Heretics Anonymous

by Katie Henry

  No. The longer I stay inside this building, the worse it is. I’ll go out by the back chapel entrance; it’s closer and no one will be leaving that way.

  The hallway’s as quiet as it was before, but now every squeak of my shoes sounds like someone coming up behind me, every saint statue I pass is Father Peter or Sister Joseph Marie out to get me, and even Saint Francis of the Pigeons doesn’t look smug anymore, but judgmental and pissed. I’m almost there. I turn into the hall that will lead me outside, and from where I’m standing, I can see all the way up the other hallway past the chapel to the front entrance, where a large group of people are gathered, staring at something on the wall.

  I have to go. Now. I turn toward the back door, so close, so close, when I hear the creak of a door and a voice that says, “Michael?”

  I turn around, and there is Lucy, peeking out from a doorway to the chapel I didn’t even know existed. She’s standing there wearing a white shirt and black skirt and carrying a water bottle and grinning at me because she doesn’t know yet.

  “What are you doing here?” she whispers. “What about dinner with your parents?”

  A strangled, not-quite-human sound comes out of my throat. Lucy doesn’t notice.

  “I can’t believe you came! Okay, so I know the Adagio, that second piece, was a total disaster, but the Haydn quartet went way better than I expected, except for Maura coming in two bars late—”

  I want to let her keep going. I want to savor this moment where she’s excited and she loves me, before the moment where she finds out what I did and skins me alive. But I can’t, because I still have to get out of here.

  She thrusts her water bottle at me. “I’m not supposed to leave during intermission, but I really need some water. Could you fill it up for me?”

  “I—I can’t,” I say, and my hands are shaking again.

  Lucy frowns. “What do you mean? The fountain’s right—”

  And then she looks up the hallway, toward the fountain. Toward the mass of people gathered around the bulletin board. Lucy looks back at me, her mouth slightly open, not knowing yet, but maybe starting to guess. She glances up the hallway again. Before she can turn back around, before she can ask or guess, I’m gone.

  24

  MAYBE IT’S BECAUSE I got two hours of sleep last night, or maybe it’s because of the thick, cold mist that blanketed the whole town this morning, but St. Clare’s looks even more sinister than usual. I’m standing by the front doors, hesitating to go inside, and the fact that the St. Clare’s bell tower has disappeared into the fog isn’t making it look more inviting. They should shoot a horror movie here.

  I was never scared of horror movies. I always knew when a monster was about to pop out of a closet, always knew the blood and guts were really cornstarch and red food coloring. “Fear is healthy,” Mom told me when I broke my arm climbing the tall, spindly tree in our old backyard. “It tells you when you shouldn’t be doing something.” Dad thought that was silly—you could be careful and brave at the same time.

  I wasn’t careful last night. And I don’t feel brave, either.

  If Mom is right, that fear is a giant orange DANGER sign in your mind, I should leave right now. I should walk back home, crawl into bed, and pretend I’m sick. I should get on a bus to Santa Fe and change my name. I should do anything but walk under St. Clare’s arched brick doorway, because there is nothing good waiting for me inside. At best, Lucy hates me now. At worst, I’m going to get shipped to a re-education camp deep in the Vatican City catacombs, and Lucy will still hate me.

  Just as I’m about to go with Option A, faking a sudden and severe flu, a flash of red ribbon catches my eye. Lucy, wearing a wrinkled uniform skirt and an expression that would freeze fire, is making a beeline for me.

  She called me three times on my walk home last night. Then she started texting. I didn’t answer her, but I kept my phone on anyway, because every beep was a sign she still wanted to talk to me.

  When I got home, I went straight upstairs to my room. No one stopped me or asked me where I’d been. “Not now,” I heard Mom whisper to Dad as I went up the stairs. “He’ll feel better in the morning.”

  I didn’t, though, because I didn’t sleep. Instead, I sat on my bed, staring at my phone as it vibrated with every new call and text from Lucy. I wanted to pick up. I did. I wanted to explain, or try to. But I didn’t want to hear what she’d say back. At 12:18, she called twice in a row, and then everything went silent.

  “Give me your phone.” Lucy holds out her hand but looks straight ahead, through my chest and out the other side, like there’s nothing in front of her.

  “Wait, let me—”

  “No.” She taps her fingers against her outstretched palm. “Give me your phone. Now.”

  I hand it to her. She bends over it, seeming happy to have something to focus on that’s not me.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, and lean over her to see. She has our text conversation thread up on the screen, and her finger is hovering over the Delete All button.

  I make a grab for the phone. “Don’t!” I yell, and she jerks back. Two freshmen standing near us look over, startled. Lucy throws a nervous look in their direction.

  “Do you want me to get expelled?” she hisses, looking right at me for the first time. “Is that what you want?”

  I shake my head.

  “Then shut up,” she says, and taps on the Delete All button.

  Everything Lucy and I have said to each other vanishes into the air like dust. If texts were made of paper, I’d have scraps to gather up. Something to salvage.

  I wait for her to hand me back my phone so I can see the emptiness for myself, but Lucy isn’t done. She finds my texts with Avi. Then Eden, then Max. She purges it all.

  I get it, later than I should. She’s deleting any evidence, making sure if I go down, the rest of them still stand a chance. I should have done that myself, last night, but I didn’t think of it. And Lucy knew I wouldn’t.

  Lucy brings up one final text conversation, and I know what it is without looking. It’s our group text, where we planned our meetings and the party where I told Lucy I couldn’t imagine not knowing her. Lucy presses Delete All one more time.

  I don’t stop her. I don’t even try.

  Lucy hands my phone back, then brushes her hands off on her skirt like they’re contaminated.

  “Find somewhere else for lunch,” she says, speaking to my chest again. “We can’t do anything about seat assignments in history, but otherwise, find somewhere else to be.”

  She turns to leave.

  “I’m moving,” I call after her. Lucy snaps her head around so fast I can hear the wind through her red ribbon. I look down at my shoes. “We’re going to Belgium, in August. That’s why this happened, I . . .” But then I can’t say anything else.

  I hear her breathe out, ragged and heavy. “Then we won’t have to do this for very long, will we?”

  I look up then, but she and her red ribbon have disappeared into the fog and the crowd.

  “Told you you should have come,” Connor says to his girlfriend as they sit down at our lab table.

  “I had a soccer game, what do you want?” Jess mutters, taking out her notebook.

  “Like soccer is more fun than learning Mr. Cartwright is a perv.”

  My blood freezes in my veins. “What are you talking about?” I ask.

  He frowns. “You didn’t hear?” I shake my head, and after checking to see if our teacher’s watching, he pulls out his phone. “The Heretics people put this up during the orchestra concert last night,” he says, scrolling through picture after picture of the red, massacred wall. “You can’t really read any of it, but it’s teachers’ files, like personal stuff about them. Like Mr. Cartwright slept with students, which is super gross.”

  And also super not true. “You took a lot of photos.”

  “Oh no, my mom took these,” Connor says. “That’s why they suck. I was backstage; most of it was taken dow
n by the time I got out.” He puffs up a bit. “I play cymbals.”

  Jess leans in to look at the photos over his shoulder. “I mean, I guess what they did is useful, this time—I’m not going to take AP Lit with Cartwright next year—but, I don’t know. This seems kind of . . . angry.”

  “Sociopathic,” Theresa says, sliding into her seat next to Jess, her arms full of our lab equipment for the day. “I’d call it sociopathic.”

  “That’s not what sociopaths do,” Jess says. “Haven’t you ever seen a serial killer show?”

  “My family doesn’t own a TV,” Theresa says. She turns to Connor. “You’re not supposed to be talking about what happened last night. Ms. Kerr and Father Peter told the whole orchestra not to, but no, you’ve got to send all these photos around, so now everybody knows—”

  Connor gestures at me. “He didn’t know! That’s why we were talking about it. Not everyone in the world saw you tweeting on your recorder last night.”

  Theresa swivels her head to stare at me. “But you were at the concert.”

  My heart drops to my stomach. “What?”

  “You were there. At intermission, I heard Lucy Peña ask you to get her water.”

  I busy myself with the beakers, trying to keep my hands from shaking. “It must’ve been someone else.”

  Theresa narrows her eyes. “She said your name.”

  Our chem teacher calls for order, so I shift my focus from the beakers to the instructions he’s writing on the board, feeling the weight of Theresa’s eyes on my back.

  “By the way, Connor,” I hear her say. “It’s a flute, not a recorder.”

  In the end, Lucy didn’t have to worry about seeing me in history class. During third period, we’re herded into the chapel for mandatory Mass. At first, I’m terrified this has something to do with me and what I did, but it quickly becomes clear this was preplanned. The chapel is decked out in purple, and I hear Maura Kearney complaining that the ashes always make her break out. Ashes? What are they going to burn? Heretics?

  I hang back as everyone files in, not sure where to go. I’ve always sat with Lucy and Avi, but I can’t do that now.

  As I scan the chapel for an empty pew or, even better, an emergency exit door, two eyes lock on mine. Max is sitting in a back pew, twisted around to watch people file in. Eden’s by his side. Lucy must have told them everything, because Max is looking at me like I’m a ghost, and Eden visibly winces. I swallow hard.

  Max puts his hand up like he’s about to beckon me over but then hesitates. Eden shakes her head, eyes down. He steals one more look at me, his eyebrows knit together. Eden whispers something to him, and, hand on his arm, forces him to turn around and face the altar.

  I feel like I’ve been kicked in the gut. I wouldn’t have sat with them. Doesn’t Eden know that? I wouldn’t have done that to them, make them guilty by association. Not even if they’d let me.

  Maybe I can stand at the back. There’s a tap on my shoulder.

  “Would you care to have a seat?” Sister Joseph Marie asks me with faux politeness.

  “Um—”

  “There’s room up front,” she says, and steers me to the very first pew, closest to the altar. She settles in next to me. Fantastic.

  Mass starts, with bells and lethargic organ music, and I’m surprised by how much I remember about when to stand and when to sit. I recognize more and more of the call-and-response between Father Peter and the rest of us, too, but I keep quiet. It would be weird to say things I didn’t believe, just because I know the words. We finally get to the sermon part, where everyone gets to sit for at least five minutes straight. My eyes are heavy and my concentration’s shot, and all I want to do is sleep. But with Sister Joseph Marie on one side of me and Father Peter a couple feet away, I don’t think I’d get away with it.

  Father Peter surveys us from the altar. “Ash Wednesday marks the day Jesus went into the wilderness to fast, pray, and plan for the days ahead,” he says. “And as Christ spent forty days in the desert preparing for His ministry, we spend the forty days of Lent reflecting on our sins, seeking forgiveness, and preparing for the joyful celebration of the Resurrection at Easter.

  “People talk about ‘Catholic guilt,’” he continues. “The idea that Catholics, with our many rules, feel more guilt than others, even in secular situations. In our society, we want freedom from guilt. Restaurants advertise ‘guilt-free’ chocolate cake. We’ve created a society where no one wants to feel guilty—they want to feel good. So the idea of guilt, the idea of Catholic guilt, is always framed negatively. But I disagree,” Father Peter says. “Guilt is a gift.”

  Fear is healthy. Guilt is a gift. I’m scared and guilty, and I don’t feel strong or grateful.

  “Guilt is painful, that’s undeniable. But when we acknowledge our wrongdoings, we begin to understand, for a moment, the pain Christ suffered on the cross. He died so that we might live, so that we might repent of our sins and be forgiven. The pain of our guilt is payment for the pains of his sacrifice.”

  I’ve never been this close to the altar before, and I’ve never been so close to the giant, bleeding Jesus-on-the-cross hanging on the back wall. There are gashes all over his body—on his torso, legs, arms. Blood trickles down from his crown of thorns and a cut on his side that trails from rib to pelvic bone. It’s awful, up close. I can’t believe people worship this, put a bloody, emaciated torture victim next to their stained glass and call it beauty. Pain isn’t beautiful. Suffering isn’t pretty. But maybe that’s the point.

  “Guilt allows us to acknowledge our faults and flaws—but guilt is not enough. It is only one half of the puzzle. We must then ask forgiveness from those we’ve wronged and from God, and resolve to do better in the future. Only then, after confession and penance, can the slate be wiped clean.”

  I can see, I guess, why that would be comforting. The idea that someone already paid for your mistakes and is waiting to absolve you and shower you with love. Even if the world won’t forgive you, God will. But my friends aren’t God. Lucy isn’t God. She won’t bleed for me and then open her arms in forgiveness. I hope she doesn’t have to.

  Someone jostles me. The homily is over, and everyone’s shuffling into line. Is it for Communion? It seems too early. The girl next to me, a tiny freshman, jostles me again.

  “Move,” she says, nodding her head at the line forming at the end of our pew. I stand in line, still thinking about guilt and blood and Lucy, until I’m face-to-face with Father Peter, who is holding a bowl of something chalky and dark. Ashes.

  “Remember you are dust,” he says, drawing an ashy cross on my forehead with his thumb. “And to dust you shall return.”

  I stumble away. I don’t go back to my pew. I walk to the back of the church, flakes of ashes falling from my forehead into my eyes. No one stops me as I push open the heavy door, run to the bathroom, and throw up my breakfast.

  I spend lunch in the bathroom. I don’t throw up again, but I still feel like shit, and besides, I don’t have anywhere else to go for lunch. Lucy made that clear. I sit in the farthest stall to the left, knees drawn up to my chest, listening to people come and go. A lot of them talk about the incident at the concert. And even though I didn’t sign it, everyone seems to think it was the work of Heretics Anonymous, anyway. Some people think it was awesome. Some people think it was confusing and weird.

  I don’t know what I wanted when I stuck all those files up and wrote on the bulletin board and walls. I don’t know what I thought would happen. Did I think the school would rise up like it was the French Revolution and I’d be hailed as an anonymous hero before being exiled to Brussels? Or did I want to hurt someone, anyone?

  There’s no revolution. But I definitely hurt someone.

  When I get to theology after lunch, Lucy and Avi have taken new seats on the far side of the room. My old seat is still open, an empty island in the middle of laughing, chattering classmates. Avi stiffens and starts to get up, but Lucy pulls him down, whispers som
ething in his ear. They turn away.

  In seventh-period Spanish, my last class of the day, I feel an odd sense of relief. Maybe, a desperate part of me hopes, maybe this is over. It’s two p.m., and if they haven’t figured out who put up the posters and spray-painted the wall, maybe they never will. Maybe they think acknowledging what happened will only fuel the fire. Maybe they’ll let this go.

  The classroom phone rings. My Spanish teacher looks up from her notes, surprised. She picks it up, listens for a moment, then turns back to us.

  “Michael,” she says, and has to actively search the room for me, I’ve sunk so low in my chair. “You need to go see Father Peter in his office. They’re waiting for you.”

  They?

  As I walk down the empty hallways, my mind’s in a dozen places at once. How did they figure out it was me? Did they see me on their surveillance video? Did they find fingerprints? Do private schools have the resources to take fingerprints? Have I ever even been fingerprinted? I think when I was as a kid, as part of a stranger-danger program, but maybe your fingerprints change as you grow up. Maybe that’s my best defense.

  Maybe I’m in way over my head.

  And what did my Spanish teacher mean by “they”? Who’s waiting in Father Peter’s office already, about to go down for something I did? Eden and Max? Avi? As I get closer to the office, I can hear someone crying—a girl. Oh no. Not Lucy. It can’t be Lucy.

  I round the corner and just about cry myself, I’m so relieved. The girl sobbing on the bench outside Father Peter’s office isn’t Lucy. It’s Jenny Okoye.

  Wait. Jenny?

  “Hey,” I say, and she looks up at me with wet, puffy eyes. “Are you okay?”

  She shakes her head, glancing at the door to the admin offices. “They—they think I did that, what happened last night at the concert. Did you hear about it, the posters and stuff?”

  “Yeah,” I say, after a pause. “I heard about it.”

  “I didn’t do it,” she protests. “I wasn’t even there. But first there was that thing with the fake paper last month, and now this, and everyone thinks I did it, and I didn’t do anything!”