Page 13 of The Golden Boy's Guide to Bipolar
I sit on my hands to keep from fidgeting too much. “I actually just came here to ask you a question.”
“Ask it.”
“Or, maybe, like, two questions. Three, tops.”
The pause is too long for comfort, so I take his lack of response as my cue to go on.
“Okay, so, hypothetically speaking...” I don’t know why I’m starting out with hypotheticals when this is obviously about me. “If a guy falls for another guy, what exactly would he have to do to cancel out the sin?”
“Cancel out the sin...?” He repeats my last few words, as if they were in a different language.
“Right. Like, what if I go volunteer at a food bank every time I have sex—”
He clears his throat like that caught him off guard, but I keep going.
“I mean, since you can’t just stop doing certain sins... like if I like another guy, but I’m also, like, areallygood person, I don’t have to go to hell, right?”
He pauses again, though not for as long this time. “Your focusis in the wrong place, my son. If good deeds cancel out sins, then what is there to save us from sin? Actually, it’s the opposite. A good deed means nothing if done with sin in one’s heart.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. This is not going according to plan. “But what if it’s not a mortal sin? It’s not a conscious choice, I can’t really help it. What then?”
By now I’ve dropped the hypothetical act. He’s the one who told me to break up with Jamal for my penance last year, so he knows exactly what I’m talking about.
“You always have control over yourself, my son. You only have to resist the temptation.”
“No, you’re not getting it,” I start, my voice raising more than I mean it to. “I can be a better person! I’ll be really,reallygood, I promise—” I stop myself when my voice cracks. I wasn’t expecting to get so mad, but I also really wasn’t expecting our talk to end up this way.
“A good person who refuses to rid himself of the devil’s influence will find himself again with the devil in the afterlife.”
“But I...” I stop myself before getting choked up again. I have to go back to class soon, I can’t go getting emotional. “I have to go,” I blurt out, and bolt from the confessional before he has a chance to respond.
I thought Father John having that priestly connection with God would mean he could give me some kind of answers, but I was wrong.
No, he’s the one who’s wrong. He must have mistranslated or something. He’swrong. There has to be a way to prove him wrong.
6
When Resisting the Routine Feels Like Freedom
Grasping For Control
I do a double take when Doña Violeta shows up to take me and Yami home from school instead of my mom. The woman is basically our surrogate grandma, for all intents and purposes, since Yami and I haven’t seen or heard from our abuela in years. On the rare occasion Abuela comes up in conversation, Mami either changes the subject or says something about how crazy she is. Growing up, Doña Violeta was there instead. She helped raise Yami and me, and practically every other kid on our block.
“What’s she doing here?” I ask Yami as we walk toward her car.
“Mami’s in Sedona this weekend, remember?” Yami raises an eyebrow. “She’s been talking about it all week.”
“Oh, right,” I say, pretending I remember her bringing it up. Somehow my brain only manages to remember useless things, like textbook glossaries and differential equations. When it comes to real life, I always come up blank.
Maybe that has something to do with The Thoughts I keep having to push down whenever my brain tries to leave robot-studentmode. Those thoughts being particularly persistent after that conversation with Father John.
I pretend to pay attention to Doña Violeta’s story in the car, but all I can think about is how I have to prove Father John wrong. There has to be some kind of loophole. If Father John can’t tell me what to do in order to be with Jamal without going to hell, I’ll bring my case straight to the source. I may not be able to hear God’s voice in my ear like a priest, but I can still get my message across.
As soon as we get home, I go straight to my room and pray harder than I have since my hospital stay. I know most people pray before bed, but my usual time is after school. Since I go to bed at inconsistent times, if at all, it’s easier to make a habit of it if I can do it at the same time every day.
I pull my cross necklace out of my shirt and close my fist around it tight. When I’m not in school, I’m usually wearing that one and my jaguar necklace, which both feel spiritual to me in different ways. But with the dress code, I can only wear the cross to school.
I’m not proud of it, but this particular prayer is not pretty. I find myself straight up groveling, begging for some kind of sign that I missed something—that Father John missed something—and I don’t have to spend the rest of my life pretending not to love Jamal.
