by S. J. Adams
fingertip.
“What’s your last name, Debbie?” Emma asked, imitating Moira with a chuckle. “See? She wanted to know all about you.”
“I thought she was just really interested in last names.”
Tim looked back. “Who’s interested in that?”
“Well, she was changing hers, she said. Maybe last names are her hobby.”
It just didn’t seem real to me that a girl would like me like that. And Moira was kind of cute—I liked her old fashioned outfit, and the way she giggled, and how she’d made up the kind of person she wanted to be and just, like, become it, even though she was born several decades too late.
I felt like I was cheating on Lisa just by thinking about it, but it was really sort of exciting to be driving along, knowing that someone was sitting around thinking about me. Me! And someone who wasn’t Hairy Nate or a bowling alley skank.
“Ha!” said Tim, turning around. “You’re smiling!”
“I am not,” I said.
“Sure you aren’t,” said Tim.
“Are there a lot of practical time travelers in town?”
“Not many,” said Emma. “I mean, the goths kind of are, and you meet a disco kid now and then. But they don’t take it all as seriously as she does. She’s a dedicated retro freak.”
“There’s a handful of Civil War reenactors,” said Tim. “That’s who taught Moira about getting a period rush.”
“That sounds kind of nasty,” I said.
“It just means the high you get when you feel like you’re really back in time,” said Emma. “But, yeah, everything sounds dirty in Clive.”
Up in front of us, I saw the Methodist church on the corner. I’d never been inside of it—Lisa went to a different church, and hers was the only one I’d ever really been in, except for the time the youth group played a volleyball game against the Presbyterians at their church in Windsor Heights (and kicked their butts, thanks to a wicked spike from Debbie Woodlawn, thank you very much).
The church in Clive was way, way bigger than Lisa’s. Like the size of a mall or something.
“Man, I hope I don’t, like, turn into a pillar of salt as soon as I step back into this place,” said Emma.
“Relax,” said Tim. “I’m pretty sure they don’t stone people to death anymore.” He turned to me. “That’s not one of the things you do in Active Christian Teens, is it?”
I shook my head. “Not usually, but it sounds like more of a Fellowship of Christian Athletes thing. They might be planning a stoning for spring break for all I know.”
“See? Nothing to worry about,” said Emma. “We’ll find Norman, get the backpack, and have time left over to find something to break and some people to see naked, then hook Debbie up with Lisa once and for all. Today will be a day of Bluish miracles.”
“Unless I get dumped by her once and for all,” I said. “In which case, the next holy quest will be packing my stuff to move to my dad’s place in Minneapolis.”
“I think Lisa wants you,” said Tim. “Just a hunch. You’ll be getting naked with her by the end of the night.”
I blushed a bit just imagining that. Lisa and I had never talked about that sort of thing—sex, nudity, etc.—out loud. About the closest we’d come to talking about sex, besides the stuff you talk about at abstinence rallies, was that one time I’d heard her say that she hated the way the word “vagina” sounded, although she didn’t expand on that to say what word she preferred.
I’d never even seen her naked, in fact. She was always really discreet—hiding behind towels and stuff—when we changed into our bathing suits in the locker room at the pool.
Emma pulled into the church parking lot, and we all walked up to the front door. But the doorknob wouldn’t turn.
“Fucking A,” said Emma. “Why would they lock a church? Aren’t they supposed to be open in case, like, a leper comes?”
“There are a couple of cars in the parking lot,” said Tim. “There has to be somebody in there.”
“Is one of those Norman’s car?” asked Emma.
“Who knows?” I said. “I think sometimes he drives his own car and sometimes he drives new ones off his dad’s lot. And I don’t know what kind his is.”
“Back door, then,” said Emma. “Let’s roll.”
We walked around the church in sort of a synchronized fashion, sort of like we were a street gang in a musical. I was almost surprised that nobody started snapping their fingers. I guess we were sort of a gang—a gang of Bluists trying to invade a Christian church. Not that I was a Bluist myself, of course, but that’s the team I was playing for at the moment.
We checked the cars first—they were full of textbooks that made it obvious they belonged to people from our same school. But no sign of my backpack.
And the back door to the church was locked, too.
“Shit,” said Emma. “You’d think they were trying to keep us out of this place!” She started banging on the back door. “Hello?” she shouted. “Anyone here? Jesus?”
I was sure I heard someone inside, but no one came to the door.
“See? I told you,” said Tim. “Whoever’s in there is ignoring us.”
“Relax,” said Emma. “Blue will provide. Maybe there’s an open window or something.”
“You want to sneak in?” I asked.
“If Ramona says Norman’s there, then he’s probably there,” said Emma. “That means the backpack’s in there. Let’s check the windows.”
“Who opens windows when there’s a storm coming in?” asked Tim. “Seriously, it looks like we’re in for another Great Flood.”
The sky was getting darker and darker with clouds as mean as any I’d ever seen in my life. I hadn’t felt a drop yet, but the rain smell was definitely getting stronger.
“Faith, gentle apostle,” Emma said. “Blue will
provide.”
“This is nuts,” I said. “Why not just wait by the cars?”
“Because that could take hours. And if Norman’s not in there, then your backpack is out there in the wild someplace. We’ve got to get inside and find out who’s there.”
Looking back, I’m still not entirely sure Emma was being totally rational. But neither was I. I had to know who was in there. I couldn’t just sit around the parking lot hoping Norman would come outside. Not if he might be out there someplace with my backpack.
The windows around the back of the building were pretty high off the ground, and small, but not so high that you couldn’t reach them or anything. Emma walked up to the first one, reached up, and pushed it, but it was shut fast. So was the second one she tried.
But not the third.
“Hallelujah!” she said, and the window opened into the building. “It’s a miracle, o ye of little faith!”
“Miracle my ass,” said Tim. “That window is six feet off the ground. How are you supposed to get in?”
“I said for thee to have faith,” said Emma. “Don’t make me cast thy ass into the fiery mouth of Nebraska!”
“Go smite yourself,” said Tim.
We stood and stared at the window for a second.
“Problem is,” said Emma, “I’m never fitting into that thing.”
“I could, probably,” said Tim. “But I don’t know if this is worth getting arrested for. There’s got to be an easier way.”
“Just tell them you came to get baptized or something, and even when it was locked, you were determined to get in and get saved. They’ll eat it up.”
I stared up at the window and thought of all the times people on Full House snuck into things.
One time, Danny and Joey dressed in drag to sneak into a sorority reunion.
Kimmy Gibbler snuck Stephanie and Michelle into a movie. On D. J.’s orders.
D. J
. skipped school to sneak out to the mall to get some singer’s autograph.
And Stephanie at least tried to sneak out of the house to see a ballerina when she was sick.
They all got caught, of course. Danny and Joey even ended up in jail. But in one episode, Danny snuck into a Slaughter concert with one of his one-episode-stand girlfriends, and he totally got away with it.
This could not be too big of a risk for me.
“I’ll do it,” I said.
“You sure?” asked Emma. “This is pretty advanced espionage stuff.”
“It’s the kind of thing I need to start doing more of,” I said.
“Atta kid,” said Emma. “Come on.”
She tossed her own backpack on the ground, then crouched down on all fours below the window. “Climb up,” she said.
“Are you sure you won’t get hurt?” I asked, walking slowly up to her.
“Relax,” said Emma. “It’s not like I’ve never had Tim jump on my back during a holy quest before. And he probably weighs way more than you do.”
I very cautiously put one foot on Emma’s back, then slowly raised myself up.
“Oof!” she grunted.
“You okay?” I asked.
“No problem,” said Emma. “You were just kinda on my kidney. Keep going.”
I lifted my second foot up, and I was standing right on her, with my head just about level with the window, which I pushed further open.
“Can you hoist yourself in?” asked Emma.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think so.”
I reached my arms into the window, pushed myself up, then lifted a leg off of Emma and up to the window, and rolled the rest of the way inside.
I was in. All alone, but in.
“Awesome!” I heard Emma shout. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I called back.
“Good,” said Emma. “Now, go find that backpack, and we’ll go find ourselves some nudity and something breakable before Lisa and Norman’s date!”
I took a second to look around me—the walls were covered with brightly colored cartoony pictures of shepherds and Roman soldiers and stuff. There were some juice cartons that had been made into little churches on a table, and a bunch of chairs that looked like they were made for five-year-olds. Obviously, I had broken into a Sunday school room.
There was no sign of the backpack there, of course, which meant that I was going to have to go explore the rest of the place.
“Nothing in this room,” I called out the window. “I’ll keep looking.”
“All right,” Emma called back. “Tim and I will head to the back door. You can unlock it from inside and let us in.”
And I made my way out of the Sunday school room and started sneaking through the church.
I’d used rough language in front of a teacher, stolen a cup of coffee, and broken into a building. It was nothing they wouldn’t have done on Full House, but I felt like I was actually starting to become a regular badass.
And as nervous as I was, it felt pretty good.
Twelve
I ducked into a bathroom to take a quick pee, since I couldn’t wait any longer, then walked down the hall until I found the back door. It was made of glass, so I could see Emma and Tim on the other side.
Emma gave me the thumbs-up.
“Hang on,” I mouthed. “I’ll let you in.”
I started looking around for the latch or whatever, but I couldn’t find anything to unlock the door. I shrugged. Emma shrugged back.
“Is there a switch on the edge of the door?” she shouted. “Sometimes there’s a switch.” I could barely hear her through the thick glass—no wonder whoever was in the place hadn’t heard us before.
“Go around to the front,” I mouthed, waving my arms around in case she couldn’t read my lips well enough. “I’ll try that one.”
She must have gotten the message, because she and Tim darted around the corner, out of sight.
I was on my own.
It was spooky in there—I totally understood what Emma and Tim meant about feeling freaked out when they turned out the lights in empty spaces. I could hear the sounds of at least one person moving around and making noise somewhere in the church. Either it was haunted or there were still people in there someplace. But I didn’t think I believed in ghosts.
I did sort of believe that dreams could mean something, though, and now I was living out the dreams I’d had about sneaking around someplace where I wasn’t welcome. I had those so often that I’d even asked my mom about them, and she looked them up in some dream dictionary that she had.
“Dreams about intruding are very common,” she said. “It usually means that you worry that someone knows a secret about you, or that you’re trying to force yourself on someone who may not want you. But you never know. Dreams mean different things to different people.”
At the time, I’d kept myself from thinking that maybe I was worried about forcing myself on Lisa, and decided that the dreams were just a natural extension of my constant worrying about people knowing what I was thinking. It made sense.
But I was sort of forcing myself on Lisa. I was hanging around with her, joining all the same clubs as her, pretending to like all the same things and be the same religion as her, all in the vague hope that someday she’d fall in love with me. If that wasn’t forcing myself on her, I didn’t know what was.
But it was all going to end tonight.
The lights were on in the hallway, and I could see that every other room nearby seemed to be Sunday school stuff, too. Some of the rooms were clearly for older kids—instead of cartoons of shepherds, the wall had posters of contemporary Christian bands, and those really graphic posters of Jesus on the cross with things like “body piercing can save your life” written in a spray paint font. There were about a million copies of that “Footprints” poster on the walls.
At the far end of the hall was the main sanctuary, or whatever the big room with the pews and the altar in it is supposed to be called. I paused and snuck a glance into it—it was weird seeing a sanctuary sitting empty. The lights were off and no candles were burning or anything. It was kind of spooky, in fact. I still felt sort of like a badass, but nervousness was overcoming me very quickly.
Then I heard a sound. A voice. A girl’s voice. It was coming from down a hallway to the right of the sanctuary.
It wasn’t really a voice that said anything; it was more like a noise than anything else, but I could tell it was human. And even though I was kind of creeped out by the empty church, I could somehow tell that it wasn’t a ghost voice or anything.
Then I heard a guy’s voice, too.
I walked further down the hall, toward the room where the noise was coming from, and found myself at the very end of the hall at a room marked Coats.
“Hello?” I called out. “Is anyone here?”
“Oh, shit,” said the female voice. And this time, I recognized the voice right away. It was Angela!
So I opened the door, and there was Angela, all right. Along with a guy I didn’t really recognize. They were cuddled up on the floor, with her sort of on top of him, and butt naked. Not doing it, as far as I could tell, but definitely naked.
“Debbie!” screamed Angela. She quickly rolled away from the guy and covered herself with her arms, and, in doing so, gave me a clear full frontal view of both of them. “What are you doing here?”
I probably blushed as red as a traffic light. I could feel all the blood in my face. For a second I didn’t say anything, I just stared.
The guy wasn’t even panicking and trying to cover himself, like people always do when someone sees them naked on TV. He was just … there. Staring back at me like it was no big deal. I tried to look at his face, not, like, south of the border, but I ended up getting an eyeful.
“I’m looking for my backpack. I heard Norman was here.”
“For God’s sake,” said Angela to the guy. “Cover yourself!”
I heard her tossing him a coat or something, and when I chanced to turn my head back in their direction, she’d covered herself in her own coat, which she was wearing like a smock. The guy was tying his jacket around his waist like it was a loincloth or something.
For a second, none of us said anything. Then I realized that I was still standing there, and turned and bolted out of the room.
At least I could cross a goal off the list.
“Debbie!” I heard Angela calling. “Wait! Come on back!”
When I turned back, they were both laughing. Angela, especially, was cracking up.
“I’m soooo sorry,” I said. “I … didn’t mean to … ”
“Relax,” said Angela, between chuckles. “It’s the risk one takes when one fools around in public.”
“Public?” asked the guy. “We locked the fucking door. How’d you even get in to the building?”
“Window,” I said sheepishly. “I snuck in.”
They both laughed, and I even managed to giggle a tiny bit myself.
“Debbie, this is Josh,” said Angela, pointing at the guy like she would have introduced anyone else. “Josh, this is Debbie Woodlawn. She’s a friend of Lisa and Norman.”
The guy nodded and reached out a hand for me to shake. I felt totally weird shaking it—I mean, I’ve shaken hundreds of guys’ hands before, but even though he was covering up, and everyone’s naked under their clothes, this time I was pretty much touching a naked guy. I made it a very, very quick handshake.
“So … is Norman around here someplace?” I asked.
Angela chuckled again. “No, it’s just us. We hung around after the prayer group left.”
“And you just started … you know … ?”
Now Angela blushed a bit. “Hey,” she said. “We had some time to kill, and I thought we’d locked the place!”