All the Ugly and Wonderful Things(83)

The questions never stopped, but in high school, I learned a new way to deal with them. No matter what the question was, I nodded.

Were your parents really murdered? Yes.

Did your boyfriend kill your parents? Yes.

Is it true you were gang-raped by some bikers? Yes.

Aunt Brenda told the story to her book club and they told someone else, who told someone else, and on and on and on, getting less true every time it got told. Even less true than Aunt Brenda’s version.

I mostly liked high school. I liked learning things. How numbers worked together to explain the stars. How molecules made the world. All the ugly and wonderful things people had done in the last two thousand years.

I also liked watching people. The girl who was pregnant changed the way she moved to hide it. The boy who looked at people like they were bugs scribbled angry things in his notebook. The teachers kissing desperately in the storage room weren’t married to each other. Amy stood too close to the Spanish teacher when she worked the football concession stand. Leaning over, she brushed her arm longingly against Mrs. Ramirez’s arm.

Watching and doing made things bearable. Also, time passed, even while I slept. After I turned twenty-one, Aunt Brenda wouldn’t be able to frown and say, “I don’t think that’s an appropriate way to spend your trust fund.”

Even before that, I would be eighteen. I could find out things Aunt Brenda didn’t want me to know. Where was Donal? How long until Kellen was free?

In the meantime, the things that hurt other people healed me.

At the end of my freshman year, a girl in my class was raped. Held down and raped by two boys in a bullpen at the city baseball diamond. The rape made other girls nervous, but it reminded me that Kellen loved me. He hadn’t raped me. I slipped secret notes in the girl’s locker. Notes to say, “You’re very good at math,” and “Your hair is pretty today.”

During my junior year, a boy in Amy’s class killed himself. He had terrible acne, purple welts like bee stings all over his face, and he went home from school and hung himself. I could have told him there was no sense in rushing toward being dead. It would find you soon enough, and before it did there were pleasures to make your heart hurt less. If I lay very still in bed at night, I remembered how Grandma’s house smelled. The taste of mint ice cream on Kellen’s tongue. Donal jumping on the bed to wake me up.

For everyone else, the boy killing himself was scary. It made Aunt Brenda hug Amy harder and tell Leslie it was okay if she wanted to move home from the dorm, where she was lonely, even though the college was only twenty miles away. It made them go to church more, hoping God would comfort them.

I didn’t think God could comfort anyone, but I was content to go and sit in the sanctuary. People stared at me sometimes, but they had to follow the rules and I didn’t. God made everyone else stand up and sing, sit down and pray, stand up, sit down, pray, sing, pray. God didn’t seem to care if I read novels or knitted scarves.

Youth group was harder to get through. Charlotte, the youth pastor, was a hugger. She was big and blond, with an enormous mouth full of teeth to hold her big smiley voice. Once, she visited the house, so she and Aunt Brenda could discuss her concerns about me not being baptized. Swimming in a stock tank under the full moon didn’t count.

“I know you’ll be discreet,” Aunt Brenda told Charlotte. “So I’m just going to tell you the whole sordid story. To help you understand. So you can be sensitive to Wavy’s situation.”

Only Aunt Brenda didn’t tell the whole sordid story. She never told anyone about the deposition, but especially not Charlotte. As much as Charlotte loved crying and hugging, she loved to talk about sex more. Or she loved to talk about how you weren’t supposed to have sex.

“God made your body a temple to honor him and he wants you to cherish that gift. He doesn’t want you to put drugs in it. He doesn’t want you to hurt yourself driving recklessly. And He doesn’t want you to share yourself with just anyone. The gift of your temple is for you to share with the special person God has chosen for you.” Charlotte always looked so happy when she talked like that. Ecstatic.

God also didn’t want you to “pollute yourself.” Touching yourself for pleasure wasn’t what God designed your temple for, according to Charlotte. Either God was stupid or Charlotte was confused, because my temple was clearly designed for that.

“When you get married, the purity of your temple will be a gift you give not only to your spouse but to God. The gift of honoring His commandments.” Charlotte wasn’t married and sometimes I caught her looking at Kellen’s ring on my finger.

I wondered, was Charlotte saving her loud-mouthed temple for someone?

The girl in front of me had a better question: “But what about people who aren’t virgins when they get married?”

“Our God is a merciful God,” Charlotte said. “If a person honestly regrets what they’ve done—”

“But what if it’s not their fault?”

“Yeah, like what if a girl gets raped?” Amy’s best friend Angela said. She sounded mad.

Charlotte’s mouth made a big O.

“That’s not the same thing,” said Marcus. He had a crush on Amy, but he might as well have been at home polluting his temple as sitting there mooning over her.

“Marcus is right, that’s not the same thing.” Charlotte’s voice went into its pre-cry quaver. “God understands that bad things can happen to good people.”