Over the next few days I visited Sven several times at his house, after school. He gave me an H-U bracelet; these were Italian charm bracelets that distinguished undergrounders from Fundies and everyone else, having the letters H and U on two of the links. There was a symbol that meant there was a meeting, and another that would tell you who the meeting was for; by writing one or both on your hand or arm you could pass the message on to other undergrounders.

Meetings in the Heathen Underground were very informal. We tended to section off, the witches congregating in one place, and the atheists or the Satanists meeting in another place. This was where I heard the Big Issue, at one of these meetings; and it is at one of these my story really begins.

“Have you heard about the Sweeps?” Marie Taloss, a Wiccan, asked the 20-some people congregated in the garage of Vickie Pelosi’s house early in 2018.

Most of the others looked clueless, but Vickie said, “Yeah, the ones at school? They’re going through our lockers and are gonna go through backpacks and everything, the whole shebang.”

“Shit,” a lot of the others muttered, some more anxiously. The witches especially had a lot to be anxious about.

Jake Hunt, a devout follower of Santeria, suggested that we break into the school. “We could grab all our incriminating stuff and put off the searches for awhile if we break a few windows.”

“Jake, that’s nuts,” Sven snapped. “There’s these things called cameras and we’re this thing called visible. We can’t just go break into the school, seriously.”

“But someone could pull the fire alarm.” Someone else interjected.

“That could work,” Jake replied approvingly.

It was too late the next day. Everything had been searched, and kids kept getting called out of their classes to the office—people I recognized from the meeting. But they never called me, and all I could do was bite my nails and pray that God would protect me from the bloodthirsty Fundies.

But I knew it was only a matter of time. They had found my notebooks and had confiscated the rose quartz that was the only thing that remained from my mother. I panicked and didn’t know how to get out of the situation I was in, so I turned to the only person who’d know what to do.

I went straight to Sven’s house after school that day.

“Sven,” I said, stifling a sob, “I don’t want to die. What can I do?”