Fraying at the Edge by Cindy Woodsmall

as long as my life is fodder for you and your friends. Do you know why I’m agreeing to those things, Cameron? Has it dawned on you that this isn’t just about the joy of learning I’m not Amish?”
    Cameron looked at Gabe and then Brandi. “I…I never thought about it.”
    “Because if I fail to please Nicholas, an Amish midwife who is probably the age of your grandmother will go to jail. So, ya, I’m here, and everything about me is hilariously out of sync with this world, only nothing about it is funny.” Ariana turned and hurried up the stairs, no longer hungry or caring if she and Cameron ever got along.
    She closed the door behind her, leaned against it, and fought for air.
God, what are You doing to me?
Life seemed so unfair. Skylar had magically inherited wonderful parents and nine siblings.
She
was Abram’s twin, not Ariana.
    Ariana had lost everything and gained nothing.
    Nothing.
    The only thing that had been hers that still remained hers was Rudy, and she missed him so much. He wouldn’t have a lot of advice for how to cope with going from the Amish world to the Englisch one as Quill might, but Rudy was the one she longed to talk to. Thankfully her new status as the only daughter of Brandi and Nicholas hadn’t changed Rudy’s love for her. He was spending this time with his parents in Indiana to save money so they could start a life together after she returned to Summer Grove. All she had to do was survive, be obedient to her biological parents, and return home.
    Well, she also needed to avoid Cameron as much as possible.
    “God,” she whispered as tears fell, “when I do finally return home, will Mamm, Daed, my sisters, and my brothers still consider me family?” Or would everything change after a year of pondering her non-Brenneman status and the natural shrinking of the hole her absence had made?
    Ariana shuddered.
    She needed to talk to someone about all this craziness that weighted down her shoulders like the yoke of a workhorse. Who could she talk to? Brandi? Nicholas?
    Quill.
    The idea of calling Quill annoyed her. Angered her actually.
    “Ariana.” Brandi tapped on the door.
    Ariana wiped the tears off her face. “Just a minute, please.” She stood upright, willing the tears to stop as she drew a deep breath and moved away from the door. “Come in.” Ariana went to the window seat and sat looking out at the neighborhood.
    The door eased open, and Brandi stood in the threshold. “Hi.” She stepped inside and closed the door. “You okay?”
    Ariana opened the learner’s manual, giving herself something to look at other than Brandi. “I’m sorry for losing my temper. I don’t know what came over me.”
    “I know. Your world’s been stripped away, and Cameron isn’t a parent you feel you have to be respectful to, and then she trounced on your last nerve. A perfect storm, as she would say.”
    “I guess.” Ariana flipped some pages, catching glimpses of road signs.
    Life had a new and unfamiliar weight to it. She’d thought she was reasonably tough after being raised poor, and in some instances that was probably true. But she was no match for the weight of worldliness. And loneliness.
    “You want to talk?” Brandi sat down a foot away from her.
    Ariana’s throat started to close again, and she knew tears were close to the surface. “Thanks, but no.”
    “Nicholas and I have really botched this. I was hoping by some miracle we’d do things right, but I guess that’s beyond our parenting skill set.”
    “It’s fine.” Ariana dog-eared a page, opening and closing the tiny triangle. “We’re all three trying to cope and adjust.”
    It’d been a long, tough week, one in which Nicholas had spent a lot of time teaching her about things she’d never heard of as well as teaching her how to drive. When Officer Barnes had brought her home, Nicholas and Brandi were visibly less hostile to each other. They apologized for their argumentative behavior and said they had worked