Brianna

Amanda packed me a lunch, just like she has every day this week, but I've never eaten it, and I wasn't planning on it today. Jace always tries, but he doesn't push too hard. Somehow, I doubt I'll be in the same luck today.

Becky lifts her own lunch out of her mini cooler, and I unzip my backpack to see what Amanda slipped in this morning. It's the usual cooler, which I've obviously already seen, and inside is chicken that's obviously meant to be good cold, as well as a zipper bag full of a salad she made, another that holds a sliced orange, and another with chips. At the bottom, there's a chocolate bar, but I don't even glance at it.

I hesitate, before choosing the orange slices. Maybe I can get away with just eating them.

"So..." Becky says gently, "Officer Phipps..." Caleb. "called me, and I want you to know I'll be there tomorrow."

I stare at the ground, trying to force myself to eat the orange. "Thanks."

"And Bri?" she adds quietly. "I am so, so sorry about everything you've been going through. You deserve so much better than that."

I bite the inside of my lip, doing the same to the tears that are trying to force their way out. "It's... it's my fault," I whisper.

"Bri, that is not true," she tells me seriously, meeting my gaze despite my best efforts to avoid hers. "None of this is your fault."

"If I hadn't have tried to..." I falter, finding that I can't force the words out of my mouth. But Becky obviously knows what I'm referring to, so I go on anyway. "Then none of his would have happened."

"Bri, if Lincoln wouldn't have done what he did, then none of this would have happened," Becky corrects gently. "That wasn't your fault, and neither is any of the rest of this."

I shake my head slowly. "That's not even what my counselors said," I murmur. "Even they knew it was my fault."

"Well..." She falters, sighing sadly. "Bri, what they were talking about is that you have made choices, and it's part of their job to show you that you made those choices and no one else. But this is not your fault, because you're not the only one who's made decisions. Lincoln chose to do what he did. Your parents and everyone else chose to believe his lie over the truth. They also chose to react the way they did and make your life into a living hell. Baby, I'm not saying you've done everything right, but you can't blame this on yourself, because it's not your fault."

"But I'm a Christian," I argue, the tears welling up inside my eyes despite my best efforts to hold them back. "I'm not supposed to react like this. I'm not supposed to feel like this. I'm not handling pain like a believer."

"Bri," she murmurs, "What you're feeling is not a sin, alright? Lots of Christians feel like that. It's just something that's really hard to admit it, so many people don't. As impossible as it seems, what you have to do is fall back on what God says and not what you feel."

I squeeze my eyes shut, barely able to force my next sentence out of my mouth. "God seems to have quit talking to me lately."

I blink just briefly enough to see that there are tears in her own eyes as she moves over to my side, wrapping one arm around my shoulders and bringing the other hand over to rest on my knee. All I can do is focus on fighting back my tears as she begins to quietly pray.

When she's done, she straightens, but doesn't remove her arm from around me. "I know it can be so hard to feel him speaking to us sometimes," she says quietly, the moisture behind her voice evidence that she really means it when she says she knows. "But we just have to go back to the basics. The Gospels and the Psalms are a good place to start."

"Okay," I whisper, still fighting tears.

"And you know if you ever need to talk, I'm just a call or a text away, right?" she adds.

I nod. "I know."

"Good," she says, and slowly releases me, reaching over and sliding her food over to me in front of her once more. "I love you, Baby."

After such a wait, you would think I would have a really long, groundbreaking chapter, but instead I give to you a 750-word, absolutely pathetically-written mess :P. I'm really sorry. I'm in the middle of NaNoWriMo with one of my originals (which I don't post on here), so I'm scrambling to get this stuff written too. However, the next chapter is when two angels from Australia are going to make an appearance, and the chapter after that will have Ms. Ciara brought back in. Also, I haven't forgotten all of the amazing advice you wonderful people gave me back in August, and I am leading up to the end, where I've created a mix of all of the different ideas you had. Excitement. Probably only for me because I doubt anyone else cares. But ya know. Thanks for reading this as I babble. See ya later (or in another billion years, like my updates have been as of late).