Jacked Up

by Erica Sage

  But that box had been opened. And whoever opened it was reading those secrets.

  Someone was reading our secrets.

  I clicked the f lashlight off and slipped the confession under my pillow. That little paper had been in the hall outside the sanctuary. Lots of people traveled that hall because it linked the sanctuary to the camp offices, but the closest office was the custodian’s.

  I thought of Jesus, who had been out by the barn when everyone else had been praying and crying and hugging one another. He’d said he’d been feeding the donkeys, but I didn’t remember seeing any hay on him. Of course, I didn’t remember not seeing any hay on him.

  I tried to remember the conversation, if he’d said anything odd. He’d told me it’d all be okay; he’d quoted the Bible. John 1:9.

  But Natalie had been out that night too, and she hadn’t told me where she’d gone. She’d said she had a secret in that box, but she’d also urged me to put my secret in that box three times earlier the same day. Three times. Like a holy trinity.

  And then there was Dan. Matthew had just said he was a master at sneaking around, never been caught. And the dude was an unrelenting prick. But nasty enough to steal people’s prayers and confessions?

  I needed motives. All I could see was opportunity. A real detective would know motive was more important.

  I needed to get into the sanctuary. I needed to read the Bible. And I needed to get into the girls’ cabins, but not for reasons Jack Kerouac would like.

  In the middle of the night, I stumbled across our already-messy cabin f loor to the bathroom. The light automatically clicked on when the door swung open, the f luorescents blinding. I squinted and pushed open a stall door.

  “What the hell?”

  Jack was sitting on the toilet, painting the wall, his antiquated suitcase tucked between his legs.

  “Hello, Nicolas,” he said, not looking at me. There was a half bottle of some white liquor at his feet. The cap lay next to it.

  “You need to leave.” I reached for the bottle, to get the cap on it and throw it away before someone saw it, but my hand slipped right through it.

  “Why did you do that on the Ouija board?”

  He ignored me.

  “For God’s sake, I put the paper in the box. I did what you said. And now it’s gone. And you’re still stalking me?”

  He looked at me then, shook his head, and went back to painting.

  “Ugh,” I sighed as I let the stall close behind me. I stood at the urinal. “Jean-Louis,” I mumbled, murdering the French accent all over his name.

  When I turned back around, I couldn’t hear anything or see his feet under the stall door. But when I pushed it open, he was still there.

  I leaned in to get a look at what he was creating. It was a red and black, very sharp, very gory depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus.

  “What is wrong with you?”

  “I’m Catholic,” he said, and then he let out a short, bitter laugh.

  TUESDAY

  Our first alarm the next morning was Dan. Six a.m. “Going for a run! Who’s going with me?”

  Mumbles, grumbles, heads under pillows.

  “Athleticness is next to godliness!” he shouted.

  “Athleticism,” I mumbled.

  “You’re the one who wanted the wake-up call,” he said right in my ear. I swore I heard him call me a douche before walking out the door.

  My head throbbed thanks to Jack, who had left me wondering late into the night what it would take to get him to leave me alone for good.

  Dan shouted one more time outside my window, but I rolled over and went back to sleep.

  The next alarm was the first scream. I opened my eyes. Matthew was scrambling to the door. Chris behind him.

  Crap. I’d meant to get up with Dan so that I could check out the sanctuary before the first sermon. Now I’d have to sneak around after breakfast.

  I heard another scream. I sat up while my cabinmates laughed. Guffawed, really, till they lost their breath with it.

  I rolled out of bed and walked out onto our deck. Matthew leaned over the railing. Charles hung back, lips pursed.

  “Yessss!” Matthew said as a garbage can of water fell inside the Zion Cabin to our right. No screams, just expletives from the boys.

  “This is your handiwork?” Charles asked me.

  “Well, Dan gets the credit,” I said.

  “This does not glorify the Lord.”

  “Charles,” Matthew said, “if you have an issue with it, why do you keep signing up for Cabin D? Cabin Dan? Cabin Of-the-Devil?”

  Charles shook his head and walked back inside, the slamming of the cabin door punctuated by a third scream.

  Matthew and I stood at the deck and enjoyed six more screams and ensuing expletives. For a minute, I considered telling him about the confession I’d found the night before. The guy was smart; maybe he could help. But something held me back.

  I thought about Holly, how he’d made jokes and told me things and I’d laughed and played along. Was it the same thing? Maybe I didn’t want Matthew to know I had a secret.

  There was that feeling about Charlotte again. And Diana was right there too. She wasn’t like Holly and Charlotte. She’d dated some, but she only loved Leah. And that was enough for people to pay too much attention.

  Diana had gone out on a date one time in high school. She’d tried to pass it off like she and the other girl were friends, but someone had seen them kissing. It wasn’t even like Charlotte and Holly. It was just a kiss, and she hadn’t meant for that secret to get out there, either. But everyone had talked about it, and it had caused giggles and scrutiny and worse.

  I knew about the gossip because Diana had gotten beaten up so badly for it. I had still been a little kid, and her face had been so swollen she’d looked like a monster. I was afraid of her. She was bruised and broken because her whole being couldn’t fit in the world’s small box.

  No, I couldn’t tell Matthew about the confession I’d found. I knew what would happen to my family if my parents found out about what I’d written. I could only imagine what would happen to this kid’s family if they found out about this uncle. It was up to that kid if they would eventually confess. That was their truth to set free or to tame.

  We headed to the showers, and on my way I checked the bathroom stall. Jack had responsibly cleaned up his ode to the Renaissance.

  By the time we were ready to head to the cafeteria, Charles was fully absorbed in his math workbook. We waited for him to find a derivative, and then we left, Charles a few steps behind.

  As we walked into breakfast, the counselors were singing Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby.” Or rather, “Christ Christ Baby.”

  Dan served us eggs and bacon. Counselors all around the room served their campers—if I remember correctly from the brochure, it was something about demonstrating servitude. Dan’s face was all scrunched up in disdain. I hope Jesus hadn’t made that face at the Last Supper.

  As he poured our orange juice, Dan asked, “Where’s Stewart?”

  Payton pointed. Goth was sitting next to that same guy and Wheelchair Girl.

  “Stewart, your love triangle can wait!” Dan shouted across the dining hall. “Dude, I thought he and Nick broke up.”

  I about choked on my orange juice. “He’s gay?”

  “Gay as the day is long,” Dan said. “Why, you got a crush?”

  “No, I’m just—”

  “Tongue-tied with desire?”

  Goth meandered over, and I stared till he was in his chair.

  I looked around the table, at all the guys just chewing their food, not one of them bearing stones or torches or pitchforks or other implements of the riot before the exile. I had no problem with him being gay. I was just shocked nobody else seemed to have a problem with it. I was at Jesus camp, after all. The very one that converted Charlotte, the Queen of Homophobelandia. So I had pretty much just assumed that Eden Springs would be filled with more Royalty of Judgm
ent.

  I was genuinely shocked, but in a good way. Like the universe just got a little bigger and warmer. I didn’t know how to explain that, so I finally said, “I was just curious.”

  “Bi-curious?” Matthew laughed.

  Dan didn’t seem to get Matthew’s joke. He had his own. “You heard about the cat that died of that?” Dan said. “Curiosity killed the cat?”

  I didn’t look at him. I just chewed my food. “Curiosity’s not a disease,” I mumbled, my mouth full of egg casserole. “It’s not malaria.”

  “So be it. It’s a fatal car crash. A school shooting.”

  The f lame of hope I’d just felt f lickered. He really was an asshat. A racist, misogynist asshat with decent pranks and my key to searching the campus. He turned around and said something to one of the girls in too-short cutoffs. Then, back to us, “All right, you pansies! We got our schedule for the week. We’ve got crafts in fifteen. Ropes tomorrow.” And the next part he whispered, “And dirty work every night.”

  My cabinmates stood up. I stayed seated. Matthew sat back down next to me. “He’s a douche. Dan the douche.”

  “I was just asking,” I said.

  “Which is as deadly as a zealous antiabortionist. Stop doing dangerous things, Nick. Questions bad. Curiosity bad. Only happiness happens here!”

  I laughed.

  “Okay, let’s go craft!” he added.

  I started after him, then remembered my morning mission. “I have to go do something really quick,” I said.

  “Do something?” He looked around us in a wide, dramatic circle. “Oh, I didn’t see Holly here this morning.”

  I had to think about that for a second. “Wow.”

  “I know, dude. That’s what she’s gonna say when she sees your tiny manhood.”

  He turned around and skipped away, laughing.

  He would make Kerouac proud on so many levels.

  I pushed the sanctuary door open. The dark and the AC cooled me off. The door closed behind me, and I couldn’t see anything. I waited for my eyes to adjust for a moment.

  It didn’t take long for the stage to take shape down front, a sliver of light from behind a curtain illuminating it. This is where Pastor Kyle had expected to see the PC Box last night. It had obviously traveled down the hall after being stolen and opened. I would start in the sanctuary and move backward.

  I walked down the aisle to get a closer look around the stage. The box wasn’t off to the side or on the ground in front. Not that I really expected it to be. But wouldn’t that be a prank of sorts? Just steal the box for the night, freak everybody out, then put it back. But no. If that confession had fallen out of it, that meant the box was definitely opened.

  Shuff ling from backstage startled me.

  “Hello?” I waited.

  Nothing.

  “Jack?” I asked, a little quieter.

  I looked up and behind me into the sound booth to make sure no one was there before making my way around the stage and up the stairs. I wasn’t really doing anything wrong, but this is what empty rooms do to me. Even if a teacher hands me her keys to get something from her classroom, I’ll unlock the door and step in, and there will be this tingle of nerves, of guilt. The silence, the darkness, the lack of witnesses. It’s the temptation to be tempted. Like standing on a cliff and wanting to jump.

  My footsteps echoed as I made my way to the closed curtains. I peered between them to glance backstage.

  “Hello?”

  Still nothing.

  I pushed the heavy fabric aside and slipped through.

  I walked behind a screen. Looked on shelves. The door that led to the hallway where Dan and I had been the night before was propped open with a bucket.

  Disappointed I hadn’t found the box, I walked through the curtain and back onto the stage.

  “Hey, you’re not supposed to be in here,” an older kid called out from the back of the auditorium. As he walked closer, I saw his counselor badge.

  “I was just doing some prayer stuff.”

  “In the sanctuary?” The kid said as if this was baff ling. “It’s for skits.”

  The irony was not lost on me. “I know. I just—”

  “Where are you supposed to be?”

  “I’m on my way to crafts.”

  “Crafts are outside.”

  “I know. I just—”

  “Who’s your counselor?”

  Please don’t get him involved. “Dan.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Nick.”

  “So, listen, buddy. Nick—” He stopped and his mouth dropped open. “Oh … Nick.”

  “Yeah … ?”

  “You’re here for prayer?”

  “Um, well—”

  “For the devil-worshipping stuff.”

  Harry Potter again. “Is this about—”

  “Listen, I can lay hands. I took a class.”

  Oh, hell no. I wasn’t going to let him pray for me, let alone touch me while he did it. “I’m a verbal person, not kinesthetic,” I said. “I learned that in class.”

  “I get it, I get it.” But he stepped closer as he said this.

  “No, seriously.”

  “Yes,” he said and reached for me.

  “I mean, no hands. I have a rash.”

  He stopped, hands in the air like a traffic cop. Breathing deeply, he reached for me again. “Jesus healed the lepers.”

  I stepped back. “You’re not Jesus.” Then, for good measure: “And I’m not a leper.”

  If the Harry Potter gossip had traveled that fast and turned into devil-worship, God only knows what would become of the leper comment.

  “So, you don’t want me to touch you?”

  “Just pray for me from over there.” I pointed to a corner. “I’ll be back after crafts to let you know how it all turned out.”

  I spotted Matthew easily enough and headed over for crafts. At the Creation Station. No, I’m not joking. That’s what it was called. The Creation Station.

  Crafts. Nobody does crafts, except kindergarten kids in colorful classrooms and kindergarten kids in church basements. But Eden Springs was bringing it back old-school—gangster rap and childhood experiences alike.

  I could see as I walked over that our cabin had been paired with a cabin of girls, which made the whole crafting thing that much worse. Boys don’t craft, and our incompetence is made ever more obvious when juxtaposed with girls—who do craft—crafting.

  Matthew patted my stool. As soon as I settled in it, someone slid The Grapes of Wrath across the table. Natalie smirked at me. I hadn’t even noticed her and another girl sitting there.

  “Care to read?” she asked.

  “Do I look like someone who would read during a riveting session of crafts?”

  She read my BAD GRAMMAR MAKES ME [SIC] T-shirt.

  “Yes. Definitely yes.”

  Matthew looked at me. “Do you two know each other?”

  “We’re old dance partners,” she said.

  I f lipped absentmindedly through the pages of the book. “And nightwalkers,” I said, and made eye contact.

  Natalie’s smile disappeared and then reappeared. “Nick always needs a book when he prays. It makes him feel grounded.”

  Really? Matthew looked at me.

  I shook my head.

  “Sorry it’s not Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie,” she added.

  A counselor dropped large piles of clay in front of us, and everyone at my table got to work. I eyed Natalie for a bit. She was beautiful and happy this morning, not at all the aloof girl I had seen walk out of the sanctuary. She was the breezy girl who told everyone it would be okay even though our secrets were out, and sincerely meant it. The one who hugged the girl who picked her nose—All. The. Time. And she understood that we were sparring to see who’d tell the truth—the whole truth—first. But we’d have to continue later, sans audience.

  I looked down in front of me, at the beige mass of what looked like Play-Doh.
/>
  Clay at the Creation Station.

  “What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked. Recreate Adam and Eve? Remove ribs? Breathe life into little dolls?

  “Kim, slide that over here,” Matthew said to the other girl. It was a menu of clay-crafting options.

  I read the list: plate, handprint (à la kindergarten), coffee mug, candleholder, and wait a minute—“An ashtray?”

  “Just ’cause you smoke doesn’t mean you’re going to hell,” Payton said, glaring at me.

  “I thought the body was a temple?” I asked.

  “Play nice, Nick,” Natalie said.

  “My grandfather smokes,” Charles said.

  “And you’re worried about my beach towel?” I mumbled.

  “Satan and smoking are very different things. My grandfather is a godly man.” Charles grabbed his pile of clay and moved to a different table.

  Natalie smiled at me. “I heard about you and the devil towel.”

  “Who hasn’t?” I looked at the kids around me. “Here’s what I don’t get.”

  Matthew leaned in. Kim looked up from her mass of clay.

  “First off, the girls and their bikinis are no problem, but my towel—which actually covers the body—is satanic. Second, just about every counselor serving food in the lunchroom is female. Has anyone noticed it’s like 1950 here? And now it’s cool again to smoke and James Dean is all that and all the hot housewives look like you?” I pointed to Natalie with that bandana in her hair.

  “Wait, did you just point at me?” She smiled. “You think I’m hot?”

  My face f lushed, and I attempted to dig myself out of a pit of embarrassment. “All the girls serve us in the dining hall and poolside, like we’re JFK and they’re Marilyn Monroe about to sing us ‘Happy Birthday’ with their bathing costumes blowing in the wind, full ass exposed. And no one thinks this is odd?”

  “You didn’t answer the question about thinking I’m hot,” Natalie said.