I thought about running. I thought about cowering inside the nearest locker, or garbage can, or even behind little Henry. After all, without Ryan to protect me, what was to stop him from picking up right where he left off?
Obviously, though, that’s not how it went down at all. Alistair approached quickly and stopped with a stomp. He had these narrow blue eyes and piss yellow hair that made him look, in that moment, like some sort of an evil surfer ghost. One of the dickweeds who had been in the woods with them on Friday was a few feet behind him, hands in his pockets, staring at Henry.
I braced myself for danger, for peril, or least some kind of menacing threat, but instead—and I swear this is true—he took a deep, trembling breath, and quietly began to cry. His broad shoulders heaved and his little eyes teared and he let out a loud “Haw—uh-HAW” in a high-pitched squeal. I felt like I’d start laughing if I wasn’t still so terrified.
I turned back to Henry. He shrugged, squinting suspiciously.
Alistair said, “I’m so sorry, man. So, so sorry.”
Not knowing what else to do, I placed an awkward palm on his shoulder. But I didn’t quite have the will, courage, or the intestinal fortitude to offer any condolences.
Then out of nowhere, Alistair pulled me into a great big, sobbing bear hug. I almost screamed, but he was squeezing me too tight to breathe. I wanted to push away, to make a break for the door, but then he whispered something in my ear—four sentences; the four sentences that set everything in motion.
He said, in as clear, eloquent, and unremorseful a voice as I have ever heard from anyone, “Whatever you think you saw, it didn’t happen. It won’t bring him back. It won’t change a thing. Ryan’s a hero in this school, and you do not want to destroy that.” Then he pulled back a bit, met my eyes. “Do you?”
What else could I say? I mumbled, “No,” and looked away.
And with that, he pushed himself off of me, waved to his shithead friends, and said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “At least he’s home now, with Jesus.”
Then Alistair took off strutting down the hall. After a few steps, though, he stopped. He turned back around. “Oh yeah,” he said. “The first game is on Saturday, so Friday night we’re having the pre-game party up at the radio tower. You should really come…and bring your little friend.”
I stood frozen, unsure how to respond, until Alistair turned again and strode lazily away.
“Wow,” said Henry, once they were all out of sight. “It looks like things might be okay with him now.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said, still trying to make sense of it all. “I really don’t know.”
Seven
Shortly after my run-in with Alistair, I was walking down the hall before biology class, when this cold, bony hand clutched at my shoulder. I snapped my head around, startled by the grim-reaper feel of it, to find Ms. Lucy LaRochelle, principal of St. Soren’s. Her face was clearly attempting to convey something sort of like sympathy, but it was only managing an emotion more akin to constipation.
“Jonathan,” she said, taking my hand in her icy palms. “I’m so sorry. So so sorry.”
I tried to avoid her gaze. “Um, thanks.”
“Ricky was such a treasured member of our school community. He meant so much to us all.”
“Ryan.”
“Excuse me?”
“His name is Ryan.”
“Oh yes,” she said, not missing a beat. “Ryan. Well. At any rate, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
“Right now?”
She flashed her yellowed dentures. “Yes, now. Please follow me.” And she started to walk at a brisk pace down the hall.
I followed her to the end of the main hallway. The glare off of the beige-painted cinderblock expanse was blinding as her shoes clicked and squeaked toward the rusting metal door in the distance. She led me down a flight of stairs and into a dark basement hallway with mud-colored walls, flickering fluorescent lights, and the faint smell of onions lingering in the air. Ms. LaRochelle continued on ahead of me, unfazed by our horror-show surroundings, until we finally came to a wooden door, marked, “Sheldon Finger, B.A. School Psychologist.”
Oh, shit, I thought.
She opened the door, revealing a thirty-something, blonde-bearded man, sitting alone in a comically small office—five, maybe six feet square at the most—dressed head-to-toe in pastel blue, bright yellow, and khaki. “Mr. Finger,” said Ms. LaRochelle. “This is Jonathan Stiles.”
The khaki man leaned forward in his chair. He extended his hand, the overemphasized empathy on his face so brutally effortful that I had to look away for fear of laughing or throwing up. I shook his hand weakly, staring at the motivational posters papering his wall: pictures of beaches and sunsets and puppies, espousing such philosophical gems as, “You can do it!” and “Dedication!” and “Believe in your dreams!”
I said, “Hi.”
“Hi, Jonathan,” he purred. His voice was soft and slimy, and made me feel kind of gross. He turned to Ms. LaRochelle. “Thank you, Lucy.” She nodded and quickly left, closing the door behind her.
Then there was this incredibly long pause. Just silence, as he sat there staring at me, as if I were the one that was supposed to get this thing started.
Finally, he said, “I’m very sorry for your loss, Jonathan.”
I nodded. “Mm-hm.”
Another pause. “It’s tragic.”
“Mm-hm.”
And another pause. “So,” he said at a last, “would you like to pray before we get started?”
Really, at this point, after the morning I’d had…after the day and the weekend and the life…really, there was only one option left for me: I panicked. It was just too much. Having to come talk to this lunatic was bad enough, but pray with him? Fuck that.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I blurted out, only half pretending.
“Oh my.” He seemed shocked, and a little scared. “Well, you should…you should….”
“I have to go to the nurse.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
I didn’t wait for him to say anything more or write me a pass. I just bolted through the door, ran back through that dank, disgusting hallway, up the stairs, past the infirmary, and busted out the great big oak doors at the front of the school.
Eight
Outside, everything was the opposite of that awful basement; it was all bright sun and cut grass and quiet breeze, and it felt good. I decided to wander a bit to calm myself down. I made my way around the perimeter of the school, over to the football field. I walked past the bleachers and up to the edge of the field, when I noticed that someone was jogging on the far side of the track. He looped around, came closer, and it wasn’t until he was about a hundred yards away that I realized who it was: Jesus Jackson, running laps in a velvety white track suit, white high-top sneakers, and a white Nike headband.
He reached me a few moments later. “Hey, Jonathan!” he said, continuing to jog in place. “What’s shaking?”
I was a little surprised to see him there, but too grateful for his presence to ask any questions. Strange as it may seem, after the insanity of my first morning at St. Soren’s, Jesus Jackson seemed like the most normal person I had encountered all day. “Not much, I guess.”
He glanced at his watch—a flashy gold digital, covered in what appeared to be diamonds (but I suspected were really rhinestones). “Shouldn’t you still be in school?”
“Technically, I’m at the nurse right now.”
“Gotcha.” His feet slowed to a stop, and he bent down into a stretch. “Is everything all right?”
“Not really.”
“Kids giving you a hard time?”
“No, it’s…you know that kid, the one whose face is plastering the front of the school, whose name is soaped onto every car in the parking lo
t?”
“Your brother, right?”
I paused. “How’d you know?”
“Well, you were the only kid standing around with the police on Saturday.”
“Oh yeah. Right.”
He placed both palms flat onto the grass, exhaling sharply. “School’s been tough today? You feel like everyone is staring at you?”
“Everyone is staring at me. But that’s not what’s bothering me.”
“What is?”
My first instinct was to drop it, like I did with everyone else. Just assume that everything was innocent and easy, and go on with my life. But I couldn’t. Not with Jesus Jackson. Not after that morning.
“There’s something not right about Ryan’s death.”
He snapped upright, pulling one foot up to the back of his leg and leaning forward. “There’s a lot not right about it. He was so young…”
“Well, yeah. But I mean, there’s something strange. Something fishy.”
“Fishy?”
“Yeah, fishy.”
Jesus arched his body, reaching his arms towards the sky. “As in, what people are saying happened isn’t really what happened? That kind of fishy?”
“Yeah.
“Interesting. What makes you think it’s so fishy?”
“Well, there’s this kid Alistair. And he got into a fight with Ryan, and there were drugs involved…it’s a long story.”
Jesus stopped stretching. He put his hands on his hips. “I think you better tell me this ‘long story,’ Jonathan.”
So I did. I told Jesus all about the coke and my brother, and the woods, and Henry and Alistair’s friends, and everything. Throughout the whole story, Jesus Jackson listened with what seemed to be rapt attention, having me stop often to clarify particulars, expand on assumptions, delve more deeply into details.
After I finished, he said, “Well that is certainly suspicious. Do you have a theory about what happened after you left?”
“Not really, no.”
“But you’re saying you think there was some, well…foul play involved?”
Honestly, up until that moment I hadn’t actually let myself even consider such a thought—that Alistair really may have killed Ryan—and hearing Jesus say it, it kind of sounded a bit absurd. I mean, they were just kids, it was just an ordinary day after football practice. “No. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t think that’s what I’m saying.”
“So then what are you saying?”
“Just that it’s strange,” I said, now not sure why I had brought it up at all. “I don’t know. It’s probably nothing.”
Jesus stared at me silently for few seconds. “Well, if you say so.”
Just then, a bright red Jeep drove past us in the parking lot, with the words, “Rest with the Angels, Ryan Stiles,” painted in multicolored wax on the windows.
I sneered. “You know what I really can’t stand: all of this God crap.”
This seemed to intrigue Jesus. He raised an eyebrow. “God crap?”
“Yeah, crap. Everywhere I go, there’s a poster talking about how Ryan is in heaven, how he’s with God now, or that he’s some kind of a guardian angel, looking down over the school. People are packed into the chapel, praying and crying and lighting fucking candles—that they charge you a dime for, no less.”
Jesus seemed amused. “So why does all that bother you so much?”
“Because it’s all bullshit. It’s fake. They don’t know where Ryan is. They just choose a fairy tale and run with it. If they say he’s watching over us in heaven with God and the angels, then they might as well say he’s huffing glue at Burger King with Mickey Mouse and the Easter Bunny! He’s just dead. Dead dead dead, and no one knows what the fuck that means except that his body is sitting in some freezer somewhere, waiting for some death doctor to cut apart his insides and replace his blood with chemicals, while some morons he never even liked recite bad poetry over a bunch of cheap-ass, ten-cent candles.”
As these words left my mouth, I began to feel something very deep and strange and powerful mixing up inside me, like a volcano of nausea, fear, sorrow, and anger. It didn’t erupt, though; it didn’t blow over at all. It just stayed right beneath the surface: boiling and boiling and boiling until Jesus said, “But Ryan believed in all that, didn’t he?”
“No, that’s the worst part. He was the one who first told me that there was no such thing as God—or at least their god. He tried to make up his own damned religion when he was twelve. He didn’t believe a word of that Catholic garbage.”
Jesus raised an eyebrow. “Really? That’s not what everyone else seems to think.”
“Well they’re wrong. Trust me, I know. We talked about it like a thousand times.”
“People change, though, Jonathan. How do you know that he still didn’t believe? Could he have found some sort of faith and just decided not to tell you? When was the last time you actually talked to him about it?”
“I don’t know, it was probably—” but I had to stop myself. I knew exactly when Ryan and I had last talked about religion, God, and all of that other stuff. It was about a week before the first day of his freshman year at St. Soren’s. And not once since. “It’s been a while,” I mumbled.
Jesus took a breath like he was going to say something, but then paused, as if he changed his mind. “But what about you? Do you have your own, made-up religion too?
I took a deep breath to keep it all at bay. “I don’t have any religion anymore. I told you. I’m an atheist.”
Jesus grimaced suspiciously. “Hmm.”
“What?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“Come on, what was that look?”
He shook his head. “It’s really nothing. It’s just that…” A pause. “Well, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but atheism doesn’t really work for you.”
“What are you talking about? It works perfectly for me!”
“I’m sure you think it does,” he said. “Or at least say it does. But it doesn’t.”
“That’s ridiculous.” I pointed to a small group of students praying around the flagpole. “You think I’m one of them?”
“Walk with me,” Jesus said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “I want to explain something to you.”
“Okay…,” I said, as we started a nice easy pace around the track.
“Now it might sound strange, but atheism—despite what anyone may have told you—requires a certain amount of faith if you want it to really work.”
“Why the hell do I need faith to be an atheist?”
“It’s really very simple,” he said, grabbing my arm and pulling me to match his pace. “For atheism to really work—that is, if you want it to do its job of being for you what religion is for everyone else—you have to believe in nothing. You, however, just don’t believe in anything.”
“Well what’s the damn difference?”
“The difference is faith,” he continued, walking a bit faster, swinging his arms a little higher. “Look, I bet you are one-hundred percent confident that the world wasn’t created in seven days by some old, white-bearded dude in a toga.”
“Sure. One hundred percent.”
“And more than that, you are one hundred percent sure that all religious beliefs, from Aztec mythology to Zoroastrian theology, are completely make-believe, utterly fictional, and totally pretend inventions, created by humans to make themselves feel better about the fact that no one has even the slightest idea what they’re doing in their own lives, much less why they’re hurtling through space on a tiny speck of rock in some random corner of the universe.”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“But,” he said, stopping and looking me right in the eyes. “Are you really that confident with the idea that your life has no metaphysical meaning at all? That there’s no deeper purpose to your existence,
no universal principles that influence your inner life, no unknowable significance to love or kindness or morality or consciousness? And when you die, when your brother died, are you really one hundred percent certain that everything just ends? That it’s all darkness and nothing and that you’ll never have another thought or feeling or see anyone you love ever again forever?”
“Umm…” He sort of had a point there. “I mean, I don’t know. Maybe not one hundred percent….”
“Of course not. Because to have that kind of certainty, you need to have…”
“…faith.”
“Precisely.” Jesus smirked. “And you, my friend, just don’t have any.”
“I see.”
“Lucky for you, though, you met me.”
“Why so lucky?”
“Faith is my business. It’s what I do. Like I said, I have a one hundred percent-faith-or-your-money-back guarantee.”
“Oh, right. Your sales pitch.”
“It’s no pitch. Just a friendly, reliable offer.”
We walked for a minute in silence, and I thought about this whole idea—faith, surety, knowing that there’s nothing out there instead of just thinking that there’s nothing out there—and it started to sound really comforting, really nice. “So you can give me one hundred percent faith in nothing?” I asked. “You can do that?”
And with that Jesus stopped short, causing me to nearly trip over my own feet. He stepped back and stared at me mysteriously. “Of course I could,” he began. “Nothing is a rare kind of job, but I certainly have done it before. It’s just that…”
“It’s just that what?”
“I’m just not sure it suits you.”
“It doesn’t suit me?”
“I’m not sure. You might need something a bit more substantial than that.”
“Wait.” This was getting confusing. “You mean I don’t get to pick what I have faith in? You pick it for me?”
“Yeah. It’s part of the package.”
“But what if I know what I want to have faith in? And that’s nothing?”
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