“That would be a great role for you, Lace,” says Dad. “You’d be excellent.”
“Excellent at what?” asks Mom, coming in the front door with an armful of papers. She heads straight for the metal filing cabinet in the corner by Dad’s desk.
“Lacey’s going to try out for Abortion Girl,” Dad says.
Mom turns her head over her shoulder.
“That’s some mature content, Ted.” It bothers me when she talks to Dad and not me about me. I take a deep breath to relieve the feeling of tightness that’s gathering in my chest.
“I’ve seen the show a hundred times,” I say. “I know what the role is. Besides, I’m the one who sees girls at school go through the real thing—I like the idea of putting myself in their shoes. It’ll make me a more loving and empathetic person.”
“But to put yourself in the mind-set of that situation …,” says Mom, opening the file drawer and carefully tucking away her papers one by one. “That’s a big deal, Lacey. It might affect you in ways you won’t understand.”
My mom thinks I am eight years old. She wishes I’d stay quiet and shy and boring forever. This much is clear.
“I think she’d be great,” says Dad, ignoring Mom’s objections.
“Really?” I ask, turning back to my father and deciding not to listen to Mom. “I mean, I know it normally goes to a senior.”
“It goes to the girl who’s best for the part,” says Dad. “If that happens to be a senior, so be it, but I don’t see why a junior girl couldn’t do it just as well—if she gives a good audition.”
I smile. “Thanks, Dad.”
“So let’s hear it,” he says.
“What?” I ask.
“Your lines. If you can’t do them in front of me here, you’re gonna have a hard time at the audition on Saturday.”
I look down at my script.
“Shall I play the Demon Tour Guide?” asks Dad.
“Sure,” I say. I like the idea of rehearsing with my dad—and he has a great demon voice.
“So, let’s see here …,” says Dad. He leans over my pages and we run the lines, devil and daughter together.
At my audition, I actually weep. I’m not talking a few tears, I’m not talking a couple of sniffles—I’m talking full-on sob session. Somehow I just got carried away with the character of this girl who makes a big mistake. Well, two really. Because she had sex out of wedlock and then she had an abortion. It’s a double-sin scene. Maybe that’s why it affected me so much.
When I walk out into the church lobby, Starla Joy’s eyes widen.
“Lacey!” she says. “What in the world—”
“You did it, didn’t you?” Ty stands up from the lobby bench and strides over to me, interrupting Starla Joy. “You tried out for Abortion Girl.”
I nod, and Starla Joy hands me a tissue from the front table. I blow my nose and Ty puts his arm around me for a quick squeeze.
I wait for Starla Joy to say something snarky, but she doesn’t. She just smiles and says, “I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“What?” I ask.
“The courage to go for what you want,” she says. Her eyes flit to Ty and I wonder if she’s talking about more than just the Abortion Girl part. I blush and look down, hoping Ty didn’t notice.
She’s right, of course. In the past I haven’t gone for what I want. I’ve been safe and good and all those things that were expected of me. But I prepared for this—it’s like I was ready to reach a little higher this year—and when I got into the audition room, something shifted. I went for it.
We all sit on the lobby benches. Dean isn’t here—he signed up to work on the stage crew and be an extra wherever he’s needed, but he’s not auditioning for a bigger role. I tried to get him to go for Cyberporn Boy, who looks at lewd sites online, or even Satan’s Helper so he could work with my dad in the Hell scene, but he said he gets stage fright and can’t have a big role. I know he’s making that up—he played Joseph in last year’s Christmas pageant—and I almost kept pushing him to audition, but Starla Joy said to just let him brood. Sometimes he needs alone time.
A few minutes later, Tessa walks out of the audition room and throws her arms up in the air. “I nailed it,” she says. “Abortion Girl is mine.”
Then she pushes open the double doors and says, “Come on, Starla Joy. Momma’s making spaghetti.”
Starla Joy gives me a sympathetic glance and a quick wave before she follows her sister out to the parking lot. When I look up at Ty, I see his eyes are focused on Tessa’s retreating shape.
Sometimes I understand why Starla Joy gets mad at her sister. She tends to just claim things, like a guy or a part in a play. As if there’s no chance that someone else might be competition. I think she’s a little conceited.
I try to shrug off that feeling because it seems unkind, but I have trouble letting it go. I want this part. When will it be my time to stand out?
I exhale slowly to let go of my annoyance. Then I turn to Ty.
“So, what are you doing now?” I ask him. It’s a small sentence, but it still feels like I’m putting myself out there for rejection if he’s busy. Which is silly, I know, but …
He’s looking past me, at the bulletin board that holds announcements about Bible study groups and bake sales. Ty didn’t audition for Hell House, though I tried to get him to probably harder than I did with Dean. He just kept saying it’s not his thing, but I’m hoping I can bring him back to church a little bit this year. I mean, my dad asked me to, after all. I’m also hoping we can finally hang out alone and maybe I can have a boyfriend by the time school starts. I know that’s not a very modest or noble goal, but I do think it would be nice. I stare at his amazingly angled cheekbones and have to will myself not to reach up and touch his face.
“Well, I came here to help Aunt Vivian move some new books into the library, but I’m all done. So I thought I’d spend the afternoon with you,” he says. “Where should we go?”
I breathe a sigh of relief. He likes me! He wants to spend time with me. But I immediately get nervous again because after all of my big talk about how West River is a really great town, I’m blanking. Dean and Starla Joy and I would just go get snacks and sit in our spot on the woods, or maybe go to a movie if it’s a week when a new one opens. Sometimes we walk around downtown—which is really just one block—but does that really count as going somewhere? I glance around the room, hoping a poster or something will help me out.
“I have an idea,” says Ty, saving me. “There’s a spot I remember, from when I lived here before.”
“Okay,” I say, thankful that he chimed in. “Let me just tell my dad.”
I practically skip over to Dad’s office, where I find Mrs. Tuttle, the secretary. “Hi!” I say brightly, a big smile plastered on my face. “I know Dad’s busy with auditions, so can you just tell him I’m going to hang out with friends and I’ll be home by curfew. Okay, thanks. Bye!”
I don’t wait for the flustered Mrs. Tuttle to answer—I know she’ll assume I’m going to be with Dean and Starla Joy—and though my dad did say he’d like me to befriend Ty, I don’t think he imagined me spending time alone with him.
“I’m ready,” I say to Ty when I get back to the lobby, a little breathless.
“Follow me,” he says, crooking his arm so I can link mine through it as we walk outside to the parking lot and his waiting rusty BMW.
Chapter Eight
Once we get off the main road in town and start onto a back street through the fields, I know just where we’re going.
“The picnic spot,” I say, pleased with myself for remembering. In elementary school, our main field trip involved Ulster Park—which is a playground, really—and a picnic on top of the hill above the swing set and monkey bars and a rickety slide. I haven’t been here in forever, but we used to come to this spot like three times a year with our teachers, maybe just to give them a break from the super-hot classrooms.
“Is it still there?”
asks Ty. His question is answered as we turn into the dusty parking lot and see the swing set and the grassy hill right in front of us.
“I guess it is,” I say.
“Don’t tell me you never come here anymore,” says Ty, turning off the engine.
“It’s been a while,” I answer, opening up my door and stepping out into the still air. I toss my cardigan—which is very necessary for the air-conditioned church, but not so much for the hot air out here—into the backseat.
“Shade?” asks Ty, unlocking the trunk and pulling out a faded blue sleeping bag that looks like it’s seen better days.
I must look a little scared because he says, “I just thought we could sit on this—it’s old but clean.”
“Oh, sure,” I say. I wonder when I became a girl who leaves the town limits to lie out on a sleeping bag with a boy she hardly knows. But then I chastise myself for that thought. I know him—he’s Tyson Davis! And besides, my dad practically asked me to talk to him about church and stuff. So technically this is all in God’s plan.
Ty spreads the sleeping bag at the high point on the hill, and we sit down and take turns sipping from his earth-friendly stainless steel bottle of water. I pull my hair off my neck and twist it into a self-holding bun because I’m starting to sweat, despite the shade.
I look down at the playground and see that weeds have grown halfway up the monkey bars and the swing chains look rusted from underuse. I guess no one comes here now that they built a new playground near the center of town. Looking at it now, remembering how much fun we used to have holding hands as we flew down the extra-wide slide, makes me feel a little melancholy.
“So are you upset?” asks Ty, picking up a blade of grass and twisting it between his thumb and forefinger.
“Upset?” I ask, wondering if Ty can read the nostalgic thoughts on my face.
“About Tessa competing with you for Abortion Girl,” he says, turning to look at me.
“Oh,” I say, realizing my exhaling-the-annoyance moment must have been kind of obvious. But the truth is, I’d forgotten that part of the day already. I’m so caught up in being here, on this sleeping bag, with Ty.
“I guess I was,” I say honestly. “But not because of Tessa. Just because I thought I might get it.”
“You still might,” says Ty.
“You think?” I ask, staring at him and wondering what he sees when he looks back at me.
“Yeah,” he says.
“Why?” I ask.
“Because you’re so passionate,” he says.
I look down and feel myself blushing.
“I’m not really,” I say.
“No, you are,” says Ty. “About Hell House, about the church, about getting this role, about everything.”
“You really think so?” I ask.
“Of course,” says Ty, laughing at my hesitation.
“Other people think I’m quiet,” I say. “They call me shy.” Shy. It sounded like such a bad word when people said it about me when I was younger. “Oh, she’s shy,” like it meant I had a mental deficiency or something. But now that I’m in high school, shy is safe and respectable in people’s eyes. I’ve become Lacey Byer, the good girl, who’s always acted appropriately. And who’s never had a movie moment.
“I see how much you want that role, Lacey,” he says, and I look up at him then. “You’ve got a fire in you.”
“I do?” I ask. I’ve always felt like there was something strong inside me, but no one’s ever noticed it on the outside before.
“Yes,” he says. “That’s why I thought you might be angry at Tessa.”
“No,” I say. “She’s a senior, and I can try out for Abortion Girl next year.”
And as I say it, I think that’s true. It’s only fair for Tessa to have the part if she wants it.
“You’re so good, Lacey,” says Ty. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“It’s the Christian in me,” I say, shrugging my shoulders and smiling at him. “We’re supposed to be good.”
“Humph.” Ty makes a grunting noise, like he doubts what I’ve said.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing,” he says, tossing the blade of grass he’d been rolling between his fingers.
I stay quiet, thinking that this is what my dad must have been talking about, that Ty has strayed away from the church somehow. I’m excited. I think I can bring him back. Hell House is the best tool we have for kids our age—it’s interesting and fun and scary and controversial. Two years ago there was this kid Jack Suggs who everyone said was on drugs, but after he went through Hell House, he turned things around. He went into some rehab program and even got into college last year.
I’m about to say something to encourage Ty to go on, but then he says, “I don’t know. It’s just that I’m not sure what I believe anymore.” And I give him time to talk, because I’ve learned this from my father. People need space to say things that are serious, things that are hard.
“It’s not that I don’t believe in God,” he continues, bending his legs and resting his elbows against his knees as he looks down at the ground between his feet. “It’s just that I don’t always agree with Him … or at least with what I’ve been taught about Him.”
“Mmm-hmm,” I say encouragingly. I stare at the side of his legs, which are covered in golden hairs, and I wonder what they would feel like to touch.
“Like, do you really think that all people who commit sins are bad?” asks Ty, whipping his head up to face me. I look away from his legs and meet his eyes, but I don’t even have a chance to respond before he goes on. “Because, I mean, sins are everywhere, Lacey. And if telling a white lie is as bad as feeling jealousy, which is as bad as lusting after someone, which is as bad as abortion, which is as bad as murder, then I just don’t know what to think.”
That was a mouthful, and I’m still parsing out what Ty said when he stretches out on the sleeping bag and puts his hands behind his head. I look down at him and he looks so sweet and confused that I have an urge to reach out to him. But I don’t. I just lie back beside him—carefully leaving a foot or so between us—and stare up at the sky.
We spend the next few hours talking about these things—the big questions of what sin means and what good Christians can do in the face of it. I even tell him about how my dad sometimes brings up his own failings and uses them as lessons for the children’s group, like the time he talked about cheating on a test in high school. He went back later and confessed to his teacher, who let him take another version of the exam.
“That’s like a pseudo sin,” says Ty, laughing. “Seriously, that’s the worst your father’s ever done?”
“I guess so,” I say. I’ve never thought about it that way. I’ve always thought of my dad as pretty much perfect.
Ty has three Power Bars in his car, so even when dinnertime comes and we get hungry we don’t drive back into town. We stay out on the hill, like it’s our new spot.
By the time the fireflies start glowing, Ty and I are listing our own mini sins. I tell him about how I lied to my parents at age ten, when Dean rented an R-rated movie we were dying to see, and he mentions his first peek at a triple-X site online, which makes me blush.
“Maybe I should have pushed you to try out for Cyberporn Boy instead of Dean,” I say.
“Lacey Anne, every guy at school could play Porno Boy with no problem,” he says. And I want to object but maybe he’s right.
“Hell House is an ideal,” I say. “It’s like a guideline. Of course some of the scenes are more serious than others. Like Abortion.”
“What’s the scene like anyway?” asks Ty.
I describe it to him the way my dad described it to me when I asked for more details after the Hell House meeting—the girl on the table, bleeding a lot, the doctor pulling a fake fetus out of her body (it’s hidden under the sheet), and all the screaming.
Ty’s eyes bug out when I’m done.
“What?” I ask.
“You know t
hat’s not what it’s really like, right?” he asks.
“What what’s really like?” I ask.
“An abortion,” he says. “I mean, not like I know firsthand, but I’m pretty sure it’s quick and clean and safe ninety-nine percent of the time.” He raises an eyebrow. “And I’m positive that it doesn’t involve major blood or anything really violent. Most women walk out the same day.”
“How do you know so much about abortion?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” says Ty. “The Discovery Channel?”
“Well, it’s more like we’re dramatizing something for theatrical reasons,” I say, though I guess I hadn’t ever really thought about what an actual abortion might be like. I don’t want to seem stupid to Ty.
“Anyway, Abortion is one of the more serious scenes, like Suicide and Domestic Abuse—those are the heavy ones.”
“So you’re admitting those are worse than Cyberporn?” Ty asks.
“Yes,” I say. “Those are worse.”
Ty smiles at me in a self-satisfied way, like he won a point or something.
“But all are bad!” I say. “I mean, that doesn’t give you free rein to go home and log onto BigBoobsandButts.com tonight.”
“How did you know about my favorite site?” Ty asks, standing in fake indignation and offering me a hand.
I let him pull me up and we both laugh. I can’t believe I just used the words “boob” and “butt” in front of a guy, even if it was in a website name. But it feels okay, it feels easy.
“It’s after eight o’clock,” says Ty. “I should get home.”
“Me too,” I say quietly.
Ty looks at me and smiles. Then he puts his hand on my cheek.
“Thanks, Lacey Anne,” he says, his face leaning closer. “I really feel like I can talk to you. I knew it would be that way.”
He stares right at me and I can hardly breathe as I see the flecks of green in his blue eyes.
I’m about to lean into the kiss that I feel hovering between us. I want this to happen. I want to let go.
Then Ty lets his hand fall and says, “You’re just too good for me.”
Small Town Sinners Page 5