Chicken (11 page)

“You wanna play Battleship?” I ask.

Brant shakes his head, slides down the wall ’til he’s sitting on his butt, knees pulled up with his elbows slung over them. “I’m not in the mood to make war.”

I look at my jeans—Brant’s jeans, dark blue and too tight on me—and pick at a loose yellow seam. “Pass the Pigs?”

Another headshake. He chews on a fresh hangnail.

I kick his knee. “Stop that.”

He looks at his finger like he didn’t know he was doing it. He wipes his hand on his jeans real quick and then slides it under his butt. “I get ’em at work.”

Brant does farm chores for the Plunketts the way I do for Sister Bonnie, but on a much more labor intensive level. I look after chickens and goats. Brant hauls hay and builds fences. 

“They’ll get infected if you tear ’em off like that.”

“I know.” He chews on his lip instead. 

I wish I still had the little black straw I drew earlier so I could offer it to him, ease his agitation. He’s been different ever since the prayer. Angry. With people like me. And why shouldn’t he be? Wings of Glory has been a much bigger part of his life than I’ll ever be. Hickory Ditch isn’t big enough to have one, but it’s the go-to eating place for out-of-town church events. A few weeks ago, as a reward for winning fifth place at state, Brother Mackey took the Bible Quiz team—Brant, Hannah, Natalie, Colton, and me—to see Third Day in concert at Magic Springs. We had lunch at Wings of Glory before going into the park, and Brant scarfed down two dozen nuggets and three orders of waffle fries, a good ninety percent of which came back up after two rides on The Gauntlet and six on the Arkansas Twister. 

I stare out the nearest window while Brant glares at the foot of his bed. His room looks off the ridge, over the pines that hide the old red barn and across the yellow pasture studded with black cow paddies, all the way down to the dark woods surrounding the Ditch. 

“You ever hear him?” The words leave my lips without permission. “For real?”

“Hear who?”

“You know. The Unholy Ghost.”

Brant rolls his eyes. “Not you too.”

I shrug. “Just saying. It’s right down there. When it rains—”

“I hear rain. I hear thunder. I hear wind.”

“Maybe you just think you hear wind.”

Brant clunks his head against the bricks. “Caleb wouldn’t do that.”

My lips part, but my tongue won’t work. I know his name from a clandestine Google searches on a school computer, but this is the first time I’ve heard anyone else say it. Caleb Courts is something of a local Lord Voldemort.

I raise an eyebrow. “Since when are you on a first-name basis with ghosts?”

He raises an eyebrow right back. “Since when am I not, Casper?”

I groan and fall back on the bed, covering my face with my hands. 

He kicks my foot. “You stepped right in it.”

I rub the heels of my hands into my eyes, which now that I’m lying down feel a lot more tired from my sleepless night than I realized. I push my fingers through my hair until the tips are touching the comforter, pulling my eyes wide open and my forehead tight. I exhale.

“Okay, okay. But what wouldn’t he do, and why wouldn’t he do it?”

“He wouldn’t go around scaring people, and he wouldn’t do it because there’s no such thing as ghosts. Present company excluded, of course.”

I kick at him, but don’t hit anything. “That’s not what you meant.”

He doesn’t answer for a long moment, but then he sighs. “He was a nice guy, okay? He wouldn’t want anyone to be afraid. He was really nice.”

“So not like them folks giving Wings of Glory a hard time?”

Brant doesn’t answer. Minutes tick by. Raindrops slide down the windows. Downstairs, the washing machine spins our clothes a second time, and Brother Dean stomps his boots on the welcome mat at the front door. The heat wraps around me like that towel from the dryer, so warm it almost burns, suffocates for sure. I close my eyes because it’s always cooler in the dark, even if the dark is just a trick you’re playing on yourself.

Finally, Brant’s jeans rustle as he gets up, and I figure he’s going to say it’s time for church, but instead I feel his weight settle on the edge of the bed about two feet away. I’m not sure if my heart stops or if it just gallops off so fast I’m left with an empty chest. Brant flops onto his back. I don’t open my eyes. I don’t need to know if he’s got one arm slung over his stomach or both arms folded under his head.

“Listen, Cas, there’s something been botherin’ me, something my mama said, and I’d like to get your opinion, alright?”

I can’t tell the difference between the thunder and the dryer, the raindrops and the washing machine, my pounding heart and Brother Dean’s hand slapping his guitar, warming up for worship tonight. The bed creaks as Brant Mitchell shifts toward me.

I lick my lips. “Alright.” 

He makes a sound and a sigh and then another try. “Do you think a werewolf is the same thing as a demoniac?”

The second night of Catch the Fire bears very little resemblance to a rave. There’s no bouncing worlds or glowing crosses in the overly air-conditioned sanctuary, and not even half the crowd that showed up last night. Maybe ninety people, and even that seems a small miracle considering the water standing in the parking lot and the rain clattering on the stained glass windows. Colton’s in the sound booth, playing holy DJ, underscoring a dozen hushed conversations with some laidback, alt-rock praise. 

We find Hannah hovering near my parents’ pew four rows in from the swinging double doors. Daddy would like to sit closer, but there’s a lot of complicated politics involved in church seating, so they bide their time back here until the inevitable day when someone with a better spot gets their feathers ruffled and takes off. Hannah greets me by bending her knees a little so she can kiss me right on the lips, which has roughly the same effect as in Bambi when the Lady Skunk plants one on Flower, turning him into a bright red board—minus the part where he enjoys it. 

I take a step back and stare down at Brant’s rarely-worn sneakers on my feet, feeling even shorter than usual without my boots, but I had to leave them drying in the Mitchells’ carport. Brant moves in for a side hug, and Hannah leans her head against his shoulder. I remember what Mathis said yesterday, and it’s like falling on a double-edged sword of jealousy.

Mama lays a hand on the soft part of my back. Pinches hard. “How about Hannah’s hair? Isn’t it pretty?”

I glance up and realize I’ve committed the only sin that can compete with blaspheming the Holy Spirit in terms of unforgivability. Hannah has come home from the lake with a haircut. But not just any haircut. The haircut. The one she’s been talking about ever since the first trailer for The Perks of Being a Wallflower came out. She’s even sporting a spaghetti-thin headband. 

I know exactly what I’m supposed to say, but I can’t make the words come out. It’s like pretending to be normal around Brant all afternoon has depleted my tank of lies, and now I’m sputtering to a stop in the middle of a busy intersection. Hannah’s hair is as black as the unluckiest cat who ever existed, and her eyelashes are so thick she doesn’t need any help from eyeliner to resemble a raccoon. The lake put just enough color in her hollow, horsey cheeks to keep her from looking like her usual extra-in-a-Tim-Burton-film self, but it’s still not enough. I’ve never felt as gay as I do in this moment when I can’t just tell my loving girlfriend that she looks like Emma Watson.

“Looks really pretty,” I mumble.

Mama twists the skin she’s been pinching, and I grimace. Hannah rolls her eyes and pulls me toward her. I stumble over Brant’s feet, but wind up with my arm around Hannah’s waist. She pats my cheek.

“Don’t worry. He’s a much better boyfriend in private.”

Mama lifts her eyebrows, and Daddy shifts and clears his throat. Laramie, who can’t wolf whistle, loudly shouts, “Wheeee-wooooo!”

Brant grabs us by the shoulders before we can will ourselves to disappear through the floor. “C’mon, you lovebirds, let’s go find my would-be woman.”

He propels us down the center aisle toward the pulpit, and then turns us to the right. We edge around some old folks milling there between the altar and the first pew. Harvest Mission has four rows of pews, and then a small section of side-facing pews in front of the two outside rows. Little kids and tweens sit on the left, while teenagers and the occasional forlorn twenty-something sit on the right. This way we can sit with our friends, but everyone can keep an eye on us. 

Lauren’s already sitting in our usual spot on the second sideways pew. Hannah slides in beside her, then me, and then Brant. Someday, I guess, they’ll finish their negotiations, and the girls will sit in the middle and we’ll sit on the edges and I’ll never hear him make another stupid dinosaur sound again. But I feel rotten about begrudging Lauren’s existence when she’s so nice to Hannah, who’s been shunned by the more pious church girls ever since she posted a selfie holding a sign that said, “I need feminism because I’m not my boyfriend’s spare rib.”

Lauren squeals and pets Hannah’s hair. “You look just like Sam!”

And then they’re making plans two months in advance to go see Wallflower in Little Rock because there’s no way it’ll play at the Hickory Ditch Cinema 2.

Brant knuckles my shoulder and leans into my ear. “I noticed when you lopped off all your hair.”

I wrinkle my nose, not sure what he’s talking about. I haven’t had a dramatic haircut since—my breath catches—since the summer I showed up with a noggin covered in red fuzz and clipper scratches. Ages ago. Back when Brant’s hair was always buzzed. He took one look at me and screamed, “Wishing head!” Then he wrestled me into a head lock and ran his palm over my scalp. I wish I may. I wish I might. All over Ditch Daze that year, old folks kept calling us a matching set, like they’d never seen two boys with burrs at the same time before, or maybe like there was something else, something they couldn’t see or name, just the feeling that we fit. Which was all I’d wanted when I begged Mama to let me dye my hair that day, wasn’t it? For people to see that I belonged with someone. 

I turn my head and blink the wet spots out of my eyes. Hannah doesn’t notice. They’re too busy listing all the parts from the book they hope made it into the movie. 

“You never told me what you wished.”

“Can’t.” He heaves an exaggerated sigh. “Haven’t got it yet.”

Before I can apologize for being a defective wishing head, Brother Mackey appears behind the pulpit, looking way too hip for tonight’s congregation in his perfectly faded Buckle jeans and an XXL black shirt with a gangster cross embroidered over each breast. He waits quietly until everyone stands. 

He bows his head. 

Brother Mackey has a lot of expectations for his youth group kids during the service. We’re supposed to sing and clap and lift our hands during worship, take notes and shout Amen! at key moments during the sermon, and be open to the Spirit’s urging during the altar call. Tears of conviction make Mackey especially proud, and they’ve been flowing freely these past few weeks because it’s summer in a small town and everyone’s given in to something wicked by now. 

But before all that we pray, and when we pray we hold hands, regardless of whether the person next to us was picking their nose or adjusting their sweaty boobs ten seconds ago. That’s why—well, partly why—I never sit within hand-holding distance of any guy but Brant. He’s the only boy in this building I’ve ever seen wash his hands.

He grabs my left hand. Hannah slips hers into my right. Times like these, I miss the church back in Dallas where I could just hang onto the back of the chair in front of me during a thirty-second prayer before the strobe lights came on and worship began. Nobody had to touch me. Nobody had to know I was there. I didn’t sit with friends and I didn’t sit with my family. I’d get an iced coffee from the café in the lobby and pick a new seat every service—there were three thousand to choose from. Harvest Mission has no lobby. It has a vestibule, which is Latin for caffeine-free lobby. 

Brother Mackey thanks God that Sister Edie made it to church despite her knee surgery, and the bored muscles in Brant’s hand twitch, giving me a squeeze that doesn’t mean anything, but hurts a little because his job has turned his finger pads into hard knots and his palms into rough bark, like he’s becoming half man, half hickory. Meanwhile, the back of his hand feels like polished wood beneath my fingers, thanks to Corn Huskers lotion, which he has to slather on three times a day, he claims, to keep his cracked skin from busting open completely.

Brother Mackey praises Jesus that Brother Vince’s son is home from Afghanistan, and Hannah squeezes my right hand, which means please don’t let anyone talk you into that, and I squeeze back to say that I won’t, but honestly, who knows, I could certainly use the sign-on bonus. Her fingers are as soft and pink as a newborn filly’s nose, having never done anything more strenuous than turning all 870 pages of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Her thumbs, however, are starting to get little tough spots from tweeting at friends in far off places, friends who also have blogs and need feminism.

“—in the precious and holy name of Jesus. Amen!” Mackey thumps his hands on the big wooden pulpit, crackling the mic to wake the old folks up.

“Amen!” half the church shouts, and half of it mumbles.

Brant drops my hand, and we wipe each other’s sweat off on our jeans. Hannah tries to hang on, but I pry my fingers loose and swipe them across my leg even though they ain’t wet, not even a little bit. She lets her hand hover between us, fingers spread to make room for mine, but I hook my thumbs on my pockets instead—Brant’s pockets, still, since my own didn’t dry in time.

Brother Mackey slow-flaps his hands and we all sink onto our pews. He might have the prettiest hands in the whole church. He gets his nails done out of town so no one can say for sure that Jesus doesn’t bless him with perfect cuticles. And I’m pretty sure whatever lotion he uses to keep them so smooth is a little pricier than Brant’s Corn Huskers. Those hands settle on the edges of the pulpit now, the same gentle way they settle on the shoulders of someone who needs a hug but might not want to go full-frontal with him.