I left the stall. “Sorry, Kevin, I can’t. My advisor said I shouldn’t.”
“Advisor? Who? Jack? He doesn’t know anything. You just listen to him ’cause he’s Japanese!” I was already opening the door to leave. “Vic? Vic?! Vic!”
“Excuse me,” asked Mrs. Kay, a formidable fourth-grade teacher with the crackling, stretched-out skin of a witch. “What were you doing in there? Who is that yelling? Is this about those cards?”
“I don’t know,” I said and walked back to my classroom—Pokémon fever forced me to lie to teachers.
In the movies, the priest and the penitent had always stepped into separate boxes and been separated by a screen, as if they were in cages or looking through chainmail. But when Sister Irene opened and guided me through the confessional door, there was only an empty seat directly in front of the priest.
Father Dorner was a red-faced man with a few tawny hairs sprouting from his oval melon; when I squinted he reminded me of Mr. Conehead. By the time I sat down he had already pushed his glasses up his nose three times. The spectacles seemed to be in a state of perpetual drooping, like snow sliding down the side of a mountain.
He stared back at me.
“…”
“…”
He stared still, as if I was supposed to begin.
“…”
“…”
I sat back in the chair and let my feet dangle and scoped out the bare walls with an overlooking Christ.
Ehh humph… Father cleared his throat.
I was supposed to begin!
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”
He pushed the glasses up his nose, his frames beginning to fog. “Tell me your sins, my son.”
We were supposed to be thinking about our sins while waiting in the pews for our turns to confess, but I had been distracted by the chronological paintings depicting the events of Christ’s passion and asking myself why my father so revered the Romans if they killed Jesus?
Ehh humph.
“I, uh… I’m sorry for, uh… throwing rocks at squirrels.”
“Mhmm.”
“And snowballs at cars.”
“Mhmmmmm.”
“And, uh…”
The Roman legions were formidable military units, but I doubt I’d pick one as my champion to battle the Green Knight in the pit.
Ehh humph.
I doubt the javelin—or pilum—would hold up against a well-wielded halberd or battle-ax.
Ehh humph!
“I’m sorry for being mean to Britney.”
“And who’s Britney?”
“My sister.”
“Mhmm.”
“Sometimes I take Marlene from her—that’s her stuffed horse—and run around the house, and she can never catch me because I’m like Deion in the dining room, and this one time she stubbed her toe near the fireplace and started to cry and I ran away instead of saying ‘I’m sorry’ and getting her ice. I felt bad.”
“Mhmm.”
“I’m sorry we don’t come to church more often.”
“What?!” The priest’s face had puffed like helium in a big red balloon.
“Yeah, my mom says she went to Catholic school so she’s prayed enough for one lifetime.”
“This… this… this is unacceptable!”
“Father, is the holy water near the front door holy miracle water or just holy regular water?”
“What?” The priest bounced in his seat like he was in a car without a seatbelt. “Okay, just, just let me…” And he raised his hand over my head so close that I could see the crisscrossings of lines on his palms, closed his eyes, and began to absolve me of my sins.
“Eeeek tal’alla mande, eeeek tal’alla mande,” I started to say under my breath.
“What? What is that? Are you speaking in tongues?”
“I’m not supposed to say…”
“No! Just… don’t say anything. Ehh humph. Heavenly Father, Victor here…” And he spoke to God for me and said all I had to do to be absolved of my sins was to say four Our Fathers and four Hail Marys.
Easy enough?
I thought so, until I knelt before the sepulcher, ready to let my sins flow out of me like a river, and drew a blank.
“Hail Mary who areth in Heaven, hallowed be thy grace… Hail Mary of Heaven full of grace, hallowed be thy name… Hail Father full of Mary…”
I had choked on the biggest stage of all. Forget fourth and goal with ten seconds left against Livingston. Forget not being able to write the sequel to my best-selling epic; I froze in front of God. I continued to fumble around with the prayers about Jesus or Jesus’s father or my father (but the priest was Father, too?), and Jesus’s mother or God’s wife, or both?—I needed to talk with my CCD teacher after class and get this family tree squared away.
A kid from Hartshorn had knelt next to me after emerging from Father McManus’s confessional and seemed to have a real handle on the prayers. I peeked out in my periphery to try and read his lips, like I did with Arjun during Mrs. Sherman’s mental math massacres, but I couldn’t make out a thing.
“Psst. Psssst.”
“Huh?”
“Hey, can you just tell me the first part? I think if I get it right from the beginning I’ll be able to figure it out from there.”
“…”
“Come on.”
“…”
“I need absolution too. You’re not the only sinner. Hey… wait, don’t go.”
I looked over my shoulder and could see Sister Irene squinting from beyond the first bank of pews, shaking her head as if to say, “No chance saving that one.”
Looking up at the hanging crucifix, I said, “I’m sorry for everything,” and left to find my mother in the pickup line.
Mrs. Mason’s babies died. The school called my house and I could hear my mother scream from the kitchen as I sat on the basement couch, thumbing through my holos. The slight superiority I felt over the malignants for those few short months faded by the end of the school year. New World Manga and other card stores started selling holos individually—they had them displayed in glass cases at the counter—and my good
