“’Fore I go any further, though, I’d like to tell a joke. Stop me if y’all’ve heard this’n: What’s the difference ’tween a Southern Baptist and a Methodist?” A smile twitched onto his lips and he looked around expectantly, but nobody made a sound. “The Methodist says ‘Hello’ in a liquor store!” A few people chuckled awkwardly, but most just shifted in their seats.
“You see, we got a bit of a image problem in our church,” the pastor said, growing suddenly serious. “Not that we got a bad image, mind; no, in fact it’s the opposite: we’re too concerned with image. We’re too concerned with the external, with our appearances, with what others think of us, when we should be concerned with the internal, with our hearts, and with what God thinks of us. Radical honesty and radical faith are the heart of Christianity, ladies and gentlemen.
“I’ve lived that life. I’ve been in homes where that life is lived—perfect homes like you see on TV, full of smiling family photos and clean carpets and a cross on every wall, and it don’t mean nothin’. Think of the Apostles, and what folks must’ve thought of ’em—a buncha dirty, ramblin’, touchy-feely vagrants! But the Apostles knew they were walkin’ in righteousness, and they knew so long as they were honest and true and walked with the Lord, then the Lord walked with them.”
My fingers dug into my thighs and I stared at the back of the pew in front of me, feeling my heart beating. Sometimes it didn’t feel like God walked with me anymore. I remembered waking up in the hospital after my suicide attempt and feeling a hollow place in my heart where my faith had been. Transitioning had reawakened it a little, but it was hard to place too much hope in a God so many people said hated me.
“Radical honesty means you keep no secrets, damn the consequences. You talk about the booze, the drugs, the fornication, and the disappointments. Radical faith means you trust that the Lord visited these weaknesses and sorrows on you as part of His plan, and that as you walk with the Lord and speak honesty and demonstrate the redemption of Him others will see this, and you’ll find your life enriched. A dishonest life is a life half-lived, brothers and sisters, and it’s a life with one foot already in the Pit.”
As the pastor went on, his words kept repeating in my brain—a dishonest life is a life half-lived. Was it really true? Would my friendships and relationships always be dishonest if I was forever hiding my past? My eyes scanned the crowd around me, falling on Anna’s parents, so rigid-backed and attentive, and her brothers, fidgeting in their seats, before landing on Anna herself. Everyone around me, I realized, was living some kind of lie. Anna going out at night and telling her parents it was Bible study, her parents turning a blind eye to their sons’ bad behavior. Chloe and her relationship with Bee. Maybe secrets and lies were a part of life; maybe everyone had something they were lying to themselves about, or something they were hiding.
I looked up at the cross again and wondered if I was supposed to hear this particular sermon at this particular moment for a reason. I decided that the people who had said God didn’t love me, who said that I didn’t have a place on Earth—they were wrong. God wanted me to live, and this was the only way I knew how to survive, so this was what God wanted. This was what I wanted. I had chosen to live, and it seemed like, finally, I was doing just that.
10
I sat alone at the top of the bleachers watching the football team practice. The heat was sweltering and I had to strip down to my tank top and put my blouse over the seat to keep from burning my thighs, but a pleasant breeze made it bearable. The players were hard to tell apart from this distance, but eventually I spotted Grant milling near the edge of the field, a smile on his face. He hadn’t noticed me yet, but I preferred it that way. I liked seeing what he was like when I wasn’t around—and I liked even more that he was so clearly at ease, so strong and graceful and confident in every small motion, so comfortable in his life in a way I’d never experienced before. Maybe, I thought, if I spent enough time around him, that feeling would rub off on me.
A squat, muscular man blew hard on a whistle and Grant hustled with the rest of the team to line up in front of a checkerboard of tires. The coach whistled again and, two by two, the guys high-stepped across the tires. When it was Grant’s turn, he stepped up to the tires and crouched, ready to run as soon as the whistle sounded. The coach put the whistle to his mouth and blew. Grant took off at full speed, reaching the halfway mark noticeably faster than most of his teammates. I stood, cupped my hand around my mouth, and waved the T-shirt he’d given me the night at the lake like a flag, screaming “Woo!” at the top of my lungs. Grant’s face snapped up to me and he beamed. I smiled back. And then he missed a step and ate dirt just before the end of the course.
* * *
“You almost got me in trouble,” Grant said, squinting against the sun as he climbed up the bleachers. He had changed into jeans and a T-shirt with a faded Captain America logo on the chest. His hair was still sopping wet from the showers, reminding me of when he emerged from the lake.
“Almost,” I said, standing up and walking down a few steps to meet him. “You have to admit it was funny.”
“I’m gonna be flossing out grass for a week,” he said, his face splitting into a wide, boyish grin. “But yeah, it was funny.”
He leaned toward me and I leaned toward him. I felt that same electric rush up and down my skin as I waited for his lips to touch mine. But then a loud whooping sound erupted from below us. My eyes snapped open and I stood up straight when I saw a half dozen of Grant’s teammates standing at the edge of the field, making fist-pumping motions and gyrating their hips. I felt my cheeks warm. Grant ran his fingers through his hair and tried to laugh it off.