Glenwood
We didn’t just go to church. We never left it.
The sanctuary was our front yard, our living room, our ceiling overhead. The apartment walls shook with Sunday morning worship and evening choir practice.
Even on the quiet days, Rick reminded us this was his territory, and we were expected to keep in step. He’d quote that line from the book of Timothy like it had been stitched inside his suit jacket: an overseer must manage his own household well, keeping his children submissive with all dignity. Rick wasn’t talking about his own kids. He didn’t have any. He was talking about me.
Most of what I knew about Rick came from other people. He led Bible studies, organized church events, and visited the congregation’s shut-ins every month. Even grocery trips took longer because people wanted to talk.
I didn’t know much about Rick’s past, but I’d sometimes hear snippets about him at church. He’d had ‘a marriage that fell apart’ before he found Christ. No one ever said why. They only spoke about it carefully, like stepping over a loose floorboard.
Wednesday Night Service: The fans on the ceiling spun slowly. My thighs stuck to the velvet cushions of the pews. I was counting ceiling panels when Pastor Connors leaned forward into the microphone, his smile spreading like he knew this was about to hurt.
“This evening,” he said, “I’m being led to hear from our young people. If the Lord has done something in your life this week, come and share.”
A few people stood up and walked down to the altar. Their voices cracked out of the microphone and over the cushioned pews. A girl talked about a dream she had. A boy cried about a test he’d passed. Heads bobbed. People murmured ‘amen.’
Rick’s elbow brushed mine, and then his hand slid onto my shoulder. I stiffened and looked at him.
“You should go up,” he said, softly.
I turned and kept my eyes forward.
“I don’t have anything to say.”
His finger pressed into my skin, half a pat, half a warning.
“You’re not here as just some girl in the pew. You’re my stepdaughter. You don’t get to act like you don’t care. Set an example.”
I shook my head.
“Even just a few words,” he pressed. His voice edged. “It’s not about you, Teresia. Everyone can tell when you sit here stiff and silent. You think that doesn’t come back on me? On your mother?”
In front of me, Mrs. Connors shifted in her seat, eyes flicking back at us. A boy across the aisle darted a glance at me. I could feel it all, the surveillance, the judgment, the way Rick’s words made me the problem.
The ceiling fans continued their groan overhead, moving the air but not clearing it. I felt like I was breathing inside someone else’s chest.
My neck prickled, but I kept my voice low.
“I’m not going up there.”
Before Rick could push again, I stood. Slid past knees, out of the pew, and down the aisle. I didn’t stop until I hit the double doors and felt the cooler air outside.
My face burned. The steps were warm under my shoes. I sat for a moment, pulling air into my lungs. For the first time all evening, I let my shoulders fall. A mockingbird perched on the power line, cycling through its mimicked songs. It knew how to fit in here. I didn’t.
The door creaked, and boots hit the concrete. I turned to see the pastor’s son come out of the building.
He looked at me long enough to let me know he’d seen everything. The kind of look that made the air feel warmer and made me aware of the rub of fabric against my legs and the damp line of sweat on my back.
“Not your thing?” he asked. His voice carried a soft drawl.
I shrugged, eyes on the gravel. The silence stretched.
“I guess you don’t talk much?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Excuse me,” I said, barely above a whisper, and slipped back inside. The heat of his eyes followed me in, clinging to my back like a second skin.
The moment I stepped back inside, the sanctuary buzzed with that heavy closing hush. Pastor Connors called everyone to the front for a prayer circle. I took my place, Rick’s hand clamping down on one side of me. Mother on the other. We bowed our heads, hands linked. I kept my eyes open.
The pastor’s son paused a second to meet my eyes before closing his.
Afterward, in the fellowship hall, while people milled around drinking warm punch and making shallow conversation, he found me. Walked right up to me.
“You’re new?” he asked. He grinned like he was waiting to see if I’d hold his gaze or look away. “You’re not from around here.” It wasn’t a question.
His eyes were brown, but not quite dark. They were a warmish in-between color. He had a dimple in his left cheek. It made his face look boyish in a way that contradicted everything else about him: the posture and the cigarette smell still clinging to his sleeves.
The room felt suddenly smaller. Too many people, and nowhere to slip away without being seen. I couldn’t really avoid him anymore.
I looked away.
“I’m not,” I said, adjusting my sweater even though it was eighty degrees outside and I was sweating through the armpits. But my dress was sleeveless, and Rick thought the sweater would be more modest. I hated how exposed I felt here.
“Charles,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Teresia.”
He tried to repeat it. Butchered it. Didn’t seem to care.
“Tuh-REE-sia? Tuh-RAY-sia?”
“Can I just call you T?” he asked.
“No.”
That made him laugh. It echoed through the meeting hall, and a few heads turned. Embarrassed, I walked away without looking back.
There was something disorienting about him. Like seeing a face from a dream in real life, wrong and out of place, but hard to shake.
He was everywhere. At Sunday school. At prayer service on Wednesdays. At the ocean-side bonfire nights Mother made me attend so I’d ‘get more involved.’
During one bonfire, Charles sat by the ocean and played the guitar. The wind tousled through his hair. The usual girls surrounded him, all wearing one-pieces under sheer, old camp T-shirts. Charles’s arms and chest looked slightly sunburnt, but he played anyway. I wondered what it would be like to have people take to you that easily.
He found me later that night. “You like books?” he asked. He peered over my shoulder where I sat next to the bonfire reading Crime and Punishment.
“Just reading.” I snapped it shut and instinctively held it closer to my chest.
“Isn’t that the book where that one guy kills someone and feels sad about it for 500 pages?”
I stared at him blankly.
“I did a report on it in school,” Charles explained, averting his eyes, suddenly shy.
“You make it sound boring. It’s not,” I said.
His grin faltered, like he wasn’t used to being corrected, like he hadn’t been in a long time.
“Have you ever tried reading something lighter?” he asked.
“I like to feel something.” I wanted to swallow back the words as soon as I said them.
His grin widened, slow and too pleased. “Feel something, huh?”
My mouth fell open before I could stop it. Heat flared up my neck.
I stood up fast and walked, half ran, toward the bathrooms. I told myself he was probably like every other boy my age, I couldn’t stand: cocky, loud, sure of himself for no reason.
His attention was like a cat’s, playful, inconsistent, maddening. He flirted with everyone. He made jokes that went too far. And still, I kept orbiting him, like an idiot moth with no survival instinct.
One Friday night, I found myself stuck in the church kitchen after youth group, helping Mother clean up while everyone else loitered in the parking lot. Charles walked in like he owned the place, stole a cookie from the tray I was wrapping, and popped it into his mouth without asking.
“You’re kinda mean,” he said, like it was a compliment.
“You’re kind of presumptuous.”
He leaned against the counter beside me, close enough that I could smell the leftover smoke in his clothes, sweetened by detergent and something else, soap maybe. He didn’t wear cologne. I liked that, and hated that I noticed.
“You act different from everyone else,” he said, tilting his head. “Like you know things.”
“I do.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re trying too hard.”
He paused. Then, to my complete annoyance, he said, “But you still talk to me.”
It wasn’t until the night of the youth lock-in that things shifted.
We camped out in the fellowship hall, lights off except for a few battery lanterns, everyone sprawled in sleeping bags and folding chairs. Charles sat against the far wall, knees up, sketching something in a notepad. I pretended not to notice him. I talked to another girl about nothing important.
But later, when everyone else slept or pretended to be, I couldn’t help myself.
I got up, barefoot on the cold tile, and padded over. He looked up as I approached, shocked, but he didn’t speak. He watched me sit down beside him, close enough to see the faint ink smudges on his fingertips.
“What are you drawing?” I asked quietly so that we wouldn’t get scolded by the chaperones.
He tilted the notebook toward me. It was a sketch of the church from the outside, but warped and gothic, more haunted than holy.
“Why’d you draw it like that?”
“That’s how it feels to me.”
“Haunted?”
He shrugged. “No, just... like it used to mean something.”
“I didn’t know you were the artsy type.”
“Yeah.” He paused for a moment. “My Dad would rather I throw a ball around,” he said lightly, though I could tell it stung.
“You’re good,” I said before I could stop myself.
He didn’t answer. He looked at me for a long time.
“What?” I asked.
He leaned in slightly. “Nothing. You’re just… different when you’re not trying so hard.”
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You wear your armor thick,” he said. “But I see you underneath it.”
I wanted to slap him. I wanted to kiss him. Instead, I shuffled back to my sleeping bag after a chaperone yelled at us.
But that night, I couldn’t sleep.
I lay on the stiff church mat, blanket twisted around my legs, body restless. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him again on the beach during bonfire night, guitar balanced on his knee, the angles of his face catching the light like a blade.
I kept thinking about his hands. The easy and practiced way his fingers moved across the strings. I wondered how they’d feel against my skin, if they’d be rough from the guitar or gentle like the way he smiled.
There was an old story Mother used to tell me, back when I was still small enough to believe in the things she said—about the Näcken, the spirit who played music by the river, luring girls into the water with melodies too beautiful to resist.
I used to think it was a warning, but now, I wasn’t so sure.
Maybe the girls hadn’t been tricked.
Maybe they’d wanted to drown.
I enjoyed this. 💕 Loved the cover as well. You're doing an awesome job. ✨🌸 Keep shining. Keep writng.