Post by beautifulbrainbooks on Jul 11, 2022 13:15:07 GMT -5
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Chapter One: Elana
Dear God,
There are no cute guys at the new youth group. There haven't been any cute guys anywhere in a few years. I like guys with long hair and baby faces, but lately not even those. It's like I'm going through backwards puberty. Aren't I supposed to be boy crazy?
Maybe I would have changed my mind if I had actually had youth group with the boys. But we started out in one room, then were quickly separated so we could have The Talk. As if I wasn't seventeen, well past the age so many people at my school have already lost the purity they should have held so deeply, at least according to the youth pastor's wife. Always purity, never the word sex.
There was a nice girl there though. She knew I was new and sat next to me, in a way that made the nervous butterflies of so many unknown people flutter even faster. I think talking just made me more nervous. She asked my name, and didn't pronounce Elana wrong when she repeated it. Her name is Ruth, and she said she'd give me the downlow on everyone in the youth group, but she'd need my number, because she couldn't trash talk the girls in front of them.
It didn't seem very church-y. She laughed when I said a few ums and uhs, her laugh a loud, honking, hilarious sound, and she shook her head. "I was kidding. It's pretty conservative, but the people aren't too bad. And soon we will be getting out of here. You're a senior too, right? We're almost done." She made getting out seem like such a heavenly experience. It makes me think that maybe it's worse than she let on. But how anyone could be mean to her I can't see. Maybe she's just a city person.
"You can have my number though," I told her, and I didn't know why I said it.
She slipped out her phone, and just like that the pastor’s wife said, "phones away please. Let's get started."
The youth group conversation was awkward. The pastor's wife, who I learned was Mrs. Preston, led the conversation, but there was this girl, Mary, who answered all the questions. She was the only one who answered any of the questions, and I didn't see how she talked so much with such thin lips. We talked about how church was for long skirts. That you had to dress up, because you would dress up to go to the white house, and God's house was even more important. We talked about how we needed to keep guys from experiencing lust. We talked about dating only when it could lead to marriage. Basically, all the conversations I've heard every year since being old enough to go to a youth group. It was maybe nice to see that the new church was just like the old one, but a part of that made me sad too.
Chapter One: Elana
Dear God,
There are no cute guys at the new youth group. There haven't been any cute guys anywhere in a few years. I like guys with long hair and baby faces, but lately not even those. It's like I'm going through backwards puberty. Aren't I supposed to be boy crazy?
Maybe I would have changed my mind if I had actually had youth group with the boys. But we started out in one room, then were quickly separated so we could have The Talk. As if I wasn't seventeen, well past the age so many people at my school have already lost the purity they should have held so deeply, at least according to the youth pastor's wife. Always purity, never the word sex.
There was a nice girl there though. She knew I was new and sat next to me, in a way that made the nervous butterflies of so many unknown people flutter even faster. I think talking just made me more nervous. She asked my name, and didn't pronounce Elana wrong when she repeated it. Her name is Ruth, and she said she'd give me the downlow on everyone in the youth group, but she'd need my number, because she couldn't trash talk the girls in front of them.
It didn't seem very church-y. She laughed when I said a few ums and uhs, her laugh a loud, honking, hilarious sound, and she shook her head. "I was kidding. It's pretty conservative, but the people aren't too bad. And soon we will be getting out of here. You're a senior too, right? We're almost done." She made getting out seem like such a heavenly experience. It makes me think that maybe it's worse than she let on. But how anyone could be mean to her I can't see. Maybe she's just a city person.
"You can have my number though," I told her, and I didn't know why I said it.
She slipped out her phone, and just like that the pastor’s wife said, "phones away please. Let's get started."
The youth group conversation was awkward. The pastor's wife, who I learned was Mrs. Preston, led the conversation, but there was this girl, Mary, who answered all the questions. She was the only one who answered any of the questions, and I didn't see how she talked so much with such thin lips. We talked about how church was for long skirts. That you had to dress up, because you would dress up to go to the white house, and God's house was even more important. We talked about how we needed to keep guys from experiencing lust. We talked about dating only when it could lead to marriage. Basically, all the conversations I've heard every year since being old enough to go to a youth group. It was maybe nice to see that the new church was just like the old one, but a part of that made me sad too.