The words weren’t fully audible, but I didn’t need to hear them. I knew the script by heart. My face burned. My palms were slick with sweat. This was a mistake. A humiliating mistake.
Becky, walking beside me, slipped her arm through mine, her grip firm and anchoring. “Ignore them,” she murmured, her voice low and steady. “They have small lives and small minds. They don’t know anything. Look straight ahead. Just breathe.”
We found a seat near the back, away from my parents. I kept my head down, focusing on the worn pages of the hymn book, the grain of the wooden bench, anything to avoid the hundreds of eyes I felt boring into me. The service began. I stood when they stood, knelt when they knelt, sang the hymns on autopilot, the familiar words tasting like dust in my mouth. The priest’s s
