Total pages in book: 112
Estimated words: 106839 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 534(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106839 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 534(@200wpm)___ 427(@250wpm)___ 356(@300wpm)
After that, he would move to Disciple, work his job during the week, and take part in the Revival on the weekends, just like most everyone else. He would’ve ended up working the tent with my brothers. Their hatred of him would’ve faded over time and by now, twelve years later, we would’ve forgotten all about how it started.
But that’s not how it happened, obviously. Instead, Erol woke up early on his eighteenth birthday and went into the woods. He had a little side hustle trappin’ beaver and it was the last day of the season, so he told me the night before that he was gonna go pick up his traps before the partying started.
He never came home.
They never found a body or anything.
Just… gone.
To say that I was devastated would be an understatement. I was eight and a half months pregnant and I went into labor in school the next week. My water broke in the cafeteria at lunchtime. In front of everyone.
But there wasn’t much time to feel humiliated. There wasn’t much time to feel anything but sad and terrified, really.
And then Cross was there—named after his daddy.
And from that day on, he was my life.
Today, as I sit in the tent waving my fan to stave off the heat, is another sad day for me. And I am feeling it quite sharply at the moment because the children’s choir is singing and for the first time since he was three, Cross is not up there on the stage.
His voice started breaking a few weeks back and this morning the choir director, Mr. Bateman, decided that it was time for Cross to move on to something else. Since this departure was sudden, no one quite knew what to do with Cross this weekend, so he’s working the tent with my daddy and brothers, wearing a last-minute hand-me-down costume, and I don’t even know where he is right now.
The only thing I do know is that he’s not on that stage so I have no one to look at.
But just as I’m thinking that I notice a movement stage left. The tent flap opens and there, of all people, is Amon Parrish. He scans the crowd like he’s looking for someone. And then, unexpectedly, his eyes find mine and he smiles.
Now Amon Parrish was the boy everyone wanted to date in high school. Collin was too, but Collin was taken. Even before he hooked up with Lowyn, everyone knew he was in love with her, so no one was wastin’ any time fantasizing about Collin Creed.
Amon was the biker-jacket-wearing-bad-boy to Collin’s golden-boy-jock image. He looked like the lead singer of a rock band with that blond hair and blue eyes of his. Only he was always fit and muscular and didn’t look like a drug addict. Every girl in high school had a fantasy starring Amon Parrish and since Amon wasn’t a ‘goin’ steady’ kinda guy, most of them got to live it out. He’s only gotten better with age, so I imagine he’s had all kinds of exotic women over the last decade.
I, of course, never fantasized about Amon because I was younger and busy with my own real-life boy. But he’s still smiling so… I smile back.
And there it is—an Amon Parrish fantasy flits through my mind. I see us kissing, and his hands going wild all over my body, and some wall sex suddenly appears. Which makes me blush, so I forcibly push the fantasy aside and come back to reality.
Why is he here? Did he come here for me?
Oh, it can’t be. Amon Parrish has no business with me. We bump into each other around town and we chat every now and then, but nothing more.
Except he did invite me to go bowling with him last night, didn’t he?
Just as I’m thinking this, he starts walking this direction. It’s an unusual thing to do because we’re in the middle of a sermon. So there is a rustle of clothing as everyone’s head turns in unison to watch him do this, which causes Simon, our pastor, to stutter at the lectern.
Even if Amon is heading my way for a purpose, he’s got no endgame because there are no empty chairs in my row. There are no empty chairs at all in the tent—it’s a rule. If we’re not sold out—and that’s a rare occasion indeed—we fill those chairs up with townspeople.
He stops at the end of my row and sighs, knowing he’s got no endgame, but willing to stick it out until the show is over, I guess. Because he settles against a post and starts paying attention to the words still spilling out of Simon’s mouth.
There’s a hushed murmur from the townspeople, all wondering what he is up to. But it calms down quickly because… well, it’s Amon. Everyone knows he’s a wild card, even if they did kinda forget over the years since he left.