Donut Days by Lara Zielin Page A

went to grab a glass of milk or a piece of bread. With me and Nat, the same thing happened—and now the decay was still working its way through our friendship like a cavity, and we could feel the ache of it even if we weren’t brave enough to look at it.
    That is until Nat told me she and Carson had had a powwow about how to handle Nat’s dating restrictions, and they had decided they should just put it all out in the open with Nat’s parents and see what happened.
    “Oh, Emma,” Nat said, perched on top of Lizzie’s slide in my backyard, her words all shivery and whispery as the air grew darker and cooler around us, “it was so awesome. We figured we should just ask my parents for permission to date and come clean with how much we liked each other. So right away I went home and told them all about Carson and how much I cared about him. I asked them to let me date now instead of in September when I turn seventeen, and they said yes! Can you even believe it?”
    I didn’t say anything for a moment because I couldn’t. I fingered the chain of the swing I was sitting in and tried to ignore the fact that my mouth felt like it had been stuffed with corn husks. “Don’t you want to think about this?” I asked finally. “I mean, what do you guys even have in common?”
    Nat looked down at me from the top of the slide. “What do you mean?”
    “I mean, it’s Carson Tanner. He thinks it’s cool to push freshmen into lockers. He doesn’t exactly seem like your type.”
    Nat tilted her head and her thick hair fell to one side. “What’s your deal with Carson? Are you jealous or something?”
    I laughed. “Uh, negatory. In case you missed it, I don’t go for the blond jock type. As far as I can tell, Carson doesn’t really have any brains.”
    Nat shrugged. “Well, I like him. And he likes me. Right now that’s all that matters.”
    Except for me! I wanted to shout. Molly and I were no longer friends, Jake and I weren’t talking, and now Nat was going to leave me so she could spend all her time with her tongue down Carson’s throat. Lizzie was looking like my best chance at a social life in the immediate future.
    I tried a different tactic. “Don’t you think you guys just, I don’t know, are from different worlds? I mean, what’s he going to say about Living Word Redeemer? Or the fact that you fast for church, like, twice a month? Don’t you think that’ll make going out to dinner just a teensy bit hard?”
    I said it like I was joking, but Nat didn’t even attempt a smile. Instead, she just leaned back and looked up at the dark sky. “I don’t know. And part of me doesn’t really care.”
    Now I was getting mad. Maybe I was a little jealous, but there was something else too—a thought that was like an itch in my mind, making me wish I could reach behind my eyes and scratch it.
    Three months ago, back in the lunchroom, Nat had basically defended Mr. O’Connor’s stance on women. That meant that in Nat’s world women couldn’t do empowering things like preach, but they could do completely idiotic things like date guys they had nothing in common with, who probably had no clue what Christian faith even was.
    I could feel anger spreading through my body like a poison. “You should hear yourself,” I said in a low voice. “You really should. It’s like we should give you an apron and throw you back into the 1800s or something.”
    Nat hopped off the slide and took a step toward me. “What are you talking about?” she asked. I could feel the fury radiating off her.
    “I’m talking about you,” I said, standing up too. “You basically stuck up for Molly when she said her dad was right about women not preaching, but now you’re going around getting excited about dating a guy who doesn’t even know what the New Testament is .” My hands were shaking and the swing set was getting all out of focus as anger blurred my vision.
    “How can you say that?” Nat asked, getting right in my face.