by Katie Henry
Waiting through seventh period is agony. Not that I cared much about mastering the subjunctive before, but today, I can’t even hear my Spanish teacher, much less understand her. I’m too busy watching the clock. 2:52. 2:53. 2:54.
The minute hand hits 2:55, five minutes before the final dismissal bell. It should be coming any second now. Sure enough, to my left, I hear the muffled sound of someone’s phone vibrating deep in her backpack. Just once.
At this moment, Eden is walking back from the girls’ bathroom, the cheap burner phone we all chipped in for carefully concealed.
To my right, a girl fishes her phone out of her cardigan pocket and looks at it under her desk. She frowns. She just got a text, and I know what it says:
FROM: UNKNOWN
Have you heard the Good News, St. Clare’s? It’s waiting for you in Evergreen Park, under the tallest tree—our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all.
—HA
The girl nudges her friend and shows her the text. The friend cocks her head. Even with Eden, Max, Avi, and Lucy pooling their contacts, there’s no way we could have texted everyone. But I think we got enough, because as soon as the final bell rings, half my Spanish class bounds out of their seats, meeting up with their friends in the halls before making a beeline for the main entrance. Usually, people hang out by the lockers for a while, especially on a Friday. Not today.
It seems like all of St. Clare’s has streamed out the doors and across the street to the park. By the time I find Lucy and we go over together, the newspapers have been found and are being eagerly passed around.
Avi sidles up to us. “There aren’t enough copies,” he says, almost gleeful, as we watch our classmates huddle around our tiny newspaper. Out of the crowd emerges Theresa, white-knuckling her own copy, the pages crinkling under the pressure.
“Christ on the cross,” she whisper-screams as she passes by us.
“Wow,” Lucy says. “That almost counts as swearing.”
Avi nods. “Mission accomplished.”
When we come back to school on Monday, everyone’s still buzzing about the newspaper. A few stray copies of Off the Record are stuffed into backpacks and strewn under the benches by the front door, though the teachers are quick to confiscate any they see.
“Did you take the quiz?” Connor asks Theresa as we prep our chemistry experiment. “Because you’re such a Sister Agatha.”
“I burned the one I found,” Theresa says.
“Jesus, couldn’t you just throw it away like a normal person?” Jess asks.
“Fire is cleansing,” Theresa says, lighting the Bunsen burner. The rest of us push our lab stools back a little.
St. Clare’s feels different than it did when I first got here. Exciting, maybe. But also tense and dangerous, like walking across a fraying tightrope. The security cameras. The staff members patrolling the halls on the lookout for newspapers and dress code violations. The new posters for the St. Clare’s Crusaders that Lucy says have popped up in the girls’ locker room. The HA symbol on the third-floor staircase, the ink still wet.
Halfway through Sister Helen’s customarily boring theology lecture, Jenny Okoye stumbles into the classroom clutching a hall pass, her eyes red and her mouth quivering. She takes her seat, puts her head on her desk, and doesn’t look up for the rest of class. Sister Helen lets her. When the bell rings and the rest of us leave, she stays behind.
Lucy’s called an HA meeting for after school to discuss and assess last week’s project, so we head there together after sixth period. Eden and Max have already settled in, but Avi’s missing. He finally shows up fifteen minutes late, his tie askew, looking ashen.
“Sorry I’m late,” he mumbles.
“What’s wrong?” Lucy asks as Avi slowly lowers himself onto the couch.
“I ran into Jenny Okoye.”
“She looked so upset in theology,” Lucy says. “Do you know what happened?”
Avi looks up at the ceiling. “She spent lunch in Father Peter’s office.”
Eden laughs. “Her? For what?”
Avi doesn’t laugh. “For creating and distributing a secret newspaper called Off the Record.”
There’s a heavy, horrible silence.
“Oh no,” Lucy says. “They don’t really think—”
“They do,” Avi says. “Or they did. She got Sister Helen to confirm her alibi during lunch, so.”
“That’s horrible,” Eden says. “Just because she’s the editor in chief of the real newspaper?”
“They found it very suspicious that Off the Record used the same template and the same font as the real newspaper,” Avi says.
We all look at one another. Shit. No one thought of that.
“Anyone on the newspaper could have gotten that, though,” Max says. “Right?”
“Jenny started the petition. Jenny pushed for the article,” Avi points out. “Father Peter interrogated her for an hour about Heretics Anonymous, which, you know, she knows nothing about . . .”
“Okay, okay,” Lucy says, diving straight into damage-control mode. “This isn’t great. But if Sister Helen can vouch for her—”
“Jenny’s flipping her shit,” Avi says, “and it’s all our fault.”
“This one was your idea,” I remind him.
He glares at me. “Thanks, I’d forgotten.”
“Not helpful,” Lucy says to us both. “Let’s talk about what we can do to fix this.”
“Oh, I’m not done,” Avi says. “There’s more, so buckle up.” He pauses. “I sent Ms. Simon the newspaper.”
“What?” Lucy says. “We didn’t talk about that, you didn’t ask—”
“This one was my idea,” Avi cuts in, looking at me out of the corner of his eye. “Like he said. So I sent it to her, using that old email address Eden set up for Dress Code Week.”
“Did she write you back?” Eden asks.
Avi picks at his shirt collar. “Yes.”
Why is he acting so weird? “And?”
“She wants us to stop,” Avi says. “She said—she didn’t want this. She appreciated what we were trying to do, that we cared about her, but it wasn’t helping her. She told me we should stop.”
Eden sighs. Max wraps his cloak tighter around himself. Lucy sits down next to Avi.
“Hey,” she says, “think about it, though. The school probably made her sign something saying she wouldn’t sue or complain. She’s just protecting herself; it doesn’t mean you did something wrong.”
“She didn’t want Jenny’s article or petition either, she just wants to move on.” He throws up his hands. “I don’t know, I don’t—Jenny’s freaking out, she thinks she’s about to be expelled, and Ms. Simon never wanted this in the first place, so what was the point? Who are we helping?”
“But it’s not about Ms. Simon,” I say, and Avi and Lucy turn to look at me. “It’s not only about her, I mean. It’s about the hypocrisy of what they did when they fired her, that’s what we first talked about, it’s about the larger issues—”
“This is somebody’s life,” Avi says. “Someone’s life isn’t a larger issue.”
“I’m just saying, maybe the paper wasn’t enough. Maybe it wasn’t clear. If we looked through the files—”
Everyone groans. Avi covers his eyes with his hands. “Enough with the files, Michael!”
“Let’s all calm down,” Lucy says, holding up her palms between us. “Okay, so this wasn’t perfect.”
“We’re hurting people,” Avi insists. “The whole point of going public with Heretics Anonymous was to make it easier to be at St. Clare’s, and I’m starting to think we made it harder.”
He shoots me a look, and I cross my arms in front of myself. Okay, so it was my idea to have us go public. But I didn’t do it alone, did I?
“No one made you do this, Avi,” I snap. “No one put a gun to your head.”
“I said from the very beginning that going public was a bad idea. This isn’t on me.”
“It’s not on anybody!” Max says, so loud that Eden shushes him. “Why does it have to be someone’s fault? Heretics Anonymous is all of us, it doesn’t have a leader.”
“Um,” Lucy says. “I do think it has a leader.”
“But why does it need one?” Max presses her. “I know, I know, this is America and if you aren’t in charge, you might as well leave everyone else and do your own weird thing. The Pilgrims did it and also PETA.”
Max looks between me and Avi. “What’s happening right now sucks, and it’s scary, and it belongs to all five of us. Whatever happens—good or bad—we all have to own it.”
“If something bad even happens,” Eden cuts in. “It might not. Yeah, it’s pretty heated right now—”
“Heated,” Avi repeats. “Theresa Ambrose launched a literal crusade.”
“You don’t mean literal,” Max says. Avi stares at him. “A literal crusade would have horses.”
“Theresa launched a figurative crusade, we just about threw Jenny Okoye under the figurative bus, and the school is maybe two days away from a full-on revolt—yes, literally, Max.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” I tell Avi. “Sorry you regret doing this, but that’s not our fault.”
“We never should have done this. And someone’s going to get seriously hurt.” He turns to Lucy. “Would you back me up here?”
“She doesn’t agree with you,” I say. Lucy’s an idealist, she believes in revolution and change. She believes in the Magnificat. “Right, Lucy?”
Her eyes dart back and forth between us. “I . . .”
Avi and I both wait, tense, watching her struggle. I can’t believe this. She’s not going to take my side? I know her, I know how she feels. Why won’t she just say it?
“You guys,” Eden says, looking first at me, then at Avi. “What’s wrong with you? Don’t make her do this.”
Avi and I share a glance, then drop our eyes.
“Sorry,” I mumble. Avi does the same.
Lucy sighs and gets up from the couch. “I think we could use a break.”
“From the meeting?” Max asks.
“From HA. In general. And I think maybe the school could use a break, too.”
We put it to a vote, and miraculously, it’s unanimous. Heretics Anonymous is officially on hiatus.
23
ON THE THIRD Tuesday after Valentine’s Day, Lucy and I are in my room, again. We’re stuffed from the lemon bars Mom made and Lucy is telling me that despite the scare with the newspaper, Jenny hasn’t given up on her petition to rehire Ms. Simon. She’s gotten signatures from almost the whole school, but Father Peter still won’t look at it. I only half hear what she’s saying, because I still can’t believe she’s here. That we’re us. I keep expecting her to change her mind and walk out. Maybe I wouldn’t feel that way if she’d let me take her shirt off.
I rest my hand on her knee, drawing circles with my fingernails. Lucy laughs, gives up on her story about Jenny, and kisses me. I let my hand run up her thigh, away from her knee socks, closer and closer to the edge of her hiked-up plaid skirt, to where there is no skirt.
Lucy sits up suddenly, drawing her legs away from me. “Wait.”
I knew that was too much, going under the skirt. “Sorry, do you—?”
“It’s fine, I— Maybe we should have some rules, though.”
Great. Rules. My favorite.
“Sure,” I say, because here is Lucy, in my house, on my bed, and I’ll agree to whatever she wants as long as she doesn’t ever move. “Like what?”
“Well, for now, I think it’s better if we don’t—if you didn’t . . .” She hesitates. “Okay, so pretend my body is the United States of America—”
“What?”
“Like if my head were Alaska, and my neck were, uh, Utah—”
I like the Fourth of July as much as any person into fried food and explosions, but this is taking patriotism a bit far. “Head, Alaska; neck, Utah. Got it. So?”
“So for now—for now—maybe stay out of . . . Florida.”
I bring up a map of the United States in my head. “Wouldn’t Florida be your feet?”
Lucy screws her eyes shut. “Kentucky? You know what I mean!”
It’s just like Lucy to come up with a weird metaphor to get out of talking about sex, but I do know what she means. She doesn’t want to be the piece of unsticky masking tape. There are parts of her I can’t have.
But wait—she said “for now.” She said it three times. And maybe that’s to keep me off her back and my hands away from her skirt hem, but maybe it’s not. Maybe, somewhere beneath a lifetime of Purity Pauls telling her how to feel and who to let in, Lucy is changing her mind.
“I will stay out of Kentucky,” I promise. “And the bordering states. What’s your position on the Dakotas?”
She wrinkles her nose. I know I’m pushing it here, but I can’t help it. “The Dakotas?”
“Yeah, you know, North and South. The two . . . Dakotas.”
She takes a breath in, then lets it out slowly. “I would be amenable to that.”
And while I’m cycling through my SAT vocab flashcards in my head, trying to remember whether “amenable” has a plus sign for positive connotation, Lucy grabs my hands, nods, and pulls me back down onto the bed.
The Dakotas are beautiful this time of year.
A very satisfying half hour later, Lucy and I lay across my bed, her head resting on my chest. We haven’t spoken in at least five minutes, and nothing has ever felt more peaceful. I look down at Lucy, her eyes closed. Her shirt is wrinkled and buttoned up wrong. I reach over and fix it, and my fingers brush up against Lucy’s necklace, a medal on a simple chain that she wears every day, but always under her shirt. I’ve never gotten a close look. Etched into the silver is what looks like the Virgin Mary, a crown on her head, baby Jesus in her arms, and surrounded by the words NUESTRA SEÑORA DE CHIQUINQUIRÁ.
“It was my great-grandmother’s,” Lucy says, pushing herself up on her elbows. “Then my mom’s. She left it for me.”
“What’s it mean? Our lady of—”
“Chiquinquirá. It’s a place. That’s where my family’s from in Colombia. Close by, anyway.”
“What’s it like?” I know Colombia has beaches and jungles, but that’s about all I know.
Lucy shrugs. “I’ve never been. It’s in the west, north of Bogotá. My mom says it’s foggy in the morning, like San Francisco. And green, really green. The city’s most famous for el imagen, though.”
“The . . . image?”
“Of Mary,” she clarifies. “Short version: A painting of the Virgin Mary was abandoned in this chapel and pretty much ruined by rain leaking in, sunlight, whatever. Years later, someone moved it to Chiquinquirá, and the day after Christmas, it was miraculously, perfectly restored. It’s a big deal—the Virgin of Chiquinquirá is Colombia’s patron saint. Supposedly, some of my ancestors are buried in the cemetery there, but who knows if that’s true.”
I let go of the medal and she eases back down, closing her eyes again. That’s Lucy in a nutshell—everything is more than it appears. A necklace isn’t just a necklace, it’s a miraculous painting and a green, foggy town. And religion isn’t just religion. It’s a link to places she’s never been, people she’s never met. People who are gone. It’s something passed down to her, no different than the medal around her neck. It’s where she comes from. It’s who she is.
But there has to be more than that. God has to be more than a family heirloom.
“Why are you religious?” I ask.
She opens an eye. “Seriously?”
“You’re smart enough not to be, if you wanted to.” She opens both eyes now, just so she can roll them at me. “I mean, you’re smart and you know enough to see the inconsistencies and the uncertainties and you know it might not be true. But you believe anyway. Why?”
“This is really bad pillow talk.”
I don’t know if you can call it pillow talk if you didn’
t have sex. “It’s a big part of who you are. I want to know.”
Lucy sits up. She thinks for a moment, then starts.
“When I was eight, I went to Easter Mass. Not at St. Clare’s; Mom and I went to a different parish then,” she says, slow and halting, not like her usual stories. I don’t think she’s told this one before.
“It was a family Mass, so Father Al called all the kids up to the altar. And he told the Easter story, with the women coming to Christ’s tomb and seeing the stone pushed aside. The disciples were all in hiding, too frightened to leave, but the women came. Jesus came to Mary Magdalene and comforted her, and she was the first to see Him as the Risen Lord, she was the first person to preach the Resurrection. When Father Al asked us, ‘Where is Jesus now?’ I raised my hand, and he called on me, and I said ‘Heaven!’ Because that’s what the pictures show.”
I can picture Lucy, smart and cute and in a fluffy dress, wanting to show the priest how much she knew. That’s pretty much who she still is, minus the fluffy dress.
“But then,” she continues, “a voice from the back of the church called out, ‘Here I am.’ And then another in the balcony. And another from the choir. ‘Here I am.’ ‘Here I am.’ And I understood—even though I knew one of the voices was Mr. Mascareñaz, our neighbor, I understood. God goes where I go. He is always with me.
“The Gospel of John says, ‘Whoever does not love does not know God; for God is love.’” She picks at the threads in my bedspread. “And I love. So I know God. And even before I did know God, He knew me and loved me. He knit me in my mother’s womb and gave me life, and no matter how hard or chaotic that life becomes, He will never, ever leave me.”
Lucy looks up at me. She must wonder if I understand her at all. I do. I don’t understand God, but I do understand not wanting to be alone. She grabs onto my hand.
“I believe in God because I believe in what I feel. And when I’m in church, or praying, I feel loved. I feel safe. I feel like someone knows me.”
I squeeze her hand, trying to say, I know you too, Lucy. Maybe not like God, but I do.
“So, yes. I know it might not be true,” Lucy says. “But I don’t think I’d care if it wasn’t.”