American Rapture, page 5
“Either way we’re at the mercy of the adults.”
“We don’t have to be.”
“Noah.”
“Sophie, I can’t do anything from in here, and definitely not while I’m on this probation.”
I am quiet, that anxiety spreading. The wind against the window.
I’m ashamed, but it’s the truth. “I’m afraid.”
“Of getting caught?”
“No. I’m—I’ve been … slipping. I don’t know. I’m just … scared.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “You sound like them.” His voice is soft, but the accusation in it hits me like it’s meant to.
“Well what if they’re right?” I say. “You’ve always dismissed it, but I can feel it here, like something’s stalking me. I don’t—”
“So you think I was slipping? You think I was slipping and I got possessed?”
“No, I don’t think that.”
“Don’t you?”
“No,” I say. “But this—I feel something. The darkness, this wind, there’s—”
“Wind? You sound crazy.”
Again, that pang of hurt. We don’t do this. We don’t fight.
“You know I’m not,” I say. “And you’re being mean.”
“Well I can’t do anything, but you can and you won’t because you’re too afraid.”
“Of course I’m afraid. I’m alone here, with Mom and Dad and every major consequence, every eternal consequence, for my every action, and I am failing at every step of the way to be anything good, and I am terrified that I’m going to damn us all, that—”
“So, what, you’re blaming me for being gone? For leaving you alone with them?”
“What? No, Noah, I’m blaming me. I sinned, and I can’t stop sinning, and I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” I am crying now. Shaking. The wind is blowing outside again, this wind, pushing at the walls, clawing them. I am clinging to this phone like a lifeline.
“Sophie, you know that’s insane—”
“I’m not crazy!” My voice is loud and rings out for a moment. Neither of us says anything. Then, he says,
“I know. You’re right. I know, I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too. I’m so sorry. I miss you so much.”
“I miss you too.”
“And … I know I’m afraid all the time. I’m trying. I—I don’t know how anyone deals with this fear. How anyone can stand it?”
“I don’t know.”
No. He doesn’t know, because he doesn’t feel it. Because he is so much stronger than I am. Because he doesn’t believe.
“Noah, are they listening?” I ask, after a moment.
“I don’t think so.”
“Today, at school, there were these girls, they were … I think they were … touching each other.” My voice is soft and raw as I say it, as I pose the question I can’t actually pose.
Silence, for a moment. Then,
“They were what?” he asks. Tension in his voice, a warning. My heart pounding.
“That magazine, that night. We never … Do you still—?” I don’t know why I ask, don’t know why I need to know, why it’s taken me so long. Because it’s the only secret between us? Because I just want to understand?
“I don’t want to talk about that night,” he says. And he means it. He doesn’t want to talk, and I know I’ve messed up by asking. I know I shouldn’t keep going, but—
“Noah—”
“Time’s up, Noah. You gotta head back to prayers. I’ll give you one more minute.”
“Please, Sophie,” Noah says, none of the teasing there now. “Just do that thing for me, okay? Get us some information. I’m telling you, it’s been…”
“Yeah, okay, I will,” I say. “Noah, I love you.”
But the line is disconnected.
* * *
My mother, father, Noah, me. The magazine and the night that changed everything.
Our mother called the priest. Our father gripped Noah harder than he’d ever taken hold of anything. He shook him, yelled inches from his face, spit flying. Noah cried. My brother was crying.
Thunder, sulfur, wind, tears.
Noah’s tears. Mine.
The priest came with altar boys, bigger and older than Noah, stronger than him. Our father threw Noah over, passed him to them like he was glad to be done with him, like he couldn’t stand to touch him. Like Noah wasn’t even a person at all.
“This isn’t your home,” our father said. “You’re not welcome here, not like this.”
I ran for Noah. I fought against the altar boys and even the priest, yelled and fought and pleaded.
Please! No! What are you doing? Noah!
Our father held me back. Held me back while they dragged Noah through our living room. Kicking, crying, begging forgiveness. Screaming.
I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I repent, I won’t—
Past the dining table, out into the stormy night. My brother, the rain soaking his pajamas.
His eyes, terror in them. For the first time in his life, afraid. I screamed, fought against our father. His fingers dug in tight to my skin, bruising me.
Noah, crying, reaching for me. The wind battering the house. Thunder booming, nearly rattling the windows.
Sophie!
Noah’s eyes on mine, Noah calling my name.
Both of us screaming, fighting to reach each other. Both of us ripped apart.
Our mother standing there, watching it all. Silent tears streaming down her face.
She had called them. She had done this.
And I knew. Even through my sobs and my screams and the terror that was being ripped in two.
I knew in that moment looking at her, as the front door slammed and I heard the van doors shut outside, taking my other half from me.
Even if it was deepest sin. Even if I would burn for it for all time,
I hated.
I hated my mother’s tears more than anything. She didn’t deserve them.
I knew in that moment that I would hate her forever.
In her hand something glossy. The magazine from Noah’s room.
The magazine from Noah’s room. With two shirtless boys kissing.
The Photograph
By Friday, three students are out sick, and two more leave during the day with fevers and headaches. I think of Noah, and what he asked me to do. But in my free periods, Sister Anna supervises the computers, and there is no way to get around her.
It’s raining, hard, dark sky looming over us. I find a quiet corner in the cafeteria to finish my book. I still wear my too-small uniform and drape a sweater over my legs so that no one can see up my skirt. I wonder if Noah will notice the change in me, whenever I see him next. It fills me with shame again that my father noticed. An unclean, sick feeling.
Because some students are missing from my class, Sister Anna asks us to move forward. In front of me are Sarah and Rachel plus two of their friends. Sister Anna breaks out into a coughing fit as she begins to lecture, and when it doesn’t cease, she steps out to the hall, the door closing behind her. The moment she is gone, the girls converge on Rachel’s phone, whispering. Sarah’s jaw drops.
On the screen is a picture, taken from the front, of a boy’s torso. Like the ones on the magazine cover. He is covered in a sheen of sweat or maybe oil. I can’t see his face, just the region between his shoulders and hips. His shoulders wide, hard muscle on strong bone. The curve of that muscle rippling through his arms, over his chest, and on his abdomen makes my own stomach tighten. I can’t even see him up close, but I still feel that pulsing warmth spread through me, so quickly it comes and takes root. It’s intoxicating. Dangerous. And yet—
“He sent this to you?” one of them whispers.
“Yeah, and this is like the tamest one. You won’t even believe—here, I wasn’t going to show anyone, but I can’t not. It’s just too much. But you absolutely cannot tell!” She pulls up another photo, one that is zoomed in on something else. Before I can get a good view of it, she looks up and sees me standing next to them. She hides the screen against her chest.
“Um, excuse me. This is private.”
“Oh, sorry. I was just … stretching,” I say.
The girls laugh and whisper as I sink into my chair, Sarah glances back at me and stage-whispers, “She’s so weird!”
Sister Anna returns, her eyes watering and sniffling against a handkerchief. “Now,” she says, “let’s begin.”
I don’t listen to her lecture.
I am preoccupied—Noah, the girls in the music room, the flu.
The music room girls. I couldn’t see their faces, couldn’t even really make out the exact color of their hair, and half the school is blond anyway. They could be anyone in here. The sky outside the window is so dark. It feels important, somehow. I don’t know. I’m restless. Noah’s magazine has always been an open question, the one secret between us, even now.
Before I think better of it, I say, “Sister Anna?”
Sister Anna looks up. All the girls turn to face me.
I hesitate, now with everyone’s attention.
“I have a question,” I say.
Sister Anna raises her brows.
“It’s about, um … homosexuals.”
The girls erupt. Laugh and lean into each other, whisper. “Is she serious?”
Sister Anna’s face goes white, whiter than usual. That look, almost like …
Then it’s gone. Why would fear show there anyway?
“Settle down, girls. Settle,” she says. “Sophie, we’re talking about Job, you can’t possibly—”
“I just don’t understand.”
She sighs. “What don’t you understand?”
“Well, like in Sodom. Why did they do that? Why would men choose men?”
Again the girls laugh, and Sister Anna regards me for a moment. Then she says, “Why does anyone sin? They allowed the Devil in, bent to temptation.”
“But why were they tempted? How would the Devil benefit from that?”
“Because by choosing perversion, they turned their backs on God and earned a place in Hell.”
“But if men who choose men, or women who choose women, know that it will earn them a place in Hell, if they know it will break their relationship with God, what do they get out of it? Why do they choose it?”
“Because they are wicked.”
“But that doesn’t—”
“We’re not discussing this,” Sister Anna says. Her tone is harsh, the words swift. Weighty. Something in the way she fidgets with the chalk in her hand.
I don’t understand. I still don’t understand. But then I think of the two girls in the music room and the feeling that ran through me. It was dangerous and bad, and I knew it. But a part of me …
I shake my head. Maybe I’m not any closer, or maybe I understand it more than I want to. But what I do know is that Sister Anna is wrong on one point. And it’s such a vital point, such a profound incorrectness that as I sit here in this classroom, the wind scraping against the windows, I feel something maybe. Just slightly. A shift within me.
Noah is the farthest thing from wicked.
Thunder booms outside, and rain pummels the windows. The lights flicker off, then on, and I stare out into the dark. The dark in the daylight. The woods.
The whisper, and the wind.
HOW TO DEVELOP A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY, BY THE METHOD OF LOCI (CICERO’S MIND PALACE):
Construct your mind palace. Preferably a familiar building, one you know inside and out.
Fill it with characters. Obscene, grotesque, funny, tragic. Memorable. Attach what you’re trying to remember to them.
Take a walk through it.
Practice often. Memory improves with repetition.
The Library
My mother drives me to the library after school. The rain comes down even harder now, that same crackling electric feeling underlying everything, suffusing the air. It’s so dark it almost feels like night. I hold my bookbag close to my chest and run through the downpour to the doors. My mother always brought Noah and me to the library when we were kids. But after he left and I refused to interact with her the way I once did, she started waiting outside while I found everything on our list.
Inside, I pause. This warm place. This welcoming, peaceful, sacred place. When I am here, nothing beyond these walls matters. This place more home than home.
I shake the water off and dry my shoes as much as possible. This, a house I don’t want to profane. The rows of wooden tables and shelves under the yellow lights, the rain sliding down the glass windows, the smell of old dusty books and new plastic-covered ones. There is nothing complicated here. Just stories, just acceptance, just life.
I glance over at the main desk where Mrs. Parson usually sits, but it’s empty. I’ll find her tagging or shelving somewhere in the stacks.
One time, in the year after Noah left, I was here, and the loneliness had been particularly crushing that week, the nuns particularly cruel, and I’d always liked the library, always felt safe here. And I didn’t mean to. But as I was reaching for a book, I just broke down crying, right in the children’s section. I sat on the floor, and I cried and cried into my hands.
“It must have been a really awful book,” a woman said.
I looked up, sure I was going to get in trouble. But the woman standing in front of me was like an angel. She had dark skin and hair and eyes, and I had never seen a face so symmetrical, so lovely and perfect. It was like she wasn’t real. And she was so open, kind, smiling in a bright pink sweater. I realized she’d said something to me.
“What book?” I sniffed, wiping my eyes with the backs of my hands.
“Whatever made you cry like that.”
For a moment, I sat there, uncomprehending. And then I understood. And …
I laughed. I had forgotten what it felt like to laugh.
“That’s better,” she said. The way she said it, the way she knelt down beside me and took in my face. It was like she really cared about me. And I knew she couldn’t because she didn’t even know me. “So if this wasn’t a book-related tragedy, what kind was it?” she said.
I shrugged, sniffed again.
“Let me guess. Kids at school?”
“The nuns.”
“Ahh, I see.”
And I don’t know why I said it because I didn’t know her at all, but, “I miss my brother.”
“Did something happen to him?”
“He doesn’t live with us anymore.”
She watched me for a moment and then nodded her head.
“You seem like a smart girl,” she said. “Are you picking out books for yourself?”
I nodded. She looked around the children’s books, furrowed her brow. “Is reading easy for you?” I nodded again, quickly. She smiled. “I think I may have just the thing.”
She stepped away and came back with a book in her hand. “I’m Mrs. Parson, by the way. I’m the new librarian. And you are?”
“Sophie.”
“Nice to meet you, Sophie. Have you read this one by any chance?”
She held it out to me. A Wrinkle in Time. I shook my head, no.
“I think you might like it.”
“I’m not allowed. I can only get the books on my list,” I said.
She bent down and studied me again, seemed to read everything about me in that one look. I saw it. Understanding. She put out her hand, and I took it. She helped me up to stand.
Mrs. Parson winked. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
* * *
I grab the mercifully dry books and slip them into the return slot at the front desk. A shiver runs through me, in my wet clothes, and I begin my walk through the aisles. Sliding my fingers over the books and their little tabs. I love the way they feel, slick plastic, dimpled leather, crinkling paper. I take in a long, deep breath.
There are too many books in the world, so many that it would take countless lifetimes to read them all. So I’ve devised a system. And there is only one rule: I choose at random, and no matter what I am delivered, I can’t put it back until I’ve read it cover to cover.
I close my eyes and reach out my hand. I slowly move down the aisle until the moment feels right. When it does, I stop and let my fingers move closer to the shelf. I pause, enjoying the moment, and extend them toward the nearest spine. Time is suspended. All my worries momentarily gone. I am about to meet a new friend, explore a new world, become a new me, if only for a short time.
My fingertips brush up against it.
“Excuse me. I, uh, hate to be the bearer of bad news, but reading generally requires keeping one’s eyes open. Unless, of course, you’re looking for the braille books. If you are, you’re in the wrong section.”
I spin around.
Ben.
From the truck at school. From the map at the mall. And now he’s standing here. In the library, no screen between us.
“It’s you,” he says. Then his face colors, as if … embarrassed? He straightens and says, “You, uh, you go to St. Mary’s.”
My brain stutters. My mouth, strangely, says, “Did the uniform tell you?” It’s an absurdly childish response, and I am not sure why I am suddenly annoyed. He is so beautiful I can barely breathe.
I blink, shake my head. Where did that thought—?
“Uh, no, but now that you mention your uniform, do you want a towel or something?”
His eyes travel from my wet hair down to my collared shirt and stick there momentarily. He clears his throat and looks away. And I am now, suddenly, acutely aware that my shirt is soaked through, completely. My hair, pulled to one side and dripping down, is only making the situation worse. I am wearing an old bra, and it doesn’t cover the tops of my breasts, which shouldn’t matter except that the white fabric of my shirt now clings to my skin there. Everything is visible. My face grows hot. I pick up my bag and hold it in front of myself as a shield.
“No. Thank you.” I glance around and wait for him to leave.
“So, uh, you were at the mall too, right? It was you I saw there?”
“Oh. I—no. Probably someone else.” I don’t know why I say it.
“Oh. Huh. Okay then, um, so how can I help you?”
