Chapter 8 #2
“Might things have turned out differently if Alissa had reached out to God? We will never know, but I believe they would have. As we see today’s teens moving away from the church and our Heavenly Father, we see more and more of them taking their own lives.
How do we stop this epidemic? How do we convince these children that these worldly pressures are nothing compared to the glory of God’s light?
That the greatest sin is to reject the sanctity of human life? ”
I think my eyes might bug out of my head.
My heart is racing a mile a minute. I feel trapped, like I need to be fighting, I need to be hitting this man to stop him from saying all this.
God is the only one who can help someone who’s suicidal?
Is that what this idiot wants us to tell people who want to kill themselves?
Only God can help you, and if you don’t get an answer, guess you should go die?
But also if you kill yourself, you’re committing the greatest sin and you’ll burn in hell forever?
“This is bullshit,” Ash says beside me. His mom whips toward him, shock written across her face.
“Ashton!” she hisses.
Pastor Mitchell hasn’t heard them and is still talking. “We will all pray for Alissa, because she can no longer pray for herself—”
Ash stands up. “THIS IS BULLSHIT!”
Pastor Mitchell cuts off mid-sentence, staring blankly at Ash, as if he’s not sure what’s happening.
Ash’s entire body is shaking. A chilling silence settles over the church.
“She didn’t need to pray more,” Ash spits.
“She prayed every fucking night and it didn’t make a difference.
She needed medicine and therapy, but no one gave it to her because they thought God would make it better.
And now you’re turning her into a church PSA so you can trick people into depending on you?
” His lips pull back in a feral snarl. He jabs a finger toward Pastor Mitchell. “Fuck you.”
“Ashton!” Mr. Whitaker is up now, trying to force Ash back into his seat, and Mrs. Whitaker is sobbing again. Ash throws his dad off and pushes past both his parents into the aisle. The room erupts as he stalks out.
“Emotions are running high, I understand,” says Pastor Mitchell, not missing a beat, his face impassive, as if Ash’s words had no impact on him at all. “We all say things we don’t mean in times of great stress—”
“I think he fucking meant it,” I say, only loud enough for the people around me to hear, and then I get up and slide out of the pew after Ash. I don’t care who’s watching me. I don’t want to be here anymore, and at least this time I won’t have to sit on the curb by myself.
I catch Ash in the parking lot. He recoils as I trot alongside him, then relaxes when he sees who it is. He doesn’t slow his pace.
“I’m gonna get reamed at home for that,” he says.
“If you hadn’t done it, I think I might’ve,” I say. “I wanted to scream. I wanted to hit him.”
“Normally I don’t mind it here. Pastor Mitchell’s weird, but it can be calming. And Alissa always liked it. But that’s just . . . fuck. Another two minutes and he would have been talking about how suicides are tortured in hell for all eternity.”
“How do they believe things like that?”
“Their fucking brains are rotten,” Ash says. “They’ve never known what it feels like. They don’t get what it means to want to die, so they think there’s an easy answer. They think God can fix it, or if you just try to be happy, you will be. They think we do this to ourselves.”
I glance at him at “we,” and his mouth snaps shut. He keeps walking, but he stares ahead, jaw clenched. He knows what it’s like to feel like that?
The sudden awkwardness makes me worry, so I try to change the tone.
“Alissa was too sweet to go to hell,” I say. “They would have assumed she got sent to the wrong place and turned her away at the gates.”
Ash laughs; the sound is a little broken, but then his pace slows, and he smiles. “Yeah. Clerical error on that one.”
“That never made sense to me anyway,” I add, “suicides going to hell. Life tormented them so much they felt like they had to kill themselves to leave it. Wouldn’t those be the ones that should get extra care in an afterlife? Treat them to a spa day for eternity, or something.”
“I like that. She’s getting a massage right now. Or chilling in a hot tub with some scented oils.” Ash wipes his eyes. “When we were little, she loved playing spa day. She’d pretend to be lounging on a chair and make me fan her with a leaf from Mom’s fig plant.”
“And you played along?”
“For like twenty seconds. Then I started hitting her with it.” He pauses. “I knew this morning was going to suck, but I didn’t think it’d suck this much.”
We stop at the far end of the parking lot. Ash drops onto the grass. After a moment, I sit beside him. It’s cold, but the sun is out and the day is warming up.
“Will your parents make you go back?” I ask.
“Definitely. To apologize to Pastor Mitchell, if nothing else.”
“Fuck that guy.”
“Yeah.”
He stretches out on his back and closes his eyes. His dark hair fans out in the grass. He’s frowning against the sun on his face, and the scar on his lip goes white in the bright light.
“Thanks for coming out here with me,” he says. “I think I might’ve started smashing things if I hadn’t calmed down.”
“Break a few side-view mirrors?”
“Headlights, windshields, the usual.”
“Your reputation at school would skyrocket. A real badass delinquent.”
He snorts and cracks one eye open to look at me. “My reputation? I have a reputation?”
I tuck my legs up and wrap my arms around them. Telling him about himself is kind of fun and, as a bonus, seems to be distracting him. “Sure. You don’t get to have a scar like that and not be super mysterious and scary.”
His fingers go to his lips. The movement seems unconscious. “Scary, huh?”
“You’re like the boogeyman to the freshmen. There’s a story going around that you fought off a serial killer.”
He outright laughs at that, deep in his chest. “What? That’s so stupid!”
“But it does make you sound cool.”
“I guess so.”
Both eyes are open now, and he’s smiling again. I was wrong—it is actually very easy to tell when he’s really smiling. And it’s a beautiful smile.
“Do you think I’m scary?”
I shrug. “I think I did once. But not anymore.”
“Once when?”
“Before now. When we were younger.” I look away, try to keep my blush from being too obvious. “You were Alissa’s older brother. I guess I always thought you were more . . . more than us. More important, or something. I didn’t think I was allowed to be around you.”
He sits up. “Alissa always told me to leave you guys alone when you were over. I think I teased her too much. She thought I’d make you uncomfortable or something.”
I do remember Ash teasing her. It was always about small things. I never took him seriously, and I don’t think she did either, but Ash is picking at the grass and scowling again.
“She loved you, you know?” I say. “I don’t think the teasing would have ever made a dent in that.”
He glances up at me. “Yeah.” Then, after a pause, he says, “When did you get so good at comforting people? Alissa always said that wasn’t your thing.”
I draw back. She said that about me? I know I’m not always the best at being comforting, but I always tried, especially with her. If she thought that wasn’t my thing, did that mean I never really helped her? Did I not do enough? Could I have done something better?
Ash’s expression shifts. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to . . . I’m sure she didn’t mean it like that, I’m probably misremembering what she said exactly—”
“No, it’s okay.” I stand up, brushing myself off. “People are coming out of the church. I think they ended early. I should go find my mom.”
He gets to his feet. “Will you be on CoH later?”
“Yeah, definitely.”
“Good. I’ll talk to you on there.”
“Sure.”
I leave him. The warmth I was feeling, the wonderful fizzy feeling of being near him, has drained away.
As I walk—one two three four—I try desperately to turn my mind to the rest of today, to the game, but my thoughts all twist back, into the past. To every time Alissa had a problem I didn’t solve.
I run through every conversation, expression, snapshot of body language. I see all my mistakes now.
So many things I should have done. The list gets longer with every step.