Chapter 6 Caught in the Web

Beth didn’t knock.

She never did.

I heard her voice downstairs first, bright and loud, greeting my mother like she lived here.

“Mrs Rebecca! You look tired. Have you been sleeping? No? I’m going to make you tea later whether you like it or not.”

Mom’s soft laugh floated up the stairs. Then came the sound of sneakers pounding up two at a time.

My bedroom door flew open.

Beth stood there in a yellow sundress that clashed with everything in my room, holding a plastic bag like it contained treasure. Her hair was in two messy buns. She looked like sunlight that had decided to wear clothes.

“Happy late-late birthday, you emotionally unavailable gremlin,” she announced, dumping the bag on my bed. “I brought the good snacks. The ones with actual sugar. Don’t tell your mother.”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. The sound felt foreign in my throat after the last few days.

Beth climbed onto the bed and sat cross-legged facing me, already tearing open a bag of gummy bears.

“Okay,” she said around a mouthful. “We’re doing this now.”

“Doing what?”

“The storage room.”

My whole body went still.

Beth rolled her eyes so hard I thought they might get stuck. “Girl, don’t give me that face. I saw you.”

My heart started hammering. “Beth—”

“I’m not asking because I want to judge you.” Her voice softened, but her eyes stayed sharp. “I’m asking because you’re my best friend and you’ve been acting weird as hell. You didn’t even talk to me at the last fellowship. I saw you with the religious police instead.”

“Chloe and Leah?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light.

“Yeah.” She grinned. “I thought we both hated them.”

We both laughed, the sound short and real. For a second the room felt normal again.

Then Beth’s face turned serious.

“It was inappropriate, Abby. A grown man and a teenage girl alone in a private room. People talk. You know how this church works.”

I forced myself to meet her eyes. “You’re overthinking it. He bumped into me there. He had other business. Please stop making it weird because of the church’s ambiguous rules.”

Beth studied me for a long moment.

“Was something going on between you and Elijah?”

My heart jumped so hard I felt it in my throat.

“Hell no!”

“Abby.”

“For real girl, nothing happened. Nothing.”

She didn’t believe me. I could see it. But she didn’t push.

Instead she sighed and popped another gummy bear into her mouth.

“Okay. I don’t believe you. But I’m going to pretend I do because you clearly don’t want to talk about it.” She pointed a sticky finger at me. “But if Pastor Matt finds out you were alone in that storage room with his son who is taking over from him, I’m not going to heaven with you.”

I choked on a laugh that was half panic. Beth grinned, satisfied that she’d at least made me react.

She started pulling notebooks and markers out of the bag.

“We’re making the youth group welcome packs for the new girls,” she said. “Even if the official announcement hasn’t been made yet. Pastor Matt only mentioned the Purity Ball during your birthday. So we’re getting ahead of it.”

We worked for almost an hour. Cutting paper. Writing verses. Arguing about whether the ribbon should be white or pale pink. For a while I almost forgot the photograph under my pillow and the new sentence written on the back.

Then Beth glanced at me sideways.” Okay, either you're secretly a celebrity now or this church has officially become a cult." 

I forced a laugh. “Why do you say so?”

“People have been looking at you differently since you turned eighteen,” she said quietly. “Have you noticed?”

I had.

I just hadn’t wanted to say it out loud. But I was surprised she noticed it too.

She didn't know how close the joke was to the truth. 

Later that afternoon we walked to the church to drop off the packs. Most youths were already there. Caleb was already there, stacking chairs in the fellowship hall with the kind of quiet efficiency that made people trust him without knowing why. I still called him new guy even though it’s almost a year since he joined our church.

Beth brightened when she saw him.

“Caleb! Perfect timing. Help us carry these?”

He took the box from her without complaint. His eyes flicked to me once, serious and assessing, then away.

While Beth went to find more tape, Caleb spoke under his breath.

“You’ve known Eli a long time?”

The question was casual. Too casual.

“Most of my life,” I answered carefully.

Caleb nodded once. “You should probably be careful around him.”

Before I could ask what that meant, the side door opened.

Eli walked in.

The air in the room shifted the way it always did when he entered. People straightened without realizing it.

He looked at Caleb first.

The smile he gave him was polite. Pleasant. And completely cold underneath.

Caleb’s expression flattened. He murmured something about needing to check the sound system and walked away without another word.

Eli turned to me.

His eyes moved over my face slowly, like he was checking for damage.

“You spoke to Chloe yesterday,” he said. Not a question.

My pulse stuttered. I hadn’t told him that.

“How do you know?”

He didn’t answer. He just watched me with that quiet, adult patience that always made me feel younger than I was.

“Be careful who you test, Abby,” he said finally, voice low enough that only I could hear. “Some people smile while they’re taking notes.”

The words landed like a warning and a claim at the same time.

I opened my mouth to say something, but Beth interrupted me with a new task.

Later that night the official invitation arrived.

Cream envelope. Gold lettering. My full name already printed in elegant script.

I opened it at my desk, heart beating too fast for something that should have been ordinary.

Inside was the invitation card. The purity ball was to be held the 14th of this month. Then it hit me — October 14th. 

AGAIN!

Before I could fully process my feelings, I notice that clipped to the card with a small gold pin was a photograph.

Not the childhood one.

A recent photo of me and Beth.

We were sitted heads close together, laughing at something on her phone.

I noticed Beth's exact outfit. The unfinished welcome packs. The same bracelet. Maybe even the half-eaten packet of gummy bears beside Beth.

Then it dawned on me: this photograph wasn't old.

IT WAS TAKEN TODAY!

My first thought wasn’t about myself.

It was about Beth.

They had followed me into that storage room. They had watched me investigate. Now I understood the truth: my secrets hadn't kept Beth out of this, they had only kept her unprepared. 

My fingers tightened around the edges of the picture.

Whoever took this hadn't just been watching me.

They had been close enough to watch her too.

And Beth didn't even know she was being watched.