Cold Calls

by Charles Benoit

  If he had just beat the kid up, it wouldn’t have been as bad. Even the mac-and-cheese attack. But no, he had crossed the line, not with what he did but with what he had said. And not all of it, just three words.

  Gay. Queer. Fag.

  There were other words—nouns and verbs and adjectives, and words that used to be worse—but those three words were the ones that would hurt April the most.

  And those were the words he had had to use.

  The caller said so.

  The other words? Just filler.

  Eric took a deep breath and held it.

  If I could go back, he thought, would I do it again?

  Would I still say those things if I knew everything that would happen?

  How much trouble it would get me in?

  How bad I’d “disappoint” my parents?

  Hurt April?

  If I could go back, would I do it all again just to keep my so-called secret, keep that one stupid picture from getting out?

  Eric thought about it for half a second.

  Hell, yeah.

  Down the hall, a door slammed, breaking his concentration. He stretched and looked around the room. A few of the others had their heads down on their desks, either done writing or done trying. The headscarf girl was still at it, the pages of the blue book filled, her tiny writing moving into the margins. The nervous kid was chewing on his pencil, deep in thought. Greg, the guy with the tribal tattoo, was already halfway through his blue booklet. Annalise was busy drawing pictures on the blank pages.

  Eric stretched again, turning so he could see the goth girl.

  Her book was closed, her pen down on the cover. She leaned on her elbows, her hands folded and resting against her forehead, eyes closed, lips silently moving, her face wet with tears.

  Nine

  THE ORGANIST HELD THE LAST NOTE OF “IMMACULATE Mary” until the stained-glass windows rattled, then he stopped cold, letting it echo across the wood ceiling like rolling thunder.

  Not bad for a hymn.

  Shelly listened as the organist shut the cover on the keyboard and locked the choir-loft door behind him, coming down the side stairs to the vestibule, joining the other old people as they shuffled out to the shuttle bus that would take them back to the nursing home.

  She had the whole place to herself.

  There probably was an altar boy or two in the back and some usher counting the collection-plate take, but out here where the pews were, it was empty and she was in no rush to leave.

  There were two services at this church, 9:00 a.m. and noon. The noon service would be more crowded, since that was the mass with the priest who spoke English. The priest who did the early service was from someplace in Africa, and if Shelly didn’t know the liturgy by heart, she wouldn’t have had a clue what he was saying. As for the sermon, he could have been calling for a revolution for all she could make out. A lot of churches were doing that now, bringing in priests from Africa or China to make up for the shortages over here. Nonna Lucia didn’t like it one bit. To her, every priest had to sound like Father DiPonzio, with a nice Italian accent, just like Jesus. It didn’t matter to Shelly. She didn’t come for the priest.

  It had been different over at St. Mark’s. The church was smaller, but more people came, and there were four services on Sunday and one on Saturday night, but why someone would spend any part of a Saturday night in church was beyond her. She used to like to go to the 10:45 service on Sunday mornings, since that was the one with the full choir and more songs, and Father Caudillo’s homilies were usually funny and never depressing. The last time she had gone to confession it had been with Father C. He had listened quietly as she said what she had to say, and somehow she got most of it out okay, then he did his best, saying something about God’s love and forgiving oneself and the difference between guilt and shame and what sin meant, and he told her a bunch of prayers she should say, as if prayers were going to make everything sunny and bright. She had said them anyway and—surprise, surprise—things started to change. Not a lot, no, and really slow, but it was something, or at least the hint of something.

  Then the phone call.

  Shelly closed her eyes and slouched down, letting her neck rest on the back of the pew.

  Seriously, God, why you gotta be like that?

  She knew there had to be some punishment. You don’t commit a crime that big and expect to walk away. Maybe God was just picking up the slack for the judge. But it wasn’t the voice of God that had her doing things she never thought she would do, things she hated doing but didn’t have a choice about. Not a real choice, anyway.

  She knew what would have happened if she hadn’t done what the caller demanded, and she knew she couldn’t go through that again. Better they think she was a bully than know the truth.

  But what if she could have done things differently? Not with Heather Herman, but with the freak on the other end of the phone. What if she had the power to go back and start again?

  Shelly smiled and imagined a better reality.

  First, she needed to find out who was behind the calls. That had been her original plan. She’d thought it was going to be easy—download an app or something. They do it all the time on TV. What had come up on Google, though, was way, way over her head, so that plan fell through. But she was daydreaming now, and in that reality she’d get the number and she’d ring up the caller, playing it off movie-villain cool. “Hi, this is Shelly. Let’s talk.” Then there’d be that moment when whoever it was on the other end would realize they’d made a terrible mistake. It would be her mature tone and easy manner that would make the caller sweat, wondering what Shelly would do next. It didn’t matter that Shelly had no idea what that sort of thing would sound like—that wasn’t important to the fantasy. After that, she’d make it clear that if there were any more calls, any more threats, there’d be a shit storm of trouble. And not law trouble either. Real trouble—the kind you can’t get out of on a technicality. The caller would have squirmed at that, would’ve been like, “I swear, I’ll go away, you’ll never hear from me again. I’ll never tell anybody what you did, how you killed that—”

  “You are displaying much happiness on your face,” the priest said, stepping back when Shelly jumped, her stifled gasp sounding like a scream in the empty church.

  “I am most very sorry, miss,” he said. “I did not mean at all to frighten you.”

  “No, it’s all right.” Shelly put her hand over her racing heart. “I was just thinking about something, that’s all.”

  “I, too, often sit here and think. May I?”

  “It’s your church,” Shelly said, sliding down to give him room to sit.

  “It is more your church than it can be mine, as I have only been blessed to be here for two months.”

  “That’s about a month longer than me.”

  “So then we are both new members. I am Father Joseph Mwojt, but please call me Father Joe.” He held out his hand and she shook it.

  “Shelly,” she said.

  “I am from the city of Nimule, at the very southern tip of South Sudan. And yourself?”

  Shelly smiled back. “I used to go to St. Mark’s church in Lockport. Ever hear of it?”

  “There was a St. Mark’s in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, but I assume that is not the one you mean.” He laughed, and Shelly thought that even that had an indecipherable accent.

  “I enjoyed your sermon today.”

  “Impossible. I myself could not understand what I was saying half the time.” His smile was blinding white against his skin.

  “Okay, so I didn’t follow it all, but what I heard sounded good.”

  “Do you mean the beginning part when I said ‘Good morning,’ or the end part when I said ‘God bless this day’?”

  “Both. The stuff in the middle . . .” She shrugged, and that made him smile more.

  “It was from the Gospel according to John, the story of Jesus and the woman who was to be stoned to death for her crimes. Do you
know this story?”

  It figures, she said to herself, and sighed. “Yeah, that’s the old ‘He who’s without sin cast the first stone’ one.”

  “Yes, you are one hundred percent correct. This is a very good Bible story, and it is also a humorous paradox, as none of us are without sin and therefore cannot condemn the sinner.”

  “Well, that’s Jesus for you,” Shelly said, trying to ignore the memories the story had sparked.

  “Even those who think that their sins are secret must know that nothing is secret from God.”

  “Great, thanks for the reminder.” She picked her hoodie up off the pew and stood. “Good luck on your sermon next week.”

  “Thank you, Miss Shelly,” Father Joe said, stepping into the aisle. “God willing, I will speak on Proverbs nineteen-five. Do you know this as well?”

  “Not off the top of my head.”

  “I am sure that you will recall it. It is all about the mortal sin of bearing false witness.”

  Shelly shook her head as she looked up at the stained-glass window high above the altar. “Seriously, God?”

  “Excuse me, please?” Father Joe said.

  She sighed again, and this time it trailed off into a hollow laugh. “I said, see you later.”

  Ten

  ERIC RUBBED THE SLEEP FROM HIS EYES, TAPPED OPEN the app, and checked his text messages.

  His parents had his phone—probably would for weeks—and while it was a pain in the ass, it wasn’t the end of the world. A couple of clicks and a password and every text that was sent to his phone now appeared in a box on the screen of his iPad. Texting back was harder, but only because he wasn’t used to the wide keyboard.

  Nothing new had come in since midnight, when Duane had texted updates from Frederico’s house, claiming that he and Sophia were busy getting busy. That’s how Duane would have said it too—busy getting busy. And that’s why Eric knew Sophia would have laughed and walked away.

  Emma had sent a text around eight, a long string of question marks followed by an angry-face icon. He didn’t know if she was mad at him for what he did to Connor, or at the principal for piling on the punishment. Probably him, but Eric liked the idea that somehow she was on his side.

  There were no texts from April.

  April.

  It used to be so easy. In ninth grade there was Rachel; then, the night that ended, he met Simone, and that was great for a while, but then Simone heard about him and Juliana at Nick’s party and dumped him, so he hooked up with Heluna, the exchange student from Finland. Then she was gone and it was on and off with Simone again, then Chloe, then back one more time with Simone.

  And then there was April.

  Just hanging out at first, just friends, both sure it was nothing more, talking all the time, movies, pizzas, late-night texts, imagine-us-dating jokes, the jokes becoming questions, the questions answered, then real dates and real talks and real time together, wonderfully different, so true it hurt, both of them sure it could never get better.

  And then it didn’t.

  Hang-ups and voice mails and unreturned texts, his hoodie she’d loved to wear returned, balled up in his locker, the necklace handed back by a girlfriend, her Facebook status skipping It’s complicated, going right to Single.

  Eight weeks later, and it was still a blur.

  All he had now were the memories.

  The best ones of his life.

  That and the chance that, who knows, maybe, somehow, someday, they’d get back together and it would be as good again.

  Just a chance.

  Okay, there still was the whole bullying thing, so un-April it’d be hard for her to forget, but there was a chance it could happen.

  And that was all he needed.

  The number nineteen bus swung through the parking lot and pulled up in front of the main entrance of the Department of Motor Vehicles. It made no sense, since the DMV was closed on Sundays, but the bus schedule said that the number nineteen would be there at 11:50, and it was, right on time. Nobody got on the bus and nobody got off, and at 11:51 the door closed with a hiss, the driver retracing his route through the empty parking lot, turning left onto Ridgeway Boulevard.

  At 12:32 it would pull up in front of the Jefferson County Community Center, where Shelly would get off, twenty-eight minutes early for the second half of the program.

  HABIT.

  Helping Accused Bullies by Inspiring Tolerance.

  Shelly wondered if they’d started with a title, rearranging the words until the initials spelled something catchy, or if they’d picked a word they liked and forced the title into it. She used the first ten minutes of the ride to come up with better names and acronyms, stopping when she knew she couldn’t top Futilely Underfunded Course for Kids Unfit for Polite Society.

  She had the bus to herself. There had been an old guy sitting in the seat right behind the driver when she got on at the stop near the church, but he got off two stops later, and no one else had gotten on so far. There was another bus—the number twenty-one—that would have been more direct, but she was going to get there early enough as it was, and besides, she liked buses, with their big windows she could lean against and watch the world go by. At least this little part of it.

  Unfortunately, the longer ride gave her time to think. As if she wasn’t doing enough of that anyway.

  Shelly tried to remember what it was like to think about other things. There was a time—a thousand years ago—when she had an opinion on American Idol and dubstep and World of Warcraft and Taco Bell, getting into endless The Walking Dead vs. American Horror Story debates, reposting cat videos, re-tweeting one-liners. She wondered how she had been able to let go and let her mind wander in and out of dozens of random thoughts for hours on end. Maybe there was a trick to it that she’d forgotten, a way to escape the black hole that sucked her into the same endless loop of the same endless thoughts every time. If only she could remember how to do it, how to turn off her brain, she could go back to thinking about anything, even stupid stuff. Especially stupid stuff.

  The bus stopped for a red light near a Starbucks, and for a moment Shelly relaxed and thought about coffee. Her brain gave her a minute or two alone with that before starting the downward spiral, switching slowly to donuts, moving on to chocolate donuts, then just chocolate, then fancy pieces of chocolate, then chocolate in a heart-shaped box, and then, inevitably, unavoidably, she thought about Valentine’s Day.

  This time the black hole was filled with voices.

  The 911 operator pleading with her to calm down.

  The EMT saying he wasn’t getting any vital signs.

  The police officer looking down at her, telling her she had better call her parents.

  And playing under it all, like a movie soundtrack, the long, horrible scream, then the longer, more horrible silence.

  The bus jerked forward, and her brain let her go.

  Shelly breathed in deep and slow through her nose, holding her breath till her lungs burned, letting it out in little bursts the way Father Caudillo had shown her. He’d also shown her how breathing into a paper lunch bag would take the knot out of her stomach and keep her from panicking, but Shelly thought it made her look like she was huffing paint, so she stuck with the other technique, even though it didn’t always work.

  “Once you get your breathing back to normal,” Father Caudillo had told her, “take control of your thoughts. Don’t let your thoughts control you. You can’t change the past, so don’t waste time dwelling on it. Think about today, the things you have to do right now. Every journey begins with a single step in the right direction.”

  Head clearing, she thought about the next steps she had to take.

  First, she had to finish the program. The whole thing was too nice to everybody, even the assholes. While most of the video screen time went to the victims—the old “building empathy” approach—they also showed life from the bullies’ point of view, and what do you know, all the bullies, even Chip, turned out to be s
ensitive souls, fighting their own inner demons and lashing out at others as a coping mechanism. They didn’t use those exact words, but Shelly could imagine that’s what the script had called for. The problem wasn’t that they were simply demented or cruel or violent—the problem was the issues that made them act that way.

  Okay, that sort of explained her situation, but Shelly didn’t think it held for the rest of them. Maybe that little boy. And the Muslim girl who wrote all those notes to herself. And maybe that cute guy, Greg. But the jerk with the stupid haircut who got locked out, or that jock who kept looking at her, or that scary girl with the neck tattoo, or the rest of them? They didn’t need issues.

  So, anyway, finish the program.

  Then she had to write up a reaction paper for school, a ten-page essay that was supposed to show how much she had learned from the weekend session and how sorry she was for the things she had done to Heather, who she wasn’t allowed to name in the paper or to ever speak to again. The paper would be easy. She could write ten pages in her sleep, especially when she didn’t have to back any of it up with facts. As long as she kept her real emotions out and kept away from the truth, she’d be all right. As for inner demons, she had plenty, but she’d probably go with a combination new-girl-in-school/devastated-by-parents’-breakup. They weren’t her inner demons, but she knew it would be the kind of thing that would click with the counselors.

  Next she’d have to catch up on her schoolwork.

  The suspension would keep her home all week, so her teachers were supposed to send her the work she had to do, and her father was supposed to pick it up in the main office, but she knew how that would play out. Between her father not remembering to swing by the school and her teachers sending cryptic assignments or forgetting to send anything at all, she’d be behind in every class when they let her back a week from Monday.