The Summer Sisterhood (part one)

This is part one to a three part story. I got it off of a Christian website and I hope you enjoy the story. I will post part one today, part two tomorrow, and part three on Monday. Enjoy!!!

The Summer Sisterhood (Part One)
fiction by Brad Zockoll
Cut off the porch light, Heather.”
“What?”
“Cut off the light, Girl. Let’s see how dark it gets.”
I reached over and clicked the switch.
“Eewww. Too dark for me,“ said Amanda. “Switch it back on, would you?”
I waited, just to see what she would say.
“Hey,” Amanda said nervously, “cut it back on, Heather. Okay? Cut it back on. Now.”
I switched it back on.
“Keep it on, and don’t mess with it, okay? None of you.”
“Aw, Amanda, lighten up. It’s not like anyone’s out there. What were we talking about, anyway?”
“I dunno, Denise. Something about when you finally broke down and started coming to the teen meetings.“
“No, we already talked about that, Mudflap.”
“Don’t call me a mudflap, Dimbulb. You were the one who started the talk, anyway. What was it about?”
“I can’t remember. I think we were talking about the overnight lock-in from last year. It was a boring subject anyway. I’m tired, and I don’t wanna talk about it anymore. Look at that field, Girl. I can’t see but 10 or 12 rows of corn. Dare me to go run through it?”
It was Kimberly who sat up and looked around for the challenge. The rest of us were too lazy to rise.
She was right; off of the porch, it was inky-black. If it wasn’t for the yellow porch light’s glow, I don’t think you could have seen the barn. It was that dark. The four of us girls sat there, picking at the last parts of our dinner and taking in the realization that the whole farmhouse was ours for the entire weekend.
Yeah. Mom and Dad were gone. The four of us — the Sisterhood, as we had called ourselves since the fifth grade — were totally in charge of the homestead.
I mean totally in charge.
A quartet of high school seniors and 72 hours to ourselves. Almost too good to be true, you know? I sighed happily and leaned my head back on the porch railing. Things were all right with this kind of world.
Keeping Track of My WrongsSomething rustled in the corn. Amanda looked up quickly, but it didn’t bother me, ’cause she’s always jumpy. I gazed around and spit a loose piece of corn from between my teeth. Hmmm. What could it be out there? Maybe it was a dog. We didn’t have a dog that was loose, but maybe a neighbor’s dog was wandering between the rows. I squinted as we sat on the back porch, but I couldn’t see anything.
Amanda shivered. “Don’t even think about running through it.”
Kimmy’s eyes darted around. “Dare me. I’ll do it. Who wants me to?”
Amanda was shaking her head in that nervous way she always shows. Denise, though, was totally unmoved. When I glanced over at her, she was leaning her back on the porch pillar and gently bumping her head against the wood while humming to herself. That girl never gets riled up over anything. “So you run through it. So what?”
Kimberly wanted to start something, though. She looked around, searching for trouble. A lightbulb turned on in her head. She found what she was looking for — me.
“Say, Heather, Sweetie, remember what you said? ‘Outside counts more,’ were your words, I believe. Isn’t that it?” she asked, flashing her eyes quickly and looking for a response.
Kimberly was an odd sort: a skinny, perpetually energized girl who wore mascara and five earrings at all times. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen her sit still. Come to think of it, I don’t ever remember her sleeping, even at a lock-in. You couldn’t predict the way she would talk, the way she would act or what she would wear. If you wanted to liven up a party, invite Kimberly.
Kimberly looked at me hard, raised her eyebrows and gave me a wicked grin while she sipped her iced coffee through a straw. She had a daring look in her eye and tossed her long brunette hair back like she wanted to start something bad. I hated when she did that hair-tossing thing. It always irritated me. “ ‘Outside counts more’ is what you said, Girl, remember?” She smiled wider.
Amanda rolled her eyes and looked out across the cornfield. I could tell she wanted to change the subject, but she couldn’t figure out how to start. She just sat there, letting her sandal dangle on her toe while she tried to appear as if she was concentrating on the clouds covering the moon.
Denise was still leaning against the pillar in a whole other world with her plate of corncobs by her side. She was picking her teeth with a piece of grass, humming softly. Her fingers were greasy from the butter. She picked up a sheet of newspaper Dad left on the swing. It was today’s edition with a headline about an escaped convict in the area. Armed, dangerous, blah, blah, blah. Denise wiped her greasy fingers on the front page and crumpled it up.
“So talk,” urged Kimberly.
“What?” I asked, even though I knew full well what she meant. “Duh,” she answered, “let’s all guess what Heather said the other day. Don’t you want to share it with the whole class? Hmmm?”
Heather the HypocriteUp until that part of the evening, things were going okay. We were all having a pretty fun time watching the house while my parents shopped at the Warehouse Club and stayed in a hotel over an hour away, past Hiker’s Lake.
My folks hadn’t had a vacation in months, and they said it would be okay for me to invite some friends for a sleepover while they were gone. I asked Denise, Amanda and Kimberly to come. The Sisterhood was going to squeeze in a month’s worth of trouble into one weekend. We had to move fast.
From the start, we went off the deep end. I climbed out onto the second-story porch roof and came close to soaking Amanda with a bucket of water when she was coming up the walk. She ran inside and tackled me before I could escape out the back door. That’s when she poured a glass of milk over my head.
Kimberly had already fired up Dad’s riding mower and was chasing Denise around the yard. Denise slowed Kimmy down by splattering her with a moldy apple from the orchard. The Sisterhood is like that. We go a little nutty, I guess.
We had a food fight at dinner and followed that up by commenting through every line of what was supposed to be a romantic video. We giggled and snorted all through last year’s yearbook and then took advantage of the evening hours by trying to water balloon Kent Albert’s pickup when he drove by our house.
Kimberly, of course, was the wildest of the bunch, but we fell over laughing when Denise hid in the bushes and started screaming at cars going down the country road. We were tired now after loading up on almost a bushel of roasted corn on the cob, and that’s when Kimberly started getting mean.
She heard me talking last week during our youth group discussion about being kind to others, no matter how they look or act. Now she was throwing one of my old statements back in my face: “Outside counts more.”
Some of the cornstalks moved, but there was no wind. Denise raised an eyebrow and then shrugged.
Amanda played with her long, blond hair and pointed her finger in the direction of the barn. “I heard there was a burglar that escaped through that cornfield over there. He robbed the convenience store and ran through three miles of fields in the dark. Right there is where they say he may have gone.
“Of course, I also heard that the Collins’ oldest boy still wants revenge, Heather, ’cause your daddy reported his truck weaving the night he was drunk. He had to stay overnight in the jail.”
Kimberly didn’t even glance off the porch. “Don’t change the subject, Mandy. Heather’s gotta fess up, now. She came across pretty high and mighty at the youth group meeting, but I know her heart.”
“Do not,” I said, knowing my face was getting red.
“You know I do,” retorted Kimberly, leaning back on the porch swing. “You made that statement only two weeks ago when you were talking about the Baylor boys. When I said they had a bad attitude, you laughed and said, ‘Outside counts more.’ You know you did, so don’t lie. Tell us the truth.”
I sat still and clenched my jaw. I hate it when she starts this. I flipped a corncob off the porch and tried to sound casual. “I said that more ’n two months ago, and it was before the week of camp. I got things right at the camp. You know I did, Loudmouth.”
Kimberly chuckled. “You did not, Big Liar. We went to the camp over a month ago, and you said this two weeks ago.”
Denise drawled, “Let it go, Kimmy. Don’t ruin the night. Why do you get worked up about stuff like this?” She wiggled her toes and sighed loudly, and her loud sigh was always a firm hint telling Kimberly that the subject needed to be changed.
Denise was the tallest of us all, and no doubt the strongest. Kimberly shrugged, took another swig and swatted a mosquito in the direction of the bug zapper. “I dunno. I just don’t want Heather to get too uppity on us.” She giggled but nobody else did.
“Well, then, let it go. It’s not like you have any room to talk, Miss Role Model,” Denise said, yawning. “Got in trouble last week in church, right? Back row, talking. I knew you would. I told you you would.”
Kim smirked and nodded in my direction. “Not me we’re talking about. It’s Heather the Hypocrite.”
Reckless Words I was pretty sure I could get my temper back under control if I could take my plate and get into the kitchen. I hate it when she starts taunting me, making me look like an idiot. I went out to the side porch and turned off the light, trying to calm down. The clouds covered the moon, and I gazed at the kitchen window light of our nearest neighbor, over a mile away.
I stood on the porch for a moment to get myself back together. Kimberly was right; that’s what made me so mad. I couldn’t get back at her; I had nobody to blame but myself. I had blurted out that stupid, stupid statement, boldly saying that in my opinion, a guy’s looks won out. Over anything. What a moronic thing to say. And now it was coming back to haunt me, especially because of our new pastor.
Yeah, the new pastor and his wife. They moved up from Florida. He had a pretty wife who really loved teens and played a piano like nobody’s business. And the pastor himself? Like a grandfather, he was. He loved all of us immediately. He could deliver a sermon, and you’d eat it up like it was the only meal you’d ever get in a month. He was great, all right.
Except that scar.
That hideous scar that was caused in an auto accident about three years ago, they say. When his face was thrown through a windshield.
He survived it and was able to walk after a month. The only reminder of that day was a scar that traveled brutally down the side of his cheekbone and ended at his lip, that corner of his lip. That corner was twisted and mangled.
He was a beautiful man on the inside, but that scar . . . and that lip. It took some getting used to. And then I had to go and say that the only thing that counted was a person’s looks. And now Kimmy’s called me out on it.
I stood in the muggy darkness of the evening and bit my lip. I was not only stung that Kimberly would throw it at me so viciously, I choked in silent rage that I could have been so stupid as to blurt out a statement that was making my testimony look like a joke. I heaved a sigh and sat down in the shadow of the porch. I didn’t move for a few minutes. A shiver ran through the cornfield.
Wait.
No wind. That’s rustling.
It came from the cornfield.
I squinted my eyes. I forced my ears to pay attention. Yeah, there it was again. I had no doubt now.
I could hear the uneven rustle and squeak. I peered into the darkness. A sliver of moonbeam slipped through the clouds and stabbed the ground for a split second before retreating into blackness once again.
And then I saw it.
Someone was in that cornfield, moving silently toward the house.

Come back tomorrow to see what happens in "The Summer Sisterhood!"

Until tomorrow,
Socialbutterfly