Heretics Anonymous

by Katie Henry

  “I can be a wingman!” Avi insists, trying to pull his sleeve out of my grip. “Let me be your wingman!”

  When Lucy walks through the door, what she sees is me and Avi yelling at each other, locked in a battle for his flannel shirt, and standing in a puddle of vodka.

  “Uh,” she says. “Everything okay?”

  “We’re fine,” I say.

  “Michael has something to tell you,” Avi says, louder.

  Lucy turns and looks at me expectantly, adjusting the collar of her amazing sweater. Once, when I was nine, I fell out of the tree in our backyard and broke my arm. Before I felt any pain, I lay there, the wind knocked out of me, knowing there was air all around me but unable to get any of it into my lungs.

  This feels worse.

  “I—” It’s all there, everything I feel, and Lucy’s right here, bright-eyed and smiling, but all I can say is “I have to throw up.”

  And then I run out the kitchen door, like the absolute coward I am.

  The light in Avi’s bathroom is way brighter than it was an hour ago, and it hurts my eyes. I stay in the bathroom longer than I need to, trying to figure out whether I feel sick because I drank on an empty stomach or because I couldn’t, wouldn’t tell Lucy how I felt. I could have said I loved her, I think about taking off her clothes layer by layer, I wish she’d trade loving God for loving me. I didn’t say anything.

  There’s a knock at the door.

  “Avi,” I say, “do not talk to me right now. Consider not talking to me ever.”

  “It’s Lucy.”

  I turn the doorknob without getting up from the rug. I avoid looking at Lucy as she shuts the door behind her and sits down next to me.

  “So,” she says. “That was . . . weird.”

  “What did Avi tell you?”

  “He just kept saying, ‘I can be a wingman, why won’t anyone let me be a wingman.’”

  “He’s drunk. You should get back to him.”

  “I’ve got a minute. I told everyone I needed to take a call outside.” Her hand brushes my arm, just for a second. “Michael. What’s going on?”

  “Avi wanted me to tell you something.”

  She shrugs. “So why didn’t you?”

  “It’s not important,” I say, but that’s a lie. “I felt sick.” That’s only half a lie.

  “If you hadn’t felt sick,” Lucy says slowly, like she’s cracking a riddle, “what would you have said?”

  I take a breath. Then another. “I would have said . . .” I start off, and no room has ever been quieter than this one. “I would have said that on my first day in history class, I walked right past you. I sat behind you without even looking at you or anybody else because I was pissed I had to be there in the first place. I thought no one at a school like that could possibly be like me, be friends with me. I walked right past you.”

  Lucy smiles at me, and I smile too, thinking of the way she glared at me when she caught me following her through the hallways. But I have to keep going. There’s more I have to say.

  “I would have said—when you started to talk about saints, that’s when I knew I was wrong. I wasn’t alone. I could have friends, real friends. And you chose to be my friend. Even though I was a jerk about your religion, you still wanted to be my friend, and you let me join the group even though I’m not a heretic at all, and you fixed my theology homework and stole from a nun and gave me your Bible and I can’t believe I walked right past you. I should have known, before I even knew your name, that you were going to be important.”

  Lucy has stopped smiling. She’s staring at me with her mouth half open. She doesn’t look embarrassed, like I thought she might. Or overcome with joy, like I hoped she might. She looks overwhelmed. She looks like she’s seeing me for the first time.

  “I’m so glad you said something, that day in history. Because I could have kept walking past you, and I might not have known you until later, or maybe not at all. And I can’t—I can’t imagine not knowing you.”

  I exhale, drop my eyes to the carpet, feel the knot in my shoulders loosen. I’m done. Silence is filling up the room again, and soon there’s going to be no air to breathe.

  “Quick question,” Lucy says. “Did you actually have to throw up?”

  I shake my head.

  She nods. “Okay. Good.”

  She yanks me forward by my shirt collar and I’m kissing Lucy, or really, she’s kissing me, and the fluorescent bathroom lights dim and so does the party noise outside the door, because there is nothing, nothing else but her. Her hands balled in my shirt, her hair brushing against my neck, her mouth on mine. Life can’t possibly exist outside of this moment. What would be the point?

  Someone bangs on the door, and we break apart. “Michael,” Max says. “We’re going to watch a movie. Come out when you feel better, okay?”

  Lucy and I look at each other. No one knows she’s in here. No one knows what happened—except us. Do we want them to know? Does she?

  “Be out in a second,” I call to Max, and listen as he pads away from the door. Lucy looks like she’s holding her breath. “What do we do now?”

  She considers this. “I think we should watch a movie.” She gets up and offers me her hand. I let her pull me up, and before she opens the door, she kisses me. It’s quick. But the way she kisses me, it feels like she might do it again.

  Lucy leaves the bathroom first, and I follow her after a minute. The sleeper sofa in the living room has been folded out and Avi’s sprawled on top of it, already half asleep. Eden and Lucy are setting up floor cushions and sleeping bags, and Max is rummaging through Avi’s DVD collection.

  “Why are all your movies from the 1940s?” he complains to Avi. “That’s just bizarre.”

  “Nghhh,” Avi says, rolling onto his side.

  “No film noir,” Eden decides. “Pick something we’ll all like.”

  Max frowns, rummages some more, then holds up a DVD of The Breakfast Club.

  “Seems appropriate,” Lucy says, settling herself on the far side of one of the cushions.

  I hang back as Eden and Max set up the movie. I figure I’ll sleep on a pad with Max, if there’s room, or on the floor. I don’t mind sleeping on the ground. Dad and I used to go camping when I was younger. Mom wouldn’t come—she hates dirt and bugs and a lack of showers—but I always liked sleeping close to the ground, hearing crickets and frogs and smelling the grass under the tent, like the whole earth had swallowed you up.

  But as the movie starts, there’s a space on the sleeping pads, big enough to be on purpose, and it’s not next to Max. It’s next to Lucy. I’m not sure if I should. We might switch around to go to sleep, but still, I don’t want to make this weird for her. She looks up at me.

  “You’re missing it,” she says, and doesn’t tell me to sit next to her, but doesn’t object when I do.

  18

  “MICHAEL.”

  My mouth feels like cotton and someone is shaking me out of a great dream, one where Lucy and I are stranded on a desert island with lots of privacy and little clothing. I try to slide back into sleep, but the shaking gets more insistent.

  “Michael, wake up.”

  I open my eyes to see the real Lucy, the one wearing pajamas instead of a palm-frond bikini, kneeling over me.

  “Sorry,” she whispers. “But it’s almost nine. Can you drive me home?”

  “Uh” is all I can say, because not only did I wake up five seconds ago, but Lucy’s right hand is about five inches away from my leftover dream boner. This would probably freak her out, if she knew, because it’s really freaking me out, and I’m attached to it.

  “No one else is up yet,” Lucy says.

  “I AM UP,” Leftover Dream Boner says.

  I sit up in my sleeping bag and draw my knees to my chest, because maybe that will help. Lucy’s shirt slips a little off her shoulder. That does not help.

  “So can you drive me?” Lucy asks.

  “CARS ARE PLACES PEOPLE HAVE SEX,” Leftove
r Dream Boner reminds me.

  I clear my throat. “Sure,” I say to Lucy. “Totally. I just have to get ready. And stuff.”

  “Okay,” she says, but stays right there, like she’s expecting I’m going to climb out of my sleeping bag and start getting ready, which I can’t do because she’s still right there. So I stare at her helplessly and wonder when death will come.

  “Okay,” she says again, sounding suspicious and confused. She picks herself up off the floor and starts for the kitchen. “I’m going to get a glass of water. In there.”

  As soon as the kitchen door closes, I bolt out of my sleeping bag and down the hall to the bathroom.

  “DID YOU NOTICE SHE WAS ONE HUNDRED PERCENT NOT WEARING A BRA?” Leftover Dream Boner asks.

  “Shut the fuck up,” I tell Leftover Dream Boner.

  Five minutes later, with my face washed, teeth brushed, and Leftover Dream Boner mercifully gone, I join Lucy in the living room and pack up my bag. Lucy is already packed, and she’s put on a sweatshirt and sneakers. As I put on my shoes, she leans over Avi, still sprawled across the sleeper sofa, and nudges him awake.

  “Avi.”

  He makes a sound like a dying sheep and pushes her hand away. She nudges him again, harder.

  “It’s nine, I’m going home now. I put out some Gatorade for you on the kitchen table.”

  “Why are you yelling?” he mumbles, even though she isn’t.

  “Michael’s driving me.”

  “Okay.”

  “So we’ll see you later.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you want us to take the bottles out?”

  “Please,” Avi says, and buries his face in his pillow.

  I retrieve the bag full of empty bottles from under the kitchen table. As I pass by the couch, a hand snakes out and grabs my ankle. I drop the bag on the floor, right by Avi’s head.

  Lucy’s head turns as the bottles clatter against one another. Eden stirs in her sleeping bag. Avi claps his hands over his ears and buries his head farther into the pillow. And Max, eyes still closed and hand still on my ankle, mumbles, “Don’t throw the bag in the recycling.”

  “What?”

  “Only recycle the bottles. They can’t—” He yawns. “—process plastic bags.”

  He snuggles back in his sleeping bag.

  Outside, Lucy and I dutifully separate the bottles from the trash bag before getting into my car.

  “Is this weird?” Lucy asks as I start the ignition.

  I hesitate. Maybe she’s thinking about last night. “Is what weird?”

  “Leaving a sleepover this early. What’s the etiquette, are you supposed to wait until everyone’s awake, or—?”

  “Have you never had a sleepover before?”

  “My mom wasn’t into the idea. Whenever I’d ask, she’d act all confused and say, ‘But you have a bed here, mija.’”

  I’m relieved it wasn’t our kiss she thought was weird, but I wonder if we’re going to talk about it. I don’t know if I want to. I mean, I do want to, at least part of me does. The part of my brain that wants things—like pizza or Lucy with her shirt off—is screaming at me to talk about it. But another part of my brain, the part that keeps me from touching hot stoves, is holding that first part back. It must have a name.

  “What’s the part of your brain that makes you want things?” I ask Lucy as we drive down Avi’s block.

  “The limbic system,” she says, because of course she knows. “Why?”

  “No reason.”

  We drive in silence for a minute. When I shift gears, she shakes her head.

  “I can’t believe you can drive stick,” she says. “Who even has a stick shift anymore?”

  “Lots of people,” I say. “Like my dad. He says the car responds to you better, and you have to focus more, so you drive safer.”

  “More safely.”

  “You probably shouldn’t correct your chauffeur’s grammar.”

  She laughs.

  “So you’ll only drive an automatic?” I ask.

  She picks at her nails. “I actually don’t drive anything.”

  “You don’t drive?”

  I know Lucy’s family only has one car, the one her stepdad takes to work every day, so I assumed that’s why Lucy never talked about driving.

  “Didn’t your mom teach you?” I ask, remembering too late that Lucy’s mom hasn’t been around for over a year. She missed Lucy turning sixteen. The back of my neck gets hot. Why did I say that?

  “Or your stepdad,” I add, trying to recover. “What about your stepdad?”

  If the mention of her mom bothered Lucy, it isn’t showing on her face. “Oh, he tried. A couple times. But I don’t want to drive.”

  Sometimes I don’t understand this girl at all. “Why not?”

  She looks at me, then back at the road. “I do a lot, you know? For my brothers, and Jake.” She lists it off on her fingers. “Most of the cooking, all of the cleaning, the laundry, picking them up from after-school. But there’s some stuff I can’t do, like get the groceries and take them to doctor’s appointments, because I don’t drive.”

  I don’t even know how to do laundry. Everything Lucy does for herself and her brothers, my mom does for me. Lucy’s mom left and Lucy took her place. The weight of that sinks into my hands, and when Lucy reminds me to make a left, the steering wheel feels heavy.

  “I don’t mind doing what I do,” Lucy says, like she’s trying to convince both herself and me. “I love them. But if I learned how to drive—I’d have to do even more. And I guess I don’t really want to.” She sighs. “Is that selfish?”

  Lucy has never been selfish in her life.

  “No,” I say. “It’s human.”

  And she nods and looks less worried.

  “I don’t drive that much anymore, either,” I say, trying to make her feel better. “My mom always needs hers, and my dad’s is a company car, so I can’t drive that.” I shrug. “Just one more way he ruined my life.”

  Lucy laughs, but not like she thinks it’s funny. “You have a really low bar for life-ruining.”

  “What?”

  She looks at me like I’m a kid who can’t quite figure out basic addition. “Your dad didn’t ruin your life.”

  She’s barely even spoken to my dad; how would she know? “He moved us here—”

  “—so he could take a better job, right?” she says. “So you could live in a nice house, and your nice mom could stay home and cook you breakfast every morning, so you could go to a really good high school, so you could go to college and not even worry about how to pay for it.” She looks out the window. “I think he did this for you.”

  If we hadn’t moved again, if Dad hadn’t done this to me—or for me—I wouldn’t be sitting in this car with Lucy at all. I’m glad I’m here, but I’m still mad at my dad for the way it happened. And maybe that’s not fair.

  We drive in silence for a minute.

  “Hey, so,” I say, not sure if I want to hear the answer to my next question. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Lucy glances over her shoulder. “Talk about how you just missed the turn?”

  Shit. I brake, put the car in reverse. “Talk about last night.”

  “I—” She wraps her arms around herself. “We don’t have to. It’s okay.”

  “I want to.”

  Lucy nods, looking all at once hopeful and terrified.

  “I shouldn’t have done that,” she says, and my heart plummets. “Without asking, and we were both a little drunk, but you were drunker, I think, and—”

  Wait. Does she think she took advantage of me? “Hold up,” I say. “I wanted you to do that. I’m glad you did that.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Obviously.”

  “It’s just—” She hesitates. “No one’s ever wanted me to do that before. And—I’ve never wanted to do that before.”

  She’s never had a crush? Or has she never let herself feel that way? Lucy wants to be
a priest. Though she knows it’s on the far side of unlikely, it’s still what she wants. Priests don’t have crushes, they don’t kiss people, they don’t date or have sex or get married. With any other girl, a drunken bathroom makeout would be a solid foundation for a relationship, but with Lucy, I’m not so sure.

  “What do you . . . want this to be?” I ask, feeling my pulse in my fingers as I flick on the turn signal.

  She gulps audibly. “Be?”

  “I mean, was this a one-time thing? Or do you want to, I don’t know—go steady?”

  She bursts out laughing. “Only if we can get milk shakes and go to the sock hop afterward. Go steady?”

  “You know what I mean.” I can feel my hand slipping on the steering wheel. “Do you . . . want to be my girlfriend?”

  Then, silence. I keep my eyes on the road, waiting, just waiting, for her to say no.

  She clears her throat. “Do you want me to be your girlfriend?”

  “I asked first!”

  I steal a glance away from the road. Lucy’s smiling the way she did before our first theology class, like she knows something I don’t. Did she know that day? Not just that she’d bring me into Heretics Anonymous, but that she’d bring me into her life?

  “I want to,” I tell her. “If you want to, I want to.”

  She nods. “Okay. Me too.”

  I pull the car over.

  “Michael, this isn’t my block.”

  “I know.”

  I kiss her, and I don’t care that my seat belt’s practically strangling me, because it’s even better than last night. She wants this, even without alcohol and the world’s worst wingman egging her on, she wants to do this. It feels almost like being underwater, quiet and dark, the rest of the world just above the surface, but so far away. It’s a long time before we come up for air.

  “About last night,” she says. “I wanted to say, it was—it was a really nice Christmas gift.”

  “The perfume?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “Not the perfume.”

  We go back under.

  19

  WHEN WE RETURN to St. Clare’s in the second week of January, I half expect the place to be on lockdown, with barbed wire and nuns with metal detectors, weeding out any hint of dissent. But everything looks the same—if there’s another crackdown coming, no one’s letting on.