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

After a few minutes, she speaks up again. “You’re next. Sing.”Anxiety grips Hallelujah’s chest, squeezing. “I don’t sing,” she says.“C’mon, it doesn’t matter if you’re bad. It’s not like this is a concert hall—”“She’s not bad.” Jonah’s back. “She has a great voice.”Rachel swings around to look from Jonah to Hallelujah. “Really? Now you have to—”“No.“But—”“I don’t sing,” Hallelujah repeats, turning away.Jonah joins them by the fire. The silence stretches out. Except it’s not really silent, not with the birds and wind and fire and how loud Hallelujah’s heart is beating. And then Jonah clears his throat. “You used to sing,” he says. “You were great.”Hallelujah ignores the compliment. She looks into the fire. She feels the last of the day’s happiness fading away, already a memory.“Why’d you quit?” Jonah asks. “Was it ’cause of Luke?”Hallelujah inhales deeply. She feels the familiar spark of anger in her gut. “Yes,” she says. “It was because of Luke. And you. And everyone else. So thanks for that.” Jonah’s face drops. She can see that she’s hit a nerve. Well, he hurt her first. The way he took Luke’s side, shutting her out. The loss of his friendship, when she needed a friend most. The loss of their voices harmonizing, when she needed music most. How she just hurt him can’t begin to compare to all of that.

~ 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