Faking Faith by Josie Bloss

inner pocket of my purse. I hadn’t brought my laptop, which had felt painfully like leaving behind a piece of my brain, just in case someone turned it on and saw something incriminating.
    But there were still a million and a half other things that could go wrong.
    And now I was stuck. The next exit was Greenplain, Illinois, where Abigail would be waiting for me at the bus stop. She knew what I looked like. I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I was absolutely committed.
    The minutes crept by. My heart rate crept up.
    I reviewed everything I’d memorized about Abigail’s family in order to calm myself down. There were her parents, who she called Mama and Daddy in her blog. There were seven younger siblings—four boys and three girls—who she referred to with adorable nicknames. There was an older sister, who had gotten married and lived somewhere nearby. And there was one older brother, Asher, who tended to skulk in the back of photos, never looking directly at the camera.
    There had always been something about Asher that intrigued me. Once, Abigail had alluded to “Asher’s troubles” and asked us to pray for him. Which, of course, had the effect of making him even more interesting.
    I couldn’t believe I was finally going to see them all in person.
    We exited the highway and began to pass through the middle of the small town, down an arrow-straight main street with Fourth of July buntings still hanging from the eaves. There wasn’t much to Greenplain—a gas station, a hardware store, a dusty little restaurant with a few pickup trucks parked in front of it. It couldn’t have been further from the bustling, paved city suburb I’d come from.
    But I had seen so many pictures of the town on Abigail’s blog that it felt strangely … familiar. Plus, this was the sort of small town that Faith was from, too. This was the middle of rural America, where life was quieter and slower. And in certain places, much weirder.
    The bus slowed to a squeaky stop in front of the post office.
    “Greenplain,” announced the bus driver. I was the only person who stood up to exit. It felt like everyone else in the bus who was awake was gawking at me, taking in my strange clothes. I would have stared at me, too.
    I gathered my things and, heart booming in my throat, made my way down the narrow bus steps.
    Was this really happening? What if it was some joke setup? What if she somehow found out who I was? What if she wasn’t here? Could I just get back on the bus and pretend this had never happened?
    But on the sidewalk, waiting for me with a huge smile on her face, was Abigail.
    “Faith!” she squealed, skipping forward and grabbing my hands. “I’m so happy you’re finally here! I prayed and prayed you’d have good weather for your trip! God is so good !”
    My ex-friend Amanda may have talked only in question marks, but Abigail’s favorite punctuation was clearly the exclamation point.
    “Oh, wow, thank you for your prayers! They, um, worked!” I said, stumbling over my words, giddy. Hearing her say the things I’d only read on her blog was unreal, like stepping into a movie. I smiled at her, searching for any trace of suspicion, but there was none.
    Abigail looked exactly like her pictures. Her long blond hair was pulled back into a low ponytail. Her face was wide and open and honest, with deep dimples at the corners of her mouth and pink cheeks from waiting in the sun. She was wearing an outfit I recognized from blog photos—a brown skirt and white cardigan that came down to her elbows, even though it was at least eighty-five degrees outside.
    She seemed to be examining me the same way, still holding my hands. I couldn’t even breathe. What if I’d missed some physical detail that would give me away? Or what if she could see the lies in my eyes? What if this ended right here and now before I even got two feet away from the bus?
    The driver had deposited my suitcase next to me on the ground. I glanced at it for a moment