Page 26 of People Like Us

Love thy neighbor. Honor thy father. Wives submit yourselves.

Funny how often that one came up. I wished my father had picked some other sector of Christianity to hang his morality on other than the one that stemmed from the apostle that said women shouldn’t speak in church.

I was halfway through wondering if all churches were this crooked or if Southern Baptists were simply gifted at hypocrisy when a voice cut through the room.

“But Jesus hung out with criminals.” My attention swung immediately.

Shannon O’Kinzy sat two chairs down from me, hand half-raised though he’d already spoken. He always dressed like he’d stepped out of an old photograph—pressed trousers, layered button-down shirts, slicked hair. I’d once seen him in the school courtyard dancing with the redheaded girl he sometimes brought to church, the two of them spinning to music only they could hear while she wore a circle skirt with a poodle stitched on the hem. They’d looked so committed to their own strange little world that nobody had known whether to laugh or admire them.

Shannon was usually quiet, but when he did speak it came out charged, like he was one sentence away from revealing a marvelous secret. He looked that way now. His knee bounced rapidly as he waited for Pastor Sam’s answer.

Andy snorted beside me. “Well, we’re not Jesus, dipshit.”

A few boys laughed. I jabbed Andy hard in the ribs with my elbow.

“Ow—what?”

“Don’t be ugly,” I muttered. He rolled his eyes and sat straighter in his chair. Pastor Sam cleared his throat, eager to reclaim the room.

“Well, Shannon,” he said, smiling the tight smile adults used when teenagers became inconvenient, “Jesus associated with sinners to save them, not to become like them.”

Shannon opened his mouth again, then seemed to think better of it. His knee kept bouncing.

Sam continued talking, something about accountability partners and guarding our testimonies, but I stopped listening. My attention slid sideways to Andy. His jaw was set tight enough to show muscle. One of his knuckles was swollen and faintly pink, like he’d hit something recently.

I could still see the way he’d gotten in August’s face in my head: Andy crowding him with that smiling aggression boys used when they wanted witnesses to think they were joking. August standing still as a fence post, eyes flat and unreadable.

Had Andy always been this mean and I’d mistaken it for confidence? Had he always carried anger under the skin like a fever? Or was it newer? Taught, or a developed survival skill?

His father was considered practically holy by half the town. Men quoted him, and women fed him casseroles. My own father praised his humility like it was a second gospel.

But I’d seen the way Andy watched doors. The way he apologized before he knew what for. It felt like a different person than the boy who had crowded August against the trunk of my car this afternoon.

August had been so calm as Andy postured at him, he’d looked almost bored. He seemed to be perpetually disappointed by everything around him. I thought of the coral blush that rose in his cheeks when I teased him, and wondered who else got to see that side of him. Did Wyatt, or the two girls that had gotten out of the car last Sunday? Did his family?

I could hear him calling me Sin in my mind like it meant something sacred. I almost closed my eyes at the thought.

The group bowed in prayer around me before I realized Pastor Sam had finished his sermon. Hands clasped, eyes closed, chairs creaked as everyone bent forward in practiced reverence.

I lowered my head too, but I didn’t close my eyes. Instead, I glanced up through dark lashes to find Shannon staring at me. He wasn’t smirking like he had been on Sunday, but instead it felt like he was studying me. I didn’t look away from him this time. We held each other’s gaze, until the group said “Amen.” in unison, the both of us joining in.

From the outside, I knew exactly how to look devout.

Inside, I was wondering how many people in that room were pretending. Even more, I wondered why Shannon didn’t. His mother allowed his brother to skip church, so I never understood why he attended if he didn’t have to. If I had the option, I’d never step foot in another chapel again.

After youth group let out, the room emptied in a rush of teenagers giggling and shoving each other as their mothers called their names from the parking lot. The building always felt stranger once the bodies left it, as if the silence exposed something it shouldn’t have.

Andy and I stayed behind, as we usually did. Pastor Sam jingled the keys in his hand and tossed them to Andy, who caught them one-handed without looking.

“Lock up when y’all are done.”

“Yes, sir,” Andy said.

The screen door shut behind him. Only the hum of the small space heater remained, and the faint scrape of metal as we began stacking folding chairs. I set one chair on top of another building a crooked tower against the wall.

Andy slammed his own stack down harder than necessary. I glanced at him. His jaw had been tight all evening but now his temper moved around him like heat.

I slid another chair into place and asked carefully, “What’s your deal today?”