(This story is the same as the story entitled Story of a Girl, just a newer edition)

Our story begins in a bedroom. In this bedroom lies a bed, a dresser and an alarm radio. It rings precisely at 8:00, just in time to get dressed for church. On this bed lies a girl, not a very different girl, she’s 5’6 and has brown hair and brown eyes. BEEP BEEP goes the alarm. SMACK goes her hand on the alarm. ROLL goes her body and PULL goes her blankets, right over her head. She begins to once again drift off into slumber when the thought hits her: it is my birthday. Her 15th, to be precise. Happily she throws off the covers and swings her feet off the bed. As they land firmly on the floor, another thought strikes her, but this one like a bullet right through her chest. Today is Sunday. Church day. She sits for a minute, trying to sort out her thoughts, get them all lined up in her head. She swings her feet back up into her bed and once again, PULL go the covers. After contemplating her current situation for 15 minutes, she decides that she is not going to waste precious moments of her birthday sitting and listening to some bald man go on for ever about how she’s going to hell if she cuts her hair to short. Her parents burst in at 8:30, at which point she is once again asleep. They start screaming about how she is not ready to leave. PULL go the covers, higher and higher, until they both through their arms down and huff in disappointment. Yay, she thinks.

CLICK and LOCK go the door, and carefully this girl gets out of bed. She throws on her house coat, floats down the stairs and enters the kitchen. She decides on her breakfast: cinnamon toast and chocolate milk, her favourite. As she munches casually on her cinnamon toast and watches cartoons, she realizes the true bliss of not being at church, crammed into an isle, singing on her out-of-tune voice. And thus, while she is eating, she has an epiphany: She hates church! Does it make any sense? No! How could she have ever swallowed all that crap? Son of ‘god’? Burning bush? Satan? Afterlife? Ha! How could she have only thought of that now? LOGIC, she thinks LOGIC is the key. And so, with the last gulp of chocolaty goodness, she decides never to go to church again.

Months go past and still she eats cinnamon toast, drinks chocolate and watches cartoons every Sunday. This girl, this one girl, feels wonderful, and every week that passes she can feel the strings on which the church holds her get thinner and thinner. She walks down the street with her head held high, smiling at everyone she meets. None smile back. To them, she is that girl, that one girl, who doesn’t go to church. And even though this girl feels free, feels herself, she wonders why others don’t see as she does, think as she does; something must be done. She ponders for a minute of two when the answer appears to her, why didn’t she think of this before? As she runs home to get what she needs, the background drops off, still blackness surrounds her as she watches her feet speed one in front of he other automatically, STEP STEP STEP, right through her front door, STEP STEP STEP through her house, STEP STEP STEP back out and STEP STEP STEP through the streets. STOP, go her feet. She begins her plan, hesitating a bit at first, but she just shakes her head as if to knock the hesitation out through her ears and continues on her work. There, done. BURN goes the old wooden church, red flames leaping to the heavens. She stands and admires her work for a minute before grabbing her matches and speeding towards her house. If anyone sees her, it’ll only be for a second. Besides, they are all staring, mouth agape, at the crumbling building you can see from anywhere in their town. No one is ever blamed for it. But they all know,

yes, they all know she did it,

she knows she did it,

she’s glad.