Verse (6 page)

Chapter 22

Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.

“Remember, God is everything. The first and the last, the light and the darkness, the belief and the disbelief. There’s no escaping him. He’s in everything we do and everything we are. Because he’s everything and he’s nothing both.”

I look around the basement at Erwin, Faye, Sydney, Garrett, Kyle, Lewis, Ryan, Warren, and Carson sitting on their sleeping bags. “Summer break’s almost over and it’s my last year at Grant, you all know that. After this, it’ll all become bigger. A few of you will graduate and come with me, most of you will stay behind and keep things going here. But when the time comes, there will be a place for all of you. Know that.”

Garrett says, “What are we going to do after school ends?”

“We’ll go city wide, then national, then international.”

“Yeah, but how?”

I fidget with my belt loop. “All will be revealed in time.”

I go upstairs and as I close the door, Mom comes out from the living room.

She says, “You brought your friends over?”

“Yeah.”

“Aren’t you a little old to be having a slumber party?”

“It’s not a slumber party, Mom.”

“Just don’t do this again.”

“You want me to send them home? It’s midnight.”

“No, just don’t do it again.”

“No,” I say and walk away from her, to my room.

I close the door and unzip my pants.

There’s a knock on the door.

“What?” I yell.

Through the door comes Faye’s voice, “Can I talk to you?”

I flush and zip up my pants and open the door. “Sorry,” I say. “I thought it was my mother.”

“It’s okay,” and she comes in.

She sits down on my bed and I shut the door and I sit down next to her.

She just looks at me.

I say, “So, what’s going on?”

“Well, we haven’t talked much lately.”

“Yeah, I really should try to spend more individual time with people.”

“I broke up with Erwin a week ago.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“Okay.”

“I mean, it’s been really hard actually.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Have you ever had a girlfriend?”

“Um, no.”

“I didn’t think so. Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you ever think about, do you want to?”

I wheeze a laugh. “Uh, Faye…”

“Sometimes I see you looking at me.”

My heart pounds in my ears. My mouth is dry.

She leans over, puts her hand on my leg, moves her face to mine.

I jump up. “Faye. No.”

“Why not?”

“I, uh—”

“You don’t want to?”

“No.”

“Yes, you do,” she says, glancing down at my crotch.

I’m getting hard, oh God. “Faye. Go downstairs. Go to bed.”

“Manuel—”

“Go!”

She stands up and leaves, closing the door behind her.

I close my eyes and grit my teeth. I don’t know what to think about what just happened, but I know I will be thinking about it for the rest of my life.

I open my eyes and walk around in a circle until it’s gone.

I go to the door and push the lock in.

Turn off the light, take off my pants, get into bed.

I’m hard again and I’ll never sleep.

Chapter 23

First period of the first day and no one has History but me, so I go by myself. Iris is there and before I can look away we’ve made eye contact and she half-smiles and half-waves and I half-smile back so I sit next to her.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hi, Manuel. How are you?”

“Good, how are you?”

“Fine.”

Neither of us says anything. It’s kind of awkward.

She says, “How’s your cult?”

“Real good. Why do you ask?”

“Just as a friend.”

“You want to be friends again?”

“I… I miss you.”

“Me— me too.” I glance at her and she glances at me at the same time. I look away.

“Well?” she says.

I say, “Yeah, let’s be friends.”

“Oh, great. But… I meant your cult.”

“Oh right, my cult’s doing real good. You hear about us, huh?”

“Everyone hears about you.”

“Right.”

Think of something to say.

I say, “Are you excited about our last year?”

“Not really.”

“Why not?”

She laughs, “I don’t know. Why, are you excited?”

“Yeah, I can get out of this place.”

“And do what? Is there a college for messiahs?”

“I’m not going to college.”

“Really? Everyone goes to college. So what are you going to do?”

I shrug, “Take it to the real world.”

“You think they’ll follow you after graduation?”
“Why wouldn’t they?”

“I just think that maybe it’s just a high school clique to them. And they’ll get back to their regular lives.”

“No. Why do you say that? You don’t even know most of them.”

“I know Erwin and Garrett. But you’re right. How many of you are graduating this year?”

“I don’t know, a lot of us.”

“And what are the rest of them doing?”

I shrug, “College, I guess.”

“And what do you think they’re going to do there, start recruiting for you at the U-Dub? Or in some other city?”

“If I ask them to.”

“And what about you? What are you doing?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. I need to expand things.”

“Expand them where? Here? You’re going to be one of those losers who hangs around school after graduating? You and four other guys. Three drug dealers, a janitor, and the messiah?”

I laugh. “No, not here. This is more than just high school. Maybe I can open a center or something. They could work at it on the weekends and after school.”

“A center. Like a church?”

“No. Well sort of, but not like a community center, it’ll be aimed at enacting real world, um…”

The bell rings, luckily, and we turn toward the front.

The teacher’s written

The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

on the board. I write it down in my notebook and then take notes on her lecture on the origins of the Great War.

The bell rings and we pack up our things.

Say something to her.

What?

She zips her bag and I zip mine.

We leave the classroom and I look at her and she looks at me like, yes?

Tricia approaches.

Iris nods at her and then says to me, “It was nice talking to you.”

I nod, “You too.”

She turns and they walk down the hall.

I’m sorry I kissed you.

I should run after her and say it.

Why didn’t I bring it up?

I guess I never would have.

Maybe that’s a good thing, I don’t know.

Chapter 24

Sydney, Erwin, Faye, and I find a table outside and sit around it. I zip my coat up tight against the cold. Sydney scratches at his right hand with his left, obviously craving a cigarette. Erwin and Faye ignore each other.

Erwin says, “You always say when I ask you about God: maybe. You never want to just tell us what’s true, why not? I know you know. You must believe.”

“I do believe, you’re right,” I say. “I just think that it’s really the same thing if there is a God or there isn’t. We know life is real. We know we’re real. We know this is real,” I put my hand against the table.

Sydney says, “Do we?”

“We all perceive it. So even if it was fake, that fakeness would still be real because if it wasn’t, we wouldn’t perceive anything.”

Erwin says, “You mean like Descartes, like we learned in History last year, ‘I think therefore I am.’”

I say, “It’s even deeper than that. Look at what God says when Moses asks him his name. ‘I am that I am,’ or I am therefore I am. It’s not one thing justifying another, it justifies itself. It’s the same for everything. Everything exists therefore everything exists. That’s what God is. He is. It is. It is existence. Existence is existence. It is it.”

Faye says, “Wow.”

I say, “And that part of the Bible with Moses, the early part of the
Old Testament
, is thousands of years old, it came out of a primitive time when almost everybody was polytheistic, civilization and writing were still new, when human thought was so primitive. But that’s something that’s still profound today. To me that is a sign that Moses had accessed something higher than himself when he heard it.”

They’re all squinting from the sun behind my head, dropping early in the winter.

Faye says, “You should write your own testament for the
Bible
, Manuel. The things you say are so profound.”

“I— I couldn’t do that, I’m just giving my thoughts and opinions and stuff I’ve read.”

She says, “You don’t need to be so modest.”

Sydney says, “The
New New Testament
?”

I laugh.

The bell rings.

I say, “Okay, time for last period.”

Erwin says, as we’re all standing up, “This is our real school. I learn more from you than I ever do in class.”

We go inside. Faye heads to the left and Erwin and Sydney walk on either side of me down the right.

Erwin says, “That was really interesting, Manuel.”

I say, “Thanks Erwin, that means a lot.”

Erwin laughs, “No, thank you, Manuel. See you guys,” and he heads into a classroom.

I stop at my locker and enter my combination. Sydney leans against the locker next to me.

I click open the lock and pull my locker open and say, “What do you have now?”

He says, “Spanish.”

I take out my History book. “Oh, how’s that going?”

“It’s difficult right now, but I’m working at it.”

I close my locker and look at him, “You know you don’t have to act differently for my sake, right?”

“I know that.”

He walks me to my class in silence.

Chapter 25

Mom says, “Where is Manuel?”

I walk out from the study. She’s looking around at the maybe fifteen kids in the house and she looks angry.

I approach and say, “Hello, Mother.”

She says, “What’s going on here?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. Who are all these kids?”

“They’re my friends.”

“Who told you you could do this?”

“You did.”

“No I didn’t. When?”

“You said I could have friends over.”

“This isn’t a few friends, this is a party! No, it’s a cult!”

Everyone is staring at us. I say, “Maybe we should go somewhere more private.”

We go upstairs to her bedroom and I close the door behind us.

I say, “You said I could have friends over.”

“So all these kids, they come over every weekend, because I have to go into the office Sundays, and you took advantage of that, and they worship you?”

“They don’t worship me.”

“I saw what was going on.”

“You didn’t see anything.”

“But they all think you’re the messiah, don’t they?”

“No, not all of them.”

“But you want them to.”

“I want everyone to think that.”

“God damn it, Manuel!” She takes a deep breath and lets it out. “How long have you been doing this?”

“What do you mean? You know I’ve been having friends over, you said it was okay.”

“How long have you been having twenty kids over?”

I shrug. “It expanded.”

She says, “You thought you could get away with this because I work late Sundays!”

“We weren’t making messes, so what’s the harm?”

“This isn’t about you making a mess in the house!”

“It’s not? What’s it about?”

“You tell me, what is this about?”

I say, “This is about what it’s about. What life is about.”

“Life is about starting a cult in my house?”

“Our house.”

“I pay for it!”

“It’s not a cult.”

“We’re sending all these kids home and then we’ll talk.”

“Mom!”

“Get rid of them!”

I have a lump in my throat as I gather everyone and tell them that they need to go.

Everyone’s understanding and they leave and I shut the door behind Erwin, the last.

I find Mom in the kitchen, making a sandwich. I sit at the counter.

“Do you want one?” she says.

“No.”

She finishes making it, puts it on a plate, and comes and sits next to me. “This is my fault,” she says.

“No it’s not. What’s your fault?”

“You know I wish you could have had a dad.”

“That’s not your fault.”

“Yes it is. You always used to ask about him, don’t you want to know what happened?”

“I already figured it out.”

“Figured what out? You found the file?”

“What file? I mean my name. Immanuel. From the
Bible
, ‘Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.’”

She says, “Yeah, I remembered that from Sunday School when I named you that.”

I say, “When I read that prophecy, that’s how I knew my drowning vision was real. It confirmed it, I’d been prophesized thousands of years ago.”

“Manuel, I went to sperm bank.”

“What?”

“It wasn’t immaculate conception, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Head spinning. “Immaculate conception doesn’t mean that.”

“What?”

I say, “You went to a sperm bank?”

“Yeah. I was only 23, but I wanted child. I was a weird kid. Just like my weird son.”

“No, you’re lying. You don’t have to do this.”

“If I had gotten pregnant, just like as a miracle, don’t you think that would have been like national news?”

“Not if you didn’t tell anyone. Who would believe you? That doesn’t mean—”

“Yeah but at least, don’t you think I would agree that you’re the messiah?”

“I am the messiah. Well why don’t you?”

“Because it’s true. Your father was a sperm donor.”

“But… But…”

“His file, his profile, is up in my office. I hid it. I can show it to you. It’s how I picked him. It doesn’t have his name, but it has all his test scores and weight and height and stuff and a picture. You look just like him. It’s true. Why do you think you’re so beautiful and I’m a cow?”

“Mom—”

“I wanted a baby. It was probably a stupid thing to do. But I went to a fertility clinic. I was only 23. Maybe I should have waited. I could have gone on more dates or something. But you know what? I'm not sorry I had you, no matter how hard you try to make me.”

My stomach is turning. I stand up. Can’t think straight. Can’t hear what she’s saying.

“Manuel, calm down.” She stands up and tries to hug me, but I push her away. She says, “Calm down! Do you want to see the file? It has his picture and some background information, if you want.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know?”

“You were embarrassed?”

“No, I’m not emb—”

“Too pathetic to even find any guy willing to fuck you?”

She SLAPS me in the face.

I gape at her. I hold back the tears.

I turn and walk to the stairs, go up to my room, shut the door, and lean against it.

How could—?

I’m breathing hard

It’s not—

I wipe my cheeks.

I swipe a couple books off the shelf and they land, open on their pages, bending, ruining, no longer perfect condition.

I punch the bookcase, crushing pain. I rub my knuckles.

Don’t cry.

I have to get out of here.

I look around.

I grab my coat.

My keys and my wallet are still in my pocket.

I open the door and go back down the hall, down the stairs, don’t know where I’m going, have to get out of here.

I go through the living room, avoid the kitchen, and leave.