"What Resides" by William
Matheson (revision)
1990
Imagina-----tion...
1998
Andrea would someday attend school at Clay Lake Western Adventist Academy,
where in one particular gym class, everyone was going to play ball hockey.
The teams, as things normally went in classroom exhibition play, weren't
exactly evenly matched. Andrea's team had two people who could play passably
well, but a lot more people who couldn't. James, although no doubt inspired
by his new Patrick Roy goalie mask, was letting in as many shots as not.
The spirit of Andrea floated in the air, just a few feet forward and above
Joey, smiling and laughing down at him. Or rather, if things were fair,
it would have floated in the sky about that gravel road, like something
between a ghost and an angel. She would be nothing so tormented as a ghost
(unless love could be a torment), nor so pious and duty-driven as an angel
– what's more, she couldn't have been an angel anyway because all the angels
were created before man, and people did not become angels when they died.
It's all in your imagina-----tion…
So sang the monaural speaker of the colour television tuned to the low-budget
children's program on the Public Network. Happy images of flowers and rain
described in the lyrics did indeed fill the screen, as if the concept of
imagination needed to be fed to the audience in such a way as to defeat
its purpose.
No one gets hurt
No one feels sad…
Is that true? I want that, Andrea thought to herself.
Voices interrupted her reverie, dear though unwanted.
"Why are you letting her watch TV on the Sabbath?"
"I don't... I- maybe I forgot."
"You forgot? How? We were just getting ready for church!"
"Oh, Paul, what difference does it make?"
"It's the principle of the thing! When you married me, you agreed-"
The accusations grew louder. Andrea stared yet more intently at the picture
tube, trying to bury herself in the happy construction paper images. The
reality on TV was a world apart from her own, yet something she would endeavour
to make hers.
"- it's healthy! The other children wat-"
"What? This? Imagination?! It's all lies! It's teaching the children that
it's okay to tell lies to themselves! Do you not remember Genesis chapter
6, verse 5? 'And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth,
and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.'
Or Jeremiah chapter 7, verse 24? 'But they hearkened not, nor inclined
their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil
heart, and went backward, and not forward.'” He wasn't reading from an
open Bible; he had most of it memorized.
Guilt. Anger. Guilt because she didn't deserve to possess such a world.
Anger because the people on TV dared to make her feel guilty. She hated
being guilty more than anything else in the world. If the house were to
burn down, Andrea would have asked, "Mommy, did I do it?" and hearing a
negative she would nonchalantly ride her tricycle off into the sunset.
The belt wearer walked over to the switch and deactivated the TV. "It's
the Sabbath anyway, and we have church in an hour." His personality was
prone to sudden swings. He was never violent, but Andrea wondered why he
was so much more awkwardly precise than other fathers.
After the game had been given up in the minds of the players, James walked
out to become a forward, leaving his position and mask for a boy named
Joey. Andrea watched him as he awkwardly took his place, but with an awkward
grace that indicated that either he was ignorant of being awkward or perhaps
he was deliberately being awkward as if it was in his character.
You don't have to do that to impress me. But she watched him try anyway.
There was something irresistible about the – almost more about the situation
than about Joey himself. Andrea was certainly more attracted to his ways
than his body. "Good save, Joey," she said when Joey made a good, though
extravagant save – putting too much focus on the stopping of the ball and
not enough on the further playing of it (his rebounds provided more opportunity
to his opponents than their original shots). Andrea couldn't gauge Joey's
reaction to her encouragements. He seemed to play harder when she came
near, but he would rarely look upon her. Well, maybe he was busy goaltending.
Another save. "Good work, Joey." James then gave her a quizzical look that
asked her why the heck she hadn't noticed his good saves, although
James himself had done enough noticing for everyone, with his periodic
shouts of "What a goaltender!"
At a pause in play, Joey glanced at Andrea's teammate Nick, who looked
frustrated. "What's the score?" Why doesn't Joey know? He is
the goaltender.
"Who wants to know!?" Nick yelled, giving him a beastly cross-check. Joey
bounced against the floor.
Andrea watched Joey walk out of the gym through the stage exit. He might
have been crying. As soon as play resumed, Andrea exited unnoticed through
the main doors. She circled around through the corridor and found Joey
walking up the narrow corridor to the main corridor, and he was indeed
in tears.
The poor boy! Andrea stretched out her arms to embrace him. "Oh, what
did he do to you?" she asked in a very heartfelt rhetoric.
But instead of sharing their tears like she expected and desired more than
anything else in the world, and instead of finally feeling what it would
be like to be in each other's arms, Joey recoiled as if he was profoundly
offended. He turned his back to her and stalked off towards the stage again.
"I don't want to talk about it. Leave me alone!"
W-what?
Leave him alone? Didn't Joey like her?
"I suppose I must then," she cried softly.
Andrea was a foil for Joey's melancholy spirit, with her weightlessness
and freedom, and, most importantly, her unconditional love. When Joey sighed,
she smiled. When Joey said something funny, she smiled. When Joey looked
at her, she smiled. Andrea wanted to read the things that Joe wrote, and
in this form she already knew about the encrypted “Dearest Andrea” letters,
saving Joey the labour of telling her about them.
She saw through his fears and made Joey happy, which made Joey want to
cry his eyes out because it was all a lie. The images in his head refused
to take on the substance that he willed them to. And then Andrea disappeared.
Suddenly it became clear to Joey that she wasn't going to come back.
Wait a minute, she wasn't there! What do you mean, "wasn't going to come
back?" She's a figment of your imagination!
Shut up! I want her to be real, so she's real!
She's not real! She's a ghost and she went away!
What do you mean? She's not even dead!
Yeah... she's just going to live on without me.
Yes, without you! Of course she would! What would make you think any different?
You don't have any friends!
No, I don't. Why not? I'm a nice person.
No you're not, you're an asshole.
It's not my fault!
Yes it is!
No!
Yes, it's your fault, and you're going to Hell!
I don't deserve to go to Hell! I'm not going! I believe in Jesus!
No, you don't. So you're going to Hell!
Wait a second, if I don't believe in the system, then why should I believe
that I can be conndemned by it?
Oh, that's what everyone says. And they all end up going to Hell.
But maybe that's just what they say. That question can't be answered because
asking the question is wrong in and of itself. So therefore, is the system
flawless, or is it worthless? Does it exist or not?
Well, look, there's a lake down there; why don't you go find out?
Joey's feet shuffled their way down the grassy forest cottage driveway,
transporting his tear-filled eyes, open mouth, and backpack filled with
Calvin and Hobbes books (a profound influence) into the neighbour's
property and towards their lakeshore. No one was home, probably because
it was only April, and the owners of the cottage were summer-only Canadians.
A sign posted on the shady moss said "Trespassers Will Be Scorned."
Okay, now I just have to dunk my head in the water.
You'll never do that.
Yes I will! Just watch! Life sucks!
Listen to yourself! Life doesn't suck! You suck!
Leave me alone!
Suicide is wrong, you know. You'll still go to Hell.
Well, maybe they'll have sympathy for me. Like Andrea.
Andrea has more sympathy for you than you'll ever deserve.
That's why I love her so much.
And you can't even talk to her.
Communicating is hard! I don't want to communicate!
If you don't communicate, you'll never get to be in her arms.
But I'm scared...
Yes, you're too scared to talk to a girl-
She's not just a girl! This is Andrea!
- you're too scared to talk to a girl, and you're too scared to drown yourself.
How convienient. We've got you trapped very well. At least Andrea won't
despair that you have died.
Would she cry?
A little.
Well, let her cry! She should be here comforting me!
How can she? She lives in the Residence, and you don't even talk to her.
In fact, I sa-
No!
- I saw you! Just this morning, you walked away from her and told her to
leave you alone! You've always said that you hated girls and that you didn't
like her at all. You sa-
I didn't mean that! I meant the opposite!
Well, how's she supposed to know that?
She has to! She must!
Well, apparently she doesn't. If she did she might try to approach you
again. But she won't make that mistake again! You put up a really good
front there, Joey. She'll never see through your cowardly deception. By
the way, just what are you afraid of anyway?
I'm afraid of Mark and Chris... I'm not supposed to like girls. They'd
make fun of me.
They make fun of you already. Quit clinging to the old ways; they don't
work anymore! This is Grade frigging Nine! The Bare Naked Ladies are writing
songs about you already! Anyway, as far as the fear goes, I'm talking about
Andrea. Why can't you just scheme up something? Why should Mark and Jamie
and Nick have to bother you?
Joey couldn't answer.
Dearest Andrea,
I write this message in code because I don't want anyone to know how much
I adore you. I can't speak to you because I am afraid of everything.
I'm sorry I told you to leave me alone. I didn't mean that. I wish I had
hugged you.
I love you.
- Joey
Andrea walked out of Ms. Walwonziak's classroom and found her locker. She
opened it and her collection of cow ornaments tumbled out (Someone must
have disturbed my locker, she thought), but something else fell out
too. She bent her narrow frame towards the floor and picked it up. A note.
It must have knocked over the Uber-Holstien when it was slipped in through
the top.
“Joey, I… I read the note.”
“BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.”
Timid, tremulous, trembling, and terrified, Joey approached the school
entrance with trepidation. He had walked so slowly from his house that
he was ten minutes late, with the purpose that he wouldn't have to actually
talk to anybody, or face the awfulness of what he did. A thousand terrible
possibilities roared through his mind, some focused on the shock Joey imagined
must have been on Andrea's face, some worried if anyone else could have
known – Joey hoped more than anything else that Andrea kept the note to
herself; he wouldn't have known what to do if anyone else… knew.
All of the possibilities he imagined were negative.
He hid in the shadows for as long as he could, but eventually he summoned
up the courage to enter the classroom, but through the back library instead
of through the main hall. He noiselessly opened the door, and walked on
exaggerated tiptoe across the back of the room, knowing full well that
Ms. Walwonziak was staring right at him.
"Chris, my father is sending me to Queen's Academy next year."
Class eventually resumed again, but only Joey and James and a few other
people were actually in the darkened classroom watching the second half
of the BBC version of C.S. Lewis' "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader." Joey
honestly wondered where everyone was even though he suspected the answer,
but it happened to be one he didn't want to believe. Ms. Walwonziak seemed
to be aware of the situation as well, but more from her own intuition than
from deciphering the note (which she really didn't know what to make of
but had tentatively attributed to something called "puppy love").
Back in the hall after Aslan told Lucy and Edmund that they'd come to know
him on Earth as well, but by another name, Joey saw one of Andrea's snottier
friends (Brenda) at her locker. He knew full well what was going on, but
he needed to talk to someone about this. Someone had to know about his
own pain concerning Andrea's imminent departure to the Central Province.
It took a day or two for everything to settle down again. In the blink
of an eye, May had become October for Joey. With a struggle, he swept the
imminent departure of Andrea out of his mind and saved the pain for June.
I'm not a sinner. This is the last time I'll ever do this.
She tried to read the note. "Dearest Andrea," it began, just like all of
Joey's unsent letters (except that this unsent letter was, inexplicably,
sent). Of course Andrea wasn't aware of the wording because she was not
yet familiar with Joey's custom glyphs.
"Who wrote this?" she wondered aloud. Of course she knew it was probably
Joey. Nobody else at Clay Lake Western Adventist would write anything in
symbols.
Just then a boy named Chris (from the eleventh Grade at Clay Lake) walked
up. "Something wrong?" he asked in his nonchalant way.
Andrea looked at his short, stylish blonde hair. "Well, nothing really,
just that I ca-"
"What's this?" Chris grabbed the note. "Hey! It's in a crypt!"
"Y-yeah, can I have that back?"
"Well now, wait a second, Ms. Walwonziak's really good at the cryptyquotes
in the newspaper, maybe she should try do decode it." Chris had a point.
Andrea knew it would take her days to decode the message. But even so…
'Even so' of her feelings, it didn't matter. Chris, with the note, was
off to Ms. Walwonziak before she could stop him.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“How do you feel?”
“Well, I… I like you too, Joey.”
They skipped the awkward, juvenile “now whats” and embraced unashamedly.
Andrea's jet black hair shifted as if by a breeze and came to rest on Joey's
arms that were now joined around her back.
“Joey, I think we should BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.”
“What?”
“BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP-“
“No!!”
“BE-“
The new morning's horrible, detestable, depraving, despicable light spilled
in Joey's windows. The clock had advanced all the way to 7:30am, not doing
the right thing, the humane thing – which would have been letting Joey
stay within his dreams and not making him confront cold reality.
Walking downstairs for breakfast (which would fall as 'incomplete' as determined
by the cereal commercials), Joey wondered if he should take the half-hour
to have a shower. He'd just had a shower three days ago, and the dandruff
and grease was just starting to set in. However, given the circumstances…
Hmm… better not push it. Yes, Andrea would be reading the note today
and embracing him as her eternal boyfriend. With that, the decision to
shower was made. Looking at the toiletries, Joey thought it would be prudent
to pack a comb and perhaps some gel-
No, the note! Joey couldn't believe it. Had he been silly enough
to… leave the note? Aughh! Aughh! Joey couldn't go to school because
of it. What would happen? This was uncharted territory for him. After nearly
six years of running away from girls and his other problems, he had finally
expressed a shred a truth among his lies, for the sentiment behind “Dearest
Andrea” was true. It was the truest thing he had ever expressed, even truer
than the “You're my best friend,” he said to his sixth cousin once removed.
But it was only in the Halcyon days of his youth that he could freely express
such profound truths; now Joey was in Grade 9, and his life was over.
Nooooooo! No! No! No! No! No! No!
“Quit stomping around!” his mother yelled from her bedroom. “Hurry up and
take your shower, or you're going to be late!”
“Leave me alone!”
Clenching a big ball of stress in his teeth, Joey went into the bathroom
and undressed for the shower. His likeness appeared in the full length
mirror, complete with pimples, pot belly, boy breasts, and unformed penis,
but the significance of these fittings did not register with him. Okay,
he was going through an awkward age, but he still felt he looked good,
more or less. His spirit hadn't been broken forever just yet. Andrea liked
him because he was smart and special.
Joey opened the doors and looked around, keeping his footfalls as quiet
as he could considering he was at this “awkward age” in all the worst ways.
No one was to be found, so fortunately he was still unnoticed in the building.
Of course, he'd have to get to class eventually. Currently he was missing
Bible Studies, taught by the gentle Western Adventist pastor from down
the south coast who told stories and kept things pretty light. Academically,
it wouldn't make or break him, but the reality (Joey hated that word) was
that he would have to join up with his Grade 9 classmates eventually and
look upon Andrea. Joey wanted instead to hop in a spaceship and fly to
– just somewhere away from Clay Lake Western Adventist. He could use his
genius-level electronics skills to break into Residence through the alarms
and take Andrea away to another galaxy, forever. No more forlorn glances
across empty rooms. No more wedgies in the dark.
"Joey, why are you late?"
No, no, don't call attention to me! Andrea can't see me!
Everyone turned around to look at him, except for Andrea, who kept her
eyes firmly on the front blackboard, as if trying to make her self disappear
into the letters of "Provincial Studies Homework, pg. 384, #3, 6, 8."
"I, uh… well…"
"Never mind, just have a seat." And the class continued without further
incident.
What? Why isn't anyone saying anything? Joey wondered.
After a time the class was over for lunch and everyone spilled out into
the hall. Instead of staying behind to read Ms. Walwonziak's Dave Barry
books, Joey walked into the library, anxious to watch Andrea. Of course,
Andrea and everyone else had actually walked directly into the hall, but
Joey wasn't ready for a head-on confrontation just yet. Joey held off for
a few seconds, then walked in to the hall just in time to see Chris exit
out the back doors. He didn't look back. There was no one else in the corridor.
Supposing that everyone had gone outside, Joey prepared to do likewise.
He took a small triangle-shaped piece of softwood from his locker that
he had rescued from shop class and shaped into a handheld plasma gun. Stealth
mode!
"You mean you're not going back to the Cape?"
"No…"
"Hey Andrea, where is Queen's?"
"It's in Orniciara, near Grand Lake." This was the country's largest city,
but it was also known for being far away from Newlinder / Clay Lake and
even further from Cape Island. "It looks like a nice school, but I think
the schoolwork is going to be really hard."
"Will you be staying in Residence there?"
"Yes. But there's all kinds of stupid rules. I won't be allowed to have
boy visitors, I'll have to sign papers just to go for a walk, and there's
a mandatory bedtime. But on the plus side, I'll be able to eat beef!" she
laughed sarcastically.
Joey forgot about the Stormtroopers he was trailing for a moment and stared
at Andrea, Chris, and her other friends near the swings. Moving?
Where did that come from? Wasn't she going to stay in Residence forever?
Couldn't Joey wait until another day? Another month? Joey's carefully structured
artificial reality collapsed into a pile of dust.
In the middle of everything, Andrea came into the room through the library
entrance as Joey was deliberating Lewis' creative abilities with Ms. Walwonziak,
who gently asked her why she wasn't in the class at the moment.
She stood
stock-still and her mouth below her beautiful tear-filled eyes said, "There's
a problem." She deliberately avoided eye contact with Joey. Now that the
two of them were doing all they could to avoid each other yet not avoid
each other, they could accomplish things like avoiding eye contact even
more easily than before. She left the room with a sad flourish, leaving
a permanent impression on Joey's heart. What was the problem? In
a way he knew full well what at least part of it was, and he felt no guilt
for the certain supposition.
Unfortunately, his psychological bounds forbid him a plain, "I'm going
to miss Andrea a lot". Instead, to distance himself from the situation
in Brenda's perception, he asked, "So what's all this going on about Andrea?!"
as if they were all as square as a cabinet TV set for being outside and
talking and crying so much (and, more importantly, for leaving him out
of it, but that was the upset that he had to conceal at all costs).
Brenda turned and gave him a nasty look. "She's moving, you idiot! We're
her friends, so we feel bad that she's going! Of course you wouldn't understand
that because you don't have any friends!"
Joey walked, then shuffled, away; but he soon found the dark supply closet
by the stage, which was a good place for him to climb into and cry for
a half-hour. It seemed no matter how much he indulged in self-pity, he
still felt sorry for himself.
Why don't I have any friends?
We've been over this. You're an asshole.
Back in class, a fundamentalist church educator named Ms. Beaner (who was
Brenda's mother) was brought in to teach the provincially-mandated sex
education 'class.' This consisted of a video tape and Ms. Beaner's fast-forward
button, enabling her to bypass the offensive / female parts. Joey asked
her why she was skipping all the information about the female systems and
how babies are conceived and whatnot even though there were a few women
in the class, and Ms. Beaner simply said, "They must know all that already."
However, on one of the fast-forwardable segments, Joey caught one of those
strange "sex-education only words," so it was the first that Joey had ever
heard of this, and he wondered why anyone would want to do it.
“Why is this wrong? Why are you fast-forwarding it?”
That surprised her!
“Because it is demeaning to yourself and makes you feel bad. The sexual
feelings that come out from it are supposed to be saved for marriage.”
Ms. Beaner was not the type who was used to justifying the immorality of
certain practices with real reasons.
As it turned out, Ms. Beaner's lecture backfired, because after school
had let out, Joey had let his mind wander (as it was apt to do) during
the long walk home. There were two things wrong with what he was doing.
First of all, he was standing in the middle of the woods. Secondly, he
was using a sock.
Eventually the pain became too much, and he was forced to zip up again
and walk back to the street imagining that he had been pressured by aliens
into giving up his sperm. Of course Joey didn't even give any sperm unto
his sock, but the state of sex education at Clay Lake Western Adventist
ensured that he didn't know the difference.
“Why can't you just leave me alone?” Joey asked the aliens. But they didn't
reply.
Dearest, Most Beloved
Andrea,
Why must you be so cruel? You're worse than the aliens! Why can't you just
talk to me? I'm sorry I told you to leave me alone. If you'll forgive me,
I'll never leave you alone again. I don't mean that in a bad way. I wish
you were here. Can we be friends? Good friends?
I really love you very much. I want to run my fingers through your luscious
raven hair. I want to kiss you and then there's the rest of that stuff
that I don't really understand. Of course we'll be abstinent until we get
married like Ms. Beaner says because I know you like her and her daughter,
so we'll have to get married right away. Maybe we could get married in
Ms. Walwonziak's church someday. We'll get Dave Barry to MC for us. What
do you say?
I love you.
- Joey
That one he didn't bother to deposit.
The next morning, Ms. Beaner was called in again to substitute in the morning
Bible class usually taught by the Pastor.
2008
On the transit bus from Newlinder to downtown Seneca, Joey glanced over
the shoulder of the woman in front of him to see the book she was reading.
He saw in the page headers that "The Case For Faith" was the title. Oh
no, Joey groaned. Why did they even publish this stuff?
Andrea walked out of the embrace of Chris and sat down in front of her
computer. "I have to check my e-mail," she told him. "I might be hearing
back about that job in Lakeshoreville."
“Now, have any of you thought about what you're going to do in heaven?”
“First Joey and I are going to build the Enterprise-D, and then we're gonna
play hockey!” James said, clutching his Patrick Roy goalie mask inside
his backpack.
“But you can't play hockey in Heaven,” Ms. Beaner said.
“Why not?!”
“You can't play hockey because it's brutal and violent!”
“Then what can you play?”
"Sports of any kind are-"
“What about video games? Ones without violence?” Joey asked.
“None of it. Even if you had a game of picking flowers, it would still
be a sin to play it. If I'm playing against someone, that's competition,
and if I win, the other person will feel bad. So there aren't any games
in Heaven.”
You mean, we're doing all this to go to Heaven, and once we're there we
can't have any fun? “What are we supposed to spend eternity doing,
then?” Joey asked.
“You will derive all the pleasure you could want by praising God.”
A boy named Mark with attitude and fists of iron (so Joey had discovered
previously, in a story which he might dwell on in his mind if he were hungry
for more self-pity at the moment) leaned back in his chair and looked blankly
at Ms. Beaner. "You know, I can follow most of this Bible stuff, right?
But there's this one thing-"
"What?" This was an exasperated sigh, as if there were only a few good
tickets to Heaven for the entire class, and some of the people would be
making the journey in coach.
"I don't think Mary could have had Jesus if she's a fuckin' virgin!"
In the book was described the case of a woman who wrote a letter to God
pleading to win the lottery. She wrote her numbers in the letter. This
was proof, said the book, that miracles exist (since the odds were so much
against the occurrence), therefore there must be a God. Some characters
in the book even went on to talk about it being "improbable that the media
would report this if it wasn't true." Joey already knew that, and
he saw the holes in the rest of the argument right away, and unwilling
to restrain himself he said, "There's something seriously wrong with that
book you're reading."
"Pardon me? Oh, Joey!"
Oh, no. Brenda.
"Are you going to come to the Campus Crusade for Christ meeting tomorrow?"
"No."
"You should. It'll be good for you. We'll have lots of fun."
"There's something wrong with that book you are reading."
"What's wrong with it?"
"That lottery argument is totally ridiculous! You're a science student;
don't you know about the law of very large numbers?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean if you get enough of a sample size, anything outrageous is bound
to happen. If there weren't so many people playing in the lottery, there
would rarely be any winners! But if the odds of winning the lottery are
something like one in twenty million and five million people play, there
will be huge winners once in a while."
"Odds mean nothing."
"You're half right – odds in and of themselves don't mean anything, assuming
independence of events. But if I flip a coin a hundred times, it will probably
come out fairly near 50 heads, 50 tails, right?"
"Yes, but-"
"But if I flip that coin a thousand times, it will come even nearer 500
heads, 500 tails! These are the effects that we live and die by! It's why
gamblers… except for Blackjack card-counting which is illegal and sports
betting which has its own problems because a bunch of people get too good
at it the sports books will move the line and gobble everyone up… well,
it's why gamblers always loose in the long run, and why the most dangerous
part of a pilot's job is the drive to work!"
"But she wrote a letter, and God answered her call."
"You can't prove that! If this book were being fair - which it isn't, because
it's violating every scientific principle there is by reporting selected
bits of reality to support a pre-determined conclusion – if that book were
being fair, it would mention the millions of other deluded souls who must
surely have written letters to God and received no answer! After enough
people write these letters, one of those people will win. After enough
women take fertility drugs, one of them will give birth to nonuplets. This
is a big scary world, and all sorts of crazy things are bound to happen
within it."
"But you can't prove that this particular instance wasn't a miracle can
you?"
"No, but that's the whole point of science – I can't prove anything! The
idea is to disprove."
"It's a lot easier to destroy than to build, isn't it? You just don't know
the pleasure and security of Faith in God yet."
"I guess you and I are polar opposites. Compromise on this is impossible,
because you're trying to crush my interests, and I'm trying to show you
the supposed folly of yours."
"Are you going to come to the meeting? Aren't you worried about what will
happen to you after you die?"
"I think your God must be particularly cruel if he would pick on people
for their thoughts instead of their actions."
"Yes, but if you'd read the Bible, you'd discover that Jesus is the answer."
"You know, there was this other guy named Bar Kochba whose life created
almost as much controversy as Jesus'. I was reading Paul Lutus' Confessions
of a Long-Distance Sailor and in it he remarks how sailors got robbed
of a great oath this way."
"Excuse me? Is that all you care about, swearing? This is more important
than your thoughts. This is bigger than you, Joey."
"I admit that it would be unwise for me to use words that make other people
feel uncomfortable."
"It's a sin too."
"Well, who told you it's a sin? Geez, everything's a sin! Family planning,
real science, continental drift…"
"Only in some churches."
"The church's moral compass is completely out of whack – in fact, there
shouldn't even be a church. We'd get along much better if everyone was
able to decide for themselves what the best action is in each particular
moment. Sometimes after enough time, though, a bit of flexibility might
creep into the church arguments – for instance, a lot of people think that
lying is a sin but yet they will point out situations where it's okay or
even 'good' to lie. But think of other things; for instance, what about
bringing family planning to an African village? Won't that help alleviate
suffering? And yet it's sinful – many institutions refuse to promote anything
but abstinence. But you people need to realize something: right now we
are living in Nature. This isn't about Sin. This is about Survival. If
I was in a world where there was a clearly marked and proven path to Heaven,
I would probably change my tune. But as far as I can see, I'm not."
"I have to get off here. I think you should come to the meeting."
"I'm not going to."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Well, take care, then. I hope you find the Lord. I'll pray for you even
though you don't want me to. I care enough because it's the right thing
to do."
"Take care."
As the daughter of the zealot got off the bus (the argument had scarred
Joey less than his argument with Ms. Bonner about dinosaurs walking with
man), Joey thought about the Western Adventist school he once attended,
and then he remembered Andrea – the second and last woman he had ever loved.
In religion as well as romance he had made the same mistake twice. Well,
actually, maybe he'd made the mistake more than twice already, but never
twice with the same person, so it didn't count. Or perhaps the two mistakes
were just the two big mistakes that emerged from the thousands of little
mistakes. At any rate, Joey felt that his real problem was waiting for
the opportunity to make that mistake to come around again. It seemed to
him that people were either stupid or they didn't care about him, which
to him was really the only thing worth caring about in Joey's world when
you got right down to it.
Well, if they could act with carelessness and abandon, so would he.
MSN Hotmail – More Useful Everyday
| Subject: | Sender: |
| Telefone com BINA pelo menor preço!! | bagatelasite@ibest.com.br |
| YOUNG and WAITING 4U!! | jenny@2hotpersonals.com |
| CÂMERA FALSA DE VIGILÂNCIA C/ DETECTOR DE MOVIMENTO | infovianet@terra.com.br |
| The goverment is SPYYING on YOU!!!!! | donotreply@scramblercrack.cc |
| Résumé | e_ranchez@macdonalds.ca |
| 19/f/ca hot sluts | terry@livevideoanal.com |
| No job!??? NO problem!! | creditcards_ezy@midlandtrust.com |
| hello | joey@joeysworld.com |
What was that? She clicked on the descriptive and clever subject "hello"
and read the message because somewhere in the back of her mind she thought
the name "Joey" was familiar.
Andrea didn't know what to make of it. The letter itself seemed fairly
innocent – just an unremarkable hello / generic apology for the past, and
a request to hear of her whereabouts and whatabouts. Somehow, though, the
timing (in terms of years) was off, and Andrea also wondered why a twenty-plus-year-old
would be writing a letter to someone he knew in Grade 9, no matter what
the feelings might have been.
If she had written a reply, she might have said something about moving
on, but the reply in itself would have been a contradiction.
"What's that?" asked Chris, who had stepped in and taken a look over Andrea's
shoulder.
"Oh, it's nothing." She pressed 'Delete' and moved on to the previous messages,
wondering what it would take for Joey to do the same thing. If he was the
same person who had blown her off in the hall in Grade 9, it might take
a lot.
See also: