Losing Faith

by Denise Jaden

  The good news is, she’s paying little attention to Celeste and me. The bad news: We’ll likely die in a car wreck on the way up this windy incline. Though, I must admit, that sounds better than making it to the top. The road splits in two several times, but Reena seems to know the way.

  I lean slightly toward Celeste. “I’m texting for help,” I whisper. She nods.

  Reena’s eyes dart to us in the rearview mirror. I jerk back in my seat and fake the same pained expression she uses when she belts out lyrics.

  Finally, the incline evens out and Reena parks. By the moonlight all I see are boulders and rocks in every direction. I can’t see a cliff edge anywhere. Maybe she decided not to go all the way to the top. Maybe they’re going to initiate me right here.

  I can live with that.

  Nathan steps out of the car first and Reena gets out and slams her door. When she moves to his side of the car, her face contorts like she’s angry with him. A push to his chest confirms it. I wonder if this is still about him walking me home.

  Celeste bends forward with her hands over her face. Even though I’m sure she’s upset about all this, I don’t have time to comfort her. I use the top edges of my purse to hide the glow of my cell phone. It has five missed calls, and suddenly I realize I forgot to leave a note for Dad. But when I scroll to the last one, it’s from Tessa. I hit reply and frantically type a text message.

  I barely get the word HELP typed in when Celeste sits up, her eyes wet. I start to type our location and seconds later, Celeste reaches for the door handle, I suspect to keep Reena distracted.

  “Don’t look in her eyes,” she murmurs to me as she gets out.

  “Brie.” Alis’s whisper from behind me makes me jump and the motion seems to remind Reena I’m here. She turns to the car to find me.

  “Shhh,” I say under my breath. My hand fumbles over my cell phone buttons and I hit all the ones in the general vicinity of send just as Reena bends into the car. I throw my purse to the floor and kick it under the seat.

  Nathan leans in through the other door, about to say something.

  “Get away from her,” Reena snaps.

  They share a look, and for a second I feel like I’m in the middle of a lover’s spat. Was he not Faith’s boyfriend?

  “Come on,” Reena says to me in a friendlier tone. I feel my shoulders start to relax, but I fight it. I keep my eyes from hers.

  Somehow I get my legs beneath me and stand. The first thing I notice outside the car is the music. I haven’t noticed it in days, but Faith hums again, loud and clear.

  I’ve always known it’s just a figment of my imagination, or a by-product of grieving or whatever, but now, I’m shocked at the volume and the clarity. The other thing that surprises me is how bright it is with no streetlights around. The moon looks so big and close up here. A constant reminder of how high we are.

  Reena leads the way behind a boulder. “Let’s go.”

  I glance back at the car. How will Alis get out of the trunk? In a split second, I realize that maybe he tucked his jacket through the seats for a reason. Maybe he wanted me to unlatch it for him so he could get out.

  “I … uh, forgot my purse,” I say, backing toward the car.

  Reena laughs. “Don’t be silly. It’ll be fine. No one’s around.” She spreads her hands, as if to prove how absolutely isolated we are.

  Celeste mistakes my hesitance for fear, and jumps in with “I-I’ll go first. If that’s okay.”

  “Yeah,” Nathan says, stepping between Reena’s car and me. “Let’s do this.”

  Reluctantly, I follow Reena and Celeste behind the boulder. Nathan trails behind me. On the other side, we weave along a small dirt path leading us higher. Celeste sticks close behind Reena, but stumbles a little, and it gives me an idea. I force a slip and fall to the ground, hitting the dirt with the side of my shoulder and face to make it look extra convincing.

  “Oh, come on,” Reena says. “It’s not that steep.”

  Nathan reaches to help me up, but when Reena glares at him, he backs off.

  All three of them stay in place and stare at me, probably finding it hard to believe anyone could be so klutzy. “I guess the air up here is making me lightheaded,” I say. “Maybe I should sit at the car for a few minutes.”

  Celeste’s head snaps toward me. I know she’s right. We have to go through with this now if we ever want some answers about my sister.

  “It’s up to you,” Reena says. “If you’re not eager enough for our group, then you won’t be able to—”

  “I am,” I say. “Really.”

  I push myself up from the ground and hug Faith’s jacket tighter around myself more from nerves than chill.

  I can’t make out much around me until we round the crest of the small hill. I gasp. I can see the whole world, or at least the Lite-Brite image of the township of Sharon. The dots of brightness wobble in my vision.

  “So here we are,” Reena says to Celeste. “You wanted to go first? You’re sure you’re not going to run away on us again, right?”

  Celeste jitters her head side to side slightly, not looking sure at all. She takes slow steps toward the cliff edge. I want to reach out and grab her, pull her back, but she holds out her hands to each side about a foot away from the edge. All I can picture is the dream I had of Faith, arms outstretched, feet slipping off of rocks and into a dark abyss. And then of Faith’s image changing to my own. I fumble my hands into my jacket pockets to keep them from trembling.

  Reena opens the file she brought along, and I immediately recognize the multicolored papers that we’d discovered in the drawer of her room. The slight smile on her face tells me everything is going according to plan.

  “All right, let’s start.” Reena glances back toward me. “She can’t be in on this,” she tells Nathan. “But I’m watching you. Keep your distance.”

  Nathan steps in front of me, blocking my view of the other two, and holds his hands out like an invisible force field. He guides me back a few feet without actually touching me until the back of my legs hit something solid. I look back at a large rock. Squatting down, I sit on it, hoping it’ll give me a bit of a view past Nathan’s legs, but he immediately crouches into my vision. It’s more of a romantic gesture than a blocking one.

  “Too bad.” I try to smile coyly. “I was looking forward to seeing how it all works.”

  He whispers about how glad he is to have me here. I flutter my eyelashes, paying little attention to him and taking a peek over his shoulder. There’s enough glow from the moon up here that I can see Reena holding her file folder out with one of those scribbly cross stickers on it a few feet in front of Celeste’s face.

  Each time Nathan stops talking to take a breath, I overhear a few words of Reena’s. “All your thoughts, all your cares and worries are emptying into the bucket in front of you.”

  I look down, and there’s no bucket. She asks Celeste to repeat several Bible verses, and Celeste complies in a monotone. Is Reena hypnotizing her?

  Great. I’m in this alone after all.

  “The best part is,” Nathan goes on, adjusting into my vision, “we’ll see each other at least twice a week.”

  I fake a giggle, but the truth is, this does make me relax a little. If Nathan thinks I’ll be around to see him twice a week, that seems like a good sign.

  Celeste’s voice, suddenly loud, interrupts us. “I offer my body as a living sacrifice. …”

  I’m about to run past Nathan and stop Celeste before she launches herself off the cliff, but before I move, she cuts to another scripture. And then another. Celeste spouts Bible verses, along with their references like she’s racing through a timed spelling bee.

  I swallow. I’ve never heard Celeste so loud and so bold. She’s so obviously not herself. When she stumbles over a few words, Reena steps in and tells her the proper ones, but Reena’s nodding head tells me Celeste is doing just fine, even with mistakes. I don’t know a single verse without a Bible sitting right in f
ront of me, and suddenly I realize how easily Reena will break my charade.

  “I must say, I’m impressed, Celeste.” Reena turns to us. “Start the fire, Nathan. I think she’s ready for the branding ritual.”

  I swallow. Branding? With fire? As much as I can see of Celeste, she hasn’t flinched, not at any of this. I need to get her out of this somehow before she wakes up with burns all over her body.

  Nathan nudges me off of the rock while Reena announces that they’ll be going through the “Higher Scriptures” next. She starts reciting lines. Celeste waits for Reena to finish each one before repeating it back. I can’t concentrate on any of the words as I watch Nathan grab small twigs and stack them in a pile. He digs matches, paper, and two long metal rods out of a backpack.

  “Um, you don’t use those on, like, people, right?” I whisper.

  Nathan arranges the wood in a small teepee and then smiles up at me. He pulls down the middle of his shirt a few inches and I see it. My mouth goes dry. In the middle of his chest is a dark mark that looks like the scribbly cross from the stickers. It’s blackened and looks like it’s been there for a while. I wonder if it still hurts. Part of me wants to reach out and touch it, since I can’t quite believe it’s really there.

  “Pain increases the energy in our circle,” he says. “We have greater power.”

  I can’t breathe and try to get my bearings while he adjusts his shirt back over the mark and lights the fire. My concentration is shot. Reena and Celeste’s voices fade in and out of my consciousness, and blend together until I catch the phrase “higher power than God.”

  Celeste repeats the phrase without so much as a blink. I tune into the next one, a lengthy promise about committing to the Art of Martyrdom. Trusting your leader in all things, life and death. Trusting your leader above all other people and entities. I stare down at the long metal rods which Nathan now has heating in the fire.

  Celeste repeats each word methodically. As they leave her mouth, I try to picture Faith saying those same words. But it’s impossible to imagine. Faith didn’t, would never have been able to repeat those words. Not without an hour and a half argument on the finer points of the meaning of such suggestions.

  Unless … how strong is hypnotism?

  I can’t bear the thought. Could Faith have been branded too?

  When Reena completes the page, she slides it into her file. “Welcome, Orange.” She says the word “orange” slowly, like it’s more than just a color. Pulling out an orange sticker, she holds it up and hands it to Celeste. I wonder if Reena knows she picked the yellow one off of her dash.

  While Reena looks down to rearrange her folder, Celeste darts her eyes to me. Or at least one of her eyes. The moonlight glints off her right one, which is turned in sharply toward her nose.

  That must have been what Celeste had been doing bent over in the car—taking out her contact lenses. She can’t see a thing! My heart jumps. Could she be faking the hypnotism?

  Celeste turns back to Reena. “This is great,” she says, and if I hadn’t seen her eyes, I’d almost believe she is happy about the whole thing. She takes a step toward to Reena. “I did it. Everything you asked.”

  Reena narrows her eyes slightly, like she knows there’s a “but” coming.

  “Now can you please tell me about Faith?” Celeste says the words softly and sweetly.

  “It’s almost hot enough,” Nathan calls out.

  “But—”

  “You’re not done yet, Celeste.” There’s a bit of a clip to Reena’s voice, and Celeste must recognize it too. She stares past Reena toward the fire and I can tell she’s trying to keep herself composed, but I’m afraid her quickly blinking eyes are going to give her away.

  I have to save her before they hold her down and brand her. “What about my initiation?” I say. And they all turn to me.

  chapter THIRTY-THREE

  reena hands the folder to Celeste and walks toward me with her arm out, “Just step up here.”

  “Uh, no. I mean, I can’t. Not up there. I’m afraid of heights. Petrified, actually.” Just the thought of stepping closer toward the cliff’s edge makes the sweat buds in my armpits rain like a monsoon.

  “Annie,” Reena says, consolingly. If she hadn’t used my alias, I’d have forgotten it. “It’s okay. We all understand. And we’ve all been there. But our group is about trust. First, you need to learn to trust God, and then you need to accept a human trust. … Us.” I think about Nathan’s words about pain. These are not people I want to trust. Ever.

  Celeste knows about my extreme fear of heights, but I can’t blame her for not stepping in. I really can’t decide which is worse: falling off this cliff, or having a fire-soaked branding iron driven into my skin. But what if Reena tries to hypnotize me? I don’t have the luxury of removing my contact lenses.

  “How about this,” I say, thinking fast. “I’ll say all the verses, any that you want, but I could say them right here.” I hold my arms to my sides like Celeste had. Now I know why she jumped in to go first. So she could show me how to fake it convincingly.

  “No, not there.” Reena shakes her head. “It has to be the right way.”

  Of course. The OCD thing. Everything has a system. But I can’t move. I desperately want to help Celeste, to get some answers, but I just can’t do it. Reena’s face tightens with each passing second.

  “Wait! What if I take just one step over that way.” I motion toward the edge. “And you give me some inspiring words. Maybe about the martyr girl from your group. I’d love to hear how committed she was. And then maybe I can work myself up to take another step.” I can’t believe how easily the lie slides from my lips.

  Reena stares at me, and for a long second I wonder if it was over the top.

  “It’ll be okay, Reena,” Nathan says, still stoking the fire. “And we need her, right? We need four.”

  “Fine,” she says, and blinks a few times in quick succession. “Take a step first,” she says to me.

  I try to do a little shuffle for my first step, since the area is small and the edge is only a few feet away, but Reena shakes her head. I take a deep breath and lift my foot, moving it forward, and then bring my other foot to meet it. When I see farther over the cliff’s edge into oblivion, I wobble and Reena grabs my arm to help me regain my balance.

  “See, it’s fine,” she says, as though teetering any closer wouldn’t actually be a death sentence.

  “So tell me something about that girl. Faith, right?” My voice is barely recognizable through my chattering teeth. I look at Celeste, begging for her to help me get through this.

  “Yeah.” She comes up beside Reena. “Inspire us, Reena.”

  Reena nods and stares down at the ground like she’s trying to remember.

  “Is this the spot where she died?” I push.

  Reena’s eyes widen, and I can almost see the scene running through her mind.

  “She stood there.” Reena points to the place where Celeste had been, but doesn’t move her eyes. “And we talked through each of the Bible verses as she read them. The meanings, the histories, who wrote each one. She was a smart girl.” Reena blinks, and a tear drips from her eyelashes. Then she remains quiet for several seconds.

  “And the Higher Scriptures?” Celeste ventures softly.

  Reena looks up at Celeste, her eyebrows contorted together. “I—I—”

  “Another step first,” Nathan interjects, suddenly standing away from the fire. “We can’t forget about Annie here. This is an important night for her.” He winks at me. Luckily, Reena’s attention is still on Celeste and she misses Nathan’s flirting.

  I try to channel some of Celeste’s acting abilities. “The more I hear, the more excited I am.”

  Reena stares at me now, waiting. Nathan’s words clearly brought her back to her systematic thinking. I clench my teeth and take another step, making sure it’s big enough to keep her from demanding a second one.

  A rock shoots out from under my foot and t
opples over the edge. I’m close enough to watch it fall and jut off jagged peaks along its path into nothingness. Did Faith slip while she argued with Reena? Or had Reena actually hypnotized her?

  “Wow.” My jittery voice is nearly impossible to understand. “Tell me more.”

  “First, a Bible verse.” Nathan smiles at Reena as though he’s trying to earn brownie points.

  She motions for Celeste to pass him the folder. “Why don’t you do the next one, Red,” she says to Nathan.

  I remember the red sticker on Nathan’s backpack. He beams at Reena addressing him by a color. When I look up to his eyes, they’ve gone glassy. I wonder if all it takes is the mention of someone’s color to bring them into a hypnotic trance.

  Nathan holds the folder up in front of my face so now a yellow sticker is right in my line of vision. He’s going to hypnotize me. Only a foot from the edge!

  “Just concentrate on the cross,” he says, “And repeat after me. ‘Fear the LORD and serve him faithfully with all your heart; consider what great things he has done for you.’”

  I repeat it quickly, but keep my eyes an inch below the cross. Unfortunately, it’s still in my peripheral vision, but I hope that won’t be enough. As I say the words, I wonder what Faith would have thought of them. I decide she would have wholeheartedly agreed with this Yellow Level verse and that makes it easier for me to deliver.

  When I’m done, I glance to Reena, and then Celeste. Nothing. I don’t feel any different. I silently thank God. Since I only have one more step to go—a step I desperately don’t intend to take—I know this is my last chance to get some answers.

  “Tell me about Faith’s last words,” I say. Celeste shoots me a warning look, so I add, “For inspiration.”

  Reena’s lips tighten.

  “Did Faith say the Higher Verses?” Celeste asks Reena.