Jacked Up

by Erica Sage

  The song changed to something slower and the screen blipped. I expected new lyrics to appear on the screen.

  But the words didn’t match the song at all.

  It took me a second. It took us all a second before we realized what we were seeing.

  Screen after screen after screen of confessions.

  I don’t know if I should tell my dad about my mom and the grocery clerk. I mean—

  I pray for my dad, but he keeps hitting her. And I want to move out, but I can’t just lea—

  I’m called to lead my brother, but he doesn’t know how much I drink. Nobody knows I—

  I smoked it last time, but I know it’s a matter of time before I—

  I love him, so is it really so wrong—

  There were screams. Oh, my Gods. The pastor scrambled up the aisle. A woman raced him into the sound booth. The screen went black.

  Then it was just holy music and holy tears.

  The pastor walked slowly back to the stage. A couple counselors moved to sit by some of the kids who were crying, hiding their faces in the shoulders of their friends. It made it worse that they cried so publicly. That the counselors rushed over. They were basically admitting that one of those was theirs—that their dad was a cheater or a wife beater, or they’d had sex or done drugs.

  I was relieved my confession hadn’t been there. And I was in the room, too, so they couldn’t accuse me again.

  Or so I thought.

  Pastor Kyle apologized, prayed. As he did so, a couple girls kept their eyes open, watching me.

  I looked away.

  Someone behind me kicked my back. When I turned around, a kid sitting a couple feet behind me glared.

  “I gotta be real with you,” the pastor said. “We gotta talk about sin anyway, so I’m going to lay it out for you. We’re seeing each other’s sins in a way that was not meant to be. You’re seeing it, and you’re tempted to judge one another.”

  I spotted Holly. She and Payton were actually sitting next to each other.

  Payton must’ve felt me staring. He turned, then pursed his lips and shook his head.

  He thought I’d done this. But how could I? I was in the sanctuary with them.

  The pastor continued, “Not today, Champions. And, Pampers, you’re in the Super Bowl now. Listen up.”

  He pulled a rolling whiteboard to the stage and drew a diagram up on a screen. A cityscape. It even had the Space Needle, so I knew he was drawing Seattle, a city most of us had at least visited, since the majority of the audience had come from Washington, Oregon, and California.

  “And this is how we all see sin,” Pastor Kyle continued. “We see some sins as worse than others.” He pointed to a squatty building. “Maybe this is telling a little white lie to some of you, not that big. Peeking at someone’s paper on a test, maybe.”

  I was trying to pay attention, but I kept thinking about Payton’s accusing eyes. The two girls.

  “And maybe this is adultery, cheating on your girlfriend or husband,” he said, pointing to the Space Needle, which isn’t that tall, though it does stand out.

  Something bounced off my head. A crumpled piece of paper. I didn’t open it to see if it was a hate note.

  “And this is murder.” The pastor pointed to the tallest building, which would’ve had to be the Columbia Tower, since that’s the tallest in Seattle.

  Then the pastor paused to draw an aerial view of Seattle—a design like a plate for the top of the Space Needle. The dot in the center for the needle turned it into a breast. With a nipple.

  I couldn’t laugh, though.

  Someone cleared his throat. I happened to look up, just in time to see a kid f lip me off.

  “This is how God sees sin,” Pastor Kyle said when he was done with the bird’s-eye view. “You can’t recognize the height of any of the buildings. None of them are taller, bigger, greater than the others. Your lie is as great as the adultery is as great as murder.”

  And I swear he was looking right at me.

  “Remember that when you look at one another. Before you judge. No matter what you see on this screen.”

  Amens from the audience.

  “T-G-I-J!” someone shouted.

  Several campers had their arms around each other. They were feeling His call.

  They weren’t going to judge each other for what appeared on the screen.

  But they were going to judge me because they thought I’d put it up there.

  “And now, you know what time it is?!” Pastor Kyle called.

  Time to get ill? I wondered, anticipating the Beastie Boys.

  “Time to get dirty!” he shouted. Which I did not expect. “Fist pumps for Christ!”

  And the kids exploded from their seats, sprinting for the door, nearly trampling me. Matthew held onto my elbow and dragged me out. “Here comes the best part.”

  Right. He hadn’t seen the glares or the spit wads. Even now, the other kids jostled past me too hard.

  Matthew was out the door when Dan stepped in front of me. “After we get dirty,” he said, jabbing his finger at my chest, “you better come clean.”

  PRAYERS AND CONFESSIONS

  Pastor Kyle: I think about that afternoon often. I think about what I preach to kids about wisdom. I think about what I preach at the church about obedience. It seems small. Just pick up the phone really quick and take a peek. The highway is straight. It’s no big deal. But that second could have destroyed a life.

  Dan: I found my dad passed out at the table. The steak was burned. Smoke filled the kitchen. I went to school the next day smelling like a house fire. “Your mom needs to wash your clothes,” a nerdy kid said. I smashed his face. That doesn’t mean I don’t love Jesus.

  Holly: I don’t hear them talking about me. I feel them talking about me. Like insects on my skin.

  Matthew: I sent Sarah a card. I asked if I could see her. I don’t want to get back together or anything. I just want to tell her I didn’t abandon her. That it was my parents who sent the money and said I couldn’t see her anymore.

  The doom and gloom of the sin sermon gave way to a glee stampede as campers raced to their cabins and changed into grubby clothes. Apparently, we were literally going to get dirty.

  I didn’t run back to my cabin. I just walked.

  I thought about finding the PC Box; if I did find the box, would it matter? Would they assume I was just giving back what I’d stolen?

  Our cabin was empty when I got there; everyone had already changed clothes and headed out. I considered just hiding in my bunk, but I felt like that would be admitting to something. I had to keep participating. I had to keep putting myself out there, even if it meant judgment and cruelty, because I hadn’t done anything wrong.

  I dug through my clothes, set aside my HYPERBOLE: BEST. THING. EVER. shirt for the next day. I didn’t want to ruin it, and I wanted to show Natalie that I’d returned to the nerd uniform.

  In too-short basketball shorts and a faded middle school honor society shirt (yep, I could still fit into a shirt from eighth grade. Barely, but yes), I followed a small mob of campers from another cabin. We headed past the donkey barn, where I’d found Magic Jesus that first night, to a field that I had assumed was off limits because it hadn’t been watered. Dry grass and tumbleweeds meant out-of-bounds.

  We arrived at a giant mud pit, an Olympic-sized swimming pool of a mud pit.

  “Let the sins begin!” someone shouted.

  Campers whooped and fist-pumped; Pastor Kyle beamed. I stood there baff led until Matthew called me over to our group.

  We were divided into teams, each cabin split into two, for a total of thirty-two teams. We lined up at the edge of the mud pit to compete in a basic relay race.

  The three kids before me surged through the mud, their faces getting splattered, their white teeth the only clean thing as they laughed, maniacal and delirious. Then it was my turn. I sank past my ankles in the mud, tiny pebbles and sticks scratching at the soles of my feet. The earth gri
pped me, and I pulled. I could barely move. And I was hot, and I didn’t want to be doing this.

  In the first relay, my team came in second—second to the other half of our cabin. Dan called directives from the side of the pit to assist us through the quagmire. He only stopped shouting at us to coach the other team representing our cabin. Either way, he was ensuring his cabin’s victory.

  Relay after relay, we churned through the mud, new obstacles being set up each time to challenge us.

  The campers played the games, rallying to the pastor’s anti-judging-sin war cry. It was like nothing had ever happened. It was like we hadn’t just seen secrets f lashed across the big screen. Everything they’d worried about, everything they’d done, just out for everyone to see.

  They all judged each other. I’d witnessed it. They’d judged one another before anyone stole the PC Box.

  They judged me.

  But just like that, they could put it all aside thanks to the pastor’s message. Thanks to a game. It made me sick, the hypocrisy. Right now I was on a team; in ten minutes, they’d be glaring at me again.

  In ten minutes, we’d all be waiting for more confessions and prayers, more secrets. No matter the sermon, it was not okay. We couldn’t ignore the consequences. The afters. Because there were always afters, and mine would damn me, far beyond their judgments.

  When a counselor announced the next tournament, I walked away from the group.

  “Get back over here.” Dan grabbed my arm.

  “I think I’m done.”

  “Don’t be a douche. We’re almost done.”

  His words ate at me. I didn’t want to be a douche. That was the point, wasn’t it? I wasn’t a douche, even if they thought I was. I shook my head and walked back to my team.

  I looked for Natalie, but I didn’t see her. She wasn’t running the latest relay with Kim’s team. I couldn’t find the other team that would’ve come from their cabin.

  The next game was an individual race. There were twelve lanes marked with caution tape from one end of the mud pit to the other, like in a swimming pool. The object was to get to the other end of the pit, where twelve girls waited for us, all dressed in shining red devil leotards.

  “What are they holding?” I asked Matthew. Each girl had something in her hands, but they were too far away for me to tell what.

  “Prizes, for the winners. Like, there’s cash and minutes to use the Internet in Babyl On and candy bars and stuff.”

  A whistle blew, and it was my turn to race. The first few steps were easy. Or easy-ish. I yanked my feet from the mud and got ahead of the other eleven campers. But the farther I went, the harder the mud pulled me down. The mud pit didn’t get deeper, but I was definitely sinking more, the closer I got to the finish line.

  It was like all the stories I’d heard about quicksand. If you struggled in the muck, you basically ensured your death.

  I lifted my legs and worked my body through the mud, realizing two campers had passed me. I looked at the devils at the end of the pit, their faces all made-up with caked-on foundation and fake eyelashes. Their mouths shone with sexy-red lipstick, and their hips and breasts threatened to burst through the silky material of their costumes.

  Two more campers passed me in the mud.

  And ahead of me, there were twelve girls barely older than me, dressed like prostitutes. Waving around a calling card, or a piece of candy, or a dollar bill.

  I stopped racing. All eleven other campers reached the end before me, breathless but proud. Slowly, I worked my legs and hips through the muck to the end of pit and pulled myself out.

  I heard a whistle and knew Matthew would be plowing ahead in the lane behind me.

  The devilish vixen at the end of my lane looked at me with pity and held the cash behind her back. “Here’s some candy,” she said in condolence, and I swore she licked her lips at me. I walked away, leaving the Hershey’s bar in her pale, long fingers, painted blood-red.

  Then it occurred to me: these counselors in scantily clad attire were the embodiment of sin. Not a counselor in a Freddy Krueger mask. Not somebody in a mobster suit. Not a thief, not a drug dealer, not an altar boy–molesting priest. A f lirty, sexy girl.

  Jeez.

  Holly never stood a chance here, did she?

  In the heat of the morning, the mud dried and cracked on my skin, leaving it tight. I had scratches on my arms and a cut on my shin from something in the pit. My stomach felt thick, and breakfast felt too close to my throat, from the heat or the exertion. Or the sin-and-devil metaphor.

  I was done, and I didn’t care what Dan said. I walked away from the pit toward the cabins.

  But my devil girl stopped me, her costume glistening in the sunlight, the conciliatory Hershey’s bar no longer in her hands.

  “You have to clean off,” she said. Her makeup was so heavy, she looked like a Shakespearean player.

  “Where do you think I’m going?” I said.

  “You can’t go into the cabins like that. You have to go clean off first. Over there.” She pointed back toward the mud pit, where the male counselors had joined the show. Dressed in long robes with crowns on their heads, each one held a green plastic hose in his hands. More Jesuses. Counselor Jesuses. “They clean you off.”

  One of the Jesuses approached me. “Looks like you’re ready for grace.”

  The devil girl touched my arm. “Kneel.”

  I was tired of their games. Tired of the fact that they didn’t seem to be doing anything about the PC Box except blaming me. The fakeness of all of it. And the hose in his hand looked distinctly like a snaky penis.

  So I said, “No.” I did not want to kneel before him and be washed clean by his pee-jizz.

  The devil and Jesus exchanged a look.

  “I’m not going to get on my knees.” I reached for the hose.

  Jesus stepped back.

  “You have to ask him to clean you off. Just kneel,” the devil-girl continued.

  “I’ll just spray you down real quick,” Jesus offered in a softer voice, like he knew I was on the brink. “You don’t have to kneel. Just hold still.”

  I grabbed the hose and yanked, but he held on. “I’ll do it myself.”

  Devil-girl grabbed onto the hose and pulled with Jesus, grunting, “That’s. The. Point.” It was a holy tug-of-war, with both good and evil against me.

  Someone, somewhere, must have turned the faucet on, because the water sprayed me in the face all of a sudden. The hose twisted, and the water fountained into the air.

  “You’re not supposed to do it yourself!” the devil-girl yelled.

  I let go of my end of the hose, and she fell back onto her butt in the now-soaked grass. Jesus stumbled back too, still gripping his end of the hose.

  I launched myself at him to pry it from his hand, but his sandals slipped out from under him, and we both toppled together, the hose falling impotent to the ground. Jesus snatched it with his free hand, and I yanked it and twisted it in my direction, but only a light spray reached me—not nearly enough to get me clean.

  Devil-girl stood up, her leotard dark where the water had saturated it. She stormed off, her face wet from the hose, or perhaps frustrated tears.

  I let go of the hose. Jesus rolled away with it, his robe dragging across the ground.

  I sat there, alone, no cleaner. I felt a hand grab my shoulder, and I knew it would be Pastor Kyle or Leader Jason or Counselor Dan come to drag me away.

  But it was Matthew.

  “Dude, what’s your problem?”

  The sun was too bright and hot, the grass too green and wet, the sky too blue. The kids skipped and frolicked away from the mud pit with their relay rewards. They danced and laughed at the feet of the Jesuses and their plastic green hoses.

  “This is my problem.” I waved my arms around at the circus scene. “I don’t want some kid holding some hose over my head waiting for me to give him a blow job or whatever.”

  Matthew shook his head. “It’s just a game.”


  “All these girls dressed up like she-devils with their boobs all over the place. Like, do you see the irony?”

  “No, I see the metaphor.”

  Of course, I saw the metaphor too. The mud was our sin. We got dirty, we got stuck, yet we continued on to win the prize. In our case, food and Internet and money.

  “Fuck this place!” I shouted.

  And that’s when People magazine’s Sexiest Pastor Alive arrived. “Let’s go,” he said, grabbing my elbow, not even trying to be nice anymore.

  He didn’t call for the cross for me to carry. He didn’t try to lay hands and pray. Even he could see I was too far gone for salvation and games.

  I looked back to see Matthew heading over to kneel at the foot of a Jesus. Charles positioned himself at the top of a pyramid of still-muddy Disciplettes having their picture taken. The twins, Chris and Christina, were hugging out their forgiveness over the donkey inequality, I assumed.

  I followed the pastor to the medical building, where he handed me a hose.

  “They could’ve just let me have it,” I said. “I get the Jesus washing sins away part.”

  He ran his hands through his hair. “Those counselors are just kids like you.”

  “I don’t want to play these crazy games anymore. They’re not real. It’s not real,” I said. “What happens in real life is real. What happened on those signs and on that screen, that’s real.”

  “I think you take for granite—”

  “Take for granted,” I corrected.

  The pastor just stared at me.

  “It’s granted, not granite. Do you know how many words you mess up? I have a list in my journal. You know that? I don’t write down your scripture. I write down your misuse of the English language.” I shook my head and turned off the hose.

  The pastor didn’t get mad, like I thought he would. Like I hoped he would, frankly. I wanted him to punch me. I needed him to punch me. I needed everyone to take their hardest shot at my face.

  “It’s your job to know words, but you mess them all up,” I said, daring him.