by Robin Brande
I'd let the whole thing go too far.
Because the truth, of course, sounds ridiculous if you're on the outside. I know from the few times I let things slip that regular people—non-church people—can't believe how many restrictions there are on all of us to keep our minds and hearts pure. No magazines (unless they're Christian); no movies above PG (and even then maybe not, if one of the Christian watch lists says it's dirty); no TV shows featuring sex, drugs, cursing, abortion, adultery, etc., etc. (which my parents have decided is just about all of them); no video games; on and on and on—you name it, we probably can't do it.
The payoff, of course, is that we'll be going to heaven and the rest of the world won't. (Theoretically, although I have trouble with that—why should a good person living out in the jungle, who's never heard of Christ, have to go to hell while some child in Alabama or Nebraska who was baptized but who grows up to do despicable things gets to go to heaven? You see my point.)
But when you're trying to make a friend—just one new friend—and your choice is to reveal all the strange little rituals of your life, knowing he'll give you exactly the same look as when you didn't know who Aragorn was— obviously things aren't as simple as they seem.
I glanced at my watch. “I have to get to class.”
“Fine,” Casey said. “I'll bring in Fellowship of the Ring tomorrow. You can have the whole rest of the week to digest it. I'll bring in Two Towers on Monday, Return of the King next Wednesday. You'll be cured in no time.”
There was no point in letting this go any further. “Look, I can't. But thanks anyway—really.” I gathered up my backpack and prepared my escape.
Casey dropped all the dramatics. “Why not?”
I could see he was genuinely perplexed. “Um … I just can't. See you tomorrow.”
I headed for the door before he could ask me anything else. Some things just defy explanation. It would be like trying to make a fish understand what it's like to play tennis.
Too bad. I mean, it really is too bad. I might have liked hanging out with Casey. But I guess if you have to build a whole friendship on lies and secrets, it's not really going to work.
I'm doomed to be alone.
On the way out of the library I saw Teresa and Bethany and the whole Christian crew coming out of the cafeteria. Wonderful. I would have turned and walked the other way if I didn't have to get to French.
“See you tonight,” Teresa told the crowd as they dispersed. She looked over at me to make sure I heard that.
Why does she care so much? Can't she just move on?
Then Teresa added something that made my blood freeze in my veins.
“Shepherd is going down.”
Eleven
Tonight at dinner my dad actually looked at me when I asked him a question. And they say there are no miracles anymore.
Of course, it may have been because the question was, “Do you guys mind if I get a little lunch money?”
You'd have thought I asked for my allowance back. As if I'll ever risk doing that.
“You can come work for it,” my dad snapped. That one sentence seemed to take an awful lot of effort. He shoveled in another forkful of tuna noodle casserole just to re-fortify himself.
I couldn't believe he even answered. I knew I had to be careful or I'd spoil the mood. “Doing what?”
He addressed his peas and tuna. “Cleaning out the storeroom.”
“Okay,” I answered without thinking. Believe me, anything is better than this banishment. It's bad enough what's been happening on the outside. To face it in my own home has been my own particular hell.
“What do I need to do?”
He answered his casserole. “Clean up the files.”
All this time my mother sat there staring at my father, maybe not really believing he had finally decided to talk to me. From the look on her face, I'm not sure she approved. Maybe she had a different time limit in mind—like six months to a year.
“I don't know …,” she mumbled to him.
“I'll start on Saturday,” I hurried to say before my father could withdraw the offer.
My parents eyed each other. Oh, like this was such a Great Honor, cleaning out all the file boxes they've been accumulating since the last time I helped organize the dungeon of their office storeroom back when I was twelve.
But believe me, I'm willing to do almost anything at this point. And spending a Saturday sorting through papers at my parents’ insurance agency is a pretty small price to pay for the hope of family harmony.
Okay, yes—I do feel guilty. I had no idea writing that letter was going to hurt my parents’ business. I wasn't thinking about anything back then except trying to right a terrible wrong that had been keeping me up night after night and making me so sick to my stomach I could barely eat anymore.
But I overheard my parents talking the other night about what a disaster this is for their agency. They figure about eighty percent of their customers come from the church. Ever since my parents broke the news that their policies might not include coverage for what Teresa and the other demon children did, a bunch of other people from church have been taking their business elsewhere. And not only are my parents losing that revenue, but now all the people who got sued are threatening to sue my parents for selling them insurance that might not pay off after all.
It's a mess.
But that's not my fault. Why can't anyone see that? It's Teresa's and Adam's and Bethany's and all the other members of the Holy Warriors, or whatever they're calling themselves these days.
And now they're at it again. Are they really going after Ms. Shepherd? For what? She hasn't done anything but be funny and brilliant and clever.
Which is a sin, I guess, to some people.
Please don't let them do anything to her. These people have to be stopped.
Twelve
For a while I thought today was going to be good. Ms. Shepherd sort of made an example out of Adam because he started arguing with her about the jackalope.
“You lied!”
“How did I lie?” she asked him.
“There's no such thing as a jackalope. I looked it up.”
“Looked it up where?”
“On the internet.”
“Ah,” she said, “the internet.”
And that led to a whole discussion about whether we should believe everything we read, and how it's destructive to society to trust someone else's observations over our own, and that it's the scientist's duty to always test other people's hypotheses and not fall into lazy thinking.
“But they're not real,” Adam kept insisting. “It's just a rabbit with fake horns.”
“And at one point people thought the sun revolved around the earth,” Ms. Shepherd said. “Question everything.”
“So is it real or not?” Lara asked.
Ms. Shepherd answered, “I'll be interested in reading your reports to find out.”
Even though she didn't technically tell Adam to his face that he was a lazy thinker, I'm sure he interpreted it that way, because by the time class was over, he ob viously needed to take it out on someone, which would be me.
I was so stupid. I wasn't even paying attention as I walked out. One minute I'm stuffing my books into my backpack, and next thing I know I'm bouncing off the nearest wall and my stuff goes flying, and Adam's laughing his head off, and what do I do? Nothing.
I wanted to say, “Do you really think it's cool to beat up girls in the hallway? You really think that makes you a man?” But of course I didn't. Because I, Mena Reece, am a Nice Girl. A weak, pitiful, cowardly girl, but so nice, aren't I?
But even if I did have some biting thing to say, it didn't matter because Adam was already gone.
And then to add to my humiliation, Casey saw all that.
People were streaming through the hall as usual, and Casey helped me retrieve all my papers and books from under their feet and shove them back into my bag. He didn't say a word, for which I am deeply thankful.
I nodded. I was trying not to cry. It's bad enough to be as big a chicken as I am—you don't need everyone else to see it.
“We need to start work on our project,” Casey said as we made our way through the crowd.
My face was still hot. I was glad for the distraction. “What project?”
“The one for Ms. Shepherd. I think you're going to like it. But we don't have much time—we'll have to get started this afternoon.”
“This afternoon? I can't. And what do you mean, we don't have much time? She hasn't even told us what we're supposed to do yet.”
“My sister had her for biology, remember? I already know what we have to do. It's all under control.”
“Casey, I don't even …” Don't what? What was I supposed to say? Don't know what just happened, don't know you, don't know what's going on, don't know my own name right now?
“Look,” I said, “I can't. I can't go anywhere after school.”
“Why not?”
We were just entering the library, so we lowered our voices.
“I have … things to do. For my parents.” Lame, but I couldn't think of anything else.
“Come on, Mena, it's schoolwork—I'm sure they'll understand. Besides, we only have about two weeks left, then they'll be gone.”
“Who?”
“Our test subjects,” Casey answered. “Come on— you'll like this. I promise.”
He plopped his backpack onto the floor beneath one of the computers, sat down, and logged on.
“Sociobiology,” he whispered. “Personality tests. Nature versus nurture. It'll be great.”
I was running out of arguments to make, especially since I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Can't we work on it here?” I tried. “During lunch?”
“Negative. Test subjects can't leave my house.”
“What are they?”
“You'll see. I only live a few blocks from here. We'll go there after school.”
This was getting seriously out of hand. “Casey, I can't. There's no point in talking about this. It's impossible.”
Casey turned to me, his dark blue eyes gazing directly into mine. It was a little unnerving.
“Mena, I'm going to get you an A plus plus this year, but you have to stop fighting me on it. Trust me—this project is going to blow Ms. Shepherd away. Here, look.”
He brought up Ms. Shepherd's website and quickly checked her blog for new entries (none) before clicking on the heading Brilliance. He scrolled down through the past three years and clicked again.
A document came up on the screen—Virtual Universes, by Kayla Connor and Joshua Newman.
“My sister,” Casey explained. “She and Josh won their year, so obviously we have to win ours. Ms. Shepherd always posts them. Our names will be next.”
I was starting to get seriously worried.
“First of all,” I said, “there's no way I'll ever be able to come to your house.”
“All those rumors about the police finding dismembered bodies in our freezer are completely false,” Casey said.
“I'm not joking. I really can't.”
“Because?”
“My parents won't let me. I'm like, permanently grounded.”
“Well, so I guess the rumors about you are true.”
“Why? What have you heard?” I seriously thought he knew something.
“Relax, killer—nothing. Why are you grounded for life?”
“It's a long story.”
“I like long stories.” He glanced at the clock. “You have twenty-four minutes.”
“Forget it. We'll just have to think of another project.”
Casey shook his head. “Absolutely not. When brilliance finds you”—he pointed to the school's motto hanging on the wall above the librarian's desk—”you must answer the call. My house, Reece. Today.”
“Impossible.”
“Not even improbable,” he answered. “You don't understand my sister.” He switched to British. “Lovely girl, but brutal instincts. Will eat her young if they show the least sign of weakness.”
“Casey, I'm really sorry—”
“No need, no need,” he said, waving off any further objections. “My man will come round at three o'clock this afternoon. Meet him on the south stairs.”
I sighed. Deeply. It's hard to argue with someone who won't take you or himself seriously.
“Look, I'll ask my parents tonight, okay? But I'm not promising anything.”
I know there's no way on God's earth that my parents will ever let me go over to a boy's house alone without at least ten other certified Christians around, but I had to come up with something.
“Good,” Casey answered, talking like himself again. “But not a day more. We really do have to start right away. These things grow like you wouldn't believe.”
“What things?”
Casey smiled mysteriously and pointed at Ms. Shepherd's webpage. “Our future.”
This guy is way too much of a brain for me. I think I'm in over my head.
What's going to happen when he finds out I'm so average?
Thirteen
I should have known.
The way that Teresa made a point of making sure I knew about “the meeting” they were having at Bethany's house night before last. That comment about Ms. Shepherd “going down.”
The fact that Teresa and Bethany kept looking at me in English this morning and whispering, and Teresa kept laughing.
I should have known from the fact that Pastor Wells had already been talking about “taking a stand,” but somehow with all the other mess going on, I'd forgotten. Besides, he's always on the rampage about something.
I especially would have had a clue if I'd looked at Ms. Shepherd's syllabus and seen what she was going to start teaching today.
But it still came as a surprise.
Ms. Shepherd had barely gotten the word “evolution” out of her mouth when suddenly there was this dramatic scraping of chairs. Next thing I knew, almost half of the room—fourteen people, to be exact—stood up, flipped their chairs around, and plopped into their seats with their backs to Ms. Shepherd.
God help us.
Because this was it, the Big Stand, the “taking it to the front lines” Pastor Wells had bragged about.
And you can bet Teresa was loving every ounce of the attention.
I wasn't the only one shocked into silence. You could tell the Back Turners (as I have decided to call them) hadn't warned any of their non-church lab partners ahead of time, so those people were sitting there looking awfully uncomfortable—like maybe they were about to get in trouble, too.
Everyone was as quiet as stones. Casey looked at me with one eyebrow raised. I felt sick to my stomach. Phase, don't do this, I was praying, but I knew this time it wasn't my fight.
Teresa (who was wearing her Jesus = Love T-shirt, the little hypocrite—they were all wearing church shirts of some kind) kept her back to the room while she read a statement:
“We, the students of New Advantage High School, demand that Ms. Antonia Shepherd and all other science faculty cease and desist—”
(Pastor Wells's phrase, I'm sure—he's all about “cease and desist.”)
“—from teaching the unproven theory of evolution unless and until they also present the facts associated with intelligent design so that the students of New Advantage High School may be fully informed of all aspects of this controversy. We, the students of New Advantage High School, demand—”
“I get the picture,” Ms. Shepherd interrupted. She didn't sound angry, just matter-of-fact. She quickly surveyed the room, her eyes lighting on Casey. “Mr. Connor, would you come up here?”
He flashed me a little grin.
He went up to the front of the class, and I couldn't help noticing that his olive green shirt looked really good against his pale skin and dark eyebrows and black hair. And for some reason
his hair looked particularly good today—all thick and curly, like you could grab huge hand-fuls of it and pull him somewhere.
Not that any of that is important. My point is, it's just weird how your mind wanders when you're under stress.
Ms. Shepherd handed Casey a piece of paper and asked him to read it. Meanwhile, she sat serenely on the edge of her desk and sipped her Starbucks.
I couldn't understand what he was reading at first because it was all legal jargon—Edwards versus somebody, U.S. Supreme Court number something, blah, blah, blah— but pretty soon I started to catch on. It was some sort of court ruling about teaching evolution in public schools. Ms. Shepherd had obviously come prepared.
When Casey was done, Ms. Shepherd thanked him and let him sit down before fixing her stern gaze on the rest of us.
“Let's be clear about this,” she said. “I teach science. Intelligent design is not science. It is simply the latest name for a religious philosophy known as creationism. That philosophy says that the universe is too complex to have originated on its own, so some supernatural being must have been involved. That is not something we'll be addressing in this class.
“The United States Supreme Court has made it very clear that teaching creationism in a public school would violate the doctrine of separation of church and state. I happen to believe quite strongly that they are correct. So while I admire your curiosity, Ms. Roberts, you'll have to seek your answers to that particular issue from the clergy rather than from me.”
You could tell the Back Turners didn't like that one bit. They chattered among themselves like chimps, not really sure what to do next. I don't think they expected Ms. Shepherd to be so ready for them. Good. Take that.
“As I explained on Monday,” Ms. Shepherd continued, “I grade on the basis of test scores, lab work, a special project, and class participation. I do not believe in predestination—whether you receive an F in this class is in your own hands. If you choose not to participate, you understand the consequences.
“Now,” she said, her voice brightening, “let us speak of science, shall we?”