Dad smiled as if he could read my thoughts. “If you run, I’m pretty sure you can catch Natalie before she leaves the church.”
I looked across the parking lot and there she was, getting into her family ’s silver minivan.
“Nat!” I hollered, sprinting toward her. “Nat! Hold up!”
Chapter Twenty-two
J
ake, Nat, and I rode to the camp in his Jetta; my parents and Lizzie rode in the Maxima. I was glad it was a short ride, because the uncomfortable silence between me and Nat was louder than if we’d blared the music.
Drive faster,
I silently pleaded to Jake, because Nat and I may have been in the car together, but we certainly didn’t know what to say to each other. And it was awful. Making up with Nat after everything that had happened was going to be way harder than I thought. Much to my relief, Jake pushed down harder on the gas. We flew into the Crispy Dream parking lot, and then Jake slammed on the brakes because the place was packed.
Packed
.
A small army of newspaper and radio reporters swarmed the scene like busy ants, interviewing anyone and everyone about the opening. The line for the donuts was out the door and stretched all the way to the edge of the field where the campers were. Music played and people danced and ran around, high on sugar and on being part of something big. Well, big for Birch Lake, anyhow.
“I think the whole town is here,” said Dad, looking around at the crowd.
“And that means we’ll probably have to wait for ages for a donut,” I said, quickly counting more than a hundred people in the line.
“Hey,” said Jake, elbowing me, “isn’t that Anita?”
And sure enough, there was Anita, sitting on Bear’s shoulders, waving to us above the crowd. They had donuts!
“Dad! Mom! This way!” I grabbed Jake’s hand, and we went over to where they’d spread out a blanket on the blacktop, surrounded by all their Harleys.
“I thought I’d partake in a donut before I left for the rehab center,” said Bear, smiling and easing Anita off his shoulders. He motioned to a box filled with a dozen of Crispy Dream’s classic glazed donuts and said, “Help yourself.”
There were also blueberry donuts, crullers, apple fritters, crème filled, twists, and, well, just about every kind of donut Crispy Dream carried. I reached up and threw my arms around Bear’s thick neck. “Thank you,” I said, kissing his cheek.
After we’d all dug into the box for our respective pastries, I introduced my parents and Lizzie to the Angelfire Witnesses, who shook hands politely with everyone. Lizzie, who had hardly blinked since we’d arrived at the camp, was standing next to Tex and staring hard at the eagle tattoo on his arm. It didn’t take Tex long to notice.
“You ever seen something like this before?” he asked, bending down to show Lizzie the eagle up close. His enormous nose was almost the size of her whole face.
Lizzie shook her head no, and her ringlets bounced. She looked terrified—and fascinated—at once.
“Look here,” said Tex, flexing his bicep. As he did so, the eagle’s wings moved up and down.
“Whoa!” said Lizzie, extending a finger toward the eagle. She stopped just short of touching it, then looked at Tex.
“It’s okay,” said Tex, smiling. He moved his arm closer to Lizzie. “You can touch it.”
Lizzie placed her hand on the eagle, looking at the image intently. Then she frowned and looked back up at Tex.
“Is that real?” she asked, removing her hand from Tex’s arm. I smiled to myself. Maybe Lizzie was more of a skep-tic than I gave her credit for.
“It sure is,” said Tex. “And that look in your eyes says you’d know a lie if you heard one. You sure are a sharp little thing. Maybe you should go to detective school.”
Detective school—it was such a silly idea. But instead of laughing, I pictured Lizzie studying criminal justice in college, walking on a tree-lined campus with a thick textbook tucked under her arm. Instead of the image feeling weird, like I was peeping at something I shouldn’t, it was easy to imagine Lizzie in this place: confident, beautiful, doing whatever she wanted.
Not to mention attending whatever college she wanted
, I thought.
Because I paved the way
. I couldn’t help it—my heart swelled a little that I’d done something good for her.
“You giving my sister a hard time, Tex?” I asked, sidling up to Lizzie and putting my arm around her. She looked up at me, her blue eyes sparkling, grinning like Santa himself had just dropped onto the scene.
“No, ma’am,” said Tex. “I was just telling her she could be a detective.”
“Well, how about you tell her the story of Louisa and see if she can figure out if it’s real or not?”
Tex launched into the story of chasing Louisa into the woods and I glanced at my mom and dad, who were watching the whole thing go down, and gave them a small thumbs-up. My mom, apparently satisfied that Lizzie wasn’t going to get mauled by a biker if she didn’t pay close attention, started up a conversation with Anita a few feet away. “What do you do?” she asked politely.
“Used to be a waitress,” said Anita, her thin hair blowing in the breeze. Without hesitation, Anita launched into her story of Happy’s and, moments later, I saw my mom wrap both of Anita’s nicotine-stained hands in her own. When I saw that, I had to stare at the ground for a second and swallow a few times. Because no matter what the scriptures said,
that’s
why she was qualified to preach. Because after everything that happened, she still cared about people and wanted to help them.
When I looked up, Dad was sitting on Bear’s motorcycle and Bear was towering over him, pointing out all the different features. “It’s got a two-cylinder, V-twin engine, which is a good thing if you ever need to accelerate quickly to get away from authority,” Bear said.
My dad glanced up in surprise.
“I mean, for example, if you did such a thing before you were saved,” Bear said quickly.
I put a hand over my mouth to cover my laughter, then trotted over to where Jake and Nat were standing—just beyond the picnic site.
“I think someone’s about to win that brand-new RV over there,” Jake said, standing on his tippy toes and craning his neck so he could see. “They’ve set up a microphone and people are crowding around. Let’s try to get closer.”
“It could be Connie Belford!” I said as the three of us elbowed our way through all the campers.
“Who?” Nat asked. It was the first word she’d spoken to me since we’d arrived at the camp.
“Connie Belford,” I said as Nat and I squeezed past a man wearing springy antennae—like the kind you’d buy from a costume shop if you wanted to go as an alien for Halloween, except on the very ends of them, he’d replaced the Styrofoam balls with donut holes. “Connie and her husband were trying to break the Crispy Dream camping record,” I continued, “and she’d been here for almost two solid weeks when I met her. She was competing against these brothers from Brainerd and she wasn’t sure who the donagers were going to award the RV to.”
Nat cocked an eyebrow at me. “The who?”
“The donagers,” I said. “Donut managers. Like those guys straight ahead, standing by that RV, wearing the white pants and white hats.”
“The ones who look like they’re getting ready to make an announcement,” said Jake, quickening his step.
“Yep, that’s them,” I said, breaking into a trot.
When the three of us were closer, one of the donagers grabbed the nearby microphone and feedback blasted through the camp. Nat, Jake, and I stopped and covered our ears.
The donager, whose hands were shaking nervously, tapped the microphone once, and the feedback stopped. “We’d like to officially announce the winner of Crispy Dream’s brand-new Road Wolf RV,” said the donager, his voice shaking almost as much as his hands. “This prize is awarded to the campers who have broken the previous Crispy Dream record by staying at the camp for more than thirteen consecutive days. We are proud that the record has been broken here, in advance of Birch Lake’s very own brand-new Crispy Dream store!” A roar of approval went up from the crowd.
The donager coughed once, clearing his throat. “We are pleased to announce,” he said, “that the winner is . . .”
Please let it be Connie,
I prayed silently.
“. . . Connie Belford and her husband, Martin Belford!”
I whooped happily and jumped up and down as Connie emerged from behind the RV, her round, dimpled face glowing. Her husband, Martin, who was almost as big as Connie was, followed. His face was pink with excitement. The donager handed over the keys and the crowd cheered even more loudly. I hollered along with them, glad that Connie had beaten out the Brainerd brothers.
“I could use some more donuts,” said Jake after Connie and her husband had disappeared inside the RV with a wave to the crowd. “Anyone else?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, and the three of us headed back to the spot on the blacktop where the Angelfires were. As we approached, Bear waved at us.
“Hey, Jake!” he called. “Join us here and explain to Pastor Goiner what it was like to experience riding a Harley. I’m trying to convince him he should purchase one. ”
Jake laughed, then walked over to join them. Nat and I looked at each other, then I quickly glanced away. “I guess I’ll go get a donut,” I mumbled, wondering how Nat and I were ever going to find a way to say more than seven words to each other.
I sat down on the Angelfires’ blanket and, after a second, Nat sat down next to me. Both of us grabbed a donut and chewed and swallowed in silence, still not really talking. A few feet away, Jake was laughing with Bear and my dad, but he glanced my way a few times to make sure I was doing okay next to Nat.
After taking a few more bites, I suddenly remembered my tent was still standing in the camp. RVs and cars were already pulling out of the parking lot, and the camp in the field was thinning out. “My tent,” I said, standing up. “I need to go get it.”
Nat bolted to her feet too. “I’ll come with you.”
I looked at her. “All right,” I said, and we started walking together across the parking lot. We were quiet as we crossed the blacktop and stepped through the field to my tent, but once we got there, she helped me pull my sleeping bag, pillow, notebook, cell phone, and granola bars out of it so we could take it down. As we were down on all fours, rolling up the nylon, she finally spoke.
“I just want you to know that last night—the whole thing—in the beginning I thought it was just going to be a prank. You know, something funny. Molly said she was just going to put dog poop in your tent, but—”
I interrupted. “You shouldn’t have believed her, Nat.”
Nat nodded slowly—once, twice.
I sat back on my heels and pulled my skirt over my knees. Nat sat back too, but she didn’t look at me, she just ran a finger along the nylon of the tent like she was waiting for it to send her a message of what to do next.
“But you still set me up,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
Nat’s head snapped up. “Because I was so
pissed
at you, Emma.
That’s
why.”
I remembered my conversation with my dad earlier, and I tried to keep cool. “For not sticking up for you?” I asked.
Nat looked surprised that I’d said that. “Well, yeah,” she said. “That and the fact that you really do have double standards sometimes. I wasn’t kidding about that. You get mad at me for making up my mind about something when you disagree with it. But then you expect everyone else to understand
your
opinions about stuff when
you
make up your mind. You know?”
I swallowed. “I get that, Nat. I swear to God I get that, and I’ll try to be better about it. I just—sometimes it’s hard for me to just sit there if I think people are wrong.”
“Well, that’s another thing,” said Nat. “I know you might ‘think I’m wrong’ about Carson Tanner, but I like him. A lot. And how I feel should count for a lot more in your book than it actually does. If I want to date him, then you have to be cool with it. Even if you don’t think he’s, like, my perfect match or whatever.”
Just picturing Jake in my head made my nerves sizzle, and for the first time I understood that might be exactly what happened with Nat when she pictured Carson too. But there was more to it than that, and I had to come clean. “Well, maybe it wasn’t just the fact that I didn’t think you guys were a great match,” I said. “I mean, Molly and I were in a fight and Jake and I weren’t talking and it just felt like you were leaving me too.”
Nat just kept staring at me, which made my skin start to crawl. “I can’t believe you were jealous of Carson and that’s the reason you didn’t want me to date him,” she finally said.
I swallowed, trying not to lose it. “I’m sorry, Nat. It’s just—”
Nat didn’t let me finish. “I mean, Little Miss Righteous was jealous? That’s, like, unbelievable!”
I shook my head. Had I just heard her call me Little Miss Righteous? “What?”
Nat grinned. “The pastor’s daughter was jealous! Glory hallelujah!”
“Come on, Nat, this isn’t funny.”
Nat wouldn’t stop smiling. “Oh, yes, it is. I mean, you’re all,
I’m smart, I get mad at people who don’t think about things as much as I do,
and I’m just so glad you finally have an issue that makes you human. This is the best news I’ve heard all year.”
I wanted to tackle her and knock some sense into her. How could she think I was righteous and had never had an issue before that made me
human
? “What are you talking about?” I asked. “You’re the one who’s living in Perfectionville! You’re all gorgeous and faith-filled and everyone loves you. How do you think I feel standing next to you?”
Nat’s eyes darkened. “What? You think
I’m
perfect? That’s just plain stupid, Emma. Everyone knows you’re the smart one. People think I’m lucky just to have you around, like the world would eat me for breakfast if I didn’t.”