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Reading the book seemed only mildly wrong until this moment, but a graphic sex scene? It’s so inarguably misguided that I can’t continue.

I shut the book and slide it into my backpack. Tomorrow, I’ll return it to Kappy and tell her that while I appreciate her gift, it’s a bridge too far.

I continue toward home, the spring in my step now absent.

I’m accustomed to this feeling, to this steady draining of joy. It’s so predictable that I almost anticipate it—at the first spark of pleasure, I’m already expecting the pain as it’s extinguished.

Is that really how life is meant to be—every small joy actually a warning of some kind, a sign that you’ve done something wrong? Maybe there’s something wrong with me, something that consistently takes pleasure in the wrong things. Or maybe our church has just crafted such a narrow definition of what’s acceptable that far too much ends up excluded. Why, exactly, is reading a sex scene wrong? In Outlander, it’s even between a married couple.

I’m tired of accepting my father and the church’s word for it that all these things that appeal to me are dangerous. I didn’t come away from reading Beloved believing in the supernatural. The group of men who read it and deemed it dangerous presumably didn’t come away from it damaged either. I’m nearly eighteen, no longer a child, so I’m not sure why I’d allow myself to continue being treated like one.

I turn onto a side road, take a seat on the curb, and remove the book from my backpack. And then I read the scene in all its gritty detail.

First in a rush, then again more slowly.

I’ve always seen sex described as a duty, but it doesn’t seem like one for Clare.

When I finally stand to go home, I acknowledge that there’s a difference. Beloved might not have gotten me interested in the supernatural, but Outlander sure makes sex look a lot more exciting than it used to.

Ann calls after dinner. I say nothing about the book because she wouldn’t understand. She suggests that we read a scripture together. I tell her I’ve got homework, and then I return to Clare and Jamie.

On Friday morning, a sea of pinecones and felt—part of some project for Faith’s fall festival—covers the kitchen counter.

My mother smiles at me with a pinecone in each hand. “Happy birthday!”

Faith throws herself into my arms to give me a sticky, syrupy birthday hug. “I want to be eighteen too!” she cries.

It’s not nearly as exciting as she thinks.

My mom sighs. “I can’t believe I was your age when I got pregnant with you.”

I grab a bag of homemade granola for the bus ride to school. “Don’t worry. I can’t imagine being ready for kids for years and years.”

She shrugs, carefully pressing a pinecone to felt. “Sometimes things happen before you’re ready for them and you make do.”

My gaze flickers back toward her in surprise. She’s never even alluded to the fact that I wasn’t planned. But...who plans a pregnancy at that age, even if they’re married? My mother had just arrived at her two-year mission stint when she met my father, who was supposed to be leaving but had stayed on to mentor the new recruits. It was love at first sight for them both, and they were married a few months later.

For one traitorous moment, I wonder about the timing of it all. They married within a few months of meeting, and I was born less than a year later. I shake my head, dismissing the idea. My parents are the most God-fearing, rule-following people I know—there’s absolutely no way they had a shotgun wedding and that I’ve even questioned the timing is the surest sign that Penhallow has been a bad influence.

“We’ll be at the fall festival until after dinner,” my mother says, stopping her work for a moment to glance at me. “I’m sorry—not much of a birthday this year, I suppose.”

I swallow. It’s my last year at home. And my first year away from my friends. Why does Faith matter more?

“We’ll celebrate later!” she calls as I pull the door shut behind me.

She means well, but we both know later never comes, which is why my stripped bike is still locked up in front of the school.

I walk off the bus to the usual taunts. Inside the school, the halls are festooned with streamers and balloons, and a banner says, “Happy Birthday Kendall!”

It makes me feel smaller and lonelier than I already did. It’s bad enough that everyone else my age is consumed by things I’m not a part of—dating and football games and parties. Just attending this school, day after day, makes me feel smaller and lonelier than I used to. But to be hated while the Kendalls are beloved, to have my own family unable to carve out some time for me on my birthday...it would really hurt if I allowed it to.

In English, Mrs. Onorato spends the entire class discussing our college essays, which will never be necessary in my case. Only about half the kids on the Bolivia mission will decide to attend college when they’re done, and if so, they’ll go to Gulf Pines, a small college not too far from the community. The church elders arrange everything for us, from applications to housing—and if we aren’t married yet, we simply stay with our parents and commute each day.

Occasionally someone will rebel and choose a different school, but it rarely works out for them. They either don’t return to the community, or they return with unacceptable thoughts. In either case, they wind up adrift or shunned. I’m not sure why, exactly, and it’s the kind of question my parents would frown upon and fail to answer.

At lunchtime, I head outside, passing a girl bearing a cake with Kendall’s name on it. Her friends argue over whether or not they’ll get in trouble for lighting candles in the cafeteria.

I eat lunch alone, under my tree. A group of younger girls sits, squealing, twenty feet away as one of them snatches up her phone.