Losing Faith (5 page)

We haven’t hung out since I was in middle school. The last time I can think of was when we went to Disneyland three years ago.

“Come on,” Faith had yelled, grabbing my hand, and pulling me from ride to ride. We laughed so hard on Space Mountain, I thought we might pee our pants.

But so much had changed since then.

Disneyland,
I write near the top of my page, right underneath
Cliff
.

But I can’t really talk about Disneyland. Not at a funeral.

I lay my head back on the armrest and stare at the ceiling. The dark paint splotch above the window catches my eye and suddenly I remember more.

“We’re just supposed to do the trim,” Faith had teased me, paintbrush in hand.

I didn’t laugh. Not at the time, not now. At the time, I was convinced Mom would throw a fit. She’d just redecorated the living room, had the walls painted by a group from the church, and Faith and I were supposed to worry only about the trim around the windows.

But the worst part wasn’t the dark brown paintbrush splotch in the middle of the wall. Faith leaned over to try to make my error less noticeable and caught the gallon paint can with her foot.

The memory is so fresh, I feel like I have to see the stain. I push myself off the couch and crawl beside the piano. When I heave the large storage ottoman out of the way, there it is—
the basketball-size splotch on Mom’s white rug. Of course it’s still there. Where else would it be?

“Get some paint thinner from the garage,” Faith had said. By the time I raced back into the living room, she was rubbing at a corner of the stain with a bottle of bleach and a tea towel.

But nothing worked.

Finally, after we edged the heavy ottoman into place, I convinced her not to say anything to Mom and Dad. I wanted to go to a party that night and I told her we’d find a better time to tell them.

That was three months ago.

When I hear Dad hang up the phone, I put all my weight into pushing the ottoman back over the splotch, and launch myself onto the couch. I write
PAINT
in large letters on my page, just to look like I’m doing something when Dad lumbers past the French doors and up the stairs.

But I won’t be telling that story either.

Lying my head back, I close my eyes. I picture her face, see her bending down, scrubbing at the carpet. Her hair was pulled into a red bandana that day, but as I see her in my mind’s eye, the bandana falls off and her curls flounce around her face. She stands and puts her arms out, and I notice the gray sweatshirt, though I know she wasn’t wearing it that day.

There’s fear in her eyes, and I try to force her face into a smile in my mind. But it won’t budge. The longer I focus on her image, the more petrified she appears. I whisper not to worry, that I’ll take the blame for the carpet, but her face doesn’t change. If anything, it becomes more panicked.

She looks down at her feet and so do I, but it’s not the living room carpet I see. Instead, her feet stand on bits of rock and gravel. And there’s an edge, so close, and one foot starts to slip. A look of horror crosses her face when she looks up at me, and then she’s gone. My eyes dart down and she’s falling, past jagged rocks into what appears to be a bottomless pit.

“No!” When the word bursts from my mouth, everything goes black, and suddenly I feel the rush of wind past my eyes, my face. And it’s not Faith who’s falling, it’s me. I can’t see the ground, I can’t see anything, and my cheeks suck upward. I scream, but barely hear my voice.

“Brie!” someone calls out to me, but I can’t tell if it’s from above or below.

“Help!” I try to gasp, but nothing comes out. My ears echo with the loud rumble of rushing wind.

“Brie!” I feel a jerk to my shoulder. “Brie, wake up.” A shake to my arms. “It’s just a dream. Wake up!”

I stare up into Dad’s face, but I don’t know where I am or how I got here.

“Are you okay, sweetie?”

Glancing around, I see the couch under me, the love seat across the room, the paint splotch above the window. I nod, but I can’t find my voice.

“It was just a bad dream,” Dad repeats.

And I want to tell him it wasn’t. It seemed so real. But he pats my knee with a shaky hand, gives it a squeeze, and suggests I go find something to eat. It’ll make me feel better.

After he leaves the room, I take a deep breath and sit up. I’m still tired, but the last thing I want to do is accidentally fall asleep here again. And the second-to-last thing I want to do is eat.

I tiptoe to the front door and ease it open just enough to slide through. Fresh air will help me get my bearings. But the first thing I see is Faith’s Toyota.

I’m drawn to it. The driver’s door is unlocked, which isn’t surprising, since Faith trusted everyone. But I’ve never sat on the driver’s side, so it takes me a few seconds to work myself up to get in.

When I click the door shut beside me, the space feels much smaller than it ever did before, like there’s barely enough room for me. Maybe it’s because I’m huddled in by the steering wheel. I reach my hands up and run them over it. Then over her gearshift and her dash. My hand circles
the yellow sticker with the scribbly-looking cross. I slide my finger up the cross and then sideways, wondering why God would take someone so good. Someone who loved him so much. Then I trace the tiny black dots arching along the top and bottom. Looking closer, they appear to be letters and not just dots. I lean forward and try to make out the words.

Live 4 Him.

Sounds like something Faith would have pasted in her car. I peer even closer to read the minuscule bottom text.

Die 4 Him.

I suck in a breath and my thumb quickly covers the words, as if I could take back reading them.

chapter
FIVE

Plan D: Greet some mourners. Read a poem. Go home
.

Five days after the barn party, I hunch on a pew in the front row of the church, hiding behind my notebook while I wait for the dreaded service. My parents’ church doesn’t feel the same way I remember it. The decor seems so outdated. So orange. It smells different too, like the old people my grandma lives with. I don’t remember the congregation having more than five or six people with white hair, but those few must be leaving their scent.

I used to call it
our
church, back when all four of us attended weekly services come sickness, tiredness, or even major catastrophe. But then I started spending more time
with Amy, who wouldn’t get out of bed before noon on a Sunday if her eternal soul depended on it—which, according to my family, it did—and eventually I reasoned my own way out of Sunday mornings.

Mom and Dad huddle in a corner. Mom’s been crying since we got here, but not the normal kind of crying. More like a constant huffing that builds to a wail every five minutes or so.

Faith’s coffin sits less than ten feet away from me, but thankfully it’s closed. Whatever she looks like now, I don’t want to know. Even the thought of having her body so close gives me this creepy feeling, like having a dead animal carcass in the room. I’ve heard that funerals often have open caskets to give the family some measure of peace, but how could it?

As the church fills up, I recognize some faces from the parking lot the other night. The dark-haired girl who tried to include me mingles with a few distraught-looking youth group types. Some others from Sharon High, Faith’s school friends, avert their eyes, which is fine with me. If one of them died, I wouldn’t know what to say to their siblings either. I haven’t been in school all week and the appearance of all these people out of their natural habitat only adds to the hallucinatory feeling of this whole day.

My eyes stop dead on my silent-yet-intimidating locker neighbor, Tessa Lockbaum, leaning against the back wall.

What is she doing here?
She wears her usual death garb: black turtleneck, dark baggy jeans, silver belt buckle in the shape of a skull. Rumors permeate the hallways at school about how many kids she’s beaten up over the years. Students give her a wide berth whenever she makes her way to classes.

Being my age and the antithesis of holy, Tessa definitely wouldn’t have been one of Faith’s friends. With stray empty seats all around, I wonder why she just stands there, her arms crossed as though she’s judging the world.

All of a sudden, she glares right back at me and I realize how long I’ve been staring. I turn away, but feel holes burning into my back. Not only am I confused about her presence, but what’s with that look, as if she blames me for something?

A stab of guilt hits me, and my mind rebounds to that night. All I could think of was Dustin. The last time I saw my sister, I lied to her, used her, barely said thanks for the ride.

“Hey, babe. You okay?”

Dustin’s voice jolts me back to the moment. I slap my journal shut, swallow hard, and take my time looking up. He had texted me back to tell me he was sorry and that he’d be here, but that was the last I’d heard from him. In a way I’m glad. I wasn’t ready to talk to anyone earlier. Still may not be. Amy sidles up beside him. Dustin wraps an arm around my
shoulder and gives me a squeeze and Amy mimics him on the other side.

“I’m so sorry,” they both say at the same time. Even though they don’t laugh, I feel like I’ve missed out on some private joke.

Amy called me right after she got my text, asking if I wanted her to come over, but I let it ring and then e-mailed her back using the excuse that I didn’t think my parents were ready for outsiders. The truth is, I was waiting for the whole idea of what had happened to hit me. I didn’t really want anyone around when that happened. Of course I’m still waiting.

“What’s she doing here?” I ask, changing the subject and trying not to focus directly on Tessa. But when I speak, I realize how long it’s been since I’ve really talked to anyone. My voice feels strange. Echoey.

“Holy shit!” Amy says. “Did you invite Tessa Lockbaum?”

I stare at Amy, eyebrows raised, until she realizes the idiocy of her question.

“Maybe she’s paying her respects or something,” Dustin says.

That doesn’t make sense, but I’m not about to argue, especially with Dustin. I motion to the pew behind me. “I saved this row if you guys want to sit here.”

He shifts uneasily. “Actually, I left my jacket at the back.”

Sure enough, his brown leather jacket hangs over the pew of the very back row. I’m disappointed, but turn to Amy.

“I’ll be right back,” she says, before I can speak. “You know, the bathroom.”

With the church nearly full, the pastor ambles up onto the stage and rustles his papers at the podium. The way he spreads the papers out, stares at them, then shuffles them back together, I wonder if he’s at all prepared for this. Then again, am
I
prepared for this? I haven’t faced people all week and now I have to give a speech about my dead sister. How
could
I be prepared?

When the pastor taps on the microphone, Mom and Dad slip into their seats beside me.

This disorganized Pastor dude looks like he’s barely out of high school. He wears a sweater that I saw on a mannequin at American Eagle last month, which probably adds to his pubescent appearance. He must have started pastoring in kindergarten, because he’s been Faith’s youth leader for, like, ever. For all Faith used to prattle on about him, “Pastor Scott says this and Pastor Scott says that”—she never mentioned he was hot. No wonder Faith spent so much time at youth group.

“I’m Scott MacDonald,” the guy says in a much deeper voice than I expect. “For those of you who don’t know me …”
He scans the crowd for several seconds and the earring in his left ear gleams across the room like a neon sign reading
I miss the nineties
. “I’m the Youth Pastor here at Crestview Church. Or, as some of my crew like to call me, Captain Scotty.” He clears his throat and crinkles his brow, apparently just now remembering he’s leading a funeral. “We are gathered here today to celebrate the life of Faith Jenkins.”

Mom lets out a whimper at my sister’s name. I slide my hand over hers on the bench and leave it there, even though I’m tempted to pull away from her cold clamminess. I wish Dustin and Amy would have stuck close by. Someone to hold me up while I hold up Mom.

The pastor launches into the Bible, and since Mom’s breathing seems almost normal, I open my notebook low on the bench beside me. I finally wrote a poem this morning, but looking over it now, it’s way too embarrassing. When my turn comes, I’m going to give my head a little shake, and hope that Junior up there gets the picture. Surely somebody with a little more distance can start off the tributes.

The pastor goes into his philosophical take on the accident. He keeps repeating, “She wasn’t alone,” which gets redundant real fast, since Faith was never really alone. She hung out constantly with her friends from youth or, at the very least, Celeste.

I crane my neck to look for Celeste in the crowd, but can’t see her anywhere.

I’m thinking about how whacked it is that Tessa Lockbaum lurks in the back while Celeste isn’t even here, when Pastor Scott motions to the sound-tech guy and a song starts playing through the speakers at the back. A picture of Faith at her full-immersion baptism comes up on the screen at the front. Age twelve, her hair hangs straight and straggly from the water. Her glasses are covered in so many droplets I doubt she could see a thing.

Of course Celeste must be upset, but she, more than anyone, should be here.

I bite my tongue when Faith’s clear voice bursts through the speakers behind me. I didn’t know they’d be playing her music today. I ball a fist at my side to keep my strength, my balance.
It’s not really her,
I tell myself.
She’s gone.

The picture fades into another, now with Faith propped on a girl’s shoulders at youth camp. Her smile seems to take up the whole screen.

“Hallelujah, praise to my Lord,” my sister’s voice resounds through the back speakers. Not an actual song, but one of the improvised tangents the worship team used to attempt on Sunday mornings. They did that regularly back when Faith sang with them, because she could sing to anything.