Faking Faith Page 5

  She was obviously referring to the lack of boys with whom I could get in trouble with.

  “Thanks a lot for your vote of confidence, Mom,” I said, irritated.

  She gave me a withering look. “Don’t start with me today, Dylan. I don’t have time for attitude. Do you want to go to this camp or not?”

  I sighed and slumped down in a chair.

  “It would be good for college applications too, right?” I said. The magic words.

  Mom looked down at the brochure, a tight expression on her face. It occurred to me then that she hadn’t pestered me about college applications since before the Blake incident. But who could blame her? I’d screwed up pretty badly. She probably thought I was a lost cause, that there was no use in expecting anything out of me. My face burned in shame for a moment and I felt like crying, which hadn’t happened for a while.

  “Right, I’m sure it will be,” she said after a pause.

  I took a deep breath.

  “So can I use the credit card for it?”

  My parents had given me a credit card when I was a freshman, with strict rules about when and where I could use it. But I knew the credit limit on it was far greater than the stated camp tuition. I assumed my parents would probably check the bill, but I’d already planned for that.

  Mom flipped through the brochure again, then put it down. “Well, I guess I don’t see why not … go ahead and ask Dad, too. His secretary said he should be home tonight.”

  I smiled, knowing I was almost home free.

  Because, predictably, Dad had even less to say about my plan.

  “Okay, sounds fine,” he said without even looking at the brochure, sprawled in front of the TV with a glass of Scotch in one hand and his BlackBerry in the other. He glanced up at me. “Guess it might be nice for you to get out of town for a while, huh?”

  I know they’re my parents and that they’re obligated to love me, but I think they were both relieved I wouldn’t be around the entire summer, hanging out being weird and reminding them of how much they’d somehow messed up with me.

  “Sure, Dad,” I said. “Guess so.”

  From there on, my ruse was shockingly easy to pull off. The next day I used the credit card to pay the camp tuition money to a PayPal account I’d set up and blandly named Summer Legislative Experience. Of course, the account was tied to my bank account and the money was going directly back to me. But I wasn’t going to use it for drugs and alcohol and designer clothes like other kids my age might, oh no! This money was going directly toward a Greyhound bus ticket and a wardrobe’s worth of modest, fundamentalist homeschooled girl ensembles.

  I was on my way.

  I can hardly wait to fellowship with you! I wrote to Abigail. This will be such a blessing!

  A month later, I was on the bus.

  EIGHT

  I didn’t start to have second thoughts until I was one bus stop away from Abigail’s town, and by then it was far too late to change my mind.

  As I watched the flat green farmland of central Illinois pass outside the window, I felt some of the rosy-glassed denial I’d been working under begin to seep out of me. It finally hit my gut just what I had gotten myself into. And I started to realize that I was scared out of my mind.

  Faking another entire person.

  Sure, I’d acted in a few school plays before, which technically counts as pretending to be someone else. While I was with Blake, I’d pretended to be someone who was entirely comfortable with that sort of relationship, and after everything that happened, I’d pretended like the bullying didn’t bother me. And I’d been writing in Faith’s voice for months now, which had totally been all about taking on a character. I certainly had experience with faking it.

  But none of those things really compared to two entire weeks of lying my ass off in person, twenty-four hours a day.

  I smoothed my long denim skirt over my knees for the hundredth time. There was so much that could go wrong! I could say the wrong thing, or not know something that I was definitely supposed to know (or, on the other hand, know something that as an innocent homeschooled girl I was definitely NOT supposed to know), or look at someone wrong, or even blurt out something in my sleep!

  “Oh, dear,” I whispered to myself, practicing my fundamentalist-Christian-approved equivalent of an expletive. “Oh dear, oh dear.”

  In the headiness of my plan coming together, my excitement over actually meeting Abigail in person and seeing her life, I’d barely allowed myself to think about how hard it was going to be.

  Every word out of my mouth. Every gesture. There was my entire pretend family I had to remember details about … there was a whole life that I’d made up that I had to keep straight. If I slipped even a little bit, the whole charade could come crashing down around me like a bad

  sit-com episode.

  I’d definitely tried to think through every step of hiding my true identity. I’d buried my ID and credit card at the bottom of my suitcase, between layers of skirts. My phone was turned off and hidden in an inner pocket of my purse. I hadn’t brought my laptop, which had felt painfully like leaving behind a piece of my brain, just in case someone turned it on and saw something incriminating.

  But there were still a million and a half other things that could go wrong.

  And now I was stuck. The next exit was Greenplain, Illinois, where Abigail would be waiting for me at the bus stop. She knew what I looked like. I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I was absolutely committed.

  The minutes crept by. My heart rate crept up.

  I reviewed everything I’d memorized about Abigail’s family in order to calm myself down. There were her parents, who she called Mama and Daddy in her blog. There were seven younger siblings—four boys and three girls—who she referred to with adorable nicknames. There was an older sister, who had gotten married and lived somewhere nearby. And there was one older brother, Asher, who tended to skulk in the back of photos, never looking directly at the camera.

  There had always been something about Asher that intrigued me. Once, Abigail had alluded to “Asher’s troubles” and asked us to pray for him. Which, of course, had the effect of making him even more interesting.

  I couldn’t believe I was finally going to see them all in person.

  We exited the highway and began to pass through the middle of the small town, down an arrow-straight main street with Fourth of July buntings still hanging from the eaves. There wasn’t much to Greenplain—a gas station, a hardware store, a dusty little restaurant with a few pickup trucks parked in front of it. It couldn’t have been further from the bustling, paved city suburb I’d come from.

  But I had seen so many pictures of the town on Abigail’s blog that it felt strangely … familiar. Plus, this was the sort of small town that Faith was from, too. This was the middle of rural America, where life was quieter and slower. And in certain places, much weirder.

  The bus slowed to a squeaky stop in front of the post office.

  “Greenplain,” announced the bus driver. I was the only person who stood up to exit. It felt like everyone else in the bus who was awake was gawking at me, taking in my strange clothes. I would have stared at me, too.

  I gathered my things and, heart booming in my throat, made my way down the narrow bus steps.

  Was this really happening? What if it was some joke setup? What if she somehow found out who I was? What if she wasn’t here? Could I just get back on the bus and pretend this had never happened?

  But on the sidewalk, waiting for me with a huge smile on her face, was Abigail.

  “Faith!” she squealed, skipping forward and grabbing my hands. “I’m so happy you’re finally here! I prayed and prayed you’d have good weather for your trip! God is so good !”

  My ex-friend Amanda may have talked only in question marks, but Abigail’s favorite punctuation was clearly the exclamation point.

  “Oh, wow, thank you for your prayers! They, um, worked!” I said, stumbling over my words, giddy. Hearin
g her say the things I’d only read on her blog was unreal, like stepping into a movie. I smiled at her, searching for any trace of suspicion, but there was none.

  Abigail looked exactly like her pictures. Her long blond hair was pulled back into a low ponytail. Her face was wide and open and honest, with deep dimples at the corners of her mouth and pink cheeks from waiting in the sun. She was wearing an outfit I recognized from blog photos—a brown skirt and white cardigan that came down to her elbows, even though it was at least eighty-five degrees outside.

  She seemed to be examining me the same way, still holding my hands. I couldn’t even breathe. What if I’d missed some physical detail that would give me away? Or what if she could see the lies in my eyes? What if this ended right here and now before I even got two feet away from the bus?

  The driver had deposited my suitcase next to me on the ground. I glanced at it for a moment and then looked back at Abigail. She was still staring at me, beaming.

  “So … ” I said. “Did, um, your dad drive you here?”

  She blinked. “Oh, no. Daddy was busy with work, so my brother Asher drove me! You have to meet him!”

  Uh oh.

  From a shadow in the alley behind Abigail, a figure emerged. And there was Asher, the mysterious older brother, in the flesh.

  “This is Faith!” Abigail told him excitedly, dropping my hands so she could hook her arm in his. She was bouncing a little on her toes. “Can you believe she’s finally here? Asher can tell you, I’ve been waiting for this day for absolutely forever. It’s all I’ve talked about for weeks!”

  Asher cleared his throat and nodded his head.

  “Very pleased to meet you, Faith,” he said in a deep voice.

  I’d instantly clammed up as soon as I caught sight of him. Asher was entirely too good-looking for me to feel comfortable.

  Trying not to stare, I took in his light brown hair, which was a little long and curly on top, and a square-jawed face with startling blue eyes. His respectable blue button-down shirt was rolled up to his elbows, exposing strong brown forearms. From what I could tell, beneath his clothes was the body of a Greek statue.

  It wasn’t the sort of hotness that asshole Blake had. Not a preened and self-aware handsomeness, with muscles mostly acquired at a ritzy, air-conditioned athletic club and a lazy tan from trips to Florida or lying out by the family pool. I could tell this boy came by his appearance honestly, through hard manual labor and working in the sun. Asher had clearly earned it.

  But he still scared me.

  Because what caught me so off guard was the realization that I hadn’t actually been attracted to anyone since Blake. Of course, I hadn’t had much of an opportunity to be around guys who weren’t harassing me or actively ignoring me because of my bad, Blake-created reputation. Even the so-called “nice guys” who I’d been friends with since elementary school averted their eyes and laughed along at the nasty jokes the bullies made about me. None of them had stuck up for me.

  Guys in general felt dangerous and unknown. I’d more or less shut that part of my brain down and convinced myself it would be fine to never kiss another person until college.

  But suddenly, with this cute boy, I couldn’t help but notice how there was something about his face and voice, and the softness around his eyes, that sort of woke me up again. It was weird and upsetting. I didn’t want to feel that way. I didn’t want someone to have that sort of power over me again.

  Because the last time I let that happen, naked pictures of me ended up on the Internet.

  Asher was smiling shyly at me, waiting for a response.

  “Faith? Are you all right?” Abigail asked, looking concerned.

  “Hello, Asher. Lovely to meet you,” I said quickly, keeping any coyness in my voice to an absolute minimum, conscious of the fact that I wasn’t supposed to be noticing him as anything other than my friend’s older brother.

  In this world, flirting was looked down upon and considered defrauding. Faith would be horrified by the idea. In fact, Dylan was a bit horrified by the idea as well.

  I already knew Asher had the potential to be a big problem.

  NINE

  We drove back to their farm in the dusty family pickup truck. Abigail took the middle seat and talked excitedly without pause for the whole trip. Asher drove silently, leaning his forearm out the window, tapping along to an unheard tune on the steering wheel.

  I wondered what the song was.

  No, Dylan! I admonished myself. Stop this right now. You are not here to get inexplicable crushes on completely unattainable boys! You are here to …

  What? What exactly was I here in this absurd situation to do?

  “And I thought we could be in charge of dinner one night!” Abigail was saying. “You said you make a mean fried chicken on your blog, didn’t you? And maybe you could make that red velvet cake that you posted pictures of! And I’m sure Mama would let us do some of the

  homeschooling for the little ones. They’re excited to have a new teacher for a change! And we’re hosting a Ladies’ Bible Study Luncheon in a few days, and you’ll be the guest of honor, if that’s okay with you!”

  I looked over at her, trying not to let my face quaver at the gauntlet of highly failable tests laid out before me. “That sounds wonderful, Abigail! Whatever you have planned is fine. I don’t want to be any trouble.”

  She grinned at me, scrunching up her nose. “Oh, how could you be any trouble, Faith? You’re a blessing!”

  I smiled back at her, feeling a strange twist in my chest. No one had ever said something like that to me that I could remember. Certainly not recently.

  We pulled into the long gravel driveway of the farm, and Abigail pointed out where they set up their road stand when they had extra produce to sell. We drove through a few acres of fenced grazing land, scenically dotted by grazing cows and sheep. Abigail recited their names and told me which animal belonged to which of her siblings.

  “You can help me take care of my cow, Maybelle, while you’re here! We can get up in the morning together!” she said, bouncing a little in her seat. “Just so you feel like part of the family! Oh, how fun!”

  Just as I started to panic about the possibility of having to act like I knew how to milk a cow, Asher snorted. It was the first noise he’d made the whole trip.

  “What?” said Abigail, looking at him. “Did I say something wrong?”

  “She’s a … she’s a guest, Abi,” Asher said. “Do you really think she wants to worry about milking a cow?”

  I couldn’t have been more grateful to him.

  Abigail looked embarrassed. “Sorry, Faith. If you don’t want to, that’s perfectly fine. I just thought that because you wanted to be part of things … ”

  I glanced at her with an encouraging smile. There was something about Abigail that made me dread disappointing her. She seemed so young and vulnerable, able to be tipped over with the wrong words or a harsh look.

  “Can we maybe just see how it goes?” I asked. “First, I’d really love to just watch and see how you all manage things.”

  She brightened. “Of course! That’s a great idea!”

  We pulled around in front of the house, which was so ridiculously idyllic I almost gasped.

  “Welcome to Shady Acres!” Abigail said. “Our home sweet home.”

  We got out of the truck and I tried not to gawk too openly. It was a lovely old farmhouse on a small hill, painted pristine white with black shutters. There was a wrap-around porch with a swing and Adirondack chairs, and a large grassy front yard. Beyond the house stood a bright red barn and some fenced-in pens, and I could see parts of a huge, lush garden. Cows mooed in the distance and a rooster crowed.

  I thought that maybe I had arrived in some country heaven.

  “Um, wow,” I said quietly, forgetting myself. “Your house is so beautiful.”

  “Thanks!” Abigail said, beaming at me. “Daddy renovated it himself when I was just a baby. Isn’t he talented?”

&
nbsp; A girl holding a baby appeared in the doorway and looked at us, and a general clamor went up within the house. There was the sound of calling and running feet, and children spilled out onto the front porch in quick succession. Four tow-headed boys wearing crisp khakis and polo shirts and two girls in summery calico dresses, the older one holding the baby, crowded together and stared at me.

  Again the feeling struck that I was on a movie set. Or on an alien planet.

  Abigail hooked her arm in mine and dragged me up to the front steps to the porch.

  “They dressed up for you. We don’t get many new visitors,” she whispered in my ear. “They might be even more excited than I am that you’re here!”

  “Oh … well, that’s nice,” I said, fumbling for words as I looked at all their small faces. What the hell did I know about interacting with a bunch of little kids?

  “Everyone, this is Faith,” she announced. “You all be good and polite to her, and remember what we practice about joy.”

  “Joy?” I said.

  Abigail gave me an odd look. “Children, remind our lovely guest what joy is,” she said in a teacherish tone.

  “Jesus first, others second, and yourself third,” they recited dutifully.

  Whoops, I should have known that. It was a common saying on the blogs.

  “Of course, how nice!” I said. “Thank you for reminding me.”

  Abigail introduced all of the smaller kids in order of age. “This is Matthew and Jed and Luke and Martha and Joseph, and this little one is Mercy.”

  Abigail took the baby from the arms of the oldest girl, whom I knew from the blog was about fourteen years old. She looked like a mini-Abigail, with the same wispy hair and round face, her hands clasped in front of her.

  “And this, of course, is one of my greatest earthly blessings, Chastity,” Abigail said, propping Mercy on her hip and putting her free arm around Chastity’s shoulder. “She’s been so sweet and offered to give up her bed for you while you’re here so you can stay in with me.”