Jacked Up

by Erica Sage

  “No cigarettes, no beer, no bebop, no women, nothing to do but roam and ramble and stare out into this vast expanse of half-naked girls—”

  And he was back at it. “You can leave.”

  “—most of whom are available for sweet breath and lips and words—”

  “You can leave,” I said louder.

  “—none of whom are Leah.”

  “You can leave!” I sat up straight in my bed and threw my pillow.

  But Jack was already gone.

  I lay back on the bed, but I was too angry to sleep. I had to carry a damn cross for something I didn’t do. It was humiliating, and everyone saw. And even if Pastor Pettyfer (sans British accent) told everyone I didn’t do it, they would only half believe him. You can’t take that back. The accusation lingers, the condemnation a veil between you and everyone else.

  And Charlotte. Here I was at Jesus camp with gay people, and my own sister couldn’t wrap her mind around homosexuality. Not even to understand her own dead-and-gone sister. Not even to go mourn her at her funeral.

  And then Leah. If she would just let me apologize. If I could just talk to her, to hear the way she talked. Just like Diana. If I could just say good-bye at least. But her absence just festered. To my parents, Charlotte was what they had left of Diana. I understood why they had spoken to her after the funeral—she was their only daughter now. She was all they had left. And to me, Leah was what I had left.

  When my sister died, I spoke at her funeral, which was held in an old cathedral near where she lived. She didn’t go to St. Mark’s—she wasn’t a practicing Catholic—but she liked to go there on Sunday nights for Compline, to hear the sonorous chants of the choir. To listen to the rites, to ponder her mortality. She’d brought me a couple times. I had lain on the f loor of the church, which you could do, and allowed the organ notes and the choir’s voices to slip into me and resonate in my chest. I loved it there, and when she died I knew it was the only place for her funeral, but I had worried that the priest would have nothing to say because she didn’t fellowship, or whatever, with the congregation.

  I stood up there, looking out into the mourners one last time in search of Charlotte, indignant that she hadn’t come.

  I told the story of how, for my tenth birthday, Diana had kidnapped me and drove me in the green Volvo to the coast. She’d planned it with my parents, but I hadn’t known that till later, when it was getting dark, and I had been afraid that my parents would be worried.

  “It’s okay,” she’d said. She always said that to me. “You’re fine. I’m going to take care of you.”

  She’d parked her car on the beach, where the loamy waves beat against the hard gray sand. We had woven through the clumps of seaweed, crab shells, and barnacle-covered driftwood, picking up every sand dollar we could find, turning each over and over and inspecting the pale disks. It had taken a long time to find ten sand dollars that hadn’t been broken apart by the seagulls. We’d put them in a yellow plastic bucket that Diana had pulled from her trunk, and then in a falling-apart cottage she’d rented for the night. We’d painted each sand dollar with a different scene, a scene that represented one wish for every year I’d lived.

  “If only you had ten lives,” Diana had said. “You are ten-lives cool, Nick. Maybe one-hundred-lives cool. You’re bigger and better than the rest of us.”

  She was crazy, and she said crazy things I barely understood. I told her so.

  “I hope you live ten lives in this one. Live till you lose your breath.”

  I didn’t quote that conversation in my eulogy. Instead, I’d just said, “Diana was a mad one.” And then I’d meant to recite the Jack Kerouac quote that was printed on the poster on the wall, but I couldn’t. My throat squeezed shut till I couldn’t breathe, and I tried to talk and a sob came out, and my mom, whose mascara had run all over her face, came up to the podium with my dad and held me up as I walked back to the pew.

  At the wake, I sat by the fireplace and looked out at all the beautiful women my sister had known. Her girlfriend—or ex-girlfriend—Leah sat down in a chair next to me and put her arm around me, telling me what a beautiful job I’d done.

  “She was a Roman candle,” Leah said, choking on her own tears at the end. I loved Leah for many reasons, least of which was her finishing the Kerouac quote with me.

  Her hair f lowed down her shoulders and she wore this tight black dress like she was going to a cocktail party. Leah was beautiful, and I had no childhood memories without her in them. She’d been my sister’s girlfriend for a decade. I was fifteen, and she was twenty-three, and we were lost. I couldn’t feel what held us together. I didn’t know if it was a thread or a branch or a steel rod. I just knew I needed her to not leave me too.

  When Leah had broken up with my sister, I hadn’t cared that Diana had been sad. I had been sad.

  And I had been mad at Diana for whatever she’d done to cause the breakup. It had to have been her fault. Diana had been too much a butterf ly. Leah had been on more solid ground. Leah had read books. She’d talked about them. She’d cooked dinner. Her interests hadn’t waxed and waned. She’d had a job. She’d had a career.

  The day my sister died, Diana drove to Leah’s house. I don’t know if she drove out there to talk, to win Leah back. Or maybe she’d always intended to punish Leah for ending it. Maybe there had never been a conversation one way or the other. Maybe there had never been any hope for either of them. Maybe the plan all along had been punishment, never atonement.

  It didn’t matter. Leah was punished.

  Because my sister shot herself, and Leah had to see it. And see it. And see it. And see it. For all the long years that she would live. She would be punished.

  Diana was a mad one.

  And I was mad at her.

  At the wake, Leah started talking, started retelling that day.

  “It’s my fault,” she said. “I should’ve just talked to her, or pretended I still wanted her … It’s my fault.” And then she just kept on saying it, repeating it like a mantra, like the prayers any of the left-behind say. Like my mom said, like my dad said.

  It’s my fault.

  It’s my fault.

  It’s my fault.

  But they were wrong. They didn’t know.

  Leah cried, her mascara snaking in sad rivers down her cheeks that somehow made her more beautiful. Desperate and beautiful, and I still loved her because I just always had, because she was always there. And I knew then that I wouldn’t see her again. She would leave me too.

  I walked around the house, sipping off people’s abandoned cocktails. Everyone seemed to drink strong at wakes. Soon, I was stumbling to the bathroom to take a piss. I was holding walls for balance, and then Leah was there, in the hall by the bathroom door. She’d cleaned off the mascara, but her eyes were still glassy, from drink and sadness.

  “It’s my fault,” I said with a heavy tongue. I almost told her then. About the gun and the bullets.

  But, instead, I leaned forward and kissed her. I didn’t wait, and she didn’t stop me. She opened her mouth, and I tasted her, the warm darkness of what it meant to love her. And the love mixed with my tears and her tears. And I loved her like my sister did, kissed her like my sister did. Sadly and wholly.

  The only time I cried.

  The only time I was being true.

  “It was all sin and holiness,” Jack said from the corner of the room.

  I was awoken by the door bouncing open against the wall and my cabinmates storming in.

  “It’s because of his towel,” Charles said. “Even if he didn’t steal the box.”

  There was only one towel worthy of this level of attention.

  “I don’t even have my towel anymore,” I said from my bed, startling them all.

  The guys—Charles, Chris, and Payton—turned toward me.

  “Oh, hey.”

  “What’s up?”

  “You okay?”

  Charles continued, unfazed by the fact that I’d
heard his accusations. “But you did. You did have the towel. And you brought it here.”

  I looked meaningfully at Chris, but didn’t say anything about his Ouija board.

  I sat up on the edge of my bed. “Next it’ll have brought a plague.”

  “Like smallpox,” Chris said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Charles said to Chris. “That’s been eradicated.”

  “Probably swine f lu,” Payton offered, straight-faced except for the twitch at the corner of his mouth that Charles clearly didn’t see. Whoa—he was on my side. I felt a sting of guilt for the Holly stuff. Did he know people said stuff about her?

  “Ebola,” Chris said.

  “I’m serious,” Charles said. “All of this—the PC Box—this is what happens when you bring the relics of demonic worship to camp.”

  “Fine. What do you want me to do? I got rid of the towel. I didn’t steal the box. I mean, I’m super pissed too. I have a confession in there.”

  “Maybe. If your confession is still in there,” Chris said.

  “What do you mean?” I looked from face to face, every one of them drawn. “What are you talking about?” I felt my throat tighten in panic (or cardiac arrest—as opposed to the symptoms of an imminent plague).

  “Look outside.”

  I stepped out onto the porch. About fifty political signs were stuck into the hillside. Campers walked back and forth on the lawn in front of the fence. Reading, waving, pointing, while the counselors frantically plucked the signs from the ground.

  “Mine wasn’t there,” Payton said from behind me.

  “What are those?”

  “Confessions,” Chris said.

  My face f lushed. “Printed onto signs?”

  “No, printed on paper and taped to signs.”

  I squinted to read, but I couldn’t see from where I stood. At least they were taking them out.

  “Mine was on one of those,” Charles said.

  I heard him. I understood him. It explained his indignation.

  But mine could still be out there.

  “It was pretty easy to tell it was yours,” Payton said to Charles. “We all know you love the Disciplettes.”

  Charles’s eyes darted from Payton to Chris. “But you didn’t know I wanted to be one.”

  “Yeah we did,” Chris said.

  He swallowed, looked at me. He wanted me to make him feel better, but I couldn’t.

  I kept my eyes on the scene. The barbed wire fence clearly indicated the hillside was off-limits. Campers were supposed to stay on the green grass. Stay inside the Garden of Eden, lest a serpent lead you to the tree of the fruit of good and evil, and all that jazz. Surprisingly, most campers still abided the rule.

  “When did those signs even get there?” I asked. The counselors kept yanking them from the ground, one by one. Gawd, I hoped mine wasn’t out there.

  “They were there when Pastor Kyle finished the sermon. You know, after he led you away. After they called us back.”

  I turned away from the few signs that remained on the hill, my cheeks still hot from panic.

  “Did he tell everyone I didn’t steal the box?”

  The guys nodded.

  “Did he tell everyone I found that confession, that it wasn’t something I stole?”

  When no absolutions were forthcoming, I asked, “Did everyone believe him?”

  Shrugged shoulders, eyes avoiding mine. Matthew was the only one who ever stood up for me. But he wasn’t here. I was the leper after all.

  “You guys, it was in the hall when we were getting buckets for the prank.”

  “Sure,” Payton said. “You’d better not post my secret on one of those signs.”

  The signs were gone now. If mine had been out there, I’d have to wait till it blew through camp like their gossip before I’d know about it. I’d have to wait till someone put it all together.

  The guys started getting ready for the pool, slipping into their swim trunks and grabbing towels. I lay back on my bed and stared at the bunk above me. The door shut without a single one of them inviting me.

  They didn’t believe the pastor. They didn’t believe me. That truth curdled in my stomach like a slow poison.

  I took the Bible the camp had given me off the windowsill.

  I hadn’t stolen that box. I hadn’t dropped that confession in the hall. Hillbilly Jesus had said everything was going to be okay, and he’d quoted the Bible. He’d wanted me to know something. I turned to John, f lipped to chapter one, and read the ninth verse:

  There was the true light, even the light which lighteth every man, coming into the world.

  I read it again and again.

  Why would he give me this verse? Maybe it was a clue. Maybe Jesus knew who stole the box, knew that I was onto something, but couldn’t tell me. Maybe he was speaking in code. Maybe the person who did the lights in the sanctuary was the culprit. Was there a lighting person? This wasn’t Broadway.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” I said aloud.

  “What doesn’t make sense?” I sat up. Charles was still in the room. I’d thought he’d gone out with the other guys.

  “I was just reading John 1:9, and it doesn’t make sense to me.” I wasn’t going to tell him why I was reading the Bible. Maybe I’d get some credit for reading “the Word.” You know it’s bad when you’re hoping for homeschool credit.

  “Which one?”

  “Which one, what? I asked.

  “There’s John, 1 John, and 2 John. Which John 1?”

  For eff’s sake. I’d read plain John 1.

  I f lipped to 1 John 1:9 and read: If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

  I read it again. And I read it again.

  I’d found motivation.

  I set the Bible down and walked out the cabin door. From the porch, I could see most of camp. It was eerily quiet. Some of the Super Bowl Christians were back to normal, jumping off the high dive at the pool. Some played volleyball. A couple girls bought ice cream bars from the freezer bike rolling around blaring Christian rock. I saw many people walking in and out of the sanctuary. Small groups were sitting together on the patio where we’d prayed in small groups the night before. There was a line on the sidewalk to Pastor Kyle’s door.

  I scanned from the barns to the sanctuary, looking for that familiar, long robe. I had to find Hillbilly Jesus. He’d had the opportunity. He’d been outside of the sanctuary the night the box was stolen. His office was by the sanctuary. He carried that box around all day. And now motivation—he was a guy who played Jesus. A guy who had a bad accent, who scrubbed toilets by night. A guy with no actual power, who had found a way to really play Jesus. A written confession was one thing, but putting it out into the world, making us accountable to everyone. To Christ. That was a thing. I’d read about it on the Internet. And that’s what he was doing. Charlotte would’ve been all about it.

  The counselors were on high alert, peering into campers’ faces, scanning the grounds, all a bit twitchy. Or perhaps the one riding the bike just didn’t ride bikes that well.

  The girls with their ice cream wandered past my cabin, and I followed them with my eyes. A guy with long hair was setting up a small table on the lawn outside the first set of cabins.

  Jesus.

  I went downstairs and headed for the table just as some volleyball players left their game to walk over.

  Jesus was performing a card trick—an elementary one at that. He dealt four rows of cards, a girl pointed to a card, and then he picked them all up, shuff led, and stacked them in fours. He pulled out her card, apparently, because the round of golf clapping ensued.

  Jesus shuff led the cards, looked around at his audience, then spotted me. “Come in a bit closer,” he said. His hillbilly accent was gone. I know he recognized me—I was the Harry Potter kid, the barn kid, the carry-his-cross kid. But he was in character now, so he was all aloof and ominous, à la Old Testamen
t God. He looked around us, chin high, hands out like he was preparing to feed us loaves of bread and fish.

  I did as he said, and the girls around his table grudgingly stepped aside.

  “Would you like a turn?” he asked, his voice resonating. He must’ve taken vocal lessons to do that. He included all his syllables, no “ain’t” to be heard.

  “A card trick?”

  Diana had bought a book of card tricks when she was in high school. She actually made money doing kid birthday parties and setting up makeshift stands down by the Pike Place Market in Seattle.

  “I can guess your card.”

  “I’m sure you can,” I said. Anyone could learn tricks.

  “Don’t you wanna witness it?” he asked.

  “I can watch other people while you—”

  “Jack,” he interrupted.

  I looked at him sharply. “What?” I’d come down here to talk straight, but he’d knocked me off balance. I needed him to explain that Bible quote, but not with all these other campers around.

  “Jack,” he said again. “Always.”

  I looked around for Kerouac. Were other people finally seeing the things I saw?

  “Jack of Hearts for you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Jesus nodded toward me. “In your pocket.”

  I reached into both pockets.

  There was the Jack of Hearts, in my right hand.

  The audience gasped.

  “Now do you believe?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “I already did.” It was sleight of hand. Then again, he’d transformed overnight—that wasn’t just some cheap trick. What did he really have up his sleeve? I tried to hand him the card back.

  “You keep it,” he said, pulling a Jack of Hearts off the top of the deck in his hand. “I already have one.” He shuff led the cards. “You like deception?”

  “No.”

  “You lie to yourself,” he said. Then he winked at me. “We all like deception. We like where the hunt takes us.” I was sure he was talking about finding me in the barn, but it was still a weird-as-hell thing to say.

  He folded up his table, slipped his cards into his robe pocket, and walked away. The girls with the ice cream cones followed him, chattering in awe. The volleyball girls waved over their friends who’d remained at the net. They all followed the man across the camp, to the end of the cabins where he set up his table once again.