Free Guardian by Kassandra Kush Page A

“What’s your full name?”
    “Lyla Marie Rose Evans,” I said.
    “Rose of Lima, I assume?” he queried at my second middle name, the name of the patron saint I had taken at my confirmation several years ago.
    I nodded.
    “Were you born in Columbus?”
    “Born and raised,” I grumbled. “It’s only the most boring place on the planet. There’s nothing here.”
    Rafael grinned at this. “Do you enjoy school? You always seem to be there, or studying.”
    “Moderately. If I want to escape my house and be able to provide for myself, I need to do well in school. So I do.”
    “And you attend church every Sunday?”
    “More than that, if I’m able,” I said quietly.
    “Your faith is quite extraordinary, for being so young,” Rafael commented.
    I shrugged. “God has always been there for me.”
    “It’s more than that,” Rafael insisted. “It, it seeps out from you, your trust in Him. Being near you, it’s like when I stand outside the church. I can feel Him inside you, radiating out.”
    I frowned at him. “Radiating out?”
    Rafael nodded. “For someone like me, unable to set foot in a church, even being near one is like having rain after a drought. You, you’re like a church. Being near you fills me with, with, I can’t really find the words to describe it.”
    “Why can’t you set foot in a church?” I asked, shaking my head. “Are you banned from it? What’s that called? Excommunicated! Were you excommunicated from the church?”
    With my question, Rafael seemed to realize he had let something slip. His lips thinned and I realized they probably weren’t going to open up about that subject again for awhile. Without warning he stood up quickly, and I took a step backward, surprised.
    “Our time is up for today,” he said, and began walking away at a quick clip. I blinked once, and he had already disappeared.
     
    From that day on, Rafael and I met every day at the park, by the same bench. The first day after he had left so abruptly, I showed up, unsure whether he would come, but he was there even before I was. It was never agreed aloud that we would meet every single day, but yet every afternoon, at three sharp, there we were, sitting on the bench, talking.
    Once I learned after that first week of prying that any conversation and questions directly involving Rafael’s past, present, and future were totally off limits and meant an early end to our day, we got along a lot better. Our talks ranged from my school and life plans, to the places and countries he had visited (which he was more than willing to talk about, so long as I didn’t ask what he had been doing there).
    I began, soon after, to realize that we were becoming friends, slowly but surely. But it was a different kind of friendship than what I shared with Natalie or Austin. Though they had been my closest friends nearly all my life, there were things about me, about my life and my parents that they didn’t know. And yet Rafael did. He had known from the beginning, and I found it was much easier to confide in him about it than Natalie or Austin. He listened, rather than trying to tell me what to do. He had amazing insight, seemed to understand people better than I could ever hope to, and I found myself wanting our days in the park to last longer and longer.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

 
 
 
 
 
CHAPTER SIX
They have become callous and have handed themselves over to
licentiousness for the practice of every kind of impurity to excess.
Ephesians 4:19
     
    I woke up one morning and stretched luxuriously. I took up the whole bed with it, and then suddenly realized that I didn’t hit Grace’s small, warm body in my cat-like yawn. She was gone. Quick as a flash I was out of bed, sprinting down the short hallway to our living room.
    I stopped short when I saw Colton and Grace sitting at the kitchen table, devouring pancakes while my mom stood at the