She laughed. A sound like acid pumping through my ears, dissolving my insides from the heart down.

Kneeling, I spun the dial on my combination lock. With it unclasped, I freed my bike from the bench, then coiled the lock and chain around the seat post so they wouldn’t impede my escape. Tonight’s mission: total fail. Any hope for making this work in the future, likely gone too.

Angling the handlebars toward the street, away from Kiera, I said, “I guess I’ll see you later.”

“I thought you wanted to walk with me.”

“I—?” That laugh from before left behind an easy smile. “Yeah.”

“On one condition,” she said. “I want to ride that bike.”

As soon as Kiera mounted my Schwinn, we got a group text from Jameer.

Jameer: You two okay?

I hit him back with a simple Yep.

Kiera said, “I’ll tell him where we are.”

His next message came before she finished.

Jameer: I’ll catch up later. A friend I haven’t seen in a while showed up.

Jameer: Kiera, don’t go in the house until I’m back. You know why.

She frowned, so confused. “What friend?”

I figured my dude was improvising. Still giving me and Kiera the alone time we’d planned for. Though that last text confused me, too. “Why can’t you go in the house until he comes back?”

The Schwinn’s gears tick-tick-ticked while she pedaled slowly. “Have you met his parents? We left together, so we can’t come back separate. That’s trouble for everyone.”

“Like how?” There was so little his parents seemed to allow him now, what else could they take away?

“Like getting Pastor involved.” Kiera twisted the handlebars away from me, then back, making my bike coast in wide, swooping arcs. Close to me, then far, the wind soft-combing her hair with each turn.

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means we’re all very careful not to cross the line.”

“What line? Who’s ‘we’?”

“Jameer hasn’t told you about baring your soul.”

A breeze had started pushing our way, strong enough to howl, so I thought I’d misheard her somehow. The words didn’t make any sense.

She must’ve seen it in my face, so she clarified. “Confessing your sins.”

“Oh.” I’d seen that a lot on TV, and in movies. “Like in those booths where you talk to a priest behind a screen.”

Kiera laughed. “You’re thinking about Catholics. That’s not how it’s done at First Missionary.”

“So, how’s it done?”

She wasn’t laughing anymore. “Publicly. In front of the whole congregation.”

I considered that. It seemed kind of extreme, but, “I guess if someone wants to do that, it’s their business, right?”

“Want has nothing to do with it.”

“Wait. You don’t mean—? That’s a public shaming, Kiera. That’s some Game of Thrones type sh—stuff.”

“Like I said, we’re careful. Confession’s important, don’t get me wrong, I talk to God every night about my offenses, and always ask for His forgiveness. But when Pastor makes you do it that way, it’s— I just wouldn’t want to.”