Believe (13 page)

TWENTY-FOUR

I walked to school alone. I was a girl with no boyfriend, and my friends weren't answering their phones. So I walked past the church and the tree alone, and the whole time, my phone buzzed. Unknown name and number, every time. I turned it off. At the light across the street from the school, a policeman directed traffic. “I have a nephew who's been dealing with Lyme disease.” I grimaced and tried to avoid eye contact. One of these days, I really should try to get a license. “You want me to escort you to the door?” he asked.

“No thanks,” I said. “I can handle them.”

“Are you sure?”

I reminded myself he meant well. “I'm sure.” He held up his hands so it was clear to cross the street.

So far, the scene didn't look too bad. There were the usual groups of students hanging around. In between, I noticed five or six unfamiliar adults. That wasn't a lot. I'd dealt with worse.

When they saw me, they simultaneously began to walk toward me.

“What was it like?”

“How did it feel?”

“Now do you think your hands are holy?”

Their questions were pretty standard.

“No comment,” I said. I kept walking toward the door, my hand shielding my face. They followed at a safe distance—they wouldn't do anything stupid on school grounds. All around me, other students turned and watched. They posed. A lot of them looked like they had dressed up, hoping to get the attention of a camera.

Any one of them would love to answer questions about Abe. They all knew him—or at least knew something about him.

I was ten steps from the front door when a short guy with scruffy facial hair and a plaid, wrinkled shirt and scuffed shoes bumped into me, knocking my backpack off my shoulder. “Sorry,” he said, reaching down to help me, as if the collision was an accident and he was some klutzy substitute teacher and not a reporter.

I said, “It's okay. They're just books.”

He stood between me and the door. “What do you think about the power of faith? Have you spoken to Dave Armstrong?” When I just shook my head—these questions were possibly the most obvious ones I'd ever been asked—a crowd formed around us.

I looked around. Where was the principal? How about a teacher? The closest familiar face was a girl from my English class. I couldn't remember her name. She asked, “Do you deny that Abe Demetrius recovered? How can you turn your back on other people who might need your help?”

A week ago, she had ranted about double standards—that women weren't recognized professionally as often as men. I thought she seemed okay, even though she was a bit uptight. Now she was shouting. “If you can heal people, don't you want to share your gift with the world? Don't you have to? With all these witnesses, isn't there anything you want to say?”

We stared at each other as the cameras flashed. “I honestly don't know,” I said, not because I didn't, but because right now, I was a bit embarrassed, a bit ashamed. I understood responsibility—I was human—but I also had to contend with reality.

This is what no one understood.

Unlike her, if I gave up my seat on a bus, someone might take my picture. If I worked in a soup kitchen for the holiday, someone always found out and wrote a story about my desire to feed the hungry. If I cheated on a test or wore a fur coat or supported the wrong cause, even better. Someone got himself a headline.

Think that wasn't so bad?

Just the price of being famous?

Ask a movie star or even a mayor or any semifamous person—especially after their pictures are splashed across some seedy headline—how they feel about their “fifteen minutes,” and they'll tell you: being famous (even for a little while) was not fun. When you were famous, you always had to consider how your actions would play to the press. You had to be careful and think about the downside of every word you said. Even if what you wanted was the right thing to do, there was always a negative. I hated it. I thought it was annoying. I never wanted to read about myself. “Of course I understand responsibility.”

The girl said, “Then make a statement. Tell us everything that happened.” She waved her fist in the air in a very forceful, confident way. (Of course, she could also be exploiting her own fifteen minutes.)

I was considering the personal damage I'd have to absorb if I punched her in the nose when I heard someone shouting my name. Across the street, Samantha and Miriam stood and waved. The second the policeman stopped the traffic, they sprinted toward me. Samantha stepped into the small crowd. “Of course Janine is delighted to know that Abe has recovered. She is also very concerned about other very important issues in the local community.”

She'd clearly practiced her opening line.

Too bad Miriam was a terrible actress. This was supposed to look spontaneous, but when she raised her hand like a schoolgirl, the first reporter smirked. “Important issues? Can you explain? Are you speaking about the community farm that the town is planning to sell to the college?”

One reporter walked away.

The rest looked at me. I was the target. They would stay until I left.

So I stayed. As Samantha talked about how the farm was close to my heart, how even though it made good economic sense to move it, it also had an emotional value, I listened. I watched the reporters stop writing and zone out. I watched them look at their phones. I watched them look at me, waiting for me to do something.

I didn't.

I stood there and nodded until the bell for school rang and Mrs. Hollingsworth, the secretary to the principal, an old lady with a very tight bun, walked out into the front lawn to escort me inside. “Go home,” she told the posse. She had no patience for grandstanding. It worked. They walked away. No one wanted to be scolded by a woman who looked like a grandma.

I had never been so happy to see Mrs. Hollingsworth. “Thank you,” I said. If she had been a little shorter and more cuddly, I would have hugged her.

She wasn't the touchy type. She looked straight ahead and said, “Follow me.” When we were alone in her office, she apologized for what she called the ruckus. “I don't understand your world one bit.” She explained that “in her day,” this never would have happened. People respected each other's privacy. She thought it was a pity—a crying shame—that she wasn't permitted to control everything that happened outside the school.

Because inside, it was another story. For today, the principal had posted extra security at every door, but if anyone snuck through, I should let her know immediately. She said, “Although I am confident your classmates will be nothing less than respectful, I also sent the entire faculty a memo.” She reminded me, “You should feel safe here. No one is allowed to talk about things like religion. This is a school. There's no mixing church and state.”

It was a minor miracle I didn't scream. My peers did not understand. I felt threatened now. Religion was everywhere. No one could escape it.

It was the reason there was war.

It was why my parents were dead.

The separation of church and state was a joke.

Just last year, after some kid told his friend he was going to hell because he didn't believe in Jesus, the school held a symposium to officially talk about all the different religions. They invited a whole panel of believers. At the end of the row was a rabbi.

He said, “The land of Israel is sacred.” He said, “We are more than a faith—we are a community, a chosen people.” He called the Torah “a mine, waiting to be excavated.” He said Jews believed that you had to work to understand new ideas—that you had to release your old opinions to gain new ones. He called us “witnesses” because we see and hear. Then he challenged us to think.

Miriam thought it was cool—for religion.

When I asked Lo about it, she was just relieved no one dissed gay marriage. Yes, she still “felt” Jewish, but that didn't mean she wanted to go to services. Faith was a good thing, but religion … it didn't matter which one … she didn't like the politics.

I asked, “Is that because my grandparents were religious?” I was sure this was why.

She said, “No. Not particularly.” Then she talked in big generalizations. “After everything that happened, I became cynical. And more private. I'm glad the rabbi was nice, but I have no interest or need to start praying in public.”

Behind her desk, Mrs. Hollingsworth folded her hands. Her nails were painted pale pink. On her desk she had a picture of a whole herd of grandchildren smiling in matching white button-downs. Across the top it said, “We love you, Grammy!” Next to that was a tiny green nest holding chocolate Easter eggs. And a half-green, half-red apple. She said, “Time to go. You don't want to be late.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I'll let you know how it goes.” There was no point telling her I wasn't optimistic, that my peers were almost as bad as everyone else.

Or maybe worse.

First period, three people insisted I was appearing on Letterman, Conan, and the
Daily Show
respectively. This was not the first time people told me this. The difference is, the first time, I thought it was funny. Now not so much.

Second period, it got worse. Some guy who had never said two words to me asked me to go to the prom. When I said no—I didn't even know him—he said, “Do you already have a date? Or is it because you are dropping out of school to star in a movie?”

Someone else heard I was doing a nude photo spread. And people in the hall started calling me “Healer Girl.” And the captain of the football team slid onto his knees and crossed himself at my feet.

A few people laughed. If it weren't happening to me, I might think it was funny, too.

What wasn't funny: Miriam and Samantha. They wouldn't stop pestering me about Roxanne. Every time I turned around, one of them asked, “Have you called her yet?”

“I will,” I promised. But I didn't. And so they kept asking. Every hour. At the same time, I hoped that Miriam would change her mind and tell me not to bother. She knew how much I didn't want to make this call.

“Not to be critical,” Samantha says, “but if I were you, I'd be thanking us. I mean—you could do a lot of things with your fame. You know, like stop AIDS. Or end hunger.”

Yeah. My responsibility. A lot of people said things like that. They thought being famous was easy/fun/exciting/meaningful. I just couldn't believe that someone as smart as Samantha really believed that my kind of fame could do anything.

Miriam could see I was about to blow. “J, you told me I could count on you. And now I am.”

I took out my phone and her business card. Tricking Roxanne into covering their story was not a good idea. I knew that. This whole thing gave me a sick feeling. But I wasn't going to be able to get out of it either.

She answered on the first ring. “Janine. I was just thinking about you.”

As we suspected, she was more than happy to meet me. “At the protest,” I said a few times, so Samantha and Miriam could hear that I was doing what they wanted. “That is where I'll be after school.”

Finally, they smiled. Miriam said, “Thank you!” Samantha said, “We have so much work to do! See you at lunch!”

I spent lunch hiding in the last stall in the girls' bathroom. Right now, all I wanted to do was be alone. I didn't want to talk about me or the farm or Roxanne or Abe. I didn't care that Dan was avoiding me or that all of my teachers were looking at me funny.

Instead, I sat on the edge of the toilet. I read the graffiti that covered the walls and the stall door, realizing it was a kind of high-school news report.

Some of it was etched into the metal. “Ian loves Carol.” “Marci is a slut.” I knew a girl named Marci, but the message might be an old one. “For a good time, call 867-5309.” This was the kind of fame most people had to deal with. It was the kind of notoriety people joked about in their yearbooks. At reunions.

In big block letters, someone had written,
High school proves THERE IS NO GOD
. I wonder who wrote that. We could be friends.

The door creaked open. I put my feet up on the toilet until the person was gone. A minute later, the bell rang. When I opened the door, the first things I saw were the signs pasted to the mirror.

SAT PREP COURSE. GET YOUR SCORES UP.

AUDITIONS FOR THE TEMPEST! Must be able to rehearse four nights a week.

SAVE OUR COMMUNITY FARM! PROTEST TONIGHT!

Everyone else had it so easy. They tried out for the play. They took the SATs and applied to college and got to introduce themselves without any preconceived notions. Whether they had been sluts or a good time or in love, they got to live their lives the way they wanted to … without the cameras. They never had to wonder what people had heard about them.