Heretics Anonymous

by Katie Henry

  Everybody knows you’re not supposed to show up to a house party right on time. This is a universally accepted fact. The problem with befriending members of a secret society, though, is they don’t know anything about parties. Which is why, when I show up at eight thirty, only a half hour after Avi said, Lucy opens the door to Avi’s house and says, “We were wondering where you were.”

  “Is everyone else already here?”

  I think about the last party I went to, before we moved. It was at Becca Conover’s house on the Fourth of July. Someone burned a hole in the fence with off-brand Mexican sparklers, and two people later developed staph infections from Becca’s improperly cleaned hot tub.

  This is not that kind of party.

  “Max is here and Eden’s on her way—she got held up at home.” Lucy takes my coat for me and hangs it over the banister in Avi’s clean, beige entryway. The sweater she’s wearing—cornflower blue, soft-looking, and a lot tighter than her school cardigan—rides up in the back as she does. I don’t know why that tiny sliver of tan skin is so mesmerizing, but it is. Probably because I’ve memorized and cataloged every little part of Lucy, and this is a new part.

  I sound like a serial killer. I hate myself. I love that sweater.

  I’ve seen enough stuff on the internet to know a lot of people really like the Catholic schoolgirl thing, with the knee socks and the plaid. I don’t get it. I like seeing Lucy like this, in jeans and a sweater I hope she owns ten of, dressed like every girl I’ve liked before, girls I somehow managed to kiss and go on awkward dates with. Catholic schoolgirl is okay, but regular girl is a lot better.

  She turns around and catches me staring. “What?”

  “Uh—” My brain stumbles around like it’s already drunk. Then I remember what’s in the shopping bag next to me, nestled against a bottle of vodka. “I have something for you.”

  It’s not a great gift. I know it’s not. But I had to get Lucy something after she gave me the marked-up Bible. So, when Mom decided the tree needed more colored lights the day before Christmas, I offered to go pick some up. And I did, but I also stopped by the section of the mall where they sell makeup and perfume. I was so embarrassed to be there, I blew off the saleslady’s offer to help me “pick out something nice,” grabbed pretty much the first thing I saw, and left, trailing colored Christmas lights and shame.

  I hand Lucy a red box and think about telling her I picked that box because it was the same color red as her ribbon but don’t.

  She opens it. “It’s . . . is it perfume?”

  I considered finding Bible quotes about perfume and sticking them in the box, too. But after flipping through Lucy’s carefully annotated Bible and using Google, the only ones I could find referred to prostitutes, and that wasn’t the message I wanted to send.

  Instead, I nod, affirming that yes, it is perfume, and that yes, I know why she’s asking. Perfume is not a gift you give your friend whose boobs you don’t sometimes stare at.

  “Thank you,” Lucy says. “It’s— Thank you.”

  I want to think she’s at a loss for words because she’s overcome by the specialness and not terribleness of my gift.

  “I appreciate you keeping your Christmas promise,” she says, putting the perfume bottle into her overnight bag. She grimaces. “Not everyone does.”

  Oh no. “Your mom—she didn’t—?”

  “She called. Just a little more time. She just needs a little more time. Yeah, well, my brothers need their mom. Jake needs his wife.”

  “What about you?” I ask. “What do you need?”

  We lock eyes for a moment. Then she stands and adjusts her sweater. “I need to check on Avi.”

  “What? Why?” I ask as I follow her into the kitchen.

  “He’s a bit ahead of us.” Avi and Max sit at a polished, dark-wood table, a half-empty bottle next to Avi.

  “Michael!” Avi says as we enter, happier to see me than he has ever been in his sober life. “You made it!” He holds up the bottle. “Would you like to try the drink of my people? My Jewish people, not my gay people.”

  “What is it?” I ask, eyeing the bottle.

  “Manischewitz,” Avi says. “The only thing my parents drink ever.” He begins to pour himself another glass.

  “Hey, okay, maybe pace yourself,” Lucy says, pulling the bottle out of his reach.

  “It’s four glasses, Lucy. You have to drink four glasses, that’s the rule.”

  “Yeah, on Passover. It’s Boxing Day.”

  “Why is it called Boxing Day?” Max asks. His cape is new; it’s a darker color and less frayed at the edges. “Maybe because one year, some person in, like, medieval France tried to return their Christmas present—a cloak, probably—and the store wouldn’t take it back, so he got into a fistfight with the store owner and now it’s called Boxing Day.”

  “I think it’s actually because servants would get Christmas boxes from their masters that day,” Lucy says, putting the Manischewitz on a high shelf, despite Avi’s protests.

  “My story’s better,” Max says.

  As Max and Lucy argue over the etymology of Boxing Day, I search for the bathroom. Everything in Avi’s house is nice, a carefully planned kind of nice. Curated. Like a museum people live in. I nearly burn my hands on the heated towel rack in the bathroom.

  The thing that makes Avi’s house not like a museum, though, is all the family pictures. They’re almost all of Avi, usually looking vaguely uncomfortable, often flanked by two beaming older people. Baby photos, childhood photos, an actual kindergarten diploma framed and mounted on the wall—I take it back. Avi’s house is less like a museum and more like a shrine. To him.

  Max appears in the doorway. “Did you get lost?” he asks. “It’s not a big enough house to actually get lost, but when I was six I got lost in a clothing rack at JC Penney, so I guess you can get lost anywhere.”

  “I was just looking around. There are . . . a lot of photos of Avi.”

  Max nods. “Yeah. His parents really like him. I mean, all parents love their kids, I guess, but his parents really do. Avi thinks it’s weird, but he told me once his parents tried forever to have kids and his mom had a bunch of miscarriages and so he thinks they’re just happy he actually made it.” He pauses. “Should I have told you that?”

  “Probably not, Max.”

  The front door opens behind me, and Eden comes in, wearing a weather-inappropriate long, gauzy dress under her winter coat and carrying five beers out of a six-pack under one arm. She hugs us hello, and we all head to the kitchen, where Lucy is struggling to open my bottle of vodka.

  “Here,” she says, holding it out to me. “Can you try?”

  I will open this bottle even if I have to smash it open over the sink. Luckily, it doesn’t come to that. I open it, then go to the fridge.

  “What kind of mixer do you want?” I call over my shoulder to Lucy. “There’s orange juice and, um, Mountain Dew—”

  I turn back around to see Lucy has already poured herself a shot. She downs it and then looks at me with supreme satisfaction. “What?” she says. “I’ve been drinking wine every Sunday since I was seven, you think I can’t do a shot?”

  “Uh, so have I,” Eden says, “but I’d like some of the orange juice, please, Michael.”

  I reattach my dropped jaw to the rest of my face, reexamine every assumption I have ever made about Lucy, and fix Eden a drink.

  “We should play a game,” Lucy suggests, once we’re all settled in Avi’s living room, drinks in hand.

  Avi nods so hard he spills his drink. “Scrabble, let’s play Scrabble, I am kickass at Scrabble.”

  “I meant like a drinking game,” Lucy says. “Though you should switch to soda.”

  “Which one do you want to play?” Eden asks. There’s silence, and then they all slowly turn to me.

  Sometimes I wonder how Heretics Anonymous had any fun before I showed up.

  “How about Never Have I Ever?” I suggest.

  Nei
ther Lucy or Max have ever played it before, so as we all get in a circle on the rug, I explain the rules.

  “We go around the circle, each saying something we haven’t done. Like, ‘Never have I ever been to London.’ So, if you have been to London, you take a drink.”

  Avi demonstrates by taking a drink.

  “We’re not playing yet,” Eden says.

  “And they shouldn’t be boring like that,” I add. “You’re supposed to get people to admit stuff they’ve done, not where they went on vacation.”

  But four rounds later, the only one who ends up admitting anything is me, because in the second surprise of the century, it turns out Max, Eden, Lucy, and Avi collectively haven’t done anything. They have never smoked weed or a cigarette. They have never snuck out of their house at night. They have never been drunk enough to throw up, though Avi might get there soon. On Max’s turn, he asks if anyone has ever accidentally lit themselves on fire, and thankfully, I don’t have to take a drink on that one.

  Eden’s next. She swishes her drink around in her cup. “Never have I ever made my parents proud of me.”

  Max puts his head in his hands. “Wow, Eden,” Lucy says. “Way to be a downer.”

  “That’s mine and I’m sticking to it,” she says. “Who’s drinking?”

  We all do, even me—my parents were very proud of my preschool macaroni art.

  “Oh, you jerks with your happy home lives,” Eden says. Lucy stiffens, and I know she’s thinking about her mom. Lucy must not have told Eden. Lucy’s got so much to complain about, so much to be angry about, but she keeps it somewhere out of sight, like a box in the basement. I can’t do that. I spread all my problems out on the lawn, like a yard sale.

  “My parents are weird, too,” Avi says.

  Lucy scoffs. “Please. They adore you.”

  “They’re obsessed with me. Not in a stalker way, but—actually, almost in a stalker way.”

  “You don’t want your parents to be proud of you?” Eden asks.

  “Maybe if I deserved it.”

  “You do,” Max insists. “You’re smart and a good artist and other things I can’t think of right now.”

  “It’s not about me, it’s about them.” Avi looks at the ceiling. “Everything I do, even who I am—it’s like a checkmark for them, something they can drop into conversations at parties.” He sighs. “They spent all their time . . . I don’t know, cultivating me—”

  “Cultivating?” Max says. “Like a garden?”

  “Yeah,” Avi says. “Watering and weeding and making everything look perfect. But I’m not perfect.” He sighs. “They’re proud of me. But I’m not sure they actually know me.”

  “My mom and dad are great,” Max announces. “Zero complaints.”

  “Good,” Eden says. “Someone should have a functional family.”

  “I didn’t say my whole family,” Max says. “My grandparents think we’re total weirdos, and I kind of get that, but also, we’re really awesome, and I wish they thought so, too.”

  Eden laughs. “Your mom wears sweater sets. Your dad collects baseball cards. They’re the most normal people I’ve ever met.”

  Max shrugs. “My grandma and grandpa—my mom’s parents—are hard to please, sometimes. And I think I embarrass them.”

  “Why?” Avi says. “Just because of the cape?”

  “Everything,” Max says. “I talk too much, I talk too loud, I talk about the wrong things. It makes them go quiet. They look at each other and whisper. Like there’s something wrong with me.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with you,” I tell him.

  “I know that. My parents know that. But—” He hesitates. “I think my grandparents had a really specific idea of who I was going to be, and I’m not that person.”

  “That’s so shitty,” I say.

  “It’s not,” Max says. “They only want what’s best for me; we just don’t agree on what that is. I don’t know. I wish they didn’t make me feel so bad. I wish I didn’t make them feel bad.”

  We sit there, no one saying anything, until Lucy clears her throat. “Let’s play a new game,” she says. “It doesn’t have to be a drinking game, it could be a regular sleepover game. Maybe Truth or Dare?”

  I hate Truth or Dare. It’s always physically painful or emotionally scarring. The last time I played, in eighth grade, I had to jump from the roof of Justin Bennes’s dad’s home office, and the time before that, I had to kiss Rachel Markowitz, who had very sharp braces. I do not want to do this.

  Lucy can tell, too, because she turns on actual, full-blown puppy-dog eyes.

  “Come on,” she pleads. “It’ll be fun.”

  I didn’t even know Lucy was capable of puppy-dog eyes. I thought she’d find them demeaning. But hers are amazing, and maybe there’s a reason she wants to play. Maybe that reason involves me.

  “I’m game,” I say.

  “Okay, Lucy,” Eden says, clearly with something already in mind. “Truth or dare?”

  “Dare.”

  “I dare you to follow Connor Zetsner on the social media platform of your choice. And leave him a nice comment.”

  “What?” Lucy yelps. “Why?”

  “Because it’s funny and you don’t want to,” Eden explains, and it is, but I’m disappointed the dare didn’t involve me. I’m relieved, too. “Go on, get out your phone.”

  Lucy digs her phone out of her pocket. “He’ll block me, just watch.”

  “Quit stalling,” Avi says.

  “I’m not, I can’t find him on— Oh.” She grimaces. “Is his shirt off in all his photos?”

  Avi grabs the phone from her. “Holy shit,” he says, and keeps scrolling.

  Lucy snatches the phone back, types for a moment, then holds the screen up for Eden to see.

  “‘You are an adequate human being,’” Eden reads aloud. She looks at Lucy. “That’s your idea of a nice comment?”

  “He doesn’t believe the pay gap exists,” Lucy says. “Adequate is as far as I’ll go.”

  Eden is the first to choose truth. I jump in, because there’s something I genuinely want to know. “What’s the weirdest spell you’ve ever cast?”

  Eden raises an eyebrow. “I don’t do spells, that’s not part of my practice.”

  “You used to,” Lucy insists. “You totally used to, you carried around that giant spellbook for all of seventh grade.”

  “Ugh, that book was horrible. The author named herself Sapphire Lonewolf. I didn’t know any better yet.”

  “Okay, so,” I press on. “What was the spell you did then, even if you don’t do them now?”

  Eden blushes down to the roots of her hair. “A love spell.”

  “On who?” Avi asks.

  “His name was Daniel.”

  Lucy bursts out laughing. “Danny the Dragon.”

  Eden gets redder. “He liked dragons, so what?”

  “No, Eden, he didn’t like dragons, he seriously believed deep down in his soul he was a dragon.”

  “I liked dragons, too,” Eden says, ignoring Lucy. “But he barely noticed me and I was too shy to talk to him, so I went through that book and decided to try a spell. It was called Aphrodite’s Elixir, and I had to gather all this stuff—rose petals, cloves, lavender, and kosher salt for some reason—and ask Isis and Hecate to help me ‘ensnare my future lover,’ which even I thought was over the top, and I was twelve.”

  I don’t get why Eden thinks that’s weird, but worshipping ancient Irish gods is a perfectly normal thing to do. Lucy thinks it’s weird Eden follows ancient gods, but has no problem living by the whims of an itinerant street preacher. I don’t understand either of them.

  “So the spell didn’t work?” I ask.

  “Of course not. Danny started going out with Kristin O’Donnell, who was convinced she could talk to horses. I started reading more about Celtic Reconstructionist ideas and decided spellcasting wasn’t for me.”

  “Because it’s not real,” I say.

  “
Because it wasn’t real for me. I had to read, and talk to other people, and change my mind a lot before I figured out exactly what I did believe in.”

  “How can you change your mind about what’s real?” I say. “Either something exists or it doesn’t.”

  “But that’s so limiting,” Eden says. “You can decide you were wrong about something, and it doesn’t mean you were stupid. You just know more now. If I still thought the same as I did in seventh grade, I’d be worried.”

  I mean, sure, in seventh grade I thought girls were gross and one day I’d be tall enough to dunk a basketball, but that’s kid stuff. The bigger things, though, those stay the same.

  Don’t they?

  “It’s your turn,” Lucy says to me. “Truth or dare?”

  My mouth is dry. My stomach is doing somersaults. I have to pee.

  “Come on, truth or dare?” Avi asks, sitting up. I don’t like the way he’s looking at me.

  “Um.” I swallow. “I need some water.”

  I stand on shaky legs and escape to the kitchen. I’m pouring myself a slightly less-stiff drink when Avi materializes at my side like a horror movie jump gag. I almost spill the drink.

  “Hey,” he whispers, as if we’re plotting something.

  “I don’t think you need another,” I tell him, sliding the vodka away.

  “You should talk to Lucy,” he says.

  I look back into the living room. Lucy hasn’t moved from her spot on the carpet. “Why?”

  “Dude,” he says, too close to my ear, too loud. “Dude. You know why.” I shake my head. “You like her. So tell her already.”

  A wave of nausea overtakes me. “I don’t—”

  “I’m not blind,” he says. “If I have my glasses on, I’m not blind. At first, I didn’t think it was a great idea, but you’re a good guy, mostly. And I like you, mostly. And Lucy should be happy, she deserves to be happy. So, tell her.”

  “Of course she should be happy,” I say. “But—”

  “I’ll get her,” Avi decides. He turns to the living room. “Lucy!”

  My nausea is instantly joined by panic. “Wait, no—” I grab for Avi’s arm, spilling my drink onto the floor in the process.