Chapter Four
Amazing Grace

My grandmother wasn't Christian. She wasn't a shining beacon of compassion and faith. The nicest thing she'd ever said to me was, "Thalia, the only good thing about seeing you is I appreciate the quiet so much more once you're gone."

Death was the most flattering cloak a person could wear.

The church was stifling. My mom kept mopping her face with a kerchief, but it was pointless. Leave it to Grandma Adrienne to make us suffer even after she was long gone.

"I think I can smell rotting flesh," I moaned to my mom. In reality, all I could smell was incense. "When can we go home?"

She pursed her lips. "If you're going to act like a child, you can wait outside."

Yes, please.

I plowed through the assorted family members in our pew, mumbling excuses about feeling sick and needing fresh air. My dress was sticking to my legs. Damn Grandma Adrienne.

As morbid as it sounded, death was a big deal in Shallow Lake. It meant the whole town got to go to the funeral home and pretend to care, and afterwards they got a free meal out of it. Or at least that's how I saw things.

Mom always said I was too dark for my own good.

And worst of all, when the population was only a few thousand, everyone knew everyone. When Adrienne died, people knew the entire Grace clan, spread out all over the country, would come to pay their last respects.

When you unexpectedly left two weeks before freshman year started, your former friends were bound to show up just to ask you where the hell you'd been for nearly two years. So far I'd only seen a handful of people, all of whom I was able to dodge before the service started.

But of course the one person I feared confronting most would be waiting for me.

He was sitting next to the small flower garden on one of the oversized rocks. A lit cigarette dangled from his mouth. Besides that little detail, he looked exactly like I remembered him. His sandy hair was in desperate need of a trim, his jeans holy, and the Hollister shirt he was wearing was faded to the point where it was almost white.

"So it took your old hag of a grandmother dying for you to come back," Luke said, blowing out a big cloud of smoke. The whole thing reminded me of the scene in Alice in Wonderland with the caterpillar.

I wished I could have acted half as composed as him. A pregnant pause hung between us before I blurted, "When'd you start smoking?"

"When'd you grow up?" he shot back.

When you were gone. Neither of us said anything. I didn't know what I'd imagined for the moment when we saw each other again, but this was not it.

"You should sit down," he finally said, moving over on his rock to make room for me.

I put a hand on my hip. "What makes you think I'm staying out here with you?"

"Because you don't care about the heavenly words of the Lord or whatever, and you can't stand the people who pretend they do. No one in this town is actually Christian. They all just pretend to be, because they're scared they'll be kicked out of the little small town circle if people know they're not."

I couldn't deny that he'd hit the nail right on the head. Feigning reluctance, I sat next to him.

"Why'd you leave?" Luke asked, his blue eyes fixed on me.

"Not much for small talk, I see."

He rolled his eyes. "Fine. How's your mom?"

Just like that, we went from one bad subject to another. In reality, my mom was the reason we left. I came home one day and everything was packed. She told me she was moving to California. I could come with her or stay with my grandparents.

Once we got settled in California, she tried to get back into acting, something she'd had to give up when she got pregnant with me. However, no one wanted her. Who cared if she'd been on Days of Our Lives for three weeks? No one even remembered Samantha Clandestine.

She took the rejection hard. I just tried to stay out of her way as much as possible.

Then I came home one day and our stuff was packed again. For a second I thought we were moving permanently back to Michigan. "Adrienne died. We have to go back for the funeral. It will only be a few days; I promise," Mom informed me, no emotion in her voice whatsoever.

And that was how we ended up here.

I remembered he'd asked me a question. "Just great. Could you put that out? It's gross."

He sighed and put out his cigarette on the rock, then tossed it in the garden. Of course he wouldn't have any reverence for the house of the Lord. I didn't either. "Your mom know you're smoking now?"

"Do you really care?"

Again, it was back to silence. I suddenly missed the days when we were little kids and could talk for hours about nothing. "I don't know why we left," I finally offered.

"Well that makes two of us."

"My mom told me we couldn't talk to anyone back home." My defense sounded weak, even to me. "She said we were in trouble and needed to stay under the radar for a while, or…"

"Since when do you listen to your mom? How hard would it be to pick up the phone just once and-"

"I didn't think that it would matter. And maybe it was just better to forget about everything. We were only little kids, and-"

"So nothing mattered to you? We were best friends, and you could just leave?"

"It doesn't matter. We're flying out tonight."

The next few seconds seemed to happen in slow motion. Luke leaned closer to me, his face only inches from mine. It was a rare moment when he let his guard down. "I missed you," he whispered.

That was all it took for me to make the decision I'd probably regret for the rest of my life. I pulled him close, my mouth meeting his.

"You taste like cherries," he whispered, licking his lips. I could feel his hot breath on my neck and his warm hands wandering down to uncharted land. Well, he wasn't one for wasting time.

"Luke," I hissed. "We're in front of a church." Judging by how we was, well, feeling, I didn't think he would have cared if we were in the middle of Times Square.

He gave me an innocent look. "There's an upstairs."

My freshman health teacher told me that unless you planned ahead, your teenage emotions would win every time. Well, I never really planned on losing my virginity to my childhood best friend in the upper story of a church while my grandmother's funeral was going on downstairs.

Hormones: one. Thalia: zero.

Did the doorknob just jiggle? I froze, and Thalia looked at me, her eyes wide. "Get dressed," I whispered. "Fast."

I thanked the nonexistent god - whose church I'd just defiled - that I'd remembered to lock the door. "You ready?" I looked at her after I had my clothes back on.

She nodded, running a hand through her unruly hair. "I'll follow your lead."

Yeah, leave me to get us out of this mess. I unlocked the door and plastered a fake smile on my face. "Reverend Candra! Is the service done already?"

Reverend Candra looked like she couldn't be older than twelve, yet she'd been at the church since I was a little kid. She also had a low bullshit tolerance, so I was going to have to be pretty careful to get out of this. "No, but we need some more incense."

Incense. Right. "Yeah, well, we're up here because Thalia was feeling a little sick, and you know, it's so hot outside, and…"

The reverend was not buying it. We were screwed. Okay, bad choice of words.

I heard little sobs from behind me. "It's just…Grandma Adrienne was so nice…and it's so sad that she's gone, and I couldn't handle going back in to watch the rest of the service…" Thalia put her head in her hands and continued crying.

"Oh, well…" Thalia's outburst left the reverend started and obviously uncomfortable. "I'm going to grab the incense, and you can stay up here as long as you need to, Miss Grace. Remember, she is with the Lord, and she will always be watching over you."

I could barely keep from laughing until Reverend Candra left. "It's not funny," Thalia said, punching me in the arm. Hard. She wiped the fake tears off her face. "She knew why we were up here."

"Oh yeah? How?"

"Luke. Look at your pants."

My face turned red. "Yeah, well…good thing you could come in with the fake tears."

"My mom's an actress," she said by way of explanation. "Even if her career was a complete failure, you learn a few things over the years."

We could smell the incense wafting up from downstairs and hear a pipe organ belt out the beginning chords of Amazing Grace. "Oh my God," Thalia said. "My grandma is having her funeral downstairs, and we just had sex."

I shrugged. "You really don't care?" she demanded.

"Yeah, I care…but, I don't get why you're freaking out."

"We see each other for the first time in two years and you decide that it's a great idea to go have sex on top of a church. We're probably doomed to go to hell or some shit. How are you not freaking out?"

"Well it's a good thing you can go home in a few hours and forget this ever happened."

She fixed me with a glare and headed for the door. "I'm crazy for thinking you might have changed over two years."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Don't pretend you don't know when you do it to every single person in your life. Everything's fine as long as you get what you want. But the second someone turns to you wanting something, you just push them away."

"Is this because I don't have a problem with having sex in a church?"

"Quit dodging!" She was a few decibels away from screaming. "I'm stupid, so stupid. You know what? I'm just gonna go back down and watch the rest of my grandma's service. And you can just go wherever, as long as it's not anywhere near me. Let's forget this ever happened. Even better, let's pretend we never knew each other!"

She stormed out the door, and I just watched her go.

I ran a hand through my hair and bit my lip. Going back once was hard enough.

Going back twice was going to be impossible.

Especially knowing this time, there was no flight back to California waiting for me.