What a thirty-year-old man was going to do with a giant, menacing stuffed animal was beyond me, but I nodded emphatically.
Ben looked at the axe-man, as if he would rule against this sudden regifting, but he only shrugged indifferently.
“Thank you,” Ben said to me. “He’s a creepy fucker. I’ll name him Stoner.”
We walked through the festival—Ben, Stoner the werewolf and me.
“Wait here a second,” Ben said, shoving the werewolf into my arms.
I started to protest, but Ben was already gone.
Great.I would just stand here, then, scuffing my feet and clutching a stuffed animal like a lost child. I looked at the people milling around and caught the eye of a woman about my age, with fire-engine-red hair.
Oh—shit. I knew her. It had been years, but I would never, ever forget that face. It was burned into my memory.
Rachel. The other woman. Well, one of them.
In a blink, I was sixteen again. Existentially shaken by my father’s infidelity, my mom had decided she, Alexis and I would try this thing called church, where the people were supposed to be nice and you could soothe your mortal pain with the ultimate opiate: the promise of an all-knowing deity and a pleasant afterlife. Plus, there were doughnuts.
The chapel was a pretty building, and the songs were kind of fun, but generally, it was boring as hell. Or it was, until one Sunday morning when I looked across the aisle and caught the eye of a boy with dark hair—rakishly long—and dark eyes. When we stood up to sing, I saw he was shorter than me, but it didn’t matter. He smiled at the opening bars and my heart burst into flames.
Danny Erickson: the first boy I ever loved. He was a few years older, technically college-aged, but still lived with his parents on ritzy Lake Austin. His dad was a doctor and had lots of money. After that Sunday’s service, Danny walked right up to me and asked for my phone number, which had never happened before in my life. He called every night and we talked for hours. When my mom forced us to say good-night, he’d call me again, secretly, and we’d talk for hours more under the sheets. On and on it went.
When it was time for junior prom, he took me to Chili’s and then to the dance, and I felt like a walking, talking princess, hair curled into ringlets and a white rose on my wrist. Afterward, in the early morning hours out on the dock by his house, we sat with our foreheads touching and he told me, in a hushed voice, that he loved me. Then we sneaked back to his room and had sex for the first time, on prom night, like a cliché. But it didn’t matter. Danny was the one good thing I had in the midst of my parents’ divorce.
I wrote him poetry. I listened to the radio and inserted his name, so every song was about him. I thought,He’s the most handsome boy in the world. He’s my everything. We’ll love each other forever, no matter the odds.
Tiny, baby, idiot Lee.
We made plans for college. Well,Imade plans for college. Danny—who wasn’t ambitious about anything other than playing guitar—made plans to go with me. My mom hated the idea; we argued, I held fast.
Fast-forward to April of my senior year. I got the email saying I’d gotten into UT with a scholarship, and Claire was going, too. It was perfect. I didn’t even have to move from Austin. I couldn’t wait to tell Danny. During the drive to church that Sunday, I could feel the announcement building, big and hot in my chest. I knew he’d tell me he was really going to do it, come with me, and we’d make life plans together.
But Danny wasn’t seated in the pews. Which was strange, because his parents were, and they always dragged him. I tamped down the disappointment and told myself I’d call him right after the service.
It dragged and dragged, innumerable songs, the pastor droning on and on. And then, in the middle of a lecture on humility, the great, towering statue of Jesus on a cross behind the pastor started rocking. Everyone—even the pastor—stopped to stare.
No, it wasn’t rocking. It was thumping—a rhythmic pattern. Thump, thump, thump.
The pastor began to speak again, resuming his lecture, but all of a sudden, the thumping grew so loud and so hard that a door behind the statue of Jesus flew open and Jesus himself circled—once, twice—then surged forward, aiming straight for the pastor. The whole church gasped as he dived out of the way, missing death by inches in a holy miracle.
Two people toppled out of the open door and rolled onto the stage behind the fallen statue. Naked as the day they were born.
I knew that short body, that rakish head of hair, that freckle on the left butt cheek. It was Danny, tangled up with another girl.
The sight had me by the throat. Without thinking, I stood up and yelled, “How dare you!” But my words were drowned in someone else’s words—a girl with fire-engine-red hair from two pews in front of me, who’d launched herself out of her seat, shouting, “Itrustedyou!”
She turned in shock. We stood, blinking at each other, as the eyes of every person in the church turned from the spectacle of the naked people to the spectacle of the two furious girls. And it hit me: I wasn’t even the only girlfriend Danny Erickson was cheating on.
As Danny’s mother launched out of her pew, red-faced and yelling, “Daniel Michael Erickson, not again, I told you last time was the final straw,” I decided to hightail it out of the church.
Unfortunately, the red-haired girl had the same idea, so when Danny—wearing pants, at least, and hurriedly buttoning his shirt—came running out of the church, he caught both of us.
“Please! Lee. Rachel.” He looked between us. “I’m sorry.”
He’d said helovedme. But he’d wanted someone else—two someone elses. He’d taken the precious thing between us and dashed it against the rocks.
“Why?” It was a miracle I could speak at all with my throat closing up.
