hot chocolate in front of Grace and me, and introduced us to a couple of the dealers working that night, Ryan and Derek. I recognized Ryan as the one who’d stared too long when I came in the last time—and soon discovered that it was because he had recognized me. An amateur filmmaker and fan of the director Kevin Smith, Ryan had followed my years-long Twitter battle with Smith (#SaveMegan).
With eyes wide and mouth agape, I shook my head. How was this possible? I’d traveled twelve hours to this tiny town at the edge of South Dakota to get away from everything and everyone who knew me—only to be spotted on the first night at the first establishment I’d wandered into. What were the odds?
“I need a drink,” I told Cora, using a poor imitation of a wink to disguise how unsettled Ryan’s revelation had made me. She poured a shot of Jack Daniels’ Tennessee Honey into my hot chocolate, which I nearly spewed out the instant it touched my tongue. Disgusting. Not wanting to be rude, I sipped the rest of it slowly while we all conversed—and though the flavor didn’t improve, I felt my stomach grow warm and my worries fade. As the dealers rotated through their stations and then off the gaming floor, they’d come to the bar to chat. Grace and I would ask them questions about their families and their lives—so foreign to us—and they’d ask about Westboro, what it was like to picket in the face of angry crowds, how our peers at school had treated us. They got a real kick out of the fact that we had made a habit of protesting outside our own high school over our lunch hour, snacking on Lunchables while classmates drove by honking their horns, flipping us off, and throwing the occasional sandwich.
“Do you have any family outside of the church?” Cora asked.
I beamed and told them the happiest moment I’d had since leaving.
Two nights after our departure from Westboro, Libby had driven Grace and me to our brother Josh’s house. It had been eight years since he left—several lifetimes, it seemed—and at my request, Libby hadn’t alerted him to the fact that Grace and I had left, too. My stomach was in knots during the forty-five-minute drive. I had a terrible feeling that he would be unrecognizable to me, and that I would be to him. I kept thinking of the terrible things I’d said about him when asked by journalists. I’d told them he was a disobedient rebel. I’d told them he was bound for Hell. I’d told them he wasn’t my brother anymore. For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother. I suddenly felt so silly and arrogant for judging him all these years, based only on his behavior as a nineteen-year-old kid and the fact that he wasn’t a member of Westboro. Would he forgive me? What kind of person had he become since I’d known him?
It was pitch-dark when we arrived, nearly 9 P.M. Libby found the keypad and entered the code to open the garage door, and I followed her in while Grace stayed outside, waiting to see how Josh would react. All the inside lights were on, and I only needed a glance and a moment to take it all in: the granite countertops and matching kitchen appliances, the hardwood floors, high ceilings, and the inviting scent of maple-vanilla candles. This was the home of someone who’d made something of himself. Libby pointed me down the steps just inside the door, and I proceeded alone, pausing at the bottom of the stairs to look around. It was classic Josh. To my right, a framed collection of theater ticket stubs. Still the movie buff. Above the basement door, a wooden plaque that read, “I’m ashamed of what I did for a Klondike Bar.” The same sort of saying that had characterized his entire T-shirt collection in high school. And there in front of me was Josh himself, playing a video game with a headset on, his back to me—exactly the same position in which I’d found him so many times in his basement bedroom back at home.
Some things never change.
I held my breath, crossed the room, and sat down on the couch adjacent to the one he was occupying. His head turned, and he froze. Silence. I studied his face for a beat, looking for signs