Morrigan by Jonathan King (cat reading book txt) 📕

well enough. It’d be a lovely little palace if it weren’t a cage.” She turned away and stared at the clouds wandering across the sky. “Did you ever feel like your own skin was a prison? That if you were someone else, anyone else, life wouldn’t be so cruel?”

“That does sound familiar,” said Abel. “All that pressure to act a certain way, look a certain way, be a certain way, and all coming from someone who’s supposed to love you no matter what.”

“So she says,” Morgan muttered. “And there’s so much I need to do, so many people who need me, and I can’t be that with her around.”

“Just once I’d like to be able to decide what my own life looks like,” Abel went on. “But next year I’ll be at some private Christian college he’s picked out for me, and it’ll be more of the same, just from different people.”

“So don’t go,” said Morgan. “You’re a man. Tell your father you’re living your life, not his. Go to college where you want to go.”

Abel chuckled. “No one tells the Reverend anything. He tells them. It’s in his job description, and he’s very much aware of it. Besides, I’m still a minor. I’m not going anywhere on my own until I’m eighteen, and I’m sure not paying for college myself.”

“People younger than you have fought in wars, and you can’t even leave home?” asked Morgan.

“That was ages ago,” said Abel. “It was normal. And I’m not exactly the warrior type. I’m just me, and I don’t exactly have a lot of options, you know?”

Morgan stared at him, her eyes piercing his. “What if I could give you options?”

“What?”

“A chance to fight back. You got a pen?”

Abel pulled one from his coat pocket, and she grabbed a napkin from the food table and scribbled a note on it. She folded it and stuffed it back into his hand, slipping his pen into the pocket of her jeans. Abel started to protest, but the mischievous arch in her eyebrow told him he wasn’t going to get it back.

Instead, he held up the napkin. “What’s this?”

“Read it the next time you’re alone. If you’re up to it, we might both find that freedom we’re looking for.” She grinned and winked at him. “There’s a fighter in you somewhere. I know it.”

Before Abel could ask any more questions, Morgan melted back into the crowd, snatching up a leg of fried chicken as an alibi. None too soon, either, as Cora’s shrill tones called out her not-daughter’s name.

Abel slipped the napkin into his pocket, rubbing his fingers across it and smiling at the memory of Morgan’s face. Maybe this picnic wasn’t all bad after all.

Sunday, October 27

4:33 PM

Hey, God. It’s me, Abel.

So there’s this girl.

I know you probably get that a lot. I’ve even said it before. Remember that crush I had on Sally Arrowwood and her gap-toothed smile? Back before we left Open Hearts Baptist. We swore we’d keep in touch, and then years go by without a word, and she’s dating some punk with a nose ring and won’t accept my friend request?

Ahem. Well. This is different.

Maybe it’s not. Morgan didn’t seem to like me very much. And she could be kinda mean sometimes. But gosh, was she gorgeous. Just being near her and looking into her eyes made me feel more alive than I’ve felt in years. And we both feel trapped by our parents. Maybe we have more in common. Maybe I’ll find out someday. If she’ll talk to me again. If she doesn’t feel like our parents are setting us up.

Give me patience, God. I want to get to know everything about her right now, to spend every last second with her, and I only just met her today. Show me the brakes on this thing before I drive it over the edge.

Thanks, God. Abel out.

2

Abel breathed a sigh of relief as he pulled the tie from around his neck. At last the sensation of being hanged was gone. He shrugged off his jacket and hung it up in the closet, giving it plenty of room to avoid wrinkling. Off came his shirt and undershirt, which he crammed into a ball and slam dunked into the hamper.

“He shoots, he scores.” Pepper’s Mill First Baptist was too small for a basketball team, or any other kind of team, so he’d missed out on sports growing up. This was as close as he could get; the Reverend didn’t want him around the wrong kind of locker room talk. His only exercise was a walk around town and as much of a workout as he could get in this bedroom.

He stopped in front of the full-length mirror he used to coordinate his Sunday outfits, pulling back a few Scripture-covered sticky notes that blocked his view. Not bad. Those muscles were finally defining themselves. Now if that mustache would grow in and join the rest of his beard, he’d look like a man instead of a scraggly kid.

A thought came to him. He grabbed a notebook from his desk and flipped to the very last page. At the top was printed Preacher’s Kid Freedom List, with several to-dos underneath. Grabbing a pencil, he added Go shirtless in public. That would be the day. The Reverend would have a fit. He’d delivered more than one drive-by sermon against half-dressed joggers they passed on the road. How much more enraged would he be to find his son showing off his body and “causing women to stumble”?

An absent-minded smile crossed Abel’s lips as he wondered what Morgan would think of him shirtless. Then he shook his head. Better not to go down that path. “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” He shrugged. Of course, she’d be doing the looking, not me. I can hardly be blamed for that. And if I look at her … well, she is beautiful.

He