes later when my conscience gets the best of me, I walk for the kitchen too. Mom and Dad both sit at the table with their heads down. Normally, I’d think they were praying, but for the tense feeling. Nuisance is splayed under Mom’s chair, his head drooping across his paws like he has no plans to move anytime this year.

I lift the lid from the pot on the table before I sit. Franks and beans. I scan the counters and see two cans, lying empty on their sides. What had Mom been doing in the kitchen the whole afternoon? And how could she, of all people, stoop to canned mush? But from there, my eyes go to Ms. Frostbite and take in the preschool drawings now plastered across the front, Faith’s name at the top of every one.

Silently, I scoop some of the sweet muck onto my plate and sit down. I assume the same position my parents are in and listen to the kitchen clock tick.

Well, as long as all the weirdness is gone …

chapter
ELEVEN

Plan L: Youth group, here I come.

Since Mom and Dad won’t talk about Faith, I decide to try another route to reconnect with my sister. After dinner, I flip through the Yellow Pages and scan the plethora of church listings. At first I don’t know where to start, but when I see Grass Roots, I remember Pastor Scott mentioning that one. I look up their website, and the fancy flash screen tells me their youth group meets on Tuesday and Friday nights.

After school Tuesday, I call and let my parents know I’m sticking around school to work on a project and will be home by ten. My cell phone will be on. Since Dad’s still at work and Mom won’t pick up the phone for anybody, I just leave the
excuse on the answering machine. It is pretty crazy though, that I’m lying to my parents because I don’t want to tell them I’m going to youth group.

I head to the school library to find the online city bus schedule. It doesn’t take me long to figure out my way to Grass Roots Community Church, and once I arrive I sit outside on the bench to attack some of my homework while I wait. The church looms high into the sky behind me, much bigger and newer than Crestview.

Just after six, I call home to make sure my school project plan is kosher. Dad answers on the second ring.