Small Town Sinners

by Melissa Walker

  “I’m done!” I say to Ty.

  “Let’s go,” he replies.

  We take both of our cars and drive out to Ulster Park.

  Even though I’ve told my mom that my shift lasts until eight p.m. on Saturdays, it really only goes until seven. It’s a dangerous lie, because my parents know Mel, of course, but they trust me. That makes me feel half-guilty and half-confident in my deception.

  This is the third Saturday in a row that Ty and I have spent the evening out at Ulster Park. We catch the end of twilight, when the sky gets that dusty filter and the fireflies flicker. We’ve mostly just been talking about faith, life—all these big questions and concepts that feel so new the way Ty looks at them. But tonight I plan to ask him why he hasn’t kissed me. If I can get up the nerve.

  Ty spreads his old sleeping bag on top of the hill in what I’ve come to think of as “our spot,” in the same way that the fallen log in the woods is my friends’ spot. This one, however, has romantic potential.

  Usually, I leave a foot between us on the sleeping bag. Tonight I edge more toward Ty. In a burst of confidence I lean my head on his shoulder.

  I feel his breath quicken but he doesn’t push me away. We sit like that for a few moments, and then I say, “I like being with you.”

  It sounds so simple and innocuous on one level, but so forward and flirty on another. And his silence after I say it means that my own voice is echoing in my mind, taking on a hundred different interpretations and connotations and making me feel more insecure by the second.

  Finally, Ty sighs and moves his shoulder from under my head.

  I stare forward into space, not wanting to face him as he pulls his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them.

  “I like being with you too, Lacey,” he says. Which is the right thing to say, but the way he’s all curled in a ball, like he’s protecting himself from me, tells a different story.

  “Okay,” I say. And I’m so tired of us sitting here, talking about everything, things I don’t even talk to my best friends about, that I turn to face him now with renewed energy, silencing the doubting voices in my head.

  “So what is it?” I ask. “Do you like me, but you’re not attracted to me? Or maybe you like Starla Joy? Or someone else entirely, like …,” and I think about how I saw Ty talking to Bore-a Bergen in the halls earlier this week, and I let out a small gasp. “It’s not Laura Bergen, is it?”

  He chuckles and shakes his head at me. “No,” he says. “It’s not Laura Bergen. It’s not Starla Joy. And it isn’t that I’m not attracted to you. You’ve got the prettiest face I’ve ever seen, Lacey Anne. And you keep getting prettier.”

  I look away from him now, embarrassed but also the good kind of nervous, because I can feel the electricity between us. And he just admitted to feeling it too, in his own way.

  He reaches for my chin, bringing my eyes back to him and holding my face tilted upward like he did once before, but this time he follows through with what I expect—a kiss. It’s soft and gentle, but I can also feel the longing within it. Tingles pass through my body and down to my toes, and I’m not sure I’m breathing.

  When we pull back, I open my pale eyes and look into his bright blue ones. I can feel that mine are shining with happiness—this is what I’ve wanted—but I also want to see that feeling reflected in his. What I see instead is something more like sadness, or nervousness, or fear. I watch his gaze dart to the right as he straightens up.

  “I shouldn’t have done that,” he says.

  My heart sinks like an overweight fishing lure.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I wanted you to.”

  “Lacey, it’s just—” he starts, and then stutters a bit. “You just … you don’t really know me.”

  “I know you, Tyson Davis,” I say, smiling at him, still hoping to savor this moment. “I know you love trains and know all about them, you always shared the glue, you add a packet of sugar to already-sweet tea, and you aren’t quite ready for Hell House. It’s really okay.”

  “You used to know me,” he says. “And maybe you know who I’m trying to be. But there are things—”

  The beams of two headlights flash into the parking lot, and we both turn to look. It’s just someone turning around, but it breaks the moment.

  Ty stands up and starts to gather the sleeping bag while I’m still sitting on it. I fall over sideways as he pulls it out from under me.

  “Sorry,” he says. “I have to go.” He tucks the sleeping bag under his arm and leaves me stumbling after him, brushing grass from my jean skirt and fighting back the tears that are starting to sting my eyes.

  Ty doesn’t look back again, just revs up his loud engine and flees, like he’s robbed a bank and needs to get away as fast as possible.

  I stand in the parking lot, staring after him for a minute before getting into my car. A wave of shame washes over me as I sink behind the wheel, and when I get home and walk in the door, I drop the keys on the front table and go straight to my room. I text Starla Joy but she doesn’t respond and I figure she has enough to handle without me whining to her. I consider calling Dean, but I’m embarrassed to talk about this with him.

  A few minutes after I get home, Mom knocks on my door to offer leftovers, and I just shout, “I ate at Joey’s. Doing homework.”

  She pushes the door open anyway, bringing in a cup of butternut squash soup and a piece of toast on a tray. I sit up and try to look normal.

  “Thanks,” I say softly, hoping she’ll put it down and go.

  But she sits on the edge of my bed, staring at me like I’m a mystery.

  “Are you okay, Lacey Anne?” she asks.

  I want to tell her that I don’t even know what’s going on with me. I don’t even know if I’m okay. But I just say, “I’m fine, Mom.”

  I take a bite of the toast to confirm it, and she looks down at her hands.

  “You know that you can talk to us …,” she starts. “To me, I mean, about Tessa. If you’re upset or if there’s something you need guidance about.”

  I stay quiet.

  “I know your father is normally the one who gives advice,” she says, turning her head away from me.

  And I realize it’s true. It’s always been Dad who’s there with a sermon-ready lesson or a parallel Bible story to explain away any confusion I’ve had in the past. But this feels beyond him.

  I suddenly feel a rush of affection for my mother, and I reach over the tray to take her hand just as she stands up to go. She doesn’t turn around, doesn’t see that I reached out, and I take my hand back.

  “Thanks for the soup,” I say, as she opens the door to go.

  “You’re welcome, honey,” she says quietly, slipping out into the hallway.

  When she closes the door, I wonder. If I had taken her hand, if she had stayed … would I have told her about my feelings for Ty?

  I lie back on my bed and stare at the ceiling, at my glow-in-the-dark stars. I feel a tear trickle down the side of my face as I wonder what happened. I got what I wanted—the kiss. I thought it was what I wanted, anyway. I guess I only wanted it if Ty wanted it too.

  And he didn’t.

  In the morning I wake up feeling like a slut. I don’t even like thinking of that word, but it’s what I hear in my head when I think about what I’ve done. How could I have pressed Ty into kissing me? He obviously didn’t want to. He obviously felt sorry for me after I practically threw myself at him. Maybe he even thinks I’ve gone out there with him to Ulster Park—alone and on a sleeping bag for goodness’ sake—just so we could hook up.

  The thought makes me sick to my stomach, and I wait until the last minute to get in the shower and get ready for church. When they ask me about me missing breakfast, I tell my parents that I’m tired from work, and I grab an apple to eat as the three of us head out the door.

  When we walk into the sanctuary, I look down at the floor until we reach our row. I don’t want to catch Ty’s eyes, not after I shamed myself
so wholly last night. I’m unable to concentrate on Pastor Frist’s sermon, and when I stare up at the stained-glass windows behind the pulpit, all I see are muted colors and messy imperfections in the glass.

  We have a Hell House rehearsal today, and I’m thankful to see Ty and Miss Moss exit the building after the service. That means there’s less chance I’ll run into him this afternoon. I wonder if he’s avoiding me as much as I’m avoiding him.

  As Mom and Dad get caught up in their Sunday greeting rituals, I pass Starla Joy’s row and nod. She follows me out the back doors and around the side of the church facing the woods.

  “What happened?” she asks. “Lacey, you look awful.”

  “I feel awful,” I say. And then I just come out with it: “Ty and I kissed last night.”

  Starla Joy’s eyes open wide and she grabs my arm. “You did not!” she says.

  “We did.”

  “And are you happy?” she asks, dropping her grip.

  “Well, I was,” I say. “But then he ran off and said, ‘We shouldn’t have done this’ or ‘This was wrong’ or something like that. He just left me there.”

  “In Ulster Park?” asks Starla Joy.

  “Yeah,” I say. “It was a total disaster. He didn’t even say hi to me today.”

  “I saw you barrel past everyone with your head down when you walked into church,” says Starla Joy. “I don’t think you gave him much of a chance.”

  “Still …,” I say. “He’s the one who kissed me and then ran away like I’d shot at him.”

  Starla Joy sighs and looks at me seriously.

  “Do you think he’s super conservative and thinks that kissing before marriage should be off limits?” she asks.

  “That’s what I wondered!” I said. “Before the kiss, I mean.”

  “And after?” Starla Joy asks.

  I flash back to his warm lips on mine, the way our bodies folded toward each other as our mouths touched ever so gently.

  “I don’t think so,” I say, starting to smile. “He was too into it.”

  “Until he stopped,” she says.

  “Yeah,” I say, smile fading. “Until then.”

  “And he just bolted?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “It was bizarre. It was like we’d committed a major crime and he had to flee the scene.”

  “I know what you should do,” says Starla Joy.

  Relief floods through me, because she always knows how to handle things, and she’s so nice to focus on my problem, even for just a few minutes.

  “What?” I ask gratefully.

  “You should talk to him and ask him why he freaked out,” she says.

  “What?” I say. “No, no, no. I don’t want to ask him that. I already put myself out there to kiss him and he ended up running away from me like I was a serial killer.”

  “It’s the only way,” she says firmly.

  “Lacey Anne!” I hear my mom’s voice calling from around the corner, and I peek my head out.

  “Rehearsal is starting,” she says.

  “Okay!” I shout. “Coming!”

  “You can’t know until you ask,” says Starla Joy, pressing me. “And you have to ask him straight, without the ums or wells or uhs. Those get in the way.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I say. I link arms with her as we walk back into the sanctuary for prayer warm-ups. “Thanks,” I whisper, hugging her arm close to me.

  “Anytime,” she says back. I see her look down at the ground, her heart heavy with a sadness much greater than mine, and I wish with all my being that I could make things better for her.

  Chapter Nineteen

  On Monday at school, I decide to be brave like Starla Joy wants me to be. I wait by Ty’s locker, and when he walks up and smiles it just comes out, almost easily.

  “I like you.”

  “I like you too,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

  “Can we just—” I start.

  “What if we—” he says at the same time.

  We laugh and both look down. Then Ty catches my left palm lightly and looks at my hand. He fingers my ring.

  “I guess I’m afraid of temptation too, Lacey Anne,” he says.

  I blush, not sure what to say. “People deal with it,” I mutter.

  “We could have rules,” says Ty. He sounds like he’s half-joking and half-serious.

  “Like what?” I ask.

  “We’ll make them up as we go along,” he says. “But kissing should definitely be on the list.”

  Then he leans in and gives me a quick peck on the cheek. We are in the hallway after all.

  I nod in agreement and float to my class, feeling his warm lips next to my skin all through first period.

  For the rest of the day, I’m walking on air. I had a library lab for chemistry and we were supposed to be doing online experiments, but instead I took a million quizzes, trying to figure out if Ty is the one for me. I can’t stop thinking about what my skin feels like when he touches me. The moment our lips met replays in my mind a hundred times—I acknowledge that I might be insane. I never thought I’d feel like this, like those girls who can’t hold back and keep thinking about a guy. But when I get home I plan on replaying movie kisses on YouTube to make sure I’ll do it right when it happens again. I can’t seem to get Ty out of my head.

  After school, I see my dad’s Taurus station wagon in front of the main building as I walk out with Dean. My first thought is that I’m in trouble somehow. Strange that that’s where my mind goes these days.

  But then I see a broad smile across his face, and I peer behind him through the window of the car and spy two fishing rods in the backseat. I walk up to him warily.

  “Hi, Dean,” my dad says.

  “Hey, Pastor Byer,” Dean says back.

  “You’ll have to come over soon and help me work on the model some more.”

  “Oh,” says Dean. “Uh, sure.” He hasn’t been over to see my dad since before school started.

  Then Dad turns to me.

  “I got the boat from Mr. Tucker,” he says. “Mom knows we’re going to try to catch dinner.”

  I raise my eyebrows in a question. It’s rare for him to want to take me out on a school night. Fishing is usually a summer thing, maybe weekends, but never Mondays.

  “How come?” I ask.

  “Well, your Saturdays are taken up at Joey’s, and I just felt like getting out on the water with my little girl,” he says. He looks more like my father than he has in a few weeks. There’s no tense line for a mouth, just a wide, open smile.

  I shrug. “Okay,” I say, moving toward the car. “Dean, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Cool,” he says, already making a beeline for the student parking lot to meet Starla Joy. I suddenly panic that my dad found out that Ty and I kissed—that someone saw us in the hallway!—and now we’re going to have to have a sex talk on the boat, where I can’t escape or close a door or even really turn away from him. My heart races.

  But then I realize that Mom would be the one to have that talk with me, and I calm down. Sort of.

  When we get out to Otto Lake, the water is glassy and sparkling. It’s still warm out for fall, so the sweater I wore to school is sufficient, and Dad brought my bright yellow rain shell for me too. I put it on so I won’t get splashed.

  We pick up the old motorboat and put Dad’s tackle box in the middle. My light rod is pretty easy to set up, and we use artificial lures—not real live worms or crawlers. Even though I can unhook and clean my own fish, squirming bait has always made me squeamish.

  By the time we get to our favorite spot—Satterwhite Cove—I’m feeling renewed. It’s pretty hard not to see God everywhere when you’re in the middle of nature. Sure, the engine is kicking up small waves and making noise, but soon we stop to coast and start casting out our reels. The late-afternoon sunlight dances on the surface of the water as the waves lap up against the boat in a rhythmic beat, and I feel a sense of peace settle over me that I haven’t expe
rienced in a while.

  If Dad is trying to win points with me, it’s working. Out here, we’re father and daughter, two fishermen with the same thoughts and goals.

  After four casts, I feel a bite, and I jerk my rod up to hook whatever’s nibbling on my bucktail jig. I start reeling it in but I can tell it’s a small one, and when my dad sees it’s a tiny sunfish he says, “First catch of the day is still first catch of the day.”

  He brings it up to the side of the boat and gently unhooks the little guy, who promptly swims away.

  I remember the first few times I tried unhooking my own fish. Dad made it look so easy—his hands were so gentle. But for me, it was tougher. The hooks have barbs; they’re made to stay attached. You have to remove them quickly, so the fish aren’t out of the water too long. And sometimes it’s bloody.

  I lost a few fish in the beginning—they died while I was trying to release them—and it always used to make me tear up. But my dad would say, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. They are a part of the circle of life.”

  Once we sat where we could see the floating dead body of a fish we couldn’t keep—it was a tiny one and in my six-year-old mind I imagined that the fish, too, was probably a six-year-old, starting first grade at its “school.” (I took most words literally back then.) I had hooked it and worked to get it free, but it died while I was trying to untangle it, and I started to cry.

  Dad sat there with me as we watched it bobbing on the surface of the water—and soon birds came over and started picking at the fish. Finally, a big bass jumped up and swallowed it in one joyous gulp.

  I guess that might have been traumatic for some kids, but for me it was proof that my dad had all the answers. It’s okay that fish die, because they provide food for other fish, who then get a hearty meal. One fish’s death may even save another fish’s life with its sustenance. It’s all in God’s plan.

  Every question had an answer back then, and my dad could shed light on any doubting darkness that crept into my mind.

  “Lacey Anne,” Dad says, speaking in soft tones like we tend to do out on the lake. “I wanted to talk to you.”