Page 3 of Of Heathens & Havoc

I can hear the father shifting in the booth on the other side of the screen. Suddenly, I’m frozen with mortification. What if he knows?

I haven’t been to Thorncrown in four years, since I left Faulkner, and this priest must be new. I would remember that voice, sinfully dark and rich, a voice that belongs to a devil tempting me to hell, not a priest delivering me from it.

I haven’t said my brother’s name, but we used to attend mass here, and he stayed in Faulkner when I left. What if he’s confessed to this very father, told him this very scene? Has this father with a voice like sin itself heard these words before?

“He pulled up my shirt,” I whisper. “All the way. And the little bralette thing I wore under it. And he was leaning over me, that thing against my stomach, rubbing it harder and harder. No one was laughing. My friend was still yelling at him, but the others were just watching, and he was staring down at… at… Where we were together. His eyes were churning with some kind of madness. I’ll never forget it. And then he…” I choke out the last word.“Finished.”

I grip the cross until it breaks the skin, relief flooding out of my skin with the blood. My face is on fire, my breath unsteady, my hands shaking. But I did it. I got it out.

Unclenching my fingers from the necklace, I lick the blood off my scarred palm before I sandwich my hands in the flowy fabric between my knees. “I still remember how it felt.”

“You said that before,” the priest murmurs. “How did it feel?”

“It felt good,” I whisper, my voice barely audible. “How is that possible, Father? That it—all—felt—good. I was defiled. I’m unclean. But even knowing that, even after everything that followed, when I think about it, I have… Impure thoughts.”

His words are hesitant, faltering. “What kind of thoughts? Lustful ones?”

“Yes,” I admit, the shame so deep it shivers in my blood. “He woke something inside me, and I want it to go away. I want you to tell me how to make them stop. Because I’ve had them for six years, Father. I just want to be clean again. I want to not feel like I’m dying when I go to bed, and the thoughts come back, and I imagine he did more than that, that he put it inside me, right there on the floor with everyone watching. Sometimes I evenpicture my brother or his friend holding me down, or… Or doing more.”

I wait for him to condemn me to hell where I belong for a sin this devastating. For the things I’ve thought for so long, things no pure girl would ever imagine.

“Do you ever act on these fantasies?” he asks.

“What do you mean, act on them?”

“Were you promiscuous in high school?”

“No,” I say quickly. There are rules about student conduct at a place like this, a Catholic college. Maybe he’s trying to ferret out the liars, the dangers. Maybe he seeks out girls who look innocent but hide the form of temptation and sin under their clothes.

Maybe he found one.

“I never did anything,” I say firmly, not only because I don’t want to be turned over to the bishop and expelled, but because it’s the truth. “I never even kissed a boy. That’s why I don’t understand why these thoughts won’t go away, why I’m being tormented by them. Mom said they’d go away if I ignored them, but they didn’t. How do I stop having sinful thoughts?”

“We’re all made of sin,” the Father says. “You and I are no different from every other student and faculty and clergy member here. Getting rid of sin entirely isn’t the answer. It’s impossible. Accepting that you’re made this way, that you are perfect in God’s eyes, and He forgives and accepts you as you are, might be a better place to start.”

“But Idon’taccept it,” I say, swiping angrily at a tear. “What kind of person has that happen to them, and… Andlikesit? The thoughts mess me up more than what happened. I know what he did wasn’t my fault. Aunt Lucy made sure I knew that. I had therapists and youth councilors at church. I even know that I didn’t really want him to go further, but I can’t stop the way it makes me feel when I think about it.”

“Many people your age struggle with sins of the flesh,” he says. “It’s a college, lamb.”

I don’t know what makes the shudder roll through my entire body and my thighs clench involuntarily—the sound of his tongue forming those words like a caress made of smoke and velvet, or the nickname he dropped so casually, as if all his flock are lambs to him.

I try to focus on the words he’s still speaking. “We may have stricter rules of conduct than a public university, but we have no illusions about human nature.”

“But what do I do?” I ask.

“First, I want you to have patience with yourself,” he says. “I’d like to see you again, if you feel comfortable coming back in. We can meet in my office next time—”

“No,” I say quickly. “I mean, if that’s okay, Father. I’d rather talk to you here, like this.”

“If you’d let me finish, I was going to say, or here if you’d rather,” he says, sounding slightly amused, which only humiliates me further.

“What about this week?” I ask. “A million Hail Mary’s?”

“Some of us have a tendency toward self-flagellation when what we truly need is to forgive ourselves as God would forgive us.”

I resist the urge to groan.

“Yes, Father,” I say instead. Going easy on myself is not one of my strong points, especially after what happened two years later. I didn’t pay the same way the others did, but I paid. When does my punishment end?

---