Kathryn Holmes said this quote

So how did you think about him?” Rachel asks.Hallelujah shrugs. “We were friends. Good friends. He knew—knows—a lot about me. I guess I know a lot about him. Stuff he likes and doesn’t like.”Rachel looks skeptical. “And yet you never knew he liked you.”“No! I mean—when Jonah and I were friends, I liked Luke. So maybe I missed some signs.”“So you just . . . hung out? Platonically?”“Yeah. I guess.” Hallelujah thinks about how to explain it. How to distill a friendship down to its most basic components. “We had choir together last year. We talked. For kind of the first time, even though we’d been in church and school together since fourth grade.”“And, what, you found out you had so much in common?”“Actually, no. But we started comparing music we liked, and a month into ninth grade, Jonah made me this mix of songs. Based on what we’d talked about. So then I made him a mix. And it grew from there. We’d go to each other’s houses, watch movies, listen to music, that kind of thing. Hanging out.”“So tell me about Jonah. Something only you know.”“Um. He’d probably deny it, but he got really into the Harry Potter books. Like, really into them. I loaned him my box set last spring. He got so mad at me for not warning him how Book Six ends.”Rachel laughs. “He didn’t see the movies?”“No. But I told him we couldn’t watch them until he’d finished the books.

~ Kathryn Holmes

I hate him.” She repeats it louder. “I hate him!” She shouts it at the sky, even though it’s hard to shout lying down: “I! Hate! Luke! Willis!”Rachel asks, “But what did he do?”Hallelujah can hear Jonah waiting for her answer. She knows he’s waiting because he’s stopped making fire-building noises. He’s silent. Completely.She takes a deep breath. “He told a lie about me. Actually, a lot of lies. And people believed him. The grown-ups, because he’s the preacher’s son and he’d never do something bad. And everyone our age—because he’s popular and you don’t question the popular guy, because if you do, you’ll stop being popular yourself. Or you’ll never get the chance. And because of what he said, my parents stopped trusting me. I lost friends. I was just this loser who—”She breaks off. Now she’s talking to Jonah. Even though he’s behind her and she can’t see him. “It doesn’t matter what you saw that night, or what he told you happened. Luke treated me like I was nothing, and you let him do it.”Jonah doesn’t answer.“But that’s not what makes me the maddest,” Hallelujah continues, pushing up to sit. “What makes me the maddest is that I let it happen too. I didn’t stand up for myself. And when someone did tell me to stand up for myself, I got so mad—”Sarah. She feels the emotion of their argument wash over her, fresh.“I pushed her away. I told her she didn’t understand anything. But she was right. I became this girl who wouldn’t stand up for herself. The quiet girl. The nothing girl. I just wanted it all to stop, but from the outside, without me having to make it stop. And I wanted to get away, but I figured, hey, college will get here eventually and then I’ll be away, I just have to get there, and all the while I’m miserable, and I’m letting you guys make me miserable, letting you make me think I’m supposed to be miserable, that I’m supposed to be quiet, and I’m shutting people out, people who maybe actually care, and I hate myself for it.” An abrupt stop. The train of thought hits a wall.She’s never said that before. Never thought it before. Not consciously.But she knows, deeper than she’s ever known anything, that it’s true.Hallelujah has spent six months hating herself for being weak and silent and for letting bad things happen and for not fighting.

~ Kathryn Holmes

Luke said that he was surprised when I showed up at his room. That he hadn’t meant to give me the wrong idea. That he would never have taken it beyond just kissing. And he looked so genuine. So trustworthy. So sorry about what had happened. He almost convinced me that I’d misread his signals.” Hallelujah pauses. “The whole time, I kept my mouth shut. I wish I hadn’t. But I was still so humiliated. And I felt guilty. I made out with him. I liked it. And no one made me go to his room.”Her voice breaks. She has to swallow past a lump in her throat.“I know Luke’s not a good guy. I know what he did isn’t my fault. It’s his. But still, none of it would’ve happened if I hadn’t gone to his room.”She’s almost there. Almost done. Almost heard. Something deep inside her hurts like it hasn’t hurt in a long time. But she knows that this gash had to reopen in order to heal. That’s how wounds work. They need air.“I knew I’d get punished, and I did. My parents grounded me. I was put on youth group probation. But I honestly thought Luke’s lies would just fade away if I kept a low profile. There’s always gossip about someone. This time it was me.”...“Luke is still telling people about what supposedly happened that night,” Hallelujah says. “And he makes fun of me. All the time. What I look like, what I say, my name. And he does this thing at church: whenever we sing a hymn with my name in it, he sings it like he’s hooking up with me. He sings the word ‘hallelujah’ at me. He moans it. And I hate it.” That’s one of the reasons she stopped singing: his voice, his fake grunts of satisfaction, ruining the music she loved so much.“You said,” she says to Jonah, “he wanted to keep me upset. To keep me from telling anyone what really happened. Well, it worked.” She pauses. “Until now.”“Until now,” Rachel repeats. Then she curses. “I can’t believe him. I can’t believe he got away with it.”“I let him get away with it,” Hallelujah says softly.“No. He’s the one who crossed the line. And okay, maybe you could’ve spoken up sooner. But if no one pushed you for your side of the story, that’s on them.” Rachel yawns and stretches. “And when we get home, we’re going to set the record straight.

~ Kathryn Holmes

He’s looking at her with so much compassion. Like he knows what she’s going through. Like he cares about her. This is what she wanted to see after everything happened with Luke. Instead, she saw Jonah’s back, every time he turned and walked away from her.She blurts, “Why are you being nice to me?She regrets it immediately. It’s the vulnerability talking. The fear. The adrenaline. For a second, she forgot the aloof, thick-skinned Hallelujah she needs to be.Jonah relaxes his grip. He looks away, out into the wet woods. He waits a long time before speaking. “Luke told me.”Hallelujah is instantly tense. “Luke told you what?”Another long pause. “That he lied. About what happened that night.”“What happened?” Rachel cuts in. “What’d Luke lie about?”Hallelujah ignores her. She stays focused on Jonah, even though he won’t look at her. “What’d he tell you originally?”Jonah flinches. “He made it . . . worse. Than what he told the adults. He said that that wasn’t the first time. And he said that you—”“Never mind,” Hallelujah cuts in. “I can guess.” She’s heard the rumors. The persistent ones and the surprising, weird, creative ones. She bets there are a lot that she hasn’t heard, too. “None of that happened,” she says softly but firmly, certain without even knowing exactly what Luke said. What Jonah heard. “None of it.”“That’s what he told me yesterday. I wanted to know why he was still—” He swallows, his Adam’s apple moving up and down. “I’d heard him and Brad laughing about what they were gonna do to you this week, and I was like, enough is enough. Time to let it go. So I asked him what was up. Why he was still messing with you.”“And?” Hallelujah asks.“And he told me the truth: that he’d made most of it up. He said he had to keep you quiet. Plus, um. He said messing with you was fun.”Hallelujah lets that sink in. “You really didn’t know it was a lie? You believed him this whole time?”Jonah suddenly looks right at her. His eyes plead. “I saw you, Hallie. And Luke was the only one of the two of you with a story to explain it.

~ Kathryn Holmes