Heretics Anonymous

by Katie Henry

  Before Father Peter’s even finished with the introduction, Purity Paul bursts through the center of the curtains, carrying a mic in his hand and wearing a smile that could only be caused by Jesus or LSD.

  “Thank you so, so much, Father Peter.” Purity Paul turns to us. “Let’s give Father Peter a big hand, everybody,” he says, gesturing at Father Peter’s hastily retreating back. One person claps like a seal. I’m pretty sure it’s Theresa.

  “Hello, St. Clare’s!” Paul says, too close to his mic. “It’s great to be back!”

  Paul plops himself down on the edge of the stage in a way I think was supposed to seem casual.

  “So, guys. Sex.” He looks at us like we should be shocked and awed he’s said the word out loud. “I bet you hear a lot about it. On TV, in movies, in books—not to mention the internet. And what do you hear about it? What does our media tell you sex is like?”

  He pauses, and I’m not sure if he’s expecting anyone to answer, but no one does.

  “Everyone says it’s the best thing ever, right? Isn’t that what you hear? It’s a rite of passage. It’s amazing. It’s fun. And you know what, guys?” He leans in, conspiratorial again. “They’re right. Sex is an amazing, beautiful thing.”

  He sits back, looking disgustingly pleased with himself. You’ve got them now, I can almost hear him thinking. You acknowledged sex is fun! They went in expecting something stuffy and boring, but you’re different!

  I have never been more embarrassed for anyone in my life.

  “Don’t forget,” he reminds us, “God invented sex. Like everything else on this earth, it’s one of His creations.”

  Yeah, well, then so is genocide. And mosquitoes. And tangled headphone cords.

  “He wants us to be happy, to enjoy sex, but to do it in a way that respects our body, our spouse’s body, and His divine plan for life and procreation. He’s not”—and Paul smirks a little here—“some kind of cosmic killjoy.”

  New life plan: form a band called Cosmic Killjoy.

  Purity Paul retrieves a black duffel bag from behind the curtain. I wonder what’s in it. Enough chastity belts to go around? Miniature statues of the Virgin Mary that weep when you masturbate?

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Paul says, though I’m sure he doesn’t. “You’re thinking this is all a lot of blah blah blah. So how about we mix it up, you guys? See how all this stuff works in the real world?”

  “Ugh,” Avi says, slumping in his seat. “The object lesson.”

  “The what?”

  Avi opens his mouth, but before he can answer, Paul asks, “I’m going to need a helping hand for this—any volunteers?”

  I sense, rather than see, Theresa’s hand shoot up. “Maybe someone who didn’t help out last year,” Paul adds, scanning the room. He points at someone in the back. “How about you?”

  I crane my neck, trying to see who he’s chosen. Whoever his victim is, they don’t seem too eager to get up.

  “Yes, you,” he repeats. “With the hair ribbon.”

  Oh no.

  Lucy picks herself up, and slowly, stiffly descends the stairs and crosses the stage to stand next to Paul. She looks like a cow walking into a slaughterhouse, except unlike a cow, she knows exactly what’s going to happen to her. But I don’t.

  “What’s your name?” Paul asks, tipping his mic down to her.

  “Lucy,” she mumbles.

  “Lucy. A pretty name for a pretty girl. But I bet people tell you that all the time.”

  She stares at him, unblinking.

  “Well. Lucy, you are going to help me with a little experiment.”

  Handing the mic to Lucy, Paul digs around in his bag of tricks and pulls out a roll of masking tape. He holds it aloft for us like it’s Simba in the beginning of The Lion King. He tears off a medium-sized section and puts the rest back in his bag.

  “What is this, Lucy?” he asks, showing her the sticky side.

  “Masking tape.”

  “And what does it look like?”

  “It looks like masking tape.”

  Paul laughs. “Come on. You can be more descriptive than that. What does this side look like?”

  “White. Rectangular. Sticky.”

  “Does it have anything on it?”

  “No,” Lucy says. “It’s . . .”

  “Go on. It’s—”

  Lucy’s looking at him like someone who figured out a joke’s punch line too fast and doesn’t think it’s funny.

  “It’s clean,” she says.

  “Exactly right. It’s clean.” Paul holds the sticky side up for all of us to see. “This is what you are like, when you choose chastity. Pure, unblemished, untouched . . .”

  . . . and good at holding packages together? Did this dude compare our virgin souls to masking tape?

  “But what happens when we give ourselves to others? What happens to our bodies and our souls? So, Lucy, if you could take this—”

  Paul hands the tape over to Lucy, who would clearly rather paste it over his mouth.

  “—and pick out someone in the front row.” He chuckles. “A male someone, please.”

  I am in the front row. I am male. I am someone.

  And while I’m trying to figure out whether I really want to be part of this office supplies experiment, Lucy comes and stands in front of my seat, holding the tape between two fingers. She looks pissed. She looks sad. Mostly, she looks like she’d rather be anywhere but here, and I want that for her, too.

  The way she’s standing, her body blocks Purity Paul, but I can hear his voice from behind her. “Now stick the tape to his arm.”

  I hold my arm out for her, palm up, but off Paul’s instruction, she flips it over so it’s palm-side down. She affixes the scratchy tape above my wrist, smoothing it over with her hand. This is the longest Lucy has ever touched me. My pulse jumps under her fingers. I know we’re in an auditorium full of people and taking orders from a man who thinks premarital sex is akin to murder, but I want to keep feeling the pads of her fingers on my arm, all the blood in my body rushing toward her touch.

  I wonder what the Catholic Church does to people who get turned on at chastity assemblies. They probably castrate them.

  Suddenly, she yanks the tape off and about half my arm hair with it. Paul must have told her to, but she could have done it more gently.

  “Ow!” I hiss at her, and for a second, she smiles, a real Lucy smile, before she heads back to the front of the room. Lucy hands the masking tape to Paul, and he holds it up for everyone to see. It’s a little wrinkled now, with bits of hair.

  “Now, this is what you’re like with one partner. One single partner. But that’s not what society tells you to do, is it? No, society wants you to hook up. Society says it’s okay to treat sex like no big deal. So what happens then, when you’ve given the most precious part of your soul not to one person, but to five, or ten?”

  He sends Lucy out to repeat the masking tape trick four more times, using the same bit of tape. After she’s done, he holds up the tape again. It’s worse for the wear now, crinkled in some places and curling at the ends. With the remnants of five dudes’ arm hair stuck to it, it looks gross.

  “This,” he says, showing the tape off, “is what you are when you choose to live an unchaste life. And for the girls, there’s an extra level of danger. Biologically, women develop strong, hard-to-break attachments to those they sleep with. Though we all give away pieces of our God-given soul through unchaste actions, ladies, you give away pieces of your heart, too.”

  My breath catches. Is that what Lucy’s afraid of? That someone will love her for a moment and then wreck her forever? What he’s saying is awful, and wrong besides that, but does Lucy believe it?

  “So, Lucy,” Paul says, tearing a clean swatch of tape from the roll and presenting her with both pieces, one pristine, the other wrinkled and dirty. “Which do you choose? Which one do you want to be?”

  Lucy’s clenching and unclenching her hands like she can
’t figure out whether to punch or strangle this douchebag. And if she can’t choose, I’ll do it for her, because I don’t know if I’ve hated someone so much, so instantly, in my entire life. Lucy is not a piece of tape. Lucy is not one or the other, pure or dirty. Lucy is Lucy. She could swim in a sewer, have sex with every single person in the world, and she would still never be dirty. I hate him for trying to tell her she could be.

  But, like a person who knows she doesn’t have a choice, or maybe a person who knows exactly what DVD is already set up on the TV, Lucy sighs and picks the clean, untouched piece of virgin masking tape.

  Purity Paul moves on to Purity Platitudes, telling us things like “true love waits” and “chastity is not a burden, it’s a crown of triumph” as Lucy stands awkwardly beside him, wiping her masking-tape-sticky fingers on her plaid skirt.

  “He’s wrapping up,” Avi says. “A couple minutes and they’ll start the movie.”

  This is the part of the plan we never quite figured out: the distraction. Lucy said Purity Paul never stays for the video, so he’s one less adult to worry about, and Sister Helen can barely hear, but Father Peter usually supervises. And he’ll notice if everyone actually starts paying attention to what’s on the screen. But as I look at Lucy onstage, I think I have an idea.

  I dig out a pencil and scrap of notebook paper from my backpack and start to write.

  “What are you doing?” Avi hisses.

  “Being brilliant.”

  “Seriously doubtful.”

  Just for that, I don’t let him read the note I’m writing. Purity Paul’s thanking Lucy for her participation, so I have to write fast.

  30 sec. into vid, leave like ur upset abt P.P. Take Pete w/you.

  As Lucy starts to sweep by me and up the stairs, I catch her hand. She looks surprised.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, not because I think she isn’t, but in case anyone’s listening. At the same time, I slip the folded-up note into her palm.

  “Yeah,” she says, and tightens her fist around the note before continuing up the stairs.

  Purity Paul wishes us the best of luck on our journey with purity and exits the stage to half-hearted applause. Avi looks like he’s got a few questions, but the lights dim, and Father Peter walks away from the projector. He’s put our DVD in. Well, he’s put a DVD in. I hope it’s ours.

  Thirty seconds into the opening credits, right on cue, I hear the soft squeak of patent leather shoes from the back row. I steal a glance backward and see Lucy descending the stairs, head down. A few people turn to look at her, but not many.

  As the opening credits continue, a zygote is transformed into a toddler, then into a child at his First Communion. Lucy hurries toward the auditorium doors, nearly crashing into Father Peter, illuminated by the bright hallway light. He throws out a hand to stop her. The cheesy harp music from the video makes it impossible to hear them, but Lucy gestures to the place onstage where Purity Paul had her stand. Her shoulders sag, and there’s a chance Lucy’s pulled out some Oscar-worthy tears, because Father Peter opens the door and guides her out of the room.

  Avi nudges my leg. He looks toward the door, now swinging shut again. I nod, and he sits back, satisfied. Father Peter’s out of the way now, and no one can accuse Lucy of plotting to distract him. She has every reason to be upset, and Father Peter has every reason to try to console her.

  Finally, the title card appears on the screen:

  RELATIONSHIPS WITHOUT REGRET

  PRESENTED BY FR. NICHOLAS ANGELO

  AND THE ANTIOCH, NE, DIOCESE

  Then, scrawled in a much less formal-looking font:

  ANNOTATED FOR ACCURACY BY

  HERETICS ANONYMOUS

  It sounds, for a second, like everyone’s taken a collective breath in. But nobody moves, not Theresa and certainly not Sister Helen, who’s sitting on a folding chair by the door, deep into her rosary beads.

  The movie begins with a low-budget, bad-actor clip of Romeo and Juliet during the balcony scene.

  “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” Juliet says, her terrible costume wig nearly slipping off her head.

  “Is all love equal?” the terrifying narrator says. “Two teenagers may, like Romeo and Juliet, desire one another, but is their love authentic? Those who follow God’s plan for Catholic marriages are rewarded. American Catholic couples who waited until marriage had lower divorce rates than those that did not.”

  An annotation pops up on the screen:

  But guess who had the lowest divorce rates of all, according to a decade-long study by the Barna Group? Atheists and agnostics.

  A girl across the aisle from me points at the screen, whispering with her friend. There’s a low buzz of excited chatter from the whole auditorium. Avi keeps his eyes trained on the screen, poker-faced, but I smile. I was the one who found that study.

  The narrator moves on to the section about the nature of “natural” sexual conduct between spouses, and the dangers of birth control.

  “You might have heard that the condom—”

  Here, they show a limp, banana-yellow condom.

  “—is a fail-proof method for protecting against sexually transmitted diseases. But did you know condoms have pores? A virus such as HIV can easily pass through a pore.”

  Another annotation appears on-screen, in a speech bubble for a friendly cartoon condom.

  This is untrue. Standards testing by groups such as the World Health Organization show even water molecules (smaller than an HIV virus molecule) cannot pass through a condom.

  A boy in the far right section starts taking a video with his phone. I can’t believe Theresa hasn’t torn apart the screen with both hands yet, but I’m too scared to look over at her; it might trigger homicidal rage.

  Lambskin condoms are a lot more porous, but seriously, like you’re going to buy a lambskin condom. Who are you, Henry VIII?

  There’s commotion behind me, and I turn around. Theresa, apparently recovered from shock, is trying to push out of her row. She’s dead center, so it’s slow going, even as she throws elbows. Someone yells at her for blocking the screen.

  As soon as she gets to Sister Helen, still serenely doing a Rosary in the corner, this whole thing will be dead. Theresa finally makes it out of her row, and I can hear the stomp of her shoes as she flies down the aisle, then a crash. Avi and I both twist back. Theresa’s splayed on the stairs, her foot caught in the strap of a brown, vegan leather backpack with an Irish flag pin. Eden kneels next to her, apologizing and asking if she’s okay.

  “I’m fine,” Theresa snaps, the image of Christian compassion. “Get off me.”

  Her ponytail half undone and one knee sock down, Theresa takes the stairs two at a time, running over to Sister Helen and gesturing wildly at the screen. Sister Helen stares at Theresa for a moment, then slowly rises and crosses to where she can view the screen better, just in time to see a speech bubble from a man’s crotch refuting the healing powers of zinc-filled semen.

  The joke kills. And to her credit, Sister Helen doesn’t faint.

  The door bangs as Theresa disappears out of it, returning thirty seconds later with Father Peter, Lucy trailing behind him. He doesn’t wait to see the evidence himself, just walks over to the DVD player and shuts it off. There are a couple groans. The lights flick on.

  “The rest of this period will be used as a study hall,” Father Peter announces. “You will all quickly and quietly proceed to the library. Miss Ambrose, please go warn the librarians.”

  Theresa scurries off. The rest of us file out quickly, but not quietly. The rain has stopped, and as I pass through the heavy auditorium doors into the sun-drenched hallway, I can hear someone behind me whisper the words “Heretics Anonymous.”

  11

  EVERYONE HAS BEEN whispering about Heretics Anonymous for the past two weeks.

  In theology, Leah Davies interrupts Sister Helen’s lecture to ask if the Relationships Without Regret DVD came with a teacher’s guide, because she can�
�t find any info to back up their claims about hormonal birth control. Even super-shy Jenny Okoye wants Sister Helen to know she found the blog of the priest who directed the video, and he thinks girls shouldn’t be altar servers, and she’s an altar server, so why should she have to listen to him, anyway?

  Sister Helen deflects these questions. All the adults at St. Clare’s seem determined to ignore the fact that the whole thing happened. I don’t know how effective this is, but it does mean HA can relax, at least for now.

  Avi’s at his weekly lunchtime meeting for the school newspaper, The St. Clare’s Record, so Lucy and I are sitting together at a four-top table when something hard and plastic bangs into the back of my head.

  “Oh, sorry, dude,” Connor says when I turn around, pulling back his food tray a little. He and his girlfriend eye the two empty seats at our table.

  Lucy opens her mouth, but Connor cuts her off. “There aren’t any other tables open, so chill.”

  Lucy scowls but doesn’t object when they sit down, Connor next to me, his girlfriend next to her.

  “How’d you like the sex ed assembly this year, Lucifer?” he asks Lucy, shoveling chili into his mouth.

  Lucy attempts to disembowel Connor with her eyes before saying, “I didn’t see the video. I was talking with Father Peter outside.”

  “Shit, you missed out. It was hilarious,” Connor says, and his girlfriend groans. “Oh, you are such a killjoy, Jess.”

  “Whatever,” Jess says. “I just didn’t get the point.”

  “What do you mean?” Lucy asks.

  Jess shrugs. “So they lied to us about sex. No shit. They don’t want us to have sex, of course they’d make it sound dangerous and awful.”

  “But you can’t think that’s okay!” I protest, and Lucy gives me a look that says, Dial it back.

  “Maybe it’s not. But maybe it’s also not up to us to decide what gets taught. Half of us can’t even drive yet.”

  “It was fun, though,” Connor cuts in. “A lot more entertaining than that assembly usually is.”