The Summer I Left novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Benefit

Grace Community Church had a basement hall with a drop ceiling and round tables for a hundred and forty.

A banner across the stage read *NATE'S ROAD: Because Every Boy Deserves a Home.*

I stood inside the door in a thrift-store blazer, with no mask, in the town where I grew up.

The floor on my dorm hall had raised the money for two plane tickets in an afternoon.

I had cried about it in the bathroom, where nobody could see.

Eddie stood next to me in a borrowed jacket two sizes too small.

"Remember," he said. "If anybody throws water, I'll throw a bread roll."

"Thank you."

"It's a very good roll. I checked."

We stepped inside.

A hush crossed the room table by table.

I knew most of those faces. My old Sunday school teacher. Two neighbors who had watched me grow up. The woman from the diner where I worked weekends, holding a plate of cheese cubes.

They all stared.

Then I heard the whisper, then the louder one.

"That's him."

"Look at him, walking in here without even a mask."

"After what he did to that poor boy."

A man I'd mowed lawns for turned his chair so his back faced me.

My old Sunday school teacher stopped in front of me with her arms folded.

"I taught you better than this, Drew."

"You taught me to tell the truth," I said. "I'm going to."

She blinked, and her mouth opened, and she walked away without answering.

Eddie leaned in.

"Wow. Tough crowd. It's like a funeral, but with raffle tickets."

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