Chapter 8
I played until one in the morning after texting Ash and getting invited to the clan. Not my best idea the night before going to church, but I’m blaming whoever decided to hold church services on Sunday mornings.
Mom’s already crying and we’ve only parked.
I’m back in my uncomfortable clothes. I haven’t eaten breakfast. Churches make me feel weird.
I should like all the rules, the rigidity of it, but every time I’ve been to any church, I get overwhelmed by the false sentiments.
The false sincerity, false kindness, false truth.
It’s not that I think no one is sincere, or kind, or truthful, only that I get the feeling that most people there are putting on an act because they’re in church.
They’re pretending to care about you, because you’re in church, and God says you’re supposed to love everyone, right?
The Whitakers attend a nondenominational church. The building looks nice, but it’s next to a combo laser tag/bowling alley, and that takes away any of the power or majesty it might’ve had. Churchgoers mill around before the service starts.
“I’m going to find Ash,” I tell Mom. It’s more an excuse to get away from her than anything. I weave through the crowd, scanning everyone. I can’t even find Mr. and Mrs. Whitaker—are they here yet? I make it to the other side of the room, then turn to go back.
Ash is standing behind me. My heart leaps into my throat. I stumble backward; he grabs my arm to keep me upright.
“Ah, shit. Sorry.” He lets me go quickly, both hands up in apology. His scowl makes him look apologetic and furious at the same time. It’s kind of cute.
“It’s okay. I’m normally not that easy to scare.” I’m surprised I didn’t mind him touching me. He grabbed me with the same hand he hurt on Thursday, but he just has a small Band-Aid on it now. My heart is still beating fast, and it’s not because he surprised me. “I was looking for you.”
He frowns at me. “Oh. Sorry, I could have texted you. Do you want to sit with us? Mom told me to ask. We’ll be in the front row, so I get if you don’t want to—”
“I will,” I say quickly. Sitting next to Ash will be way better than sitting next to some stranger who’s going to ask me who I am and how I’m feeling.
Ash’s lips quirk. I think it’s a smile, but it’s hard to tell. He runs his uninjured hand through his hair. He has great hair, longer than most of the boys I know, and it looks soft, shiny, and dark. We stand there for a moment in awkward silence.
“Oh . . . let me tell my mom I found you. I’ll be right back.”
I speed off through the crowd. I find my mom talking to some other ladies near a big crucifix by the doors to the nave. She isn’t crying now. “The Whitakers want us to sit with them in the front,” I tell her. “I’m going to go in with Ash. I left him over by the windows.”
Then I’m off again. Ash is where I left him, checking his phone. In his khakis and pale blue button-down, he looks as uncomfortable as I feel. He normally wears soccer jerseys and sweatpants.
“Why do you look surprised?” he asks when I stop beside him again.
“I didn’t expect you to still be here,” I say.
“You said you’d be right back.”
“Yeah, but people don’t wait for me.”
He scowls. “That’s stupid.”
I can’t help smiling. It’s nice to be around someone who’s so blunt. Being near Ash, especially here, makes me feel like I’m in a kind of protective bubble. I don’t have to pretend, and I don’t have to worry that he’s pretending.
His cheeks are still red. He clears his throat. “Have you checked the Discord yet this morning? Since you joined, Zoo thought it’d be a good idea to have a day of running dungeons to get everyone’s alts up to the level cap and gear them out. He’s impressed with you.”
I haven’t talked to Zookini, the leader of Ikelos Lair, much yet, but he seems serious about the game.
If he’s impressed with me, that means I’m doing something right.
I have the potential I thought I had. I get out my phone and pull up Discord, where the clan has a server we use to talk to each other outside the game.
There’s the post—I wasn’t tagged in it or anything, but it’s so close after me joining, it seems like it’s got to be because of me.
“Today? Hell yeah.” I stop, look around. “Ah, church, sorry.”
Ash snorts.
“I’ll need it after this,” I say. “This is the worst.”
He cuts his gaze sideways, to where his parents stand, leaning on one another.
His voice is low so no one nearby hears.
“I couldn’t have said it better. It’s literally the worst thing that has ever happened to me.
I’d rather have my leg broken again. I want it to be over.
But we keep having to do shit like this.
Go to memorials. Explain to yet another distant relative what happened.
Have people tell me they’re sorry, like it’s going to make a difference. I want people to leave me alone.”
“Somewhere else, someone else,” I say.
“Exactly,” he replies.
“Two hours,” I say, “then we can be.”
He closes his eyes and exhales hard through his nose. “Two hours.”
Churchgoers have started funneling into the nave.
I nudge him, and we join them. The last time I came to a service here, it was with Alissa, and we sat with her family in the middle of the pews, lost in the crowd.
This time we’re right in the front row, practically at the foot of the altar.
Behind the altar is another huge cross hanging before a stained-glass window depicting Jesus with the sun halo around his head.
It’s beautiful, but the beauty I find in it is entirely separate from the people here and the reason they’re all in this place.
The Whitakers sit at one end of the pew, then Ash, then me, then my mom. Mrs. Whitaker looks more pulled together than she was at the funeral, but Mr. Whitaker seems to have gone entirely gray since Wednesday.
The first half hour of the service is all about song.
Thirty minutes of Christian music that doesn’t sound bad but makes me uncomfortable in a weird, cognitive dissonance kind of way.
Most of the congregation is singing. Only Mrs. Whitaker, in our group, has joined in.
Sometimes I think people who go to church live in an entirely different world than I do, but Ash goes to church, and so did Alissa, and they definitely live in the same world as me.
At one point, Ash gets a notification on his phone and tilts it my way to show me—it’s a news story about the features of the upcoming Dreambreaker expansion—but I don’t get to read it because Mrs. Whitaker notices and hisses at him to put the phone away. I appreciate that he tried, though.
After the music portion, there’s some scripture reading.
I mostly zone out during this, instead thinking about what items I need to buy and skills I need to upgrade before I run instances today with Ikelos Lair.
I also need to check Alissa’s guides for information about boss rotations and map layouts.
Instances in CoH are designed for four-player parties—one tank, one healer, two DPS—so I need to make sure I perform my role the best I can.
I need everyone in the clan, not just Zookini, to know I’m serious about the game too. And good at it.
Finally it’s time for the sermon. The pastor is a guy in his late forties and has the kind of Christian handsomeness that guarantees he has a pretty blond wife and two point five children. Pastor Mitchell. I made fun of him to Alissa last time I was here, because he seemed so mechanical.
“He acts super nice, but it’s weird, right?”
“In what way?”
“He’s, like, not real. It’s like he memorized lines. He looks through everyone instead of at them. It’s weird.”
“You’re so critical of people.”
She was right, I am, and Pastor Mitchell hasn’t gotten any better.
“Good morning, everyone.”
The entire room chants, “Good morning, Pastor Mitchell,” back at him.
“The Spring is on its way. I wish I had something to share with you that might celebrate it, but we’re not here today to celebrate. We’re here today to remember. One of our own, Alissa Whitaker, took her life this past weekend.”
There’s a screen hanging on the wall next to the big stained-glass window. A projector throws up a picture of Alissa. Sophomore year school photo. She still had braces then. Ash’s arm goes stiff next to mine.
“It is an unspeakable tragedy to lose someone so young. Alissa was not in the prime of her life. She had yet to graduate high school, experience college, find love and marriage, have children of her own. She has left behind not only her parents and brother, but all of us.”
Yes, I think, because marriage and children are every woman’s goal in life.
“Alissa was a straight-A honor roll student and a track and cross-country star. She lit up every room she entered. She wanted to go to Ball State for communications. Even if we did not know Alissa personally, we know girls like her. They are beset by pressures from all sides: ads telling them to wear less clothing, eat less food, wear more makeup, buy more things. It is hard to be a teenager in today’s world. ”
I don’t think he’s wrong, but he sounds like he’s reciting something someone else told him.
“We cannot know what brought her to the decision she made,” he continues.
“No one of us can know what another person is thinking. But what we can know—what we can always believe in—is that God has a plan for us. God alone can know our thoughts, and when we are in our darkest moments, God alone can help us. When a tragedy like this happens, it is not because God did not want to help, and it is not because Alissa did not deserve His help. It is because help was not sought.”
Anger flashes up in me at the same time I feel Ash’s, like an electric current raising all the hairs on my body. “What the fuck?” Ash whispers. Only I hear him. Mrs. Whitaker has buried her face in Mr. Whitaker’s shoulder.