Free Faking Faith by Josie Bloss

vast majority of the time. And anyone who acted up was taken aside and swiftly rebuked by Mrs. Dean, no matter how young or old.
    Then more homeschooling, more farm chores, then getting dinner ready. It was always the women who cooked, of course. Chastity was still “in training,” but Abigail and Mrs. Dean worked together like a well-oiled machine, getting everything prepped and cooked and on the table with the efficiency of professional chefs. I just tried to keep out of the way as they whirled around the kitchen.
    In the half hour while dinner was cooking and everyone was busy with other things, Abigail beckoned me over to the little wood-paneled computer room off the kitchen.
    “Come on, Faith, I have a surprise!” she said.
    We sat down in front of her computer, a lumbering old PC my school would have junked years ago.
    “I posted an ordinary update early this morning before you woke up, but now I’m going to tell everyone in blogland that you’re here for a visit!”
    I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “Is that really a good idea? What if people … think it’s strange?”
    “Oh, you’re silly! We’re having such fun together, aren’t we? They’ll be happy for us.” She nudged me with her elbow. “Let’s take a picture.”
    A thrill of fear went through me. Except for the one picture I had Scottie take when I first started my blog, I hadn’t posted any further photos of myself. And I was sure I had nowhere near the traffic that Abigail had. Thousands of people would see this post.
    What if someone saw me and recognized my face?
    Abigail took a digital camera from a drawer in the desk. “Say cheese!”
    She put her arm around me and her face next to mine, and I tried to smile as normally as possible for the camera. We looked at the resulting picture, and I thought the fear in my eyes was a little too obvious. I looked tense and awkward next to the sweetly smiling Abigail.
    “Um, sorry,” I said. “I’m not very photogenic.”
    “Shush, you’re lovely. Let’s take some goofy ones, too!” she said, wiggling in her seat.
    So we both stuck our tongues out and made stupid faces, and then loaded them into the computer and laughed at the results.
    “Do you want to help me write my blog entry?” she asked.
    I smiled, thinking how bizarre it was to be helping my online hero write her blog. I tried to imagine telling me-from-six-months-ago what lay in the future, and totally failed. I wouldn’t have believed myself. Wouldn’t have believed I’d ever have the guts to do this.
    “Sure!”
    We worked together for a while, typing out a scripted conversation about how we had “met” and what we were doing while I was visiting. I tried to help Abigail liven it up a little bit and include some tasteful jokes. As much as they fascinated me, I’d noticed that a lot of girls from these families rarely read anything other than the Bible, cookbooks, and Jane Austen novels, and their prose was often a little stilted and strangely formal as a result. Plus they used a lot of weird made-up words like “convicting” and thought that “purpose” was a verb. Abigail seemed to appreciate my help.
    “You’re so clever!” she said, giggling. “How did you get so clever?”
    I just shrugged. “Oh, you know … a God-given talent, I suppose!”
    “Mama will get such a kick out of this,” Abigail said. “She reads it before I’m allowed to post it, of course.”
    “Of course,” I said.
    “Your parents read your blog posts before you publish them, right?” Abigail asked.
    “Well … sure,” I said awkwardly. For some reason, this lie hit me a little harder than all the others. If there was one thing my parents were completely oblivious about, it was my online activity. I could be running an illegal gambling operation for all they knew.
    “I’m glad they keep such good watch on us, aren’t you?” Abigail said. “It’s scary how big the Internet can be. I’m glad to just have my nice little