Losing Faith

by Denise Jaden

  The pink obviously isn’t working for her. “You know what? This is not a good time. Who cares if I want him, or like him, or even just think he’s cute.” My face feels like it’s three hundred degrees, but I grip my chair and go on. “My sister just died. Can’t you get that? I have plenty of reasons to not be in the right space, for your information.”

  She doesn’t say anything for a while. At least thirty seconds. Then, “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. I think it’s over, that she’s finally going to leave it alone, since that’s what any normal person would do.

  Her lip twitches into a smirk. “Fine. But if you’re going to be friends with this guy, it’s time I got to meet him.”

  I nod, thinking that’s it, and that’s a fair demand, but she goes on.

  “And you have to convince him to help us break into Reena’s room. I want to see what she’s hiding in there.”

  Want to what? Alis will never agree to that. But I force a smile and nod again, figuring I’ll come up with something to pacify her later. At least I have two people on my team now. Even if the team might be a bit of a job to bring together.

  chapter TWENTY-THREE

  my parents are both still at work when Tessa pulls up in our driveway just after four the next day. I’m getting used to her behind the wheel. So far, she hasn’t put us into any life-threatening situations. Considering her lack of instruction, she drives pretty well.

  She honks, but I’m still layering my clothes to avoid wearing a jacket. When I open the door to her knocking only minutes later, she looks like I’m wearing on her nerves already. I jot a note for Dad, explaining I’m going to a friend’s house. I include Tessa’s cell number, just in case.

  “Good to go,” I say cheerily.

  She rolls her eyes.

  I still can’t believe Alis agreed to let us come over. He didn’t even put up a fight about Tessa coming along, or about her lock-picking plan. He must be curious about Reena’s room too.

  Tessa checks her watch twice on the way to the car. I wait for her to suggest we synchronize. She loves this covert stuff.

  My heart beats techno-fast on the ride over. I take calming breaths. “When do you have to get the car back?” I have to talk to keep my mind off things. Even sneaking into Faith’s room made me nervous, and I sure didn’t have to worry about her walking in on me.

  Tessa shrugs. She’s not exactly making this conversation flow.

  “Do you think your parents suspect you drive it?” I try again.

  She glances over with a raised eyebrow. I’m not sure what the look is all about, but I’m a lot less concerned about that than I am about her keeping her eyes on the road.

  “It’s just me and my dad,” she says. “And I guess you don’t know him.” She faces forward again.

  What am I supposed to say to that? Of course I don’t know her dad. She made me wait outside her stupid apartment! But her words make me wonder if she was hiding something in there. Like me staying outside wasn’t just a matter of convenience or keeping me at arm’s length.

  I test the waters. “You’re right. I don’t know anything. What’s your dad like?” After her tone, I know better than to ask what happened to her mom.

  Tessa taps the steering wheel. We go through a couple more intersections before she says anything. “You want to know what my dad is like, huh?”

  I don’t bother answering, since it sounds rhetorical.

  “Come over tomorrow after school,” she says. “You’ll see.”

  Plan V: Breaking and Entering 101.

  A few minutes later, Tessa drives right past the Monachie’s cul-de-sac.

  “You missed it!”

  She shakes her head. “Come on, think, Jenkins.” When she calls me Jenkins, it gives me the feeling I’m growing on her. “We don’t want what’s-her-face to recognize this car. We need to keep it hidden. Just in case.”

  Just in case what? I want to ask. But I bite my lip to keep my dumb questions to myself.

  We walk a block and a half back toward the house, and then Alis separates from the shadows, and waves from the side of the house by the garden swing. We skirt around the corner in his direction.

  “Come through the back,” he whispers when we get close enough.

  I awkwardly gesture at Tessa. “Alis, this is Tessa. Tessa … Alis.”

  Tessa’s eyes dart back and forth between us. Then she studies Alis and his preppy polo shirt. Eventually, they both nod at each other. Alis stares down at her skull belt buckle. This is not exactly a friendship waiting to happen.

  He opens the sliding glass door off the porch and we enter his small kitchen. Tessa takes a slouching position against the sink and Alis leans on the kitchen table. I hover between them.

  The yellow walls with rose wallpaper bordering around the upper perimeter could’ve been in style a decade or two ago. The paint on the cupboards is chipped and the whole room feels much older than it had from the outside.

  Tessa glances between the clock and her wristwatch.

  “Synchronizing?” I joke, trying to break the awkward silence.

  She scowls. “I’m setting my alarm for five-fifteen.”

  “We better get a move on,” Alis says. “I’ve been trying to pick the lock on her bedroom door, but …” He shifts like he wants someone to interrupt. “Maybe you’d be better at this sort of thing,” he says to Tessa.

  “Me? Why?” she says in false shock.

  “Well, no. I mean, I just thought—” He shoots me a look, and I’m about to take the brunt of this one when she pushes past him.

  “Shut up.” She leads the way. I can tell she’s joking, but by the look on Alis’s face, he has no idea. I follow them up the stairs, wishing I had a better idea of why we are even here. I always thought it was more a girl thing to sneak into a sibling’s room. Then again, Alis seems protective of his sister and I wonder if he worries about what her group is into after what happened with Faith. Maybe he wants to make sure Reena doesn’t plan on following in Faith’s footsteps.

  Along the stairwell, I notice tiny nails in the walls, but no pictures. Not even one. “How long have you guys lived here?” I ask Alis.

  “Most of my life. We moved from the other side of Salem when I was three.”

  Tessa swings doors open one by one, poking her head into each room and not bothering to ask which one is Reena’s. She’ll find it herself.

  Alis scoots past her. “It’s this one.” He rattles the locked knob and gives Tessa a warning look.

  Tessa fiddles with something in her black jacket and pulls out a foot-long rod of metal. She gets down on her knees and sticks it into the keyhole. Alis eyes me, and I give him a nod to let him know she won’t bust Reena’s door. He still looks doubtful. We turn our eyes back to Tessa, but it seems to take forever. She pushes and looks relieved, then leans in closer and fidgets some more.

  “Are you … Do you think you’ll be able to?” Alis ventures.

  She glares up at him. Holds out the rod. “You wanna try?”

  He takes a step back.

  Thirty seconds later, a click sounds. “All yours,” Tessa says to Alis. She knocks him on the leg with her wand so hard I hear the snap, but if it bothers Alis, he doesn’t show it.

  He reaches to try the knob. When it turns, a smile tugs at the side of his mouth.

  Alis holds the door open, and Tessa and I walk through. He follows behind us. I lean into the wall, thoroughly creeped-out by my first glance at Reena’s hidden world.

  Taped around Reena’s walls are papers with Bible verses—that much I expected—but there’s also what I could only describe as hate messages, strewn among them. AN EYE FOR AN EYE, in big bold letters. VENGEANCE IS MINE. HATE YOUR MOTHER AND FATHER AND SISTER AND BROTHER … EVEN YOUR OWN LIFE.

  “What is this?” Tessa asks. “Some kind of labyrinth of deep-seated confusion?”

  Across the length of her ceiling is a large hand-drawn, half-painted picture of a cross. If not for w
hat’s attached to the cross, I would love to lie back and admire the artistry. But the unmistakable likeness to Reena overlapping the ornate drawing causes my eyes to shoot away and down to the floor. At least her brown shag carpet is nothing unusual.

  When I hear Alis gasp beside me, I glance up. He’s taking in the whole room at once. I wonder how recently Reena did all this.

  “Let’s get to work,” Tessa says. She, obviously, is over the shock.

  I want to ask Alis if he’s okay, if he wants me to do this instead, but when Tessa starts yanking open drawers, he crouches by her bookcase, running his thumb along the spines of her small library. Many of them are Bibles, and again I wonder why one person needs so many. I follow him over and lean down beside him.

  He pulls off a hardcover book of photography. It’s coated in dust and I hold back a sneeze.

  “This was my mom’s.” He fans through the pages, and now I do sneeze. I turn my head, so as not to get any spray on his heirloom.

  He removes a card from the middle. A piece of notepaper slips out, which he scans, and then slides under the cover of the book. Without acknowledging it, he flips back to the card and opens it. “An old birthday card. For my dad.”

  I peer over his shoulder at the card addressed to Henry. The whole left-hand side is covered in cursive writing and signed I love you. Annie.

  “This is from your mom to your dad? Why does Reena have it?”

  He scans the writing and shakes his head. “Just memories, I guess.”

  “Are you okay?” I whisper. He doesn’t answer right away, and I put my hand on his shoulder.

  “Check these out,” Tessa says, holding out a pair of silky full-fit underwear from Reena’s drawer. “Looks like something my grandma would wear.” Tessa cackles, which for a second seems like it’s aimed right at Alis and his pain. When I look at him, his jaw is tense.

  “Come on, Tessa.” I scoot over, take the underwear, and shove it back in the drawer. I wonder what she’s even looking for. Did she really suggest we break in here so she could check out Reena’s undergarments? “Please stop,” I add when she reaches for the next drawer.

  She glares at me.

  Turning away, I head over to the window to avoid her bullying eyes. But that’s not any less scary, since the second-story view makes me jittery. At home I keep my blinds closed and my bed as far from the window as humanly possible for this very reason. I put my hands up on either side of Reena’s large window frame to catch my breath, but the latch is loose and I shriek when it suddenly gives way under my hands and the cold outside air blasts against me.

  In less than a second, Tessa grabs my arm and jerks me away from the window. “Will you shut up! You scared the crap out of me.”

  I snap my mouth shut and glance at Alis apologetically, but he’s just staring down into another book. I’m afraid he’s on the verge of telling us both to get out, so I turn the opposite direction for Reena’s nightstand while Tessa pulls the window closed.

  I take measured breaths and try to focus. Under Reena’s bedside lamp, I find a rectangular pad. My hand catches on a hook of paper, sticking out from it. I place the lamp on the floor out of the way, and pick up the rectangular piece.

  When I flip it over, the papers attached on the back side fall loose toward me. “Hey, look,” I say. “A calendar.”

  The first thing I notice is it’s still on September. There are notes in almost every square, with times listed. Most say seven o’clock, but there are a few as early as five. There are also a few acronyms scattered on different dates. Most of them read YE.

  I feel Alis’s breath over my other shoulder. The only noticeably different square is one near the bottom. September twenty-fifth, the day that Faith died. It says OR. Talk to Faith. When I flip to October and then November, the pages are empty.

  “Faith?” Alis says from behind me. I turn back. He looks as serious as I feel, but I can tell in his eyes that he doesn’t have any more answers than I do. If anything, just more questions.

  “I bet these are those home group meetings,” I say, pointing to the times. It’s all I can do to distance myself. I try to think of the whole thing like a puzzle and not like the key to the last moments of my sister’s life.

  I look up from the calendar to Reena’s strange room decor and shake my head. “It’s like she’s in some kind of cult.”

  “No,” Alis says too quickly. Defensively. “It’s not …” He stops. “We have to go soon,” he whispers.

  The truth is, I want out of here way more than I want to keep looking. My stomach feels queasy. I try to give him a look that says it’s okay. That whatever this is, my sister was wrapped up in it too.

  He doesn’t see me though and turns to make his way to the door with fists clenched.

  “Wait!” Tessa is crouched down near the bottom drawer of a file cabinet, flipping through an open file. “I thought this was all just homeschool shit, but look.”

  Alis and I both kneel beside her. The first thing I see is a page of stickers at the front of the file. Five more of the same yellow ones Faith and Celeste had on their dashes. Several more in orange, red, and black. Tessa starts reading from another page.

  “Yellow Entry Level,” she says. “It says they need to memorize these eight Bible verses and prove their lives to be pure.” Her eyes scan the page for anything else of interest.

  I can’t believe she’s found explanations of what this home group is all about. But somehow the whole thing sounds a lot more normal than I’d expected.

  “Orange Level Two,” Tessa reads from another sheet. “Otherwise known as The Martyrdom Level.”

  “It says that?” I pull the paper down so I can see it too.

  “Look at all those verses,” Alis says. “There’s got to be at least thirty.”

  “Do they all have to do with martyrs?” I ask.

  Tessa scans the sheet. “I think so.”

  I pick at the carpet under my knees. “Faith had one of those yellow stickers in her car.” I can’t help my mind going to the possibility of her having an orange one somewhere else. Somewhere I hadn’t seen.

  “But if there were four levels, how could they actually martyr themselves at level two?” Tessa asks. And this makes sense. I start to relax a little, but the room is so silent, and when Tessa’s watch beeps, it sounds like a fire alarm.

  “Crap, we gotta go.” Tessa pushes all the papers back into the file. “We have to keep this.”

  “No!” Alis tries to grab it from her. “She’ll know. Reena’s meticulous with her stuff. No way.”

  Tessa grits her teeth, so I quickly grab it from both of them. “Listen, I know there’s more in here, but we’ll have to come back.” I pass it to Alis.

  Tessa turns and stalks away, thudding down the stairs like she’s three hundred pounds.

  “She’s a little hard to get used to,” I tell Alis. “Thanks for letting us do this.”

  He offers a half smile, then bends down to tidy up the mess of papers Tessa left. “You better go.”

  I back toward the hallway, wanting to stay and make sure we’re okay, but also in a panic to get out. Not coming up with anything else to say, though, I finally turn and rush to catch up to Tessa just outside the back door.

  We cut through a path in the backyard to get to her car. It’s twenty-five after by the time we leave. I let out my breath when we finally drive away from their cul-de-sac.

  Tessa’s still pissed, I can tell by the way she keeps her face away from me. I try to think of a way to calm her down, but she opens her mouth before I can come up with anything.

  “You need to get back to your homework before your teachers start getting on your case,” she says, surprising me with her sudden change in temperament. “One of us might go to college, and at the moment, it’s looking in my favor.”

  I wonder how she knows I’m behind on schoolwork. And that all of my teachers have been giving me a break. Personal experience, I suppose. But now that we’re getting some ans
wers about Faith, even if some unexpected answers, I actually think I could concentrate on a bit of homework. Tessa hits the brakes just outside my house. “Call me,” I say.

  She nods. “No meetings coming up on Reena’s calendar, huh?”

  That’s when it strikes me. Alis says Reena hasn’t had any meetings at the house. Not since the night of Faith’s death.

  “But she invited me to a group,” I say. “The meetings must still be happening.”

  “Yup. You’re right. That means we just have to find out where.”

  chapter TWENTY-FOUR

  for most of the next day, I look for Tessa and can’t find her. She doesn’t show up at her locker and I wonder if she’s skipping. I can’t help thinking that it could be because she doesn’t want to bring me home after school. I already told Dad, and he seemed pleased I was going to a friend’s house.

  But on my way out the front doors at the end of the day, there she is, waiting for me. I start to ask her where she’s been, but she interrupts with, “Don’t ask.”

  Okayyyy. But she motions with her head for me to follow her toward the bus. That’s a good sign at least. I board behind her and sit in silence while she stares out the side window.

  The bus pulls up in Tessa’s neighborhood and we get off. We walk into the lobby of her dark apartment building. The walls in the hallways aren’t the usual light cream or beige colors you normally see, but murky forest green instead. And the doors to each apartment are an old, scuffed-up brown.

  I follow Tessa to apartment number thirty-two and she slides her key into the lock.

  The inside isn’t any brighter than the outside. The walls within my vision are a dark navy blue. The pictures on the walls—large family gatherings, smaller family portraits—cram into one another, almost overlapping. Many are similar, four people in the same burgundy-and-white outfits, like they’re all from the same photo shoot, but somebody doesn’t want a single one to get wasted in a drawer.

  “This is your family?” I whisper. It seems deathly quiet in here, and I figure her dad must be taking a nap if he’s home.