A/N: Another chapter.  Not all of my chapters will be spiritual, only this one and possibly a few others. And besides, it’s not in the normal category of “spiritual,” this chapter isn’t.

“Some Suburban Fairy Tale”

Chapter One: Clearing the Mud

            Calvin was the kid living in the house across the street.  He was my age, a little taller than me, had hazel eyes, and messy light brown hair that hung around his eyes and a little below his ears. He came to Saint Paul’s High halfway through freshman year. He was philosophical, interesting, amusing, quiet, and naïve.  In other words, he was a lot like me.  And after getting to know him when he moved in during mid-freshmen year, I fell head over heels for him.

            There were a few problems though.  One was, I didn’t have the nerve or the courage to break our now-very-strong friendship by telling him I was sick for him. Two more were Michael and Vanessa.

            Michael was my boyfriend, and also one of my closest friends, ranking up there with Sydney, John, and Kayla.  We did almost everything together – hung out everywhere, we had a lot of classes together (fortunately he went to my school), and we had a lot of common interests.  However, I got to know Calvin a little better because then Michael had become busy, way too busy, and I didn’t get to see him as much.

            And Vanessa… was Calvin’s girlfriend.

            I can still remember the day I met Calvin. It was a Tuesday during Spring Break, freshman year. It was one of those spring days that felt like summer, but then the next day it would rain, like the seasons were just messing with your poor brain so you didn’t get your hopes up. He was sitting on the ground, leaning against the tree outside his house on the lawn, when I walked by to head on to Kayla’s house.

            “Hey,” he called. “Can you help me out here?”

            I glanced over at him.  He had an acoustic guitar in his hands and was wearing very baggy khaki pants and a strange, somewhat tie-dye green-blue shirt where the sleeves were so long they covered his fingers halfway. 

            “Sure,” I replied, walking up to him.  I came to stand in front of him, peering down at his messy hair.

            “Can I ask you a question?”

            “All right,” I said uneasily.  I didn’t know his name and I had a partly guilty feeling on the edge of my conscience, like the little angel supposedly sitting on my shoulder was bitching at me for not introducing myself months ago, for not acting like every other plastic-smiling face in this neighborhood and being a good neighbor by bringing over a warm apple pie and ‘getting to know’ them. 

            “Are you familiar with the Bible?”

            “Who’s not?” I replied in a somewhat sulky voice, glaring at a patch of yellowing grass to the left. In all honesty I wasn’t mad at him, but his question was stupid, redundant even.

            “Can you tell me what God doesn’t like, as stated in the Bible?”

            “Jesus, what is this, some type of trial case?”  I shuffled my feet, looking at the ground, not meaning to be such an ass.  “Well… He doesn’t like a lot of things… about people though?”

            “Yeah.”

            I remember wondering why the hell he was asking such a weird question, but I told him what had been drilled into me for all of my life: God did not like liars, gays, lesbos, perverts, witches, people of other religions and people who committed the Seven Deadly Sins: gluttony, sloth, lust, pride, greed, envy, and anger.  He forgives everyone who asks for forgiveness but only if they wholly believe it and not if they continue doing it afterwards. 

            He smiled in an odd, strangely bitter way when I finished reciting the dull tones.  “Isn’t it odd?” he murmured after a few moments of silence.  He plucked at a few of the strings, and started thrumming a sad, somewhat nostalgic tune.

            “Which part?” I smiled, irony etched in it.

            “They say our God is so merciful… yet people can’t be who they are beneath him.”

            There was a silence.  Then I sat down next to him.  He introduced himself as Calvin, and I told him my name, Crystal.  We talked a little bit more about daily ephemera and he played a song he was writing on his guitar.  It was pretty, but he didn’t have the words yet: just the melody. 

            That was the day that changed me.  From then on, I think I opened my eyes and mind a little more every day, just a little more, every day. Along with the troubles I’d been getting into, I was starting to become a better person. But I think this is a good place to start the story… spring break, freshmen year.

            Everyone at Lakeside High had already had Spring Break the week before, leaving me with only a small handful of friends I’d want to hang out with: Michael, Maggie, and a couple of other people.  And Calvin, but I’d only met him once.  So, the day after I met Calvin, I went to the park with Maggie.  We had an essay to do over Spring Break for our English teacher (we called her the English Nazi, because she was very strict with anything concerning English, and she was pretty bitchy too, although she was funny also) and we were working on it in the park.

            Maggie was a hardcore romantic.  She owned a guitar and had written four songs, all of which involved love, love’s angst, or freedom – never all in one.  She was pretty, well, individual – she mostly talked about either guys or strange things that not many people would bring up in every-day conversation, like the existence of God or why Jell-O jiggles. She didn’t question much of what she asked, though; she'd more like, voice it, and then seem to go with the flow of it in her world. She was yet another friend quite like me, except she was even bitterer than I; and I still haven’t quite found out why.  She wasn’t my best friend, but she was one of my closest at the Catholic school.

             We were working on the essay at one of the picnic tables; I was lying down on it, looking up at the sun filtering through the leaves, and she was playing her guitar and singing softly. 

            I was thinking about what Calvin had said the day before.  I couldn’t stop thinking about it.  He had been implying that he wanted to believe that God was merciful and kind, but if he was, then why did He hate gays and other religious people?  That seemed so unfair in the whole scheme of things.  And then, why did He forgive so easily? What if someone didn’t mean it?

            I had once heard someone say, “If Hitler goes to Heaven and Gandhi goes to hell… I’ll take hell.” The quote popped back into my mind as I thought about what Calvin had said.  The injustice of it made me feel like pondering it thoroughly, to search for an answer, because that’s what I do best; but then Maggie interrupted me.

            “Hey,” she said, glancing at me, “we’re not getting very far on our essay.”

            “Oh yeah,” I scowled guiltily as I sat up.  “Back to the boring recesses of working over vacation, just so it’ll get slammed by the English Nazi.”

            “Better than doing it at home, alone.”

            “True.”

            “Hey, I was wondering, do you wanna go to a religious meeting tonight?”

            I looked over at her.  She was looking at me, and she was being serious.  Normally I would bite back “No” immediately – I’m not exactly the most religious person in the world.  But the conversation with Calvin had wrought a change in me, and I wanted answers, to know why there was injustice when everyone said He was fair and kind.

            “All right,” I replied. “When?”

            Maggie gawked at me. “Good God, the girl’s gonna go to a religious event! What is this world COMING to!?”

            “Oh, quit rubbing it in.  I just want to get something … answered.  Why are YOU going to it, anyway? You don’t exactly show the most religious spirit.”

            “Aaah, anything’s better than watching old 80’s sitcom reruns, so I decided I may as well go to this…”

            “There are cute guys there, I bet.”

            “That too… It’s at 8 o’clock tonight, we can walk to it, it’s in the Dragon Lady’s house.”

           I thought about that house on Owl Street.  That was, in all honesty, a normal-looking house.  However, nobody had lived there very long.  Everyone who had lived there had only stayed for three months at maximum.  The Dragon Lady had been one of them, but everyone remembered her best.  She lived on Owl Street when I was twelve, and Owl Street was about three streets away from my own.  She would spray kids with a hose if they came onto her lawn, whether they were ding-dong-ditchers, or their ball accidentally rolled onto it.  She was a cruel bitch to all children (especially those poor Girl Scouts selling cookies) but she was always sweet to them when there was an adult present.  However, a group of the kids on my street at the time, including myself, got her back for being such a bitch.  We TP’d her like there was no tomorrow, we egged her car, and we did all sorts of other stuff to her house.  Now I feel just a little bit shitty about it, but what’s done is done and there’s no use dwelling on it.

            “Okay.”

            “I’ll walk by to your house and we can walk there together, if you want.  Now, we really should start working on this essay…”

            That night at about 7:45, Maggie rang the doorbell.  After leaving a note for Tish and Tony (they were yelling so loudly I couldn’t’ve gotten a word in) I walked out the door with her.  The sun was setting and a few birds were still chirping, giving off their last chords before settling away for the night. 

            I remember, walking along the sidewalk, that I regretted not having fireflies on this side of the Appalachian Mountains.  I don’t know why it hit me then, but it did.  A lot of things I started questioning then, too, like why Jake was such a moron and got into so much trouble (he was a junior at this time) and why my parents argued so much.  And also, why Michael was so busy lately.  And the ever-present one of the past two days, why God was merciful, yet unmerciful.

            Maggie was talking, but I wasn’t sure about what.  The only things I caught were “new kid” and “English Nazi”, but soon enough we were outside the Dragon Lady’s door, and currently an old couple had been renting the house.

            “Whose idea was this meeting, anyway?” I asked Maggie.  The lights were on in the house and I could tell more than two people were already inside.

            “Well, some kids at St. Paul’s were organizing meetings for people with religious questions and discussions and such, but they didn’t have a place to do it.  The old people here offered to house some of the meetings.  I think they’ve been having one every week for the past five weeks.”

            “Why don’t these kids just use a message board on the Internet or something?” I sighed.

            “I think this place is more fun… You can play music and express your feelings openly… Besides, the Internet’s a tool or worthless evil that hopes to suck out all our brain cells in the expectation that we shall no longer be able to think for ourselves.”

            “Okay, okay, you win… So that’s why you’re bringing your guitar?”

            “Yep.”

            “Should we go in yet?”

            “I don’t want to yet.” Maggie looked at the ground.

            “Ah… you have an important question, or are you just nervous about performing?”

            Maggie stared at the ground a bit longer.  Then she looked straight ahead and said cryptically, “Some wounds are running deep,” and stepped inside.  I followed, thinking maybe I hurt her in some way. Ah well… we all have our own secrets.

            Inside, about ten kids were sitting in a circle, and one was sitting on a chair.  I didn’t know his name, but he was a junior at my school.  The others all ranged between freshmen and senior, most boys, all looking like those pathetic people I knew so well who claimed the worst had happened to them, their life was a bitch, and yet the worst that ever happened to one of them was he scratched his car in a tiny accident.

            But after talking to Calvin, and of course after my own Troubles, I decided to not stereotype all of them, as I was used to; maybe I should hear what they say first; maybe they were not all stuck-up.

            The guy on the chair called to us. “Hi, you two.  Take a seat.  You have a guitar? That’s good… you gonna play for us tonight?”

            Maggie smiled a plastic smile. “Maybe,” she said secretively, and she took up a patch of carpet and sat down.  I sat next to her.  Glancing around, I didn’t see anyone I knew in the small crowd.

            “Well, some people tonight haven’t been here before,” said the guy on the couch, who was supposedly the leader of the group (was it some Youth Group for a church?).  “Since it’s a lot of you, why don’t we go in a circle and introduce ourselves. My name is Mark Evans, and I’m a junior at St. Paul’s.”

            Everyone went in a circle from his left; some of the people were from Lakeside, one from a different public high school, but most were from our school.  Everyone introduced themselves and when that was over, Mark said, “Some of you know the purpose of these weekly meetings, and some of you don’t.  What we do here is discuss current events and how they’re tied with our religion, Christianity, and our denomination of it, of course, Catholicism.  We also raise questions about anything in general so long as it pertains to religion.  Do you new people have any questions?” Nobody raised their hands.

            I feel like I’m in kindergarten or something with this guy, I thought bitterly, as Mark launched into the topic of the day: orphanages.  This group was going to help raise money and give it to any local charities or orphanages, and they were discussing their plans for it in detail.

            I didn’t feel like I really belonged to this discussion, so I let my thoughts roam.  Carefully I planned how I would voice the question I had for this Mark person, and the whole group, and wondered just how they’d dispute it or argue it or – well, what else can you do to a notion? Trash it?

            After about fifteen or twenty minutes of discussing the Operation Orphanage, the discussion turned to personal questions.  I didn’t really pay attention to any of the other people’s questions (by then I was kinda falling asleep) but when they said my name, I jerked to attention.

            “Sorry… what?”

            Maggie rolled her eyes, but couldn’t suppress a grin.  Mark sighed, and said patiently, “We were wondering if you had any questions regarding religion, of any kind.”

            I took a deep breath. “Yes. I have one.”

            Everyone looked at me as I gathered up the words.

            “Why does God hate gays?”

            Everyone blinked dumbly. “That’s not my entire question,” I added hastily.

            “The Bible says that gays are going against Him, because He created men and women to do each other, not their own gender.  It’s basically going against what he intended, or kinda like not following the rules,” the guy on Mark’s right said.

            “But the Bible calls God merciful and it’s a well-known ‘fact’ that He is kind and loves everyone for who they are.”

            They all looked at me expectantly, as though waiting for my point.  “Then why does He hate gays? It’s not like they can help it,” I finished lamely.

            “It’s fucking wrong,” scowled a boy a few people away from Maggie.

            ((“Pun,” muttered Maggie under her breath.))

            “It’s not like they can help it,” said the girl on my left, almost defensively.  “Aren’t gay people born with it?”

            “Of course they can help it,” the boy snarled back at her.

            “Yeah, like you can stop yourself from masturbating every night,” the girl shot back angrily.

            Mark interjected quickly, “God intends for things to go as He created them, and – “

            “Isn’t sex supposed to be saved for marriage?” I shot at Mark.

            “Ah, the commandment about adultery says to save it for a special partner, not – “

            “I learned that we were supposed to save it for marriage.  But nobody does.  So you’re all going to act like hypocrites? God’s commandment against gays is NOT one of the Ten Commandments, but the adultery one is.  More people are disobeying that one than the gay one.” I flashed the homophobic idiot who kept arguing against me a glare.  Why was there injustice in being born with urges for the same sex?

            “Not everyone here isn’t a virgin, you know,” scowled a girl on the other side of the room.  She was frowning.

            “Yes, but a lot of people aren’t virgins, a lot of ‘good’ Christians.  Anyway… that’s not my topic… I was just wondering why there’s so much injustice over something they can’t control.”

            Nobody said anything for a moment after my statement.  Either they were trying to voice the proper words to explain to such an apparent retard as myself, or they were digesting it and analyzing it.

            Finally, the homophobe (and suddenly strict Christian) said, “Look, just because the Bible says something you don’t like, doesn’t mean you can’t believe in it.  You’re just being stubborn that you’re not getting your way.”

            “Look, buddy,” I scowled, “I am not gay.  I’m just merely pointing out that this religion seems to be full of hypocrites.”

            There was another silence after that.  Suddenly I felt like I had disobeyed some unheard, unseen, sacred law, and that made me feel on the whole kinda shitty.  Feeling a bit decidedly guilty, I muttered, “Look, all I’m saying is, I want to be able to believe in my own religion.  But it feels like all the different denominations are conflicting against each other, canceling each other out – ach, I can’t describe it right, like they’re tearing apart a good idea because of their own preferences.  The whole different-denomination thing has me confused, but what’s got me even more confused is how everyone says God is kind, loving, caring, and alla that other good shit, but then He goes and sends gays to hell.  Doesn’t that kinda go against everything in His image?”

            “Well –” began Mark, but I wasn’t finished.

            “Everyone is distorting the same image – the same God.  And if we’re taught to be like Jesus and such, then why is everyone ragging on other people of different beliefs? Yes, not all of you are – only the extremists.  If someone is comfortable with who they are and they don’t want the free handouts of our corrupted churches, then why do we try to shove it down their throats?”

            I positively glared at everyone after my statements after that – although I didn’t quite mean to.  Everyone just kept looking at me, dumbfounded with rage, or curiosity, or mere condescension.

            Mark cleared his throat. “Well, look at the time,” he said somewhat hurriedly, “it’s already past nine, the meeting should’ve ended then.  Same time next week, everyone?”

            We all dispersed.  Maggie, looking disappointed (probably because she didn’t play her guitar) and I headed on back to my house.

            “I didn’t know you were so passionate,” she commented on the way, somewhat coolly.  I hoped she wasn’t mad at me.

            “Normally I’m not,” I said, hiding my anxiety.  “I met that new kid on my street though, and he brought up some… interesting perspectives.”

            “Oh really?” inquired Maggie, interested.  “Like what?”

            “Basically all that I flung about today,” I sighed, stretching my arms as we walked.  The air was cool, not cold but still a bit chilly.  The sun had set and stars were beginning to come out.  “He seems pretty… I dunno… pensive.”

            “Gotta love them pensive guys,” Maggie said dreamily, staring off into space.  There was something about Maggie that I didn’t understand, back then.  She seemed like a perfectly hopeless romantic (and soon I would be too) and friendly, but she didn’t like mentioning personal things about herself, and she could be perfectly offstand-ish when she felt like it.  “I wanna meet him. Introduce me.”

            “I have to get to know him better myself,” I said, sighing and frowning.  There was something about him though, an enigma; I really wanted to get to know him.  It felt like… like doing that would complete my world.  I sure hope I’m not turning into a ‘hopeless romantic’, I scolded myself back then. It’s too bad I didn’t heed myself, however.

            After a short silence, Maggie asked, “Any word from Michael.”

            “Hardly.  He always seems so mysteriously ‘busy’… and whenever I do get to talk to him, it’s only for five minutes.  I mean come on, what do you do during Spring Break that could possibly take up so much time?”

            We had reached my front door.  I fished out my house key while Maggie pondered this.

            “I hate to raise your suspicions, but what if he’s seeing someone else?” she mentioned casually, casting a flick of a glance at me and then at the welcome mat.

            I nearly stopped dead; but then resumed.  “I doubt it,” I replied, laughing to myself.  “We’re too close.  And if he was, I wouldn’t mind. I’m kinda boring as it is.”

            “Oh, no you’re not,” Maggie said, grinning and playfully swatting me. Then she took on a professional, didactic tone, “I believe, child, that you suffer from low self-esteem.”

            I laughed, while turning the key. “Why thank you, Doctor. I was indeed due for my checkup.  Hey, I’ll see ya tomorrow, okay?”

            “Yeah.  We should probably work on the essay sometime.  Ring me, kid.”  She headed off into the night, waving once over her shoulder before shrouded by darkness.

            I stepped inside.  Everything was quiet, except the faint murmuring of a television set.  I figured Tony was watching TV, while Tish might be sulking in my parents’ bedroom.  If that was the case, Mom had lost the battle – but definitely not the war.  Tomorrow they’d be bickering non-stop until it turned into a full-out battle of wits and volume of voice.  That would be ugly, and I hoped not to be there.

            Hurdling up the steps, I passed Jake’s room.  It smelled faintly of weed, but it was a lingering aroma; meaning he wasn’t home, and he had smoked it awhile ago.  I didn’t see his car in the driveway when I reached my house, so he was probably out driving around somewhere. 

            That kid could be so stupid.  Smoking everything up and frying his brain cells, not having a care in the world, almost failing out of school.  Of course, that might be the epitome of junior year, but I wouldn’t know.  Heading to my room, I stayed up and read a good sci-fi novel, Fire Sea.  At about midnight, I changed and lounged around on my bed, thinking.

            Where was Michael, lately?  We should’ve been spending all our time together.  We hadn’t even seen each other once since Spring Break had started… Somehow my thoughts ranged to Calvin.  He seemed nice, so far.  And maybe I could get to know him better –

            Suddenly, I heard guitar music.  Sitting up, I looked out my window. 

            And of course, Calvin was playing his guitar outside on his lawn, leaning against his tree.

            Why the hell’s he doing that? I first thought groggily.  But then, the tune became a relaxing melody; he was very good.  Smiling to myself as I watched him a little longer, I leaned back in my bed and soon fell asleep.

            That was the first time I had met Calvin.  Fortunately, we were going to become friends within the next few weeks.  And he did teach me a few lessons within that time; more about how “Bigotry is Bad” and he’d ask me unusual questions about God and such, that would normally put people off.  I, however, listened.  I liked that he asked questions.  And back then, on that Spring Break night, I really wanted to get to know him.