Little Do We Know(97)

“Okay, so…a couple thoughts,” I said.

“Hit me.”

“We don’t have camping gear.”

Emory made a check mark in the air with her finger. “Charlotte said I could borrow her family’s stuff. They don’t need it.”

“We don’t have a car.”

She got this funny look on her face. “Luke wants us to take the Jetta.”

“You told him about this already?” I asked.

“Yep.”

“And he offered his car, just like that?”

“He said he wouldn’t be needing it. He practically insisted.” She crinkled her nose. “He said something about being our glue.”

My face lit up.

Emory was waiting for an answer.

“When?” I asked.

“Right after graduation. The day after or two days later, I don’t care, you decide.” She knew she had me right where she wanted me. She leaned in close to my ear. “Don’t think about it, Hannah. Just say yes.”

I wanted to sleep on it, or at least go for a run and ponder it from the top of my rock, but instead, I acted on impulse.

“Yes,” I blurted.

“Yes? Like, yes-yes?” Emory came up on her knees and threw her arms around my neck, practically choking me with her hug. “You won’t regret this, I promise.”

But she didn’t have to tell me that. I already knew I wouldn’t.

“How many steps did you say there were between our windows?” I asked.

She looked offended, like this was information I should have committed to memory. “Thirty-six.”

“That was over two years ago.” I lifted my foot and wiggled it in the air. “We’ve grown.”

Emory jumped up, grinning as she offered her hand to help me stand. We walked to my house and slid in between the rosebush and the flowering shrub, and I pressed my back against the siding as I looped my arm through hers.

We stepped forward in unison. And then we each tapped our heels to our toes and stepped forward again. We counted aloud.

“Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one.”

And then Emory stumbled and fell to one side, so we walked back to my house and started over. The next time, we took slower, more careful steps. We wobbled a few times, but we didn’t lose count.

“Twenty-three. Twenty-four. Twenty-five.”

But Emory tickled me in the side and I lost my balance, and we had to start again.

When we took off the third time with our arms interlocked, we were laughing so hard we were almost crying.

We did better. As we neared Emory’s window, we were so focused on our objective, we didn’t say a word. I was counting in my head.

Thirty. Thirty-one. Thirty-two.

She tightened her grip on my arm and yelled, “Thirty-three.”

We took one more step, and at the exact same time, we each slapped our palms against her house.

“Thirty-four,” we yelled in unison.

I felt a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth.

All my life, I’d believed that everything happened for a reason. That it was all part of God’s plan. A puzzle He’d created, made up of tragedies and joys and everything in between, each event clicking into place exactly the way it was supposed to.

I didn’t think I believed that anymore. Each choice, good and bad, branched out and created a new path, and on and on, piecing itself together along the way, with no real vision for how it would all come together in the end. God wasn’t in control. None of us were really in control either.

But then I thought about Luke pulling up in front of my house that night, and me getting a glass of water exactly as he did. I thought about him saying that maybe it had happened for a reason.

“That’s weird,” Emory said, crinkling her nose. “Luke’s jersey number is thirty-four. Isn’t that weird?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Weird.”

Maybe it was totally random.

Maybe it was meant to be.

I’d never know.



While this is a work of fiction, both Hannah’s and Emory’s stories are deeply personal ones.

Like Hannah, when I was young, I went on a similar quest to better understand my faith. I wanted to ask myself big questions, learn as much as I could about religions that were different from my own, and discover what I believed in context with everything I’d been taught growing up. The experience opened my mind and changed me forever. It felt like an important one to share when I began writing this novel in 2014. Today, in an environment more focused on dividing us because of who we are and what we believe than uniting us as human beings, it feels even more important.

While some of the details of Emory’s assault were fictionalized, the words she hears are the same ones that were said to me when I was a young woman, word for word, by an older man in power who I trusted completely. Those words were incredibly difficult to write, not only because they forced me to relive a moment that terrified me, but also because they’re so painfully indicative of the larger problem that has since (thankfully) come to light through the #metoo movement. “I can’t be responsible for what I’ll do to you,” he said. In other words, this is happening, there’s nothing you can do about it, and it’s your fault, not mine. I haven’t forgotten those words in over twenty-five years, and it took me that long to find the courage to tell this story. To all the people who have lived with this secret, and to those who still do, you’re not alone. You did nothing wrong. We see you. We believe you. #metoo