Thinking Straight (9 page)

Green ink. CUL. See you Later.

Repacking my bag, I forced myself to stay calm. It wasn't like I'd missed another make-out session, after all. We would have been no freer to make moony eyes or hold hands on the bleachers than inside the school. But I would have been with Will. God, but I was pissed.

I called him that night, and we talked. And talked. We went over the test, and it seemed I hadn't done too badly after all. And then we talked about us.

I told him how upsetting it was that we couldn't be ourselves. That we had to hide who we really are, what we really are to each other, from everyone.

“Well,” he said, “not everyone.”

“Yeah? Like who? Who can we be honest with?”

His voice took on a funny edge. Like he was teasing me or something. “What about your friend Nina?”

“What about her?”

“I can't believe you haven't told her you're gay.”

“Will, I haven't told anyone I'm gay.” With a shock, I realized that was true; I'd never said the words out loud before. “And why would I tell her?”

“Isn't she a good friend?”

“Yeah, so…”

“She knows I am.”

“What?”

“Calm down. I didn't say anything about you, silly. I'd never out someone else. But she doesn't go to our church. And she's cool. She's got no problem with my being gay.”

Well, no, she didn't go to our church. She's Jewish. “How did you…When did you…I didn't even know you knew her!”

“We live next door to each other.”

Holy crap. Will lives right next door to Nina? It wasn't like I'd been to her house a lot. We didn't want her kid brother to start thinking we were an item and making a pest of himself. But still…

I took a shaky breath. “Okay. I'll think about it.”

“Ty? I just want you to know I loved being with you last night. I hope you're still feeling good about it, too.”

“I loved being with you, too. And I still feel frigging wonderful.”

“So, we could do it again sometime?”

“Sure. Wanna come over now?”

I loved the sound of his laugh. “I wish. Tell you what. Can you hold the phone in one hand?”

It took me a nanosecond to figure out what he was headed for. “Let me lock my door.”

Phone sex. I'd never had phone sex. Hell, I'd never had any sex, really, before last night. This guy was opening my world. And I have to say that although I preferred his hand on me, when his “ah” sounded right in my ear it was still great.

Before we hung up, I asked, “What's with the green ink?”

“My signature color. It helps me to remember to take chances. To keep going forward, like a green light. To try new things and open myself to new ideas. And always to do it my way. You like?”

“I love. Yeah.”

“Good night, Ty.”

“‘Night.”

It had felt like he'd kissed me that night, too.

 

Once or twice as I knelt there—after my ministrations, that is—I heard someone walking by in the hall. When I finally got up, there was no sign of anyone, and of course I couldn't know if anyone looked in on me. But if they had, all they'd have seen was my back bent over the chair.

The wastebasket next to my desk seemed the best place for the used tissues, so I dropped them in. Blanket back on the bed, chair back at the desk, I sat down and opened my Bible. But the words just blurred in front of me, running together, no meaning to them. I sat there staring at nothing for a minute before I realized I had to take a leak. Was I allowed to do that during Contemplation? I couldn't remember seeing any rules about that, so I left the Bible on my desk and went down the hall.

I couldn't have been gone more than three or four minutes tops, but when I got back to the room, there was Charles. He stood there, his face a weird combination of anger, pain, and something that looked like betrayal. He was holding my wastebasket.

Shit.

I stopped in the doorway and waited for him to say something. When he didn't, I acted like I didn't know already what he'd found. I shrugged like I was asking, “What's your problem?”

Anger won. “Don't pretend with me,” he said, nearly snarling. “You know very well what I found in here.” He held the wastebasket at arm's length in my direction and shook it.

Jesus. He must have held the tissues to his face and smelled them; how else would he know what was on them? And he obviously knew what was on them. I shrugged again. This time it said, “Whatever.” I walked toward my desk while he rotated in place to follow me, the basket still held out. I picked up a pad and pen and scrawled, “Enjoy yourself?”

Even as I held it up to him I knew it was a stupid thing to do. I should have apologized, cried even, anything to make him feel I understood the need for contrition. He looked as though he wanted to throw the wastebasket, but instead he walked back to where it had stood before he snooped into it and set it firmly down onto the floor.

He said, “I see you've already sealed your MI. Did you include this—this episode—in it?”

I just stared at him. No answer. No head motions.

“You must open it again. You must confess this infraction.”

His eyes and mine entered into this battle of wills. Then I reached for the pen again and I wrote, “This is
my
Contemplation time. You're supposed to leave me alone. So leave me alone. Go away.”

This was true enough, and Charles knew it. He shouldn't even have been in the room. Come to think of it, why had he come here, anyway? Sure, it was his room, too, but the resident in SafeZone has two hours of solitary Contemplation in his or her room that are not supposed to be interrupted except by someone in Leadership. (See? I'm getting the hang of this.) Strictly speaking, Charles was just another resident.

His eyes shot darts at me before he turned on his heel and left. From over his shoulder I could barely hear the words, “Don't forget to bring your Bible to Prayer Meeting tonight.”

That's it, Charles. Stay on message, whatever you do. However angry you are.

I went back to my Bible, looking up in the concordance section things like
spy
(Galatians 2:4: “This was because of the false brothers secretly brought in, who stole in to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage”) and
observe
(Isaiah 42:20: “You see many things, but don't observe”), and
betray
(Proverbs 11:13: “One who brings gossip betrays a confidence, but one who is of a trustworthy spirit is one who keeps a secret”).

This was amusing but not terribly instructive. I've had to admit in the past, and again now, that using the concordance at times like this may lead me to something really true and painful, something that stabs directly at a sin and sears into me like a hot poker, but mostly it's just a way for me—or anyone, really—to find what I want to find, to prove my own point. It takes things out of context and lets me apply my own interpretation.

So I gave that up and, feeling a little sinful and self-indulgent, I turned to the Song of Songs and imagined myself with Will again. No tissues this time; it was just love.

A
t around five minutes of six, I left the room and headed toward Mrs. Harnett's office. The basket was there, as were several other MIs from other residents. I added mine and went to the dining hall.

Again—and I almost could have predicted this—Charles stood there at the entrance, watching for me. It was as though he was saying, “This isn't over. You can't get rid of me that easily.”

Fine. Whatever.

Dinner was silent. Charles led us to a table where two guys in SafeZone were already seated. I wanted to ask them, my tongue in my cheek, “Where are your escorts? You see I've brought mine.”

No trouble finding my way to Fellowship tonight, since Charles wasn't letting me out of his sight. Fellowship was in the huge open room that Charles had shown me yesterday. No furniture. No chairs. Everyone just milled around, talking, and the din was unbelievable. After listening to a few conversations as Charles dragged me around from clutch to clutch of intensely chattering residents, it dawned on me why it was so loud. And it wasn't an acoustical phenomenon due to architecture. It was that everyone was talking loudly. What I noticed was that the more inane, forced, and desperate the conversation, the louder it was.

So there was one guy who was going on at fever pitch about this verse he'd discovered new meaning in, and I was so overwhelmed by his enthusiasm that I missed what the verse actually was. But I got that he considered the revelation to have been one of life-altering proportions for him. One girl wanted everyone to know that another resident had chastised her for some miniscule infraction of behavior, or attitude, or something, and how humbled she was, and how much she had learned as a result of the other girl's courage and insight.

I began to wonder what I would find to say in this crowd once I was out of SafeZone. Then I realized that maybe I wouldn't have to say anything, that everyone else would be so focused on getting their own story out that I wouldn't have to “Fellowship” in an active way. Just listen. Passive. A pair of understanding, compassionate ears. Probably I'd be able to carry that off indefinitely. At one point I nearly started to giggle, most inappropriately, as some guy was describing something unutterably wonderful and enlightening that he'd just realized this morning, when I speculated that if I wore a yellow sticker on my shoulder and stuck to corners of the Fellowship room where I wasn't known, I could get away with doing precious little at all. I stowed the idea away for future consideration. Of course, they might take my sheet of yellow labels away from me.

Something magical happened after we'd been in there half an hour. There was no bell. I didn't hear anyone call for attention. Nothing. But everyone stopped talking almost at once and said goodbye to the people they'd been yammering at, and they left. Charles, who hadn't let me get more than a couple of feet from him the whole time, led me out the door and on to Isaiah. I wasn't sure—in fact, I didn't have a clue—who would be in our group, other than Charles and me, and probably Jessica and Marie, given what they'd said at breakfast.

As it turned out, our group included about twenty kids, including Shorty. I looked right at him as he was heading for a chair across the room from me, wondering if he'd smile or what. But he looked right through me, as if he hadn't been reduced to giggles at break this afternoon by my effrontery and his own unexpressed irreverence. Jessica and Marie were there as well, of course. And from where Charles and I stood—dead center at the very front—I had to turn and look around to see that there were three other kids in SafeZone, including Sheldon, who was by a chair about as far away from the front of the room as he could get. I figured Hank must be here as well, but he wasn't next to Sheldon. I looked around and finally saw Hank in the row behind me and off to the side. So it would seem there was no rule about hanging with your new roomie, despite Charles's irritating tenacity.

Mrs. Harnett had told me she was our group leader, but even so, it surprised me somehow to see her there, sitting in a larger chair than ours (enthroned, perhaps?). At least our chairs weren't in neat little rows. They were in a kind of semicircle, facing the throne.

I started to sit, but Charles's hand shot out and caught my arm. “We wait for the ladies to sit.” Jeez. Guess I'd forgotten that part of the Booklet. I looked around. There were three girls standing off to one side of the seating area, chatting. Most of the other “ladies” were seated, including Mrs. Harnett, but all the guys were standing. A couple of them were talking, but most of the guys were at some kind of casual attention in front of their chairs, hands clasped over their crotches, waiting.

Finally Mrs. Harnett stood and clapped her hands once. The talking petered out pretty quickly, and when all the girls were sitting, Mrs. Harnett resumed her throne. And then all the guys sat at once. It was eerie.

Charles leaned toward me. “Mrs. Harnett might stand again when she talks, but we don't have to. Watch me for a cue when we need to stand again.”

Sure enough, Mrs. Harnett stood. I wasn't feeling particularly well-disposed toward Charles, but I thanked him silently anyway.

“Brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus,” our fearless leader began, “we will bow our heads in a prayer of thanksgiving.”

So we did, and—silly me—I thought it would be a moment of silent prayer. But no.

“Almighty God, Jesus our Savior, we are humble before you. We are grateful for everything you have done for us, everything you have given us. And we know that if you gave us only pleasure, only joy, we would not learn what we need to learn to be worthy of your grace. So we thank you for the challenges, for the difficulties, for the pain, for the sorrow. And we thank you for your patience, your forbearance, your limitless presence in our lives. We thank you for helping us to be worthy of the ultimate joy that exists only in you.”

She sort of had me. I could identify with everything she'd said. And I was ready for the “amen.” But she wasn't.

“Merciful Father, open the hearts of everyone in this room. We are sinners, every one of us. Help us to see that, and help us to put behind us the things that tempt us into sin. Some are tempted by things that alter our consciousness, by drugs and drink that pull us into evil and make us do Satan's bidding. For some it's Inappropriate Love [my capitals this time], whether for a boy or a girl, a man or a woman, that takes us away from your intended life for us and into a pit devoted only to earthly pleasure. For some it's the exhilaration of disobedience, of stealing, of flaunting the authority of those you have put in charge over us. There seems to be no end of ways we can find to sin. We are grateful that there is also no end to your forgiveness. And we understand that this forgiveness is granted only to those who truly repent. To those of us who confess our faults, our temptations, our misdeeds, and earnestly vow to take a new path. A path to holiness. A path to you.

“We pray that you forgive the sins we are about to confess, that your patience and love will hold us up as we strive to be worthy.”

Long pause.

“Amen.”

Inappropriate Love, indeed. From inside my head I yelled, My love for Will is not inappropriate! All right, she hadn't been very specific, but I knew damn well what she meant.

I couldn't quite tell whether this sort of all-inclusive prayer was something she spouted off at the start of every Prayer Meeting or whether she was improvising. It sounded practiced, but it also sounded spontaneous. I know this seems conflicting. It is. When I heard her again the next night, I learned that although the themes didn't vary much, the words did. I give the lady credit; she came up with something fresh—at least relatively fresh—every night I heard her pray.

Everyone raised their heads up again, although I noticed Charles didn't. He was still looking at the floor. Mrs. Harnett sat down again and said, “We have three new penitents in our group this week. Let's welcome them. Taylor Adams, please stand.”

I wasn't prepared for this. Should have been, probably. I stood, penitent or not. In unison, everyone around me chanted, “Welcome, Taylor. We love you.” I said my own tiny prayer of gratitude that I was in SafeZone and so could not be expected to reply to that. It would have gotten me into trouble. Maybe
that's
what SafeZone is all about?

“Sheldon Wainwright, please stand.”

Sheldon, way in the back, shuffled to his feet and then stared fixedly down at them.

“Welcome, Sheldon. We love you.”

“Monica Moon, please stand.”

Monica Moon? With a name like that, no wonder she'd ended up in here. A girl about fifty pounds overweight, long dark hair kind of stringing around her face, heaved out of her chair and looked anything but penitent. I thought I remembered seeing her in the laundry room earlier, but I wasn't working near where the girls were. Maybe she couldn't speak, but her expression said plenty. I felt a certain kinship with her immediately. What had I looked like when I'd stood? I kind of hoped it was a lot like her—impenitent. Minus the extra weight.

“Welcome, Monica. We love you.”

I expected another introduction, with three kids besides me wearing yellow stickers. But no one else was asked to stand. I looked around for the fourth kid, a guy, looking comatose. Or autistic. He was actually rocking back and forth in his chair, staring at the floor. At first I had no clue who he was, but then I remembered something Charles had said at breakfast, something about Leland being in SafeZone. “Again.” Could this be the famous Leland? What had he done?

Mrs. Harnett smiled at everyone in the room, one at a time. It took nearly a minute. And she must have noticed that Charles was still looking at his hands, clasped in his lap. She said, “Brother Charles, you seem troubled. Tell us what's in your heart tonight.”

Charles didn't start, he didn't snap to attention, he didn't budge. He must have expected this. In fact, I wondered if he'd deliberately planted himself at center front and then set about to look as distracted as possible so he'd be called on. At any rate, that's how things happened.

“I need forgiveness” was all he said at first.

“Tell us why.”

At first Charles just took a couple of shaky breaths and fidgeted with his fingers, but our Fearless Leader waited with saintly patience until he went on.

“I have broken a Program Rule [my capitalization again; I'm getting good at this].” And he stopped again.

The Saint prodded. “Which rule, Charles?” Her voice was gentle but insistent.

“I interrupted the very first Contemplation of my new roommate Taylor.” He took a breath before he could go on. As for me, it nearly stopped my breathing. He looked up at the throne. “His very first one! It was his time, his own time, for reflecting on how he came to be here, on what he needs to learn, for understanding what things will help him and what things will hold him back. I was overwhelmed by the temptation to check on him. I—I confess my own lack of faith.”

Holy shit. (Demerit be damned.) Charles was confessing his violation of my privacy! Where would he go next? Is he going to talk about what he found when he committed this “interruption”? I was really holding my breath by now.

Mrs. Harnett was nodding. Then, “And what do you think led you to lose faith, Charles? What was preying on your mind?”

More finger fidgeting. “I think it means I'm still too attached to my own failure.” He closed his eyes, and for a second I thought I saw something fall. A tear was the only thing I could think of, but his voice didn't sound like he was crying. “I haven't been successful in turning over to God what happened to Ray. I've held onto it.”

No one else was breathing either, I swear. At least, that's how quiet it was in the room. Then Mrs. Harnett, obviously knowing the answer but wanting him to say it, asked, “And what happened to Ray?”

Honest to God, I saw him shudder. But he went on bravely. “He took his life. He overstepped the limits of Free Will. He lost ultimate faith.”

Whoa! Was he telling me that the last guy to sleep in my bed, use my desk, had
killed
himself? The shock almost made me miss the Saint's next question.

“And how does this concern you?”

Eyes still closed, it was obvious now that he really was crying. His breath was catching oddly as he went on. “He was my roommate. And I took too much responsibility upon myself. And he's gone.” The word
gone
was almost inaudible.

“Did
you
lose him, Charles?”

“No.”

“Did you falter in your determination, in your own thinking or acting?”

“No.”

“How have you sinned?”

“In my lack of faith.”

“Go on.”

He took a deep breath, a shaky one, but it seemed to help. He snuffled, and opened his eyes. “I did everything I could to help Ray remain steadfast. I loved him. I set a good example for him. But I wasn't enough. I tried so hard, like I was trying to do God's job. I took on myself the things that are God's to do. And when Ray was lost, I blamed myself.”