Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 40275 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 201(@200wpm)___ 161(@250wpm)___ 134(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40275 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 201(@200wpm)___ 161(@250wpm)___ 134(@300wpm)
I blink twice, pinching the inside of my cheek between my molars, but the tears come unbidden. All I’ve ever wanted is to feel good in my skin. To feel normal somehow, like the girls at school I see walking around wearing makeup and chittering about boys and just being so carefree.
“You need to learn the value of life. Away from all this.” He waves his hand around the truck. “Time that you were humbled.”
He’s full of shit. If I was born with a Bible in my crib, he was born with a deed to a 10,000-acre tobacco farm and all the righteous weirdness to go along with it. But I don’t point that out. I’m already knee deep in sin and backtalk is not going to help.
That word humbled, though. That’s new. And it worries me.
The road narrows, the woods around getting thicker and more menacing. The road turns from pavement to gravel, then from gravel to mostly mud, but the truck handles the winding road upward into the mountains like a train on a track. There’s no stopping this, and the preacher on the radio thunders his agreement.
I shiver as we wind into the dense forest. That’s the thing about North Carolina. There are big cities, quaint towns and farmland but there are also mountains and back woods that reek of Deliverance.
It’s a terrible movie. But Burt Reynolds turned my insides to warm custard and had me writing out Mrs. Marin Reynolds in the back pages of my notebook for a year. It was the only show I could pull in the night I snuck into the attic with five extension cords and some tin foil and managed to get the thirty-year-old Magnavox to find a station.
Otherwise, no TV for me. Not unless it’s ordained by Grandpa. And, don’t even mention a cell phone. That’s two weeks of penance right there.
As we round a hairpin turn doing fifty the back of the truck slides and I yelp grabbing at the door handle. The inertia throws my burning cheek against the cool glass as Grandpa pumps the brakes and calls for Jesus to take the wheel.
He seems to make an exception to his every rule when it comes to Carrie Underwood.
Panic rises in my center, coiling around like a snake. “It was a modeling agent meeting. Something special for the last year of high school, Grandpa. Sort of like an internship.” Wow, that’s a reach but I’m desperate. “Nobody touched me, I didn’t touch nobody else. I didn’t sin. I don’t need cleansing.” I hold up the tattered printout of the email string Stacey gave me with the details. “See? Modeling. Not tempting the holy into damnation.”
Grandpa snatches the printout from my hand, balls it up, pushing the button to lower the window then releases it into the night like a paper snowball. The freezing wind blows his silver hair around as he flashes me a look, the furrows in his brow so deep they could pinch pennies. “You are the sin, child. Your earthly form is the sin.”
Hearing that isn’t new. I am the apple that tempted Adam. The fire that burns men. I’ve heard it all so many, many times.
He takes a right, then a sharp left onto an unmarked washboard road. Mud spatters onto the side windows, and in the headlights I see a cabin ahead. No, not a cabin. A shack. Moss clings to the roof, and the window to the left of the front door is flapping in the wind, covered with clear plastic secured by duct tape around a crooked frame.
All the protests die on my tongue when Grandpa skids to a stop, throwing the truck into park and flies out of his door without a word. He’s hella spry for eighty-five when he’s fired up that’s for sure.
I spring from my side, heels tottering on the gravel of the little driveway. He drops open the tailgate with a thud. And my heart sinks into the squishy ground along with my shoes.
He’s throwing out red bags and cardboard boxes. A kerosene stove; Preppers’ Warehouse MREs; iodine tablets. A blanket, a pair of red rubber boots. Jugs of water. A battery-powered lantern.
Suddenly, the plan starts to come into focus. No, no, no!
“You can’t be serious? You’re not going to leave me out here.” I toggle my head to the right, then to the left. It’s not just isolated here, it’s apocalyptic.
I nearly face plant into a puddle as I stumble trip reaching for his arm, but he shoves me away. “Best thing for you, my girl. If you end up like your mother…I’ll never forgive myself.” He says then turns away.
“Grandpa. I’ll be good. I have mid-terms coming up. What about school?”
He slams the tailgate closed without reply. The diesel engine still rumbling tells me he’s not staying. The mist filled air cools my face and after a pause, he turns to me in the red taillight glow and makes an X with his fingers as I tug the thick jacket around me. “If you survive this winter, you’ll be saved. I prayed and that’s what the Lord told me. You are eighteen, but you are not grown. You will find your humility here. With Jesus.”