Free The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth Page A

roommates . . .
    Irene could read my thinking, just like old times. She moved her hand from my arm, grabbed my hand. “It would be totally awesome, Cam. I would go first and get used to the run of the whole place, and then you’d come next fall.” Her voice had the kind of excitement it got when we used to dare each other, something we hadn’t done in what seemed like forever.
    “Maybe,” I said, thinking that it did sound so easy, in that moment, the almost-winter sun hot on the tops of our heads, the clink of the tools from the digging paleontologists, the feel of Irene’s hand in mine.
    “Why maybe? Just yes. Let’s go ask my mom to get you an application.” Irene pulled me with her toward the house. Mrs. Klauson smiled at our plan, everything so easy, as always. She said she’d be sure to have someone at Maybrook send me an application. She drove us back to town just after that. She had the top down, of course, and we made wind snakes off the sides, our arms rising and dipping with the rush of air. The weeds alongside the highway were partially gilded in death from the frosts at night—parts of them gold and ochre, dried and curled, but the rest of the weeds still green, hanging on, trying to keep growing. If you squinted your eyes, the wind snakes looked almost like they were swimming through those weeds. We did them for miles, until we were off the highway, back on town streets. And then Mrs. Klauson dropped me off in front of my house. And then Irene was gone.

Chapter Four
    M y parents had been half-lapsed Presbyterians. We were a church-on-Easter-and-Christmas Eve kind of family, with a few years of Sunday school thrown in for good measure. Grandma Post said she was too old for churchgoing and could get to heaven just fine without it. Aunt Ruth was not either of these kinds of Christian. We had been attending services at First Presbyterian practically every Sunday since the funeral, because it had been the “family church,” but Ruth made it clear during the car rides home that the mostly elderly congregation and dry sermons were not to her liking. For my part I liked them well enough. I liked, at least, that I knew the people in the pews around us, and that I knew when to stand and sit, how most of the hymns went. I liked the stained glass in the sanctuary, even though crucified Jesus was really bloody, too bloody for stained glass, I thought, all those red and magenta pieces filtering sunlight. I didn’t feel close to God at the Presbyterian church, but some Sundays I felt really close to my memories of being at church, at this place, with my parents. And I liked that feeling.
    Ruth held on through the holidays, but when we were taking down the Christmas tree, she told me that she’d been thinking that the First Presbyterian just wasn’t quite right for us anymore . She embedded this deep in another conversation we were having about how just because I didn’t have mandated sessions with gooey Nancy the counselor during the spring semester, that didn’t mean that I wouldn’t need to continue to talk with someone.
    “You know, Greg Comstock and his family go to Gates of Praise, and the Martensons, and the Hoffsteaders,” she told me. “And they all seem to just love it. First Presbyterian doesn’t have the kind of fellowship we need right now. There’s not even a youth group.”
    “What the heck is a youth group, anyway?” Grandma asked from behind the Outrageous Detective Stories magazine she was reading on the couch. “I thought children go to Sunday school until they’re old enough to behave during the service. Can’t you behave yourself, Cameron?”
    Ruth laughed the way she did when she wasn’t sure just how much Grandma was teasing and how much she was serious. “Gates of Praise has a group just for teenagers, Eleanor,” she said. “According to Greg Comstock, they do all kinds of community service projects. It might also be nice for Cammie to hang out with some Christian