Jacked Up

by Erica Sage

  Then the bathroom light f lickered on, automatically triggered by the door, and Goth slipped through. I followed. It smelled like apple-vanilla-lavender sweetness.

  I really couldn’t imagine the PC Box in a girls’ room.

  We started at the cubbies, each with a name taped on the top. From every cubby, we grabbed one bottle or compact or comb. We put three dabs of glue on each item and set the objects back into the cubbies.

  I slid Natalie’s bottles of this and that around in her cubby, looked in the little zippered bag there. No evidence.

  “You do Holly,” Goth whispered, interrupting my search. “That’s not my style.”

  At Holly’s cubby, there was a manila folder. I didn’t want to ruin her love poetry or song lyrics or whatever she was storing, so I left that alone and glued the rest of her stuff to the sides of the cubby.

  “I hope this holds with the moisture,” Goth whispered. “You know, the heat and the shower.”

  The door suddenly swung open. Goth crouched in a shower. I backed into a stall and locked it. My blood stormed in my ears.

  “Sarah, is that you?” a girl asked.

  “Mm-hmm,” I mumbled in my best high-pitched, tired-girl voice.

  She peed for a long time. More like tinkled.

  Which was the third reason I couldn’t imagine the PC Box here. Girls tinkle. They don’t rob and steal.

  She f lushed the toilet, washed her hands. We remained still. After a few minutes, the lights went out. We left our hiding places and exited the bathroom, the light popping on behind us.

  Goth and I jungle-crawled across the f loor to the other side of the cabin to the second bathroom, where we glued more girl paraphernalia to the cubbies.

  Time for the duct tape.

  Outside the bathroom, we found shoes and snacks and notebooks, and duct taped them to the ceiling and to the sides of clothing cubbies.

  I was disappointed to not find the PC Box. Not in the cubbies, not under the beds, including Natalie’s. But I was relieved to get out of the dorm. I didn’t want to get caught, and the girly perfumes were giving me a headache.

  We walked back toward our cabin. “It’s way too fruity in there,” I said.

  “No such thing.”

  It took me a second to get his joke. When I laughed, Goth did too.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Go for it.”

  I prefaced the question by telling him about Charlotte. How she was a self-proclaimed “righteous follower of Jesus” who simultaneously hated certain groups of people. “But everyone here knows you’re gay?”

  He shrugged. “I assume so.”

  “Even the pastor?”

  “Yep.”

  “And they’re just … okay with that?”

  “It’s not really their business to be okay or not okay.”

  “Yes, totally,” I said. That was it. That was thing with the whole world judging one another. “That’s what I tell Charlotte. But I swear she’s on some mission. She goes on about how God hates homosexuals and all that.” I air-quoted the last part, lest he think me earnest.

  “Well, they can hate me and not have me at camp. Or they can love me and have me at camp. If you claim to be a Jesus-lover, there’s only one choice.”

  “So, they accept you.”

  “Girl, I said love. They love me here.” He said the last part with a lisp and a click of his tongue.

  I laughed again.

  I so wanted Diana to be there to laugh too. I wanted her see how it could’ve been. How it should’ve been. Not necessarily being at Jesus camp. I didn’t really want to be here, and I doubted Diana would either. But just being anywhere. Being anyone. She could’ve lived as big as she wanted, as openly and joyously as she wanted.

  I had known Diana wasn’t happy in the months before she’d died. It wasn’t just the breakup with Leah. She’d never finished stretching out her own skin and realizing it fit.

  “My other sister was gay.” I cleared my throat. “She died, though.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Yep.” It was an understatement, but it was true. “Not everybody loved her,” I said, thinking of Charlotte. Thinking of the first time I ever told a kid at school that my sister was a lesbian, assuming it was as interesting and as significant as the fact that my house was two stories. But as I’d watched that girl’s face curdle and pinch, I’d realized it wasn’t just being gay that was a problem. It was also a problem to love gay people, to find no fault. To pass no judgment was to be judged too. At least where we lived. And it wasn’t just Christians. The kids who beat up my sister in high school weren’t doing it in the name of God. Maybe they went to church, maybe they didn’t. The only certain thing was that they wanted my sister to know she was not free to love who she wanted. Or even kiss who she wanted.

  They beat her up in the name of hate.

  “Not everybody loves me either,” Goth said, shrugging. Their loss.

  “And Nick’s your boyfriend.”

  “I met him here.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “So, you know, they just ask us not to be in the same cabin or perform poolside gay sex tricks or start riotous gay orgies.”

  “But straight sex tricks and orgies are okay?”

  “Absolutely.”

  We got to the cabin, but no one was back yet.

  “So how do you know …”—I realized I didn’t know her name—“the girl in the wheelchair?”

  “Monica? That’s Nick’s sister.”

  “What happened to her?”

  He looked at me like I was being a dick. “She was born.”

  “No, I just mean, like what kind of disabilities does she have?”

  “All kinds. It’s creatively called multiple disabilities.”

  I wanted to ask more questions, but no matter what I said, I sounded like an idiot.

  “It’s cool she comes to camp with Nick, though.”

  “Yeah. Monica is easy to love.”

  The guys returned to the cabin pair by pair. There was good and bad news. We’d successfully decorated the cabins, but no one had found the box.

  There were other cabins. But there was also the elusive Jesus.

  “That was a pale shadow of debauchery.”

  Jack was in the bathroom again that night, sitting on the shower f loor with an empty bottle next to him.

  “Breaking and entering.” His mouth moped across the words. “What about pretty road girl?”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “She’s a fine, fine girl, ample breasts, brown from the sun.”

  “You’re a pervert.”

  “No, no, I’m a dead man who hasn’t loved a woman for half a century,” he slurred.

  “It’s like the opposite of necrophilia.”

  “When will you decide to live?” he asked, ignoring my insults.

  “I am living.”

  “You exist. You breathe and walk around and wait for whatever to happen.”

  “I’m doing something. I’m looking for the PC Box.”

  “It’s the problem your sister had with you.”

  The anger burned in my chest. “My sister had a lot of problems, the least of which was me. So don’t even go there.”

  “It’s what your sister wanted for you. To live so hard you’d lose your breath from the thrill of it all.”

  “I’m fifteen! It’s hard to live so big.”

  “No. You spend too much time looking for wings before you f ly.”

  “I think being careful is part of living through your twenties. Why don’t you go ask my sister about that?”

  I locked myself in a stall to pee.

  “Why don’t you kiss that girl?” Jack said from the shower.

  “Well, I’m not gonna walk up to some girl and grab her ass and stick my tongue in her mouth, like you would likely advise,” I said as I washed my hands.

  “Maybe that’d cure what ails you.”

  “Nothing ails me.”

>   “Your spirit’s a pale thing. You’re formless.”

  “I don’t even understand you half the time.” I looked down at him. “Look at you. You’re drunk on the f loor of a church camp bathroom.”

  I kicked at his shoe and nearly lost my balance when my foot hit nothing.

  “Why won’t you help me find the box?” I asked, indignant.

  “I did, I did. You don’t hear the words when they drift in.”

  “On the Ouija? That was just songs. A bunch of Christmas carols.”

  “You don’t see the things hiding in plain sight.”

  “Are you seriously going to sit there and throw my words back in my face? About my sister? Fuck you, Jack.” I slammed my hand into the wall.

  “You’re so angry, Nicolas.”

  “What are you doing here if you’re not helping me?”

  Jack opened his mouth as if to speak. Then he puked all over the f loor.

  WEDNESDAY

  The next morning, Natalie was waiting at the bottom of my cabin stairs.

  “Totally ignore my hair,” she said. She still had the bandana, but her hair was pulled up in a bun. “I couldn’t wash it. We got hit by the Superglue Fairy. Shampoo deemed inaccessible.”

  “Crazy,” I said. I had no wit or charm. I was exhausted and angry from the night before.

  She eyed me. “You certainly look well-groomed.”

  “Yeah? Thanks.”

  “But your cabin’s upstairs.”

  “Yeah …” Her eyes sliced through me. She suspected me. “But my shoes were hanging on the ceiling. Laces duct taped and everything,” I covered.

  “Mm-hmm.” Her scalpel-eyes continued their exploratory surgery.

  I quickly changed the subject. “Have you seen Magic Jesus?”

  “Magic”—an air quote there—“Jesus?”

  “Well, you know, the robed guy who does magic,” I explained. “But, have you seen him lately?”

  “I’ve heard he’s been praying with the campers and stuff. I haven’t seen him recently.”

  “Where? In the sanctuary?”

  “I don’t know—Wait, what are you wearing?”

  I looked down, afraid I had committed some heinous fashion crime. Or worse, left some evidence of last night’s prank. But it was just a striped T-shirt.

  “Where’s your uniform?”

  Ah yes, my nerd shirts. “I only have so many T-shirts.”

  “Excuses.” She got oddly serious for a beat. “I wanted to give you something before—” She looked away. “Breakfast.”

  “Okay …”

  “But now I doubt you can handle the necessary nerdery.” And just like that, she was back. Matthew had called her a closed book. But she was more like a book that kept f lipping from page to page.

  “I can handle it.”

  “Okay, then, speaking of duct tape and hanging things from the ceiling.” She handed me a book—Sixty Scenes of Sexy.

  “I take that back,” I said. “I can’t handle it.”

  “It’s perfect for you.”

  “What?” I looked around, afraid of witnesses, afraid of heavy crosses. “Why?”

  “I think you’ll have a lot to say about it.”

  “I don’t need to read it.” I was a boy. My brain wrote new chapters of erotica every minute. I just didn’t know what to do with all of it.

  “You said you were good at grammar and all that.” She handed me a red pen. “Marginalize it.”

  “It’s already marginal.”

  “Right. So you have a duty to do something with what you love.” She waved her hands wide. “This world must be saved from the shlit.”

  “Is that Yiddish?”

  “Shit literature. Shlit.”

  “I thought that was your job.”

  “What? No. I make the classics more accessible.”

  I laughed.

  “I’m serious. No more of this shlit.”

  “I cannot walk around here with this.” I held the book up. “This is a crock of shlit.”

  “Tough shlit.”

  “The shlit’s gonna hit the fan.”

  “Shlit happens.”

  “I’ll be up shlit creek without a paddle.”

  “Don’t lose your shlit. Hold on a sec.”

  She took off, jogging to her cabin. She ran up the stairs of Jericho, the very cabin I’d been in the night before. Had she seen me? Is that why this morning’s suspicion?

  When she returned, her hair falling out of its bandana, her face red, she took Sixty Scenes of Sexy out of my hand and wrapped it in a new book cover.

  “Twilight? This is a piece of shlit too.” I pushed the book back at her. “They confiscated my Harry Potter towel, for God’s sake. This is a supernatural love triangle. Written by a Mormon.”

  “Mormons love Jesus too.”

  “She has sex in book four. They break the windows with their passionate screeching.”

  She smiled. “So you’ve read them.”

  “I’ve seen the movies,” I admitted. Diana had said it was part of my romantic education. To know every woman just wanted a man-eating monster who could quote Shakespeare.

  “Just take the book,” she pled and started backing away from me so that I couldn’t give it back. “It’ll feel so good to write all over it. And honestly, it’s a fun, fast read. Don’t be such a snob.”

  “Okay, I’ll take it.” She was walking away, heading toward the dining hall. I called after her. “But can you please find me a different cover? Maybe Suzanne Collins or James Dashner or something?”

  “I’ll try!” she called back.

  “Find something that hasn’t been banned in public schools!”

  She laughed maniacally. “Impossible!”

  PRAYERS AND CONFESSIONS

  Dan: I miss my mom. How does a mom just up and leave? I get that my dad’s crazy. But then, you’re my mom. Take me with you.

  Payton: Holly thinks I broke my arm skateboarding. Right. I broke my arm in a fight with some kid who called her a slut. Look, I know what they say. Everybody does. Because even though our school is super Christian, we all hear the same rumors. But Holly’s not a slut.

  Matthew: I’m not stupid. I know why I say all that stuff. And I probably shouldn’t. But if I just keep talking about tits and ass, then no one will think I really care about what happened between me and Sarah.

  I went back to my cabin to stash the book. But before I slipped it under my pillow, I f lipped through it.

  Natalie had inscribed a note on the inside cover:

  Dearest Nick,

  You are likely the Messiah of Grammar. Messiahs are called to save mortal man. Unsheath your pen (mightier than the sword, they say!) and do this thing.

  —Natalie

  P.S. I started it off so that you could see how it’s done.

  And she had, mostly crossing out repetitive words (burgeoning; sardonic) and phrases (oh dear; she twirled her hair) and replacing them with something new. For a visual dynamic, she’d doodled a picture of the sorry kid in the stationery store who had a crush on Miss Bronze (at least, that’s what I figured the doodle was later, when I read it).

  I didn’t want to read the book, but I wanted more of Natalie. And I liked being talked to as I read. I liked being inside someone’s head at the same time I was in mine. I liked being with Natalie even when she wasn’t there.

  After stashing the book in my pillowcase, I headed over toward the dining hall. Magic Jesus was nowhere to be found, but I spotted the Disciplettes, who had gathered near the pool. They ran around in different formations.

  “GIVE ME A J!”

  “J!”

  “GIVE ME AN E!”

  “E!”

  One cheerleader was wearing pants.

  Charles.

  In polyester pants that matched the cheer skirts.

  And a cheer shirt with a capital J.

  Charles was a Disciplette.

  Or a plain old Disciple. I wasn’t sure how it all panned o
ut with the gender differences.

  I wandered over. “It’s early for cheer practice,” I said.

  He narrowed his eyes.

  “I’m not teasing you, Charles. I think it’s cool,” I said. Even if it was cheerleading, it was cool to him.

  Charles stepped away from the girls. “Is everything okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, why?” My friendliness seemed to have caught him off guard, or something.

  “You’re just wandering around?”

  “Well, I guess.”

  He scanned the camp, biting his lip. “There’re no more secrets out?”

  “No.”

  Charles nodded. “Okay, that’s good.”

  He didn’t actually seem like he’d settled into his role as a Disciple(tte) yet, but I felt jealous of him nonetheless. Charles was lucky. His secret getting out actually provided him the liberty to live his dream, but my secret getting out would be a family nightmare.

  “Charles, get over here,” one girl called. “We need our bases.”

  “I designed a stunt,” he explained to me, walking away.

  “Wait, you’re going to throw that girl in the air?”

  He turned back around, the side of his mouth turning up in an almost-smile. “I calculated the initial velocity and angle of the trajectory prior to designing the stunt.”

  And then he and two sturdy girls, standing in a threesome, a holy cheer trinity, positioned themselves to throw another girl into the air.

  “This is not safe,” I called out.

  But the girl f lew, and the Disciplettes caught her.

  “See,” Charles called back. “It’s math, so it is safe.”

  “It’s not math.” I joked. “It’s cheer, for God’s sake.”

  “No,” he said. “It’s cheer for God’s sake.”

  In the sanctuary, Pastor Tom Brady kicked things off with Christian rap. I wasn’t paying too much attention. Mostly I was staring at the pastor, thinking Russell Wilson would’ve been a better sports reference, because everyone at camp was pretty loyal to the Seahawks. After all, most of us were Pacific Northwesterners. And it’s probably more responsible of me to make some multicultural comparisons when describing the unnatural perfection of the pastor. Plus, according to Twitter, Russell Wilson is a born-again virgin. But then, the pastor, though tan, tanned more orange. And didn’t quite have the puppy smile of the famed quarterback.