UNITED STATES
Washington Post
By Nancy French October 21
“Should we pick him up?” The preacher pointed to the side of the road to a hitchhiker.
“No!” I shrieked, but the idea was intoxicating. I’d lived in a one-festival town my whole life. Pulling over seemed like the kind of careless, wild action that could possibly blow up the roteness of small-town life. “I don’t know. Maybe?”
I was disappointed when he laughed and sped up. Nothing ever happens here. The most exciting thing that had happened to me was that morning’s vacation Bible school — all Kool Aid and butter cookies with holes in the center we wore as rings on our pinkies. The preacher offered to take me home when my mother needed to run errands. I was honored to be in his car, giggling as we sped by the hitchhiker. This preacher was younger than most and wore cool glasses. I tried to match his gregarious spirit. I should’ve said yes to the hitchhiker, I thought. That’s what cooler, older people would’ve done.
After winding down the long gravel road to my house, the preacher walked me in. I was too young to have rules for boys in the house, but this wasn’t a boy.
“Here’s the living room, and here’s the sitting room,” I said, flipping on some lights. There was a blue and white love seat up against the wall, in the room that my grandmother had used as a bedroom before she died. She’d once been alive but now was dead. It felt odd to just repurpose her room into a TV room without acknowledging that a person had so recently dwelled there.
I was thinking of her, when the preacher’s thin mouth pressed against mine, his wiry tongue stuck down my throat. He pulled me down onto the love seat and ran his hands over my budding breasts. Though I’d failed the hitchhiker test, I had another chance to prove I was cool enough to deserve attention.
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