Anything but Normal - Melody Carlson [52]
“That’s right,” a man in the back shouted. “I heard those girls made a pregnancy pact together. If that’s not getting pregnant on purpose, I don’t know what is.”
“I heard there are thirty girls in Brewster’s pregnancy center this year,” Mrs. North said. “When it first started, there were less than a dozen.”
Sophie wanted to point out those numbers had increased when Brewster decided to include the Maxwell High students as well, but she knew no one would hear her over the din in the room. Everyone was talking at once, spewing out opinions like they were facts.
Sophie glanced over at Pastor Vincent, who seemed a bit overwhelmed too. She made her way back to her seat, gathered her things, and slipped out the back. All she wanted was to run and forget this whole thing. Why had she come? What good had it done?
The next week wasn’t starting out much better. Word got out that another kind of town meeting was being held. In city hall. And it would be a media event. Mrs. Manchester had gathered up her cohorts to speak out and had even coerced Sophie into speaking.
“But what will I say?” Sophie had asked her. “Who wants to listen to me?”
“Just say what you said in the paper. Tell them about the girls you met and why you think the pregnancy center is valuable to them.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“How would you feel, Sophie,” she said, staring directly into Sophie’s eyes, “if you were in their shoes and no one wanted to stand up and speak for you?”
“Okay.” Sophie sighed. “I’ll say something.”
Mrs. Manchester clasped Sophie’s hand. “Bless you.”
So when the time came, Sophie got up. She reiterated what she’d written in her article and how the girls she’d met really needed the center. “Think about it,” she challenged her listeners. “How will it help those teens if there is no center? How will it help if they don’t get an education? How does it help anything when teen mothers don’t have enough education to get decent-paying jobs? Do you want them all to end up on welfare? Sure, they made mistakes, but who hasn’t? These girls are paying for their mistakes. Why make life harder for them?”
She looked out over the audience with uncertainty. She recognized some faces from church. But she had no idea where the others all stood. Maybe she didn’t care. “A long time ago, when a certain woman was thrown in front of Jesus and the people wanted to stone her because she had sinned, Jesus invited the person who had never sinned to throw the first stone. And you know what?” She noticed her pastor’s face in the back of the room, and he was nodding like he agreed with her. “No one threw a stone. Maybe that’s what we need to do too.”
As she left the podium, a lot of people started to clap. She wasn’t sure if the ones from her church were clapping too, but she did see Pastor Vincent give her two thumbs up from where he was standing along the back wall. She gave him a grateful nod. Now if only he would embrace that same attitude when he heard the news about her. Not that she planned on telling him—or anyone else for that matter. But eventually . . . well, she knew that some things couldn’t be hidden forever.
Just as she returned to her seat to wait for the next speaker, Wes wedged himself onto the bench beside her. “Way to go.” “Thanks.” She took in a shaky breath. “That was so freaky.” To her shock he reached over and took her hand. Her hands were still trembling, but she was surprised at how comforting it was to feel the warmth of his hand wrapped around hers. Almost as if he really knew what she was going through, almost as if he understood. And it almost made her cry.
After the meeting, Wes walked her to her car. “What do your parents think of all this?” he asked as they stood in the dimly lit underground parking structure.
“They don’t really know.”
“They don’t know?”
“Well, they’re busy.”
“Do they read the school paper?”
She shrugged. “I’ve left issues lying around the house. If they’ve read it, they haven’t mentioned it.”
“Do they watch the local news?”
“My mom says the news depresses her, and my dad just watches sports