False Gods: The Show Jumper's Challenge

“Cory, I saw something in you when we first met. You were a seeker, who was looking around for something special in the world that would fill the empty hole. I was afraid you might look in the wrong direction.” She hurried to add, “Or waste time trying to figure it out, like I did.”

Cory wasn’t sure about all the other stuff but she was sure she had felt the void—one which had widened when her dad left and her mom retreated into her own world, a void that was growing between her and Jess the longer she kept quiet, and a void that flattened and spread over everything. She’d wanted to talk to someone about that stuff and maybe that’s why she wrote some of it in that stupid essay. “And those people? The ones in the essay. I don’t know how to help. I don’t know what to do anymore . . .”

Cory looked at the rows of open-mouthed orchids, blurring from tears that threatened to spill over.

“Tell me about them.”

A cloud passed, casting the greenhouse into dapples of gray. Soon the sound of raindrops on the glass roof grew to a crescendo and nearly drowned out the words that poured out of Cory, the words that dripped down the glass walls, ran along the damp hoses, and circled the drain in the cement floor. The words that lightened her with their release.