Two Of Us

Chapter Six // BEFORE

I have to apologize for the inconsistent updates. For anyone who is at all curious, here's  a swift explanation -- it's my junior year of high school, I'm on my school's drill team (AND WE ON THE ROAD TO STATE, BITCHES HELL YEAH 2017), I'm doing this foreign exchange youth delegation thing with my city that requires weekly meetings, AND I have a job! I'm a little bit busy. I try to keep writing a priority, but sometimes I write without updating you guys. I'm sorry about that! Thank you all for the massive support I've received on this story thus far. I'm so glad to hear that so many of you can empathize and even find pieces of yourselves in either Aria or Laramie, it really warms my heart. xx -the author

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Church in the morning made me wonder what the ward knew of my family.

Laramie's parents were the ward gossips, as vivacious as their daughter, while their son Bordeaux had probably made the entire Young Men's aware that he'd actually known a girl who drank alcohol, how badass was that, and they'd discuss it while setting up the sacrament table. I played a movie in my head of one-by-one each Moreau telling the world about Juliette and all of her many issues gave me a headache, even though I knew it probably wasn't true. If there was one thing about Laramie, it was that my secrets and mine alone were safe with her.

The sun had come up in the morning, as every night I prayed that the sun would rise. Even though I loved the way that the rain invigorated the fall colors around me, lit the hills on fire with shades of scarlet against the gray skies and you could see the clouds reflected in Samuel's eyes, I was ready to have one last day of warmth. It was almost impossible to mimic summer once the fall settled in, but to be able to wear a dress with short sleeves without worrying about the rain was nice. It was a reminder of my Savior, Jesus wants me for a sunbeam, I'll be a sunbeam for him – I'd made this promise when I was tall enough only to wrap myself around my father's calf muscle.

We sat in our usual pew, in the back and to the right, as far away from church authority as possible. My parents tried so hard, they really did, though Juliette had sat next to my mother not that long ago in one of her pretty dresses. She'd talk about being a teenage beauty queen but the second her close circle of friends who all graduated the same year as her found themselves alone in the foyer, she'd divulge her stories of Saturday night.

They didn't know anything about my family. They'd never lived in my house. They couldn't judge me, or my sister, or my parents based off of anything they'd heard.

Sacrament meeting began with some formalities, people got released from and called to callings with in the church, I begun to consider all of the younger families in our ward with five or six children and how much more tiring it would be to have four Juliettes instead of just one, and finally the boys begun to pass out our weekly source of redemption. First the bread. The body of The Son, exposed for us on the cross so we may be cleansed of our sins. I wore a dress as purely white as the first snow of winter, I wanted to be wiped clean and I never wanted to see my older sister as enveloped in the hospital as she had been yesterday. It was a dress as pure as the Savior's sacrifice. Next came the water in tiny little cups the little kids slurped but the rest of us downed as quickly as one would cough syrup. This was the blood of Thy Son which was shed for us – Bordeaux had said the prayer this morning. He didn't have the same accent as his older sister who winked at me from a few rows up and over as she drank the water.

"How's Juliette doing today?" was the first question Laramie asked me once the talks had concluded and the meeting was adjourned. We stood outside our Sunday School class with Astrid clinging to the wall.