Heretics Anonymous

by Katie Henry

  Holy shit. A real, full-blown apology.

  “Me too,” I say, because I am, and even if I wasn’t, it would be the right thing to say.

  “Your mom doesn’t work, and I do, so choices get made based on that,” Dad says. “But it doesn’t mean I’m more important than her, or you, or Sophia. That’s not how I feel.” He pauses. “Is that how you feel?”

  “Sometimes. Like with the sandwiches.”

  Dad’s forehead creases, like he has no idea what I’m talking about. “What sandwiches?”

  How does he not remember this? “Whenever we’d go to the beach or on a car trip, Mom would make everyone PB and J. Except you. You always got a way better, way fancier sandwich. Like the whole thing was about you.”

  Dad is still for a moment. Then he says, “Do you know why I won’t eat peanut butter sandwiches?”

  I shrug. “Because you don’t like them.”

  “Yes,” Dad says. “But do you know why I don’t like them?”

  I always assumed it was one of Dad’s things, like everyone has. Sophia can’t have any of her food touch on her plate. I like olive oil but hate olives. Mom gets visibly nauseous whenever we pass a fried chicken place. I shake my head.

  Dad sighs, and I notice he’s started picking at the threads in the chair cushion, which isn’t like him at all. He hates people picking at stuff, like water bottle labels. It’s another one of his things.

  “Do you remember meeting your grandfather, before he died?” he asks.

  I don’t see what this has to do with peanut butter. “Yeah, all his furniture was covered in plastic and he asked me what my name was, over and over. His nurse was nice, though. She gave me candy.”

  Dad keeps picking at the cushion. He opens his mouth to say something, then stops. Like the words are there, but he can’t figure out whether I should hear them.

  “My dad,” he begins, and I realize I’ve never heard him say those words: my dad. “My dad had a hard time holding down a job when I was a kid.” He shakes his head. “He liked hanging out with his buddies more, or watching TV, or sitting around the house. There was never a lot of money going around, and he didn’t want government help, so my mom stretched everything the best she could, for me and my brothers.”

  A mom who died before I was born. Brothers I’ve never even met. Dad clears his throat.

  “You know one of the easiest, cheapest meals you can make? A peanut butter sandwich. It sticks to your ribs. And food pantries always have a loaf of Wonder Bread and some Skippy. So I ate peanut butter sandwiches practically every day of my life, for at least one meal, until I left home.” His mouth twists. “I can’t stand to eat it now. It’s too hard to get the taste out of my mouth.”

  He looks at me, and I don’t know what to say. He never talks about his family, about his childhood, and now I know why. Because it was painful, and sad, and hard in ways I can’t imagine. Our two-door fridge, constantly stocked with whatever I could want, never seemed important until now.

  “Dad. I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

  “That’s not what I wanted for you and Sophia,” Dad says. “And I thought, if I could do what my dad didn’t, have a stable job and raise you in a clean house in a good neighborhood with good schools, you wouldn’t need anything else. I thought if you were fed, and clothed, and safe, that would be enough.” Dad shuts his eyes. “Obviously, it’s not.”

  “We need you,” I say, not trying to rub it in, only show I understand. “Mom needs another adult around. Sophia wants to Skype with you every night, and she started sleeping with one of your sweaters.” I pause, and I can feel Dad waiting. “And me. I need you here, too.”

  I drop my eyes to the comforter, suddenly embarrassed for some reason.

  “I know,” Dad says. “I need to be here. And you need to stay here.” I look up. Did he say stay here? “We all do,” he continues. “For now. It’s not fair to move you or Sophia so soon. When she’s out of elementary school and you’re at college, we’ll reconsider.”

  My heart is pounding and maybe I’m dreaming, because—stay here? “But your job, and Belgium, and—”

  He holds a hand up to stop me. “I sat down with Craig this morning and we’ve reworked my position slightly. I’m going to be taking on more responsibilities at our local branch, traveling less, and taking a small pay cut.” He smiles. “So you are going to do everything in your power not to get kicked out of your very expensive private school. No more stealing from nuns, no more drive-by vandalism, no more worrying the hell out of your mom. Do we have a deal?”

  If he can negotiate with his boss, maybe I can, too. “Can I have my phone back?”

  He laughs. “Nice try. Not yet.”

  And I know this isn’t going to end with us hugging it out, or declaring how much we love each other, because that’s not us and might never be. But something has changed, small and quiet. I know things about him I didn’t before, things he doesn’t share with people, parts of him that hurt. He wants me to understand him. He wants to understand me. And even if he won’t give me my phone back, he wants us to start to become equals. He’s asking me to agree.

  I nod. “Deal.”

  28

  OVERALL, BEING SUSPENDED is not the worst thing that’s happened to me. I don’t have access to my phone, and the TV is also off-limits, but I have books and homework and SAT prep to do, anyway. Mom keeps treating me like some kind of wronged political prisoner, bringing me sandwiches and apple slices with peanut butter. But by Monday, I’m bored of my books and can’t look another Spanish conjugation worksheet in the face.

  On Wednesday, I’ll be back at school, where my one, singular goal will be to convince Lucy I’m not a horrible person. I don’t know how to fix this. If I could just understand what was going on in her head—

  I yank open the bottom drawer of my desk. How could I have forgotten? I do have a window into Lucy’s head and heart, bound and annotated and titled The New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition. I have her Bible. I curl up on my bed with a bowl of chips and start to read.

  Genesis is straightforward enough, and I know the story of Moses and the ten plagues of Egypt, but the further along I go, the weirder things get. David kills Goliath and also his mistress’s husband, then David’s son rapes his own sister, and it only goes morally downhill from there. By the time I reach Judges, I’ve got to talk to someone about all this.

  “So there’s this guy, and he’s traveling around ancient Judea with his concubine,” I explain to Mom as she does dishes and Sophia does Punnett squares for fun at the kitchen table. “And he decides to spend the night at this other man’s house. So then, for no reason, this perverted mob of townspeople show up and are like, ‘We want to have sex with your guest, hand him over.’ So then the concubine—”

  “Michael, this is a wildly inappropriate story,” Mom says, nodding her head at Sophia.

  “It’s in the Bible!” I say.

  “I know what a concubine is,” Sophia protests.

  “You do?” Mom says, probably regretting buying Sophia a subscription to a research database for Christmas.

  “Yes,” Sophia says. “It’s a purple flower.”

  Mom looks relieved. “That’s a columbine.”

  Here’s how the story ends: The man who owns the house won’t give up his guest, but he will give up his daughter or the traveler’s concubine. So they shove the concubine out, the sex mob rapes and murders her, and then the traveler takes her body, cuts it up, and sends a piece to each of the tribes of Israel. Lucy’s annotations say it’s a pro-hospitality message. I say it’s sick.

  I don’t understand how the St. Clare’s library can ban so many books for being “inappropriate” when they have a whole row of Bibles. Harry Potter might be a wizard, but I’m sure he never hacked a woman to pieces.

  I decide to skip ahead to the New Testament. In the Gospel of Luke, I find the Magnificat, Mary’s song of joy and revolution, and I hear Lucy’s voice as I read it, remembering t
he way she whispered it on the Day of the Little Candles. As I move through the other Gospels, I find myself liking Jesus, in spite of myself. He’s a good guy, healing the sick, raging against hypocrites, and giving solid life lessons. Be kind, be generous, be forgiving. I like this one, too:

  Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of people in order to be noticed by them. (Matthew 6:1)

  Lucy doesn’t have a note for that, but I think it means you should do what’s right because it’s right, not because you want people to see and praise you for it.

  In that same Gospel, Peter, Jesus’s disciple, asks Jesus how many times he must forgive someone who’s wronged him. Seven? Peter suggests. No, Jesus says, better make it seventy-seven. All men must forgive others, he tells his followers, to be forgiven by God.

  When I get back to school, I hope Lucy keeps that chapter and verse in mind.

  At home over the last few days, I wondered what going back to school would be like. Would I be greeted with applause and flower garlands as I walked through the hallways? Probably not, given the money redirected toward a new bulletin board. Would the St. Clare’s Crusaders bludgeon me with Bibles? Maybe, but I could take them.

  In the end, all I get are stares. Stares in the hallway from people I don’t know, stares from teachers, and stares from Connor and Jess across our chemistry lab table. The only one who isn’t staring is Theresa.

  “Can you pass me the iodine?” she asks Connor, even though it’s sitting right in front of me. I hand it to her. She looks straight ahead. “Connor,” she repeats. “Can you pass me the iodine?”

  I don’t know if Theresa thinks she’s hurting my feelings or if she can’t bear to touch my sinful, vandalizing hands. I put the iodine down and let Connor pass it to her.

  By lunch, I’m exhausted by the weight of people’s eyes on me, and all I want to do is sit with Lucy and Avi and tell them everything that’s happened since last Wednesday, like it’s normal again. But Lucy told me to get lost, and I doubt our last conversation sweetened her on my lunchtime presence.

  I catch Max at his locker, stuffing his forbidden cloak under some textbooks. He jumps when I say his name, then relaxes.

  “I thought you were Father Peter,” he says, and I try not to be offended. His eyes dart to his cloak. “You won’t tell, right?”

  “Never.”

  He smiles, but only for a split second. “I’m not really supposed to be talking to . . .” He trails off, making a quick sweep of the hallway with his eyes. I don’t think he’s watching out for Father Peter.

  “I know,” I say. “I’m so sorry, Max.”

  He shrugs. “It’s okay. I mean, it sucks you got in trouble and it sucks more that we can’t ever go down to the room again. But I figure you didn’t mean for that to happen.”

  A flood of relief washes over me, because if Max understands, Max whose idea of a hot date is a dead Polish physicist, then Eden and Avi and Lucy will come around. If Max understands, maybe I’m not lost.

  “It’s lunch,” I say hesitantly. “Do you want to—?”

  Max’s face drops. He busies himself with concealing his cloak in his locker. “I want to be a good friend,” he declares. “It’s important to be good to your friends.” He pauses, to make sure I get it. “But I have to be a good friend to Lucy, too. And she was here first.”

  He closes his locker, and I swallow down the hard lump in my throat. Forgive before you can be forgiven.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I understand.”

  I find a table by myself in the corner of the dining hall. This is the first time I’ve ever sat alone at lunch, not counting the time in second grade I tormented Emma Kaprow with a puppet made out of bologna and the lunch aide made me sit by myself.

  I should have sat alone my first day at St. Clare’s. I should have been alone, but I didn’t make it that far. Lucy made sure I didn’t. I scan the cafeteria for her red ribbon, and find her standing by a trash can, busing her tray, her back to me. Suddenly, Theresa’s beside her, and I can’t hear what she’s saying, but she looks pissed. Is this about Heretics Anonymous? Theresa jabs an accusatory finger in Lucy’s shoulder, and then I’m up before I can think better of it. I march across the dining hall and wedge myself between Theresa and Lucy, facing Theresa so Lucy doesn’t have to acknowledge me.

  “What’s your problem?” I say to Theresa, and she glares back at me.

  “Is that a serious question?” she snaps. “You and your girlfriend are practically terrorists.”

  People need to be stingier with the word “terrorist.” And “girlfriend.”

  “What happened was my fault,” I say, and Theresa folds her arms across her chest. “If you’re going to lose your shit on someone, it should be me, not her.”

  “You?” Theresa sweeps her braid back, looking at me like I’m a bug she’d rather crush than talk to. “I don’t care about you.”

  “You cared enough to turn me in,” I point out.

  “You were guilty,” she says. “It was the right thing to do.” She takes a step closer. “But you don’t care about my faith. You don’t know anything about my faith, or this school—you did all this stuff for fun. Not because you cared, not because it mattered to you. So you aren’t worth my time.”

  Theresa turns on her heel and goes, and I find Lucy has disappeared and been replaced by an unsmiling Avi.

  “Don’t come near her,” he says.

  “I was trying to help.”

  “Your chivalry knows no bounds,” he says. “Leave her alone, or I’ll—”

  “What?” This is none of Avi’s business; he’s not Lucy’s bodyguard, and she doesn’t need one, anyway. “You’ll kill me?”

  “Hell no,” he says. “I’m not going to prison for you.”

  And then he’s gone too, and I’m left standing by the trash. Alone, again. A hundred eyes staring, again. I head back to my table. My fries are cold. My friends hate me and my enemies can’t even be bothered with that.

  “Hello,” a voice above me says. Jenny has sidled up to my table, lunch tray in her hands. “May I sit down?”

  I nod warily. I nearly got her kicked out of school, so I can’t imagine this conversation going well. She sits. “Jenny,” I say, because I can guess why she’s here. “I am so, so sorry.”

  She scoffs. “Sorry for yourself.”

  “Sorry for everything.” She shrugs and picks at the cinnamon roll on her tray. “You didn’t end up getting in trouble, did you? I heard them send you back to class.”

  “No, I didn’t get in trouble,” she says, and relief washes over me. She notices. “And before you start thinking you did me some big favor, maybe consider that telling the truth was the least you could do. Absolute bare minimum of human decency.”

  Ouch. Fair, but ouch. “I know.”

  “You’re not a hero. Don’t think you’re a hero.”

  I’ve never thought that before, and I’m not starting now. “I know.”

  “As long as that’s clear,” Jenny says. “Has anyone told you about the news report?”

  “No one’s really talking to me at all.”

  “One of the local stations ran a segment last night,” she says, tearing off a piece of cinnamon roll. “About Ms. Simon, and the concert, and all those posters you made.”

  Oh, good. Now the whole tri-county area knows I’m a massive fuckup.

  “They didn’t say your name or anything. And it was really just a hook to get to the issue of firing teachers under morality clauses. The reporter also contacted a bunch of St. Clare’s kids, and they talked about Ms. Simon and why she had to leave. They mentioned my petition, and I got to say something on camera.”

  Is this the same girl who stumbled through her history report last fall? It’s hard to believe. But it is.

  Jenny shakes her head. “I know my petition might not do anything. I know Ms. Simon probably won’t get her job back. But now people know what happened to her, they know what St. Clare’s did. Maybe they�
��ll think twice before sending their kids here. Maybe they’ll ask questions. Maybe St. Clare’s will want to change.”

  That’s all I wanted. But is that true? I don’t know. If Jenny maybe-believes it, I can, too.

  “I hope they do,” I say.

  “You know what’s messed up, though?” Jenny says. “If you hadn’t made those posters, this probably wouldn’t have made the news. I worked for months and got nowhere. What you did got all the attention, and it wasn’t even your fight.” She pauses. “But something good did come of it. Despite your best efforts.”

  “There’s a metaphor in there, somewhere,” I say.

  “Straight white boy destroys everything, world stops to listen?” She pops a piece of cinnamon roll in her mouth. “That’s the history of the Western world.”

  It makes me feel like shit, but she’s not wrong.

  Jenny gestures at the textbooks I have on the table. “What are you working on?”

  “History homework.”

  “Oh.” She pushes her lunch tray aside. “Want me to help you get caught up?”

  At least one person at this school doesn’t want me dead. Things are going better than expected.

  29

  BY THE NEXT week, people stop staring. I’ve commandeered the two-person table in the dining hall and bring books and homework. Occasionally, Jenny joins me. With all the extra study time, I might pass precalculus. If I get an A, I will consider the possibility of earthly miracles.

  Even my hours helping Father Peter aren’t as bad as I thought. Boring, yes. Monotonous, yes. And if I never have to fold another program for Sunday Mass, I will die happy. But he leaves me alone, doesn’t lecture me or force me to relive what I did.

  One day, as I’m doing battle with a rusty paper cutter from 1965 and Father Peter is ignoring the fact that I’m losing, Max walks into the office.

  “Hello, Mr. Kim,” Father Peter says. “Are you here to pick up your costume?”

  Max’s face darkens. “I’m here to pick up my cloak, Father.”

  Father Peter lets that go, pulling the cloak out of his desk’s bottom drawer. “I’ve tried to be lenient,” he says, and Max’s hands twitch. “But next time, your parents will have to pick it up. Please, leave it at home, like we discussed.”