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Nat's earliest memory is one of her getting ready for Sunday Mass in that little trailer. She's seven, maybe seven and a half back when that still mattered to anyone and has already denounced any sort of religious affiliation with herself.
Her hair was lighter then, sun-bleached from afternoons spent running outside with Van and Laura Lee out where the amount trailers began to thin and it became just grass and gravel. Nat was all knees and elbows back then, too. Tall and slender to the point she was the acclaimed "best hider" during hide and seek.
Her and Van had claimed a number of little victory injuries over their summer before first grade, little colorful bandaids plastered across knees and shins and elbows and chins (and exactly one and a half missing teeth from Van (that half being a little chip in her front tooth)), much to her parents's dismay. That wasn't to say they ever truly noticed or cared, but Nat's mother always got grumbly about it when she was brushing out Nat's hair before Mass.
That was another thing, Natalie Guilia Scatorccio had already begun her rebellious streak. At this age it was mostly refusing to brush her hair to her mother's satisfaction or eating all three of the (frankly pathetic) broccoli pieces in the family microwave dinner they had weekly. So every week like clockwork Nat was sat down on the stained carpet of her little bedroom while her mother sat on her bed and brushed out her hair with a repurposed windex bottle (now filled with water and maybe conditioner from a few refills ago) and a myriad of colored hair ties. Her scalp stung but she knew better by now than to say anything.
She had been dressed in a yellow and white polka dotted dress that covered most of the dirt marks and bandaids above her knees and had ruffled, puffed up sleeves. Her mother had claimed it looked "very nice" on her as she wrangled her daughter into it. The only good thing about being forced to go to Mass was the promise of running around with Laura Lee afterwards. The Palmer's didn't attend often, Nat usually saw them on Easter and Christmas yearly and once after Van's uncle died.
Her father always complained about their attendance on the car ride over- he was a hypocrite to his core. He'd seethe half to himself about how "fake" they were and that "Nat shouldn't be allowed near their kid" like she wasn't sitting in the backseat, already zoning out and staring out the window. Her parents weren't fond of Van, they said she was too boyish and a bad influence but when it came down to it, Nat playing with Van meant that they didn't have to watch her so it was forgiven.
When the car pulled into the little parking lot of that old white chapel with old wood slats and an old stained glass window, Nat was jolted from her own mind and the thoughts of running through the forest free were cut short. She shoved open the car's door and waited for her parents to follow after her. The little trio walked into the church just before it began, her father gracelessly dipped his hand into a bowl of what Nat could only assume to be holy water and made the sign of the cross. Her mother followed shortly after. Nat didn't partake.
They found a pew in the middle, just behind Laura Lee's family and just in front of the Costas. Her dad was smugly proud of that- the Costa's were always trying to one up them, he'd say over the few times there were all together for dinner. The service started and Nat more or less zoned out again.
She mumbled along to what had become muscle memory over years of her Sunday mornings stuck in the same little white building staring at the same stained glass windows depicting what was supposed to be creation and Mary with a young Jesus and another thing she couldn't recall. She stood when everyone else did, knelt when her mother roughly shouldered her to do so, even though it was optional. She stared at the golden crucifix poised behind that man droning on and on about lessons and hope. Nat found it rather gruesome, to have a carving of Jesus looking like that right there- like a warning, she'd thought once.
Laura Lee turned around almost instantly when the old man at the front of the room asked everyone to offer each other the sign of peace.
Nat cracked a smile and shook her hand, trying not to giggle because it felt strangely formal for the two girls. That moment of joy was quickly broken when the blonde-haired girl who reminded Nat so much of the saints she'd read about turned back around to offer her hand to others. Nat didn't offer anything to anyone else.
She followed after her father and took communion, she made the sign of the cross then. She knew if she didn't, she wouldn't hear the end of it for at least four hours after and that would put a big damper in her "running around with Laura Lee and Van time".
Then it was time to leave. The sun had climbed higher in the sky, warming the grassy patch that the chapel sat on and creating what seemed to be a very nice summer's day.
Nat missed warm, peaceful days. All warmth meant out in who-the-fuck-knows was longer days to work. A part of her even missed Mass, and maybe if she had prayed harder- believed harder- this wouldn't have happened.
She knows that's not how it works rationally. Still, she can't help but mumble a Hail Mary or what she remembers of the Lord's Prayer when the days got too tough to handle. She knows Laura Lee wouldn't have let this happen to them- whatever this was.