“Coffee is magic,” Rachel grinned.

We’d been meeting before my Monday, Wednesday, and Friday classes for three weeks now, and in that span of time she’d developed a wicked caffeine addiction. “I can see why they forbade us drinking it,” she went on, cupping it in both hands before taking another sip. “I feel like I could take down a house. Or run a marathon.”

Her pupils were dilated the size of dinner plates. “Okay, champ,” I said, reaching over and gently prying the cup from her hands. “Let’s go easy on it, okay? You’ve got years of addiction to make up for before you can keep up with me.”

She laughed. We sat in the Student Union on a drizzly April afternoon. On the wall next to our table was the message board where clubs and groups posted their flyers. “They need to take down that one for the Blood Drive,” I commented as I glanced over it. “That already happened.”

“So take it down,” Rachel said.

I gave her a look. “If I get up from this table are you going to suck down the rest of this coffee in one gulp?”

“Yes I am,” she said with such prim dignity that I had to give in. “Fine,” I said, sliding my chair back. “That flyer’s been driving me nuts.”

I went over and yanked it down, exposing the post that had been hidden underneath. A house for rent—a small, two-bedroom cabin on Ridge Point Road. I knew that area. It used to be blocks of summer cabins situated on a low spit of land formed where the creek divided south of town, forking into two branches before coming together again a half mile downstream.

Without really knowing what I was doing, I yanked that flyer down too. Rachel watched me as I thoughtfully tucked it into my bag, but she didn’t ask me about it. She was good at keeping her thoughts to herself. I appreciated that about her. It was something that friends did.

I had a friend.

I sat back down and took the coffee cup from her hands with a shake of my head. My friend smiled with that little twist of her head, looking down as she did. It was this little tic she had, like she was afraid to let you see her smile. “What are you doing after class?” she asked.

I blinked. “I honestly have no idea,” I sighed. “I’ve been working my ass off, running this insane schedule for so long that now that I have a moment to myself I don’t know how to relax.”

“I get that feeling,” she agreed. “The rest of the janitors all complain about being exhausted, but I used to clean the whole house and care for all my little sisters and brothers.” That small twist of her head again. I could tell it hurt to mention them. “And after that, I’d still have to work with the rest of the women to get the meals done. Only having to look out for myself is so easy, I’m kind of bored.”

I grinned at her. “Well, as your official ambassador into the world of secular hedonism, I can’t have you bored. I was going to go visit Gabe—”

“Is that what you secular hedonists call it? Visiting?”

I did a double take. “Oh, oh! You’re catching on fast!” I laughed. Something in my chest unclenched, the tight fist that had held my breath in its grasp loosening. Rachel was smiling too, a smug little grin as she reached over and swiped the coffee cup back from me. “I feel like I’m corrupting a little baby lamb.”

She shook her head. “My older sister told me things. And you learn a lot growing up on a farm,” she said. 

“Come on over with me,” I said. “If you really want to be like a normal girl, then you need to know who the King Brothers are.”

“They’re a musical group, right?”

“They were the obsession of every girl our age the whole time we were growing up,” I corrected.

“Including you?”

I felt the hair on my scalp raise a little. “I had a crush on one of them, yeah.”

“Gabe?”

“Jonah.”

Rachel clapped her hands together in glee. “Oh my gracious, does Gabe know?”

“No!” I said, clapping my hand over her mouth. “And you can’t tell him, either. He absolutely hates being overshadowed by his brother. It would drive him nuts.”

“I solemnly swear to never breathe a word,” Rachel said. 

I glowered at her. “I feel like I should get you a Bible to swear on or something.”

She shook her head. “It would have to be the Prophet’s Missives,” she said, and the way she said it told me that those two words were capitalized in her brain. “The Bible is corrupted by Man’s touch.”

“Wow,” I whistled. “Don’t let my mom hear you say that.”

Rachel looked stricken for a moment, then let out a sigh of laughter. “Oh my word, I love caffeine!” she crowed, gulping down the last dregs from her cup. 

I grinned at her. “Wait ’til you try alcohol.”

Her eyes widened, scandalized. “Devil’s water.”

“Oh, yeah.” I nodded eagerly. “You think you feel good now? Just you wait.”

Rachel looked eager, so I did some quick calculations. I couldn’t very well ask Gabe to come out to the bar with us, so it would have to be later in the night. Meaning I wouldn’t be home for 9:30 curfew. I’d been sneaking out so often to run over to Gabe’s, but going to the bar would require me taking the car. There was no way I’d be able to pull in again without waking my parents.

I pressed my lips together. “Hang on. I need to send my mother a text and tell her I’ll be out. She’s not going to like it, so I’m going to have to stay out until after she leaves. That’s not until two, which is when the bar closes anyway. You think you’ll be able to hang with me until then?”

“Gee,” Rachel said. “You have to account for your whereabouts more than I ever did.”

I looked up from my phone and stared at her. She smiled in her sweet way. “I guess I’m not the only one who grew up with controlling parents.”

“No, I mean, it’s not like that…” I started to say, but she raised her eyebrow in a way that silenced me.

Rachel had grown up under an oppressive, autocratic authority figure who made her feel shame every time she dared deviate from their rigid expectations.

Hadn’t I done the same thing?

“You’re right,” I said, completely awestruck. I reached down and brushed my hand over the flyer I had taken from the bulletin board without truly understanding why. “Hey,” I asked her. “You want to take a drive with me real quick?”

We pulled on to Ridge Point Road exactly eight minutes later, and I noted with satisfaction how close it was to school. The low-slung gray house hugged the banks of the creek like a lover. I got out of the car and pulled my hood up against the rain and grinned at Rachel, who looked shyly hopeful for me. “Look at that! If it ever stops raining, I could open the window at night and hear the creek,” I said, already relishing the idea of deep quiet. “It’d be like having a white nose machine.”

Rachel gave me that smile—the one that said she had no idea what I was talking about but didn’t want me to spend the time to explain it.

I stared at the little place, already dreaming of being on my own. I glanced down at the flyer again as cold reality smacked me in the face. “But I can’t afford the rent,” I sighed. “I’d need a housemate.”

Rachel was quiet. I looked over at her. Her eyes were cast downward.

That’s why she had looked so hopeful. “Rachel? Where are you living these days?”

“Hi-Lo Hotel,” she said softly. I hated when the confidence dripped out of her voice like that. “Everything for rent requires a security deposit and I haven’t been able to—”

“Rachel?” I asked my first real friend. “Would you like to live here with me?”