by Antony John
“Show?”
“Event. Signing. Whatever you want to call it.” He rubs the crop of fresh stubble on his chin. “Oh, and please tell me you heard about the change of venue tomorrow. I left three voicemails.”
I don’t even answer—my slumping shoulders speak for me.
“Geez. Your pastor—Andy—arranged with the bookstore to have the event at your church. Sounds like a big place. A thousand seats, he told me.”
I swallow hard. “It’s huge.”
“He reckons we’ll fill it too. Said we’d need a thousand copies of Hallelujah. Minimum. That’s the kind of talk Uncle Colin likes to hear. I’ve asked all the bookstores in St. Louis to send stock, so we have enough. It’s costing a fortune—enough to keep me up at night. And if the National Enquirer runs their story on the minibar, we’re completely…” His voice peters out. “You’ve gone very pale, Luke.”
“Yeah,” I croak.
He pats my leg. “Forget it. We’ll talk about it tomorrow morning on the way to St. Louis.”
“We will?”
“Sure. I’m going to ride with you. It’ll give us a few hours to chat.”
“But… but… the car—”
“Is a Hummer, right? By the way, that’s another thing we need to talk about.” He chuckles, like he’s kind of impressed that I’d dare to choose such an expensive vehicle.
“But we don’t have any room.”
“We’ll rearrange your bags. I’m sure you and your brother can squeeze me in. I’ll even take the backseat, if that’s what you’re worried about.” He clicks his fingers. “Hey, I’ve got it: I’ll sit beside your cousin.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, oh! You know, Luke, we have this thing called the Internet. It allows us to look up what people are saying about you. Including all the references to your cousin. Would that by any chance be the purple-haired decoy I met at the hotel?”
I nod apologetically.
“Good grief, Luke. We’re supposed to be on the same team!” He shakes his head. “Please tell me she’s not your girlfriend.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re touring with your girlfriend?” He grimaces. “Wait a minute—when you asked for an extra room… oh, no! You haven’t been sharing a room, have you?”
When I don’t reply, he seems to age ten years.
“You’re sixteen! Do your parents know?”
“They don’t know we’re dating.”
“Wow. We do have a lot to talk about, don’t we?” He glances at the cardboard cutout, and I can tell he’s thinking that I have almost nothing in common with that boy. He’s right too. “Well, rest assured that I will be traveling with you tomorrow morning, no matter what.” He forces a chuckle. “It’s not like you’re saving that fourth seat for a hitchhiker, right?”
I try to laugh too, and fail. I’m pretty sure Alex won’t see the funny side either.
5:10 P.M.
Inspiration Bookstore, Springfield, Missouri
The signing should have started ten minutes ago, but apparently people are still fighting their way in, so I wait behind a panel.
I try to forget that my publicist thinks I’m an alcoholic; that no one has told him I’m traveling with not one, but two female companions; that tomorrow I’ll be doing my shtick in front of a thousand of my closest acquaintances; and that Fran—persona non grata—will be by my side, sporting purple hair, tattoos, and enough stainless-steel earrings to short-circuit a metal detector.
I try to focus. I have to put on a good show.
Whatever that means.
Finally the audience quiets, and a woman in a flowing floral dress introduces me. She uses several superlatives to describe my book. Everyone applauds. By the time she finally calls my name, it’s with such an exaggerated tone that I imagine I’m a starter on an NBA team, skipping onto the court as the lights strobe and loud, raucous music rocks my ears. There must be at least four hundred people, all of them ready to witness something special. And for once I’m absolutely determined to give them that. I owe Colin at least that much.
As soon as I’m positioned behind the lectern, I scan the audience for Fran. She isn’t hard to find, and when our eyes meet, she turns her arm toward me slightly, showing me my words. I touch my own arm, and take comfort in knowing what’s written beneath the shirtsleeve.
I pepper my spiel with jokes, and everyone laughs. I make up anecdotes about what goes on backstage at The Pastor Mike Show, and the response is exhilarating. It has taken a week, but I’ve finally found my groove—what I’m saying matches the tone of what I wrote. I wonder: Is this what I felt during those first few days of writing? Because this feels real. At last I glimpse Hallelujah as everyone else sees it. And it actually makes me proud.
For the next fifteen minutes I barely pause for breath, and the laughter rarely dies down. Even when I raise my hand and open up to questions, chuckles arise unexpectedly, aftershocks from a comedic earthquake. It’s so gratifying that I miss the first question and have to ask the old lady in the pink cardigan to repeat it.
She presses her hands together. “I read a blog that says there’s some confusion about which desert you’re talking about on page one hundred and twelve. May I ask: To which desert are you referring?”
The question sucks the energy from the room. I want to roll my eyes, but settle for a shrug instead. “It’s not any specific desert. It’s just… a desert,” I explain. “So let’s not get overheated about which one, okay?” It’s a good pun, given the circumstances.
No one laughs.
“I’m not getting overheated, Luke,” the lady continues. “I’m a big fan of your book. Bought copies for all my grandchildren. But you were there a month. You must remember which desert it was.”
I assume she’s kidding, but during the ensuing silence she doesn’t even twitch. She truly expects an answer. Even worse, so does everyone else.
“You’re not serious, are you?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says indignantly. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because… well, you know.” I narrow my eyes. “Obviously I didn’t go to any desert.”
I still manage a smile, but it’s hard work. I’m facing a wall of four hundred blank stares and frigid silence. There’s nothing amusing about this scene.
“You didn’t go to a desert?” she says, repeating my words slowly.
I try to say no, but my throat is dry. When I grab a cup, it shakes so violently that water spills over the side.
“But in that case your book is…”
The old lady’s hands cross at her throat. It looks like she’s reprising the international sign for choking, but instead her fingers curl around her pearl necklace as though it’s a rosary. She might even be praying. She can’t bring herself to say fiction, even though that’s what it is. Of course that’s what it is. I never claimed otherwise.
“Excuse me, but which desert did you think he’d gone to?” The question comes from Fran, and she’s looking at the old lady, not at me.
Her faith in me shattered, the old lady seems to be having trouble holding her head up. “I don’t know,” she mumbles. “I just thought… well, maybe Abyssinia. That’s biblical.”
“Whoa! You figured he spent a month alone in Abyssinia?” Fran knits her brows and runs a hand through her crazy messy hair. The overhead lights emphasize the uneven patches of purple dye. “It’s not even called that anymore, right? It’s Ethiopia. Would you let a high school kid go hang out alone in Ethiopia?”
Fran’s trying to be funny, but no one is laughing.
“Come on, people,” she continues. “Wake up. This is a parable. The desert is a metaphor for isolation, loneliness. The point is that faith gives you the strength to overcome even the harshest conditions.”
As it happens, she’s spot on. But the people are clearly having a hard time digesting this information.
“So he didn’t go anywhere?” asks a small boy. He doesn’t even bother to address me, just directs his
question to Fran, like she’s been appointed my official spokesperson.
I’m not sure she’s ideally suited for the job.
“No,” says Fran.
“So it’s just a story. He made it all up.”
“It’s a parable. Remember those? They’re really useful teaching tools—totally Jesus-approved.” She groans. “Please don’t tell me you take everything so literally.”
The boy’s mother stands up. “Don’t talk to my son that way. He’s not the one who made stuff up. Luke is. So back off.”
But Fran doesn’t back off. Instead, she stands too, her baggy army surplus pants unable to hide the smears of Oklahoma dust, her tank top still dotted with dead grass from our make-out session. All the rings in her ears glint in the light, a warning that she’s not someone you mess with. Oh yes, and it looks like someone vomited black ink across her arm.
“Is your faith really so weak?” She’s addressing everyone now. “Is this all it takes for you to doubt what you believe?”
The sound of several hundred subdued voices rumbles across the room, and Fran smiles anxiously. She’s still hopeful, optimistic.
She shouldn’t be; wouldn’t be, if she could see their faces.
“And who are you?” shouts a man at the end of her row.
Fran locates the culprit and returns his glare with interest. “I’m a friend of Luke’s.”
I can see where this is heading. I can hear the venom in her voice, the way she’s folding her arms across her chest, tattoos facing outward for everyone to see. She wants them to know she’s the kind of girl who’ll hold her ground—intellectually, sure, but physically too, if it comes to that. But what will that prove?
“You?” The guy snorts. “No way.”
“Why the hell not?”
The guy flinches at hell, and shakes his head in disgust. “Fine. You’re best buds. I really don’t care. I’m not staying for this.”
He slides out of the row, and when he leaves he’s not alone. At least a dozen people exit with him, though it feels like so many more.
“Why shouldn’t we be friends, huh?” cries Fran. “Do you see him denying it?”
“You are not his friend!” Another woman’s voice, launched from the back of the room, high-pitched and desperate.
I crane my neck to see who dares to take on Fran, and my heart just about stops beating.
It’s Teresa. She’s reprising her Amish look, with high frilly collar and supersized cross. She commands the undivided attention of all men and the unconditional respect of all women. No one will interrupt her.
Teresa wallows in the silence, milks it for an eternity. Then she turns back to Fran and detonates her own bomb. “You’re his girlfriend!” she shouts.
Silence.
I look around, but I can’t focus. The audience is blending, merging into a single entity. Their energy converges, and spills out in waves of disapproving whispers that crescendo into something loud and hurt and threatening.
By the time my mind clears, I realize that not one of them is looking at me.
“You’ve gotta be kidding!” a woman cries.
“Why?” spits Fran, not just standing now, but leaning forward. “Why?”
The woman stands too, leans forward too. “Because you’re rude.”
“Deal with it.”
“Just look at you!”
“What about me? What the hell does that mean?”
That word again. It has no place here—Fran must know that—and there’s another moment of silence while the crowd digests it. But only a moment, and then they’re growling, hurling their discontent at Fran in razor-sharp but oh-so-carefully-inoffensive language. The attacks grow louder and louder, until I can’t make out anyone’s voice but Fran’s as she struggles to hold her ground. They wonder who she is, this force of nature with the foul mouth and the screw you hair. They loathe her too—for being confrontational, for intruding when she wasn’t invited in the first place. She has gate-crashed the perfect party, and as their eyes shift back to me, I kind of sympathize with them.
I could’ve handled this situation. I didn’t need Fran to swear, to turn a routine event into a riot. It didn’t need to be this way.
“Is she really your girlfriend?” asks a small girl in the front row. She fingers the ends of her blond pigtails, face pulled into an anxious expression she should never have to wear. I swear she’s about to cry.
“No.” The answer just slips out—even catches me by surprise—but is lost amid the din.
“Really?” she presses, dubious, or perhaps afraid.
I shake my head. “No.”
More people hear me this time, and their earnest hushes combine, silencing the room in only a couple of seconds.
“Are you sure about that?” Teresa leans back in her chair, those narrowed eyes like thunderclouds waiting for all hell to break loose.
I can imagine the pleasure she’d get from seeing these people leave in protest—all because Fran couldn’t keep her mouth shut. But I won’t give Teresa that victory. Not now. Not ever.
“I don’t even know her,” I say, calm and confident, my eyes never wavering from Teresa.
I expect Teresa to fume—beaten once again—but she doesn’t. She tips her head back and brings her hands together like she’s offering a prayer of thanks.
That’s when I realize what I’ve done.
I wait for a crash of thunder—something appropriately biblical—but the room simply returns to normal. No one is paying any attention to Fran anymore. My words have confirmed their desire that she is merely an intruder; and now she’s history. We’ve moved on without her, joined together in celebrating the oneness of our lives. Our shared values.
But that’s not all. Everybody in the audience—consciously or not—turns away from her too. Having conquered their adversary, they shun her. Worst of all, they’re doing it in support of me. I gave them permission to treat her this way, and now I just want to throw up.
Fran doesn’t shout or scream, or lash out at them. She simply stares at the words on her arm, reading them over and over. Finally, as tears well in her eyes, she nods just once, like the world that had been off-kilter for the last few days has returned to its proper axis. I can tell it’s killing her.
It’s killing me too. I need to fill the silence I’ve created, but what should I say? I feel empty, and now I know for sure what I’ve suspected all along: My words are empty too. Everything I’ve written, everything I’ve said… it’s all just nothingness.
Fran is already out the door. My legs are shaking so badly that I’d fall over if I weren’t leaning against the lectern. I’m so focused on not crying that I have no energy to spare for forming words.
I want to go back in time, before this evening, to the day I started writing Hallelujah. I want to tell myself to stop before it’s too late. I want to tell myself I don’t deserve to own those words. I want to warn myself who I’m destined to become.
But when I recall that day, I know that my younger self would never believe me. Really, how could he?
5:35 P.M.
Inspiration Bookstore, Springfield, Missouri
The signing is over in record time. There’s not much to say anymore, nothing to top the drama of what has just unfolded. Floral-dress lady takes the microphone again, but there’s no applause. People head for the exits so fast you’d think the room was on fire.
Colin grabs my arm as I walk to the signing table. “Fiction?” he whispers. “This is fiction?”
“Yeah. I never said it wasn’t.”
“It’s subtitled: A Spiritual Chronicle of a Sixteen-Year-Old St. Louisan.”
“There are lots of sixteen-year-olds in St. Louis.”
“You told the audience of The Pastor Mike Show that it was one hundred percent truthful!”
“Did I?”
“Don’t play innocent.”
“I’m not. I just don’t remember. I’ve never watched it.”
Colin looks seriously d
epressed. “Hallelujah is about a sixteen-year-old boy from Missouri who bears an uncanny resemblance to you. Nowhere does it state the whole thing is made up.”
“Not the whole thing. Just parts. Anyway, I thought you knew. That’s why I wrote it in the third person.”
Colin has more to say, that’s obvious, but a few people still want to buy a book in spite of what they’ve witnessed. “Go,” he says. “Before everyone runs away.”
The line moves quickly. People want to ask questions, but they’re tongue-tied. I think they’re still in a state of shock, unsure what tonight’s disaster really means. The only words they exchange concern “that freaky girl,” which makes me so tense I can’t even conjure a polite smile.
Then someone ups the ante—calls Fran a freak—and I accidentally screw up the name of the dedicatee. It’s just an accident, but the bookstore owner gives Colin a nudge and I know we’ll be paying for that copy ourselves.
The last person in line places a book on the table. “The name is Chastity.”
I look up and find myself eye to eye with Teresa. She has a large manila envelope in her right hand; her left rests on Hallelujah as though it’s the Bible. “What do you want?” I ask.
“I’m a fan. Heck, I’m not even offended that you got angry at me for pretending to be someone I’m not. Although,” she adds, frowning, “that was quite hypocritical of you, in retrospect.”
“I’m not pretending to be someone else. You know exactly who I am.”
“I do now. And so will everyone else. Soon.”
“What do you want, Teresa?”
“It’s Chastity.”
“I know who you are.”
“No, Luke. You just think you do. But as I’m last in line, we have time to address that.” She holds out her hand. “Chastity Hope.”
“Very funny.” I don’t shake.
She gives up and pulls out her driver’s license. There’s a picture of her. Her name is Chastity Hope. She’s nineteen.
