“Clarity Jones,” Mrs. Patricia says in a singsong voice.
“Hello, Mrs. Patricia,” I say, shifting past her as she holds the door open for me.
I step through the second door into the foyer, relieved to find it dark and empty, drizzled in yellow sunshine from the skylight overhead. My shoes click against the tile, and I follow as Mrs. Patricia leads the way up the wraparound staircase to the third floor. The staircase is made of a marble-like stone and is one of the last remaining original structures in the building. When I was a Sunshine Saint, I always savored the click-clack of my church shoes, feeling like my mom when she’d get all dressed up.
The stairwell opens onto each floor, offering a way out of the spiral unless you need to keep going. I follow Mrs. Patricia into the dimly lit third-floor hallway, the familiarity of the stained linoleum tile—sad in comparison to the grand staircase—and the stale scent of old Bibles mixed with disinfectant returning to me like everything else about the building.
“As you might remember,” she says, piercing my thoughts, “the craft room is here.” She gestures to the first room on the left. “The gymnasium and auditorium are up those steps.” She gestures to the shadowy annex on her right. “And the classrooms are down here.”
“I remember,” I say, though it comes out small and quiet. I’m not sure she hears me.
Just like in the foyer, light spills through the doorways of each east-facing classroom, illuminating the hallway in a comically angelic glow. I follow Mrs. Patricia to the room where she teaches Sunshine Saints. The other rooms don’t get used untilthe youth services, which take place during the main one in the middle of the day.
The same red and yellow chairs are neatly pushed in at wooden tables. The tables that once rose to my chest now stop just below my knee. By a whiteboard at the front of the classroom, there’s a carpet laid out, facing a wing-backed chair where Mrs. Patricia would read Bible board books to us. The image of tiny me sitting between a tiny Jameson and a tiny Yasmin burns at the center of my mind. I turn and look out the window.
“Hasn’t changed much.” Mrs. Patricia says what I’m thinking.
“There’s something charming about that,” I reply. The distance between what this place used to be for me and what it is now creates an emptiness inside my chest.
“What can I do?” I ask. I need something to focus on.
Thankfully, that’s all it takes to snap Mrs. Patricia into teacher mode. She directs me on what supplies to gather from the craft room and where to find a closet with cleaning supplies we can use to wipe dust off the tables. When I return, I find her hanging up posters of animals in nature with biblical quotes underneath.
“It’s hard to believe that nearly two weeks ago we were watching the sun rise over the lake at Camp Refuge,” Mrs. Patricia muses. She passes me, leaving the fragrance of her citrus-and-lavender perfume in the air as she crosses the room to hang another poster. “Beautiful, wasn’t it? That’s one of my favorite things about heading into the country in the summers.”
“Itwasbeautiful,” I say, remembering the sunrises—though mine weren’t always over the lake. They were usually throughthe trees on whatever hill Hannah and I had climbed that night. We’d be making our way back down to camp or to her car. We’d wait until the sky turned pink and watch the clouds clear and the sun bleed before we rushed back to our cabins, spurred by some second wind that always kicked in even when we’d hardly slept. Then we’d sneak into bed and pretend we were waking up with everyone else.
“How has school been?” Mrs. Patricia’s voice pulls me from the hillside, away from Hannah, back into reality.
“Good.”
“Oh, don’t dothat.”
I stop wiping the last table and look up, worried that I’ve done something wrong. I find Mrs. Patricia shaking her head, her curls bouncing.
“What?”
“Give me a one-word answer like you’re some angsty teenager I haven’t known since before you were even born. Plus you’re about to be anadultand adults answer insentences.”
Right…
“Well, um, school has been good—I mean, it’s my senior year, so—” I scramble, falling over my words and trying to cling to some coherent answer. I sigh, laughing a little when Mrs. Patricia smiles at me. It’s a warm smile, one I’d forgotten the effect of. “I’m the president of the festival committee this year, so I’ve been working on planning our Squash the Pumpkin Festival.”
“So, it was saved after all?” she asks, surprising me. I forgot that I told her about my dilemma back at the beginning of camp.
“It was,” I say, leaving out Hannah’s role in all of it.
“That’s a blessing,” she says, smiling as she heads to where I set up supplies on the table. She starts sorting through the crayon-and-marker bin, gathering a rainbow set for each seat. “You were worried.”
“Yeah, but it all worked out. Now I’m trying to put together a schedule. I’m excited.”
We fall silent, so I use the pause to excuse myself and put the cleaning supplies away.
“You and Hannah go to the same school,” she says when I return.
I flinch, only for a second. I look up, and Mrs. Patricia is focused on gathering Bibles from the bookshelf, so hopefully she didn’t notice.
“Yes,” I say, though it didn’t sound like a question she wanted answered so much as a statement of fact.