Page 16 of Glad You're Here

“Did you feel it?” I teased with a smirk. “God’s power?”

“Shut up! And only men get this power in the church?”

I nodded. “There is no priesthood for women, like not even Hayley Williams could have it if she converted to Mormonism. But the women’s job is even more important. They get to support the priesthood, Thea.”

“Ew!”

I laughed out loud. It all sounded so ridiculous as I tried to explain it to Thea. How did I once buy into all of this bullshit? How could I have wasted so much of my life on the church?

Instead of the regret and anger that used to fill me to the brim when I asked myself these questions, I felt calm. I felt so light that I thought maybe I could float away. “Whoa.” I leaned back on the sofa as the room gently tilted to the left.

Thea laughed. “You’re starting to feel it, aren’t you? Relax and let it come, bro.”

Suddenly, I had an uncontrollable urge to touch Thea’s hair. I reached over and ran my fingers through her purplish-black silk. “Whoa,” I giggled, or something weird like that. “Your hair feels like unicorn clouds.”

Thea snorted and patted my cheek again. I caught her hand in mine before she could pull it away. “Your skin is so soft, Thea!” I couldn’t mask my enthusiasm. I ran my fingers over her black nail polish, mesmerized by how the lamplight caught the hidden metallic shimmer.

“Everything feels really good with a nice high, doesn’t it?” Thea smiled at me and placed my hand back in my lap, but underneath her calm, she looked rattled by my touching her. Was it a good kind of rattled? The air between us felt like it crackled with electricity. Did she feel it, too?

Before I could ask, she pushed the conversation past the change in the air. “You should try masturbating now. High orgasms are life-changing.” She narrowed her gorgeous eyes at me, all playfulness. “You sure you’ve never jerked yourself off? It seems impossible to survive the teenage years without a little self-love. I’ve never met a single guy that doesn’t masturbate weekly.”

I shrugged, willing to let Thea change the subject. I’d probably imagined whatever happened between us. “I guess I’m your first. Also, Mormons call that self-harm instead of self-love. Fun fact: if you masturbate or engage in any self-pleasure, you have to report it to your bishop and go through the repentance process. There was this one kid in my ward who used to masturbate, and we always knew when his mom caught him because suddenly, he wasn’t allowed to bless, pass, or take the sacrament for six months. He didn’t go on a mission either. He was unworthy. Unworthy dudes don’t get girls.” I burst out laughing. There was nothing particularly funny about my anecdote, but I couldn’t stop laughing. For some reason, the fact that Jeremy Jefferson couldn’t get girls because he stroked his own dick had me in peals of doubled-over laughter.

Thea watched me with a single eyebrow raised, but the corner of her mouth twitched like she was fighting off a smile. Finally, she succumbed to the laugh.

The music on Thea’s phone still played, moving on from Paramore drama to Yellowcard angst. Our eyes met, lit with excitement, when Only One began to play. We both started belting out the lyrics, laughing between phrases.

“You’re a terrible singer!” Thea laughed so hard she had tears in her eyes.

I shoved her shoulder, singing louder. I paused to say, “You’re a terrible singer!”

Thea also sang louder in response, flipping me off, and we spent the next who knows how long laughing our asses off over nothing.

But all of that nothing felt like everything.

seven

Thea

My phone buzzed on my nightstand, but I ached too much to roll over and look at it. It felt as if acid had been injected into my bones. Whoever messaged me could wait.

I pulled my fluffy, weighted blanket to my chin and closed my eyes against the pathetic tear that tried to slip out. Fuck this shit. My pain didn’t get to make me cry today.

I’d had too many good days in a row. A fibromyalgia flare-up was bound to happen sooner or later. I still remembered the day I got my official diagnosis. Lenny insisted I see doctor after doctor. I was jabbed with needles, x-rayed, jabbed with more needles, and even stuck inside an MRI machine. “Everything looks normal.” The doctor had said.

“Like hell it does!” Lenny spat back at him, tired to death of his mansplaining and the way he’d suggested perhaps I’d been experiencing PMS.

Finally, the doctor sighed. “Maybe it’s fibromyalgia, then. That’s the last stop on this train— the diagnosis we give when nothing else explains the pain.”

When nothing else explains the pain…

That sounded like a punk song lyric.

And now, I was thinking about Levi and his love of emo-punk music. I imagined him as a Mormon teenager, hiding his My Chemical Romance and The Used CDs inside the cases of The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Janice Kapp Perry. I imagined him jamming out alone in his car where no one could hear him scream his heart out in his hilariously off-key singing voice.

That thought made me smile.

My phone buzzed again. I didn’t budge. Sometimes, if I settled into the perfect position, the pain would fade enough that I could bear it.

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