Rachel Jackson Quotes

Hallelujah can barely breathe through the pain of each step. Rachel is panting from the effort of holding Hallelujah up. Still, when they get closer to the clearing, Rachel manages to call out: “Jonah! Help!”There’s a rustling noise up ahead. Twigs snapping. And then Jonah appears. His face is in shadow, but his voice is worried: “What happened?”“I turned my ankle,” Hallelujah says. “I’m okay.”“She’s not okay,” Rachel gasps. “She can’t put weight on it. Can you carry her?”Jonah doesn’t hesitate. He wraps one arm around Hallelujah’s waist, and then he scoops up her legs with the other. In a single, fluid motion, she’s off the ground. She holds on to his shoulders. For a second, she thinks about how strange this is—to be held like this, to be held by Jonah.

Kathryn Holmes

So what was Jonah like before high school? As a kid?”“As a kid?” Hallelujah brings up the picture in her mind. “He was . . . sweet, I guess. Dorky. He’d wear these outfits his mom picked out—pleated khaki pants and polo shirts, with his hair slicked down with gel. And he would get really enthusiastic about things. Too enthusiastic. He went through this cowboy phase where he wore a cowboy hat and boots to school every day. Didn’t care what anyone thought.” The mental image makes her smile.“And he and Luke were best friends?”“Starting in middle school, yeah. They played soccer together.”“Huh.” Rachel pauses. “So when did Jonah get cute?”“He was still pretty short in middle school. And skinny. But he did start dressing better.”“No more pleated khakis?”“No more pleated khakis. And then the summer before ninth grade, he had this growth spurt. And he started to, uh, fill out. So I guess ninth grade is when I noticed . . .” Hallelujah fades off. “This is embarrassing.”“No, it’s not. This is what girls talk about.” Rachel grins. “Besides. I wanted to see if you were paying as close attention to him as he was to you.”“I didn’t realize I was. We were just friends.”“You can be friends and still objectively notice someone’s cuteness.

Kathryn Holmes

Luke said that he was surprised when I showed up at his room. That he hadn’t meant to give me the wrong idea. That he would never have taken it beyond just kissing. And he looked so genuine. So trustworthy. So sorry about what had happened. He almost convinced me that I’d misread his signals.” Hallelujah pauses. “The whole time, I kept my mouth shut. I wish I hadn’t. But I was still so humiliated. And I felt guilty. I made out with him. I liked it. And no one made me go to his room.”Her voice breaks. She has to swallow past a lump in her throat.“I know Luke’s not a good guy. I know what he did isn’t my fault. It’s his. But still, none of it would’ve happened if I hadn’t gone to his room.”She’s almost there. Almost done. Almost heard. Something deep inside her hurts like it hasn’t hurt in a long time. But she knows that this gash had to reopen in order to heal. That’s how wounds work. They need air.“I knew I’d get punished, and I did. My parents grounded me. I was put on youth group probation. But I honestly thought Luke’s lies would just fade away if I kept a low profile. There’s always gossip about someone. This time it was me.”...“Luke is still telling people about what supposedly happened that night,” Hallelujah says. “And he makes fun of me. All the time. What I look like, what I say, my name. And he does this thing at church: whenever we sing a hymn with my name in it, he sings it like he’s hooking up with me. He sings the word ‘hallelujah’ at me. He moans it. And I hate it.” That’s one of the reasons she stopped singing: his voice, his fake grunts of satisfaction, ruining the music she loved so much.“You said,” she says to Jonah, “he wanted to keep me upset. To keep me from telling anyone what really happened. Well, it worked.” She pauses. “Until now.”“Until now,” Rachel repeats. Then she curses. “I can’t believe him. I can’t believe he got away with it.”“I let him get away with it,” Hallelujah says softly.“No. He’s the one who crossed the line. And okay, maybe you could’ve spoken up sooner. But if no one pushed you for your side of the story, that’s on them.” Rachel yawns and stretches. “And when we get home, we’re going to set the record straight.

Kathryn Holmes

I hate him.” She repeats it louder. “I hate him!” She shouts it at the sky, even though it’s hard to shout lying down: “I! Hate! Luke! Willis!”Rachel asks, “But what did he do?”Hallelujah can hear Jonah waiting for her answer. She knows he’s waiting because he’s stopped making fire-building noises. He’s silent. Completely.She takes a deep breath. “He told a lie about me. Actually, a lot of lies. And people believed him. The grown-ups, because he’s the preacher’s son and he’d never do something bad. And everyone our age—because he’s popular and you don’t question the popular guy, because if you do, you’ll stop being popular yourself. Or you’ll never get the chance. And because of what he said, my parents stopped trusting me. I lost friends. I was just this loser who—”She breaks off. Now she’s talking to Jonah. Even though he’s behind her and she can’t see him. “It doesn’t matter what you saw that night, or what he told you happened. Luke treated me like I was nothing, and you let him do it.”Jonah doesn’t answer.“But that’s not what makes me the maddest,” Hallelujah continues, pushing up to sit. “What makes me the maddest is that I let it happen too. I didn’t stand up for myself. And when someone did tell me to stand up for myself, I got so mad—”Sarah. She feels the emotion of their argument wash over her, fresh.“I pushed her away. I told her she didn’t understand anything. But she was right. I became this girl who wouldn’t stand up for herself. The quiet girl. The nothing girl. I just wanted it all to stop, but from the outside, without me having to make it stop. And I wanted to get away, but I figured, hey, college will get here eventually and then I’ll be away, I just have to get there, and all the while I’m miserable, and I’m letting you guys make me miserable, letting you make me think I’m supposed to be miserable, that I’m supposed to be quiet, and I’m shutting people out, people who maybe actually care, and I hate myself for it.” An abrupt stop. The train of thought hits a wall.She’s never said that before. Never thought it before. Not consciously.But she knows, deeper than she’s ever known anything, that it’s true.Hallelujah has spent six months hating herself for being weak and silent and for letting bad things happen and for not fighting.

Kathryn Holmes

After a few minutes, she speaks up again. “You’re next. Sing.”Anxiety grips Hallelujah’s chest, squeezing. “I don’t sing,” she says.“C’mon, it doesn’t matter if you’re bad. It’s not like this is a concert hall—”“She’s not bad.” Jonah’s back. “She has a great voice.”Rachel swings around to look from Jonah to Hallelujah. “Really? Now you have to—”“No."“But—”“I don’t sing,” Hallelujah repeats, turning away.Jonah joins them by the fire. The silence stretches out. Except it’s not really silent, not with the birds and wind and fire and how loud Hallelujah’s heart is beating. And then Jonah clears his throat. “You used to sing,” he says. “You were great.”Hallelujah ignores the compliment. She looks into the fire. She feels the last of the day’s happiness fading away, already a memory.“Why’d you quit?” Jonah asks. “Was it ’cause of Luke?”Hallelujah inhales deeply. She feels the familiar spark of anger in her gut. “Yes,” she says. “It was because of Luke. And you. And everyone else. So thanks for that.” Jonah’s face drops. She can see that she’s hit a nerve. Well, he hurt her first. The way he took Luke’s side, shutting her out. The loss of his friendship, when she needed a friend most. The loss of their voices harmonizing, when she needed music most. How she just hurt him can’t begin to compare to all of that.

Kathryn Holmes

So how did you think about him?” Rachel asks.Hallelujah shrugs. “We were friends. Good friends. He knew—knows—a lot about me. I guess I know a lot about him. Stuff he likes and doesn’t like.”Rachel looks skeptical. “And yet you never knew he liked you.”“No! I mean—when Jonah and I were friends, I liked Luke. So maybe I missed some signs.”“So you just . . . hung out? Platonically?”“Yeah. I guess.” Hallelujah thinks about how to explain it. How to distill a friendship down to its most basic components. “We had choir together last year. We talked. For kind of the first time, even though we’d been in church and school together since fourth grade.”“And, what, you found out you had so much in common?”“Actually, no. But we started comparing music we liked, and a month into ninth grade, Jonah made me this mix of songs. Based on what we’d talked about. So then I made him a mix. And it grew from there. We’d go to each other’s houses, watch movies, listen to music, that kind of thing. Hanging out.”“So tell me about Jonah. Something only you know.”“Um. He’d probably deny it, but he got really into the Harry Potter books. Like, really into them. I loaned him my box set last spring. He got so mad at me for not warning him how Book Six ends.”Rachel laughs. “He didn’t see the movies?”“No. But I told him we couldn’t watch them until he’d finished the books.

Kathryn Holmes

Rachel Jackson Quotes

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