Winter of Grace (12 page)

‘Oh … thanks,' I said feebly, and Ryan went off to find the booklets for me, with one last warning glance at Elliot.

‘But you will come to the forum?' Jay's keen eye gleamed at me. ‘You know what this is? This is a test. God sets us all tests to see how strong we are in the faith, and this is yours.'

‘So, no pressure, then?' I said. But Elliot was the only one who smiled.

At the end of the meeting, Ryan led us in prayer. He prayed for our soldiers and their families. I waited for him to pray for the soldiers on the other side, too, and the innocent civilians caught up in the fighting, but he didn't. ‘Father, we pray for a quick victory in this war, this war between Christianity and the darkness of false belief. We pray for the overthrow of dictators who suppress Your word. We pray for the defeat of Your enemies.'

I was so shocked I sat rigid, scarcely able to breathe. Ryan made it sound like we should
support
the war! But no one else was horrified; only me. At the end of the prayer I couldn't even echo ‘Amen' with everyone else.

When Chelsea came up to apologise because they couldn't give me a lift home, I hardly registered what she said.

‘Are you going to call your mum?' Jay prompted me.

I looked at him blankly.

Jay squeezed my arm. ‘You okay? You've been weird all night.'

‘Um … just school stuff,' I said, turning away from his concerned face, his green-gold eye peering into mine like a searchlight. Suddenly all I wanted was to get out of there.

Elliot appeared, jangling his keys. ‘Heard you're short of a lift, Bridie. I can drop you home.'

‘I'll come too,' Jay said.

‘No need,' said Elliot. ‘You can go with Ryan.'

Jay's face fell. ‘Yeah, okay. See you on Sunday, Bridie.'

‘Okay,' I said, but my smile felt plastered to my face. Elliot steered me toward his car. The doors clunked shut and locked us into a space of blessed silence.

Elliot didn't speak until we were speeding down the highway. ‘Pretty full on, tonight, hey.'

I gave him a cautious sideways glance. His face was stern in profile, lit by the passing streetlights. He'd started to grow a reddish beard; it didn't suit him.

‘Ryan's prayer,' I said. ‘I didn't know Northside was pro-war.'

Elliot frowned. ‘I wouldn't say that. No one
wants
war, of course not. But you could argue that it's a good idea to kick out cruel, oppressive tyrants who lock up and murder Christians.'

‘But Jay was at the rally; he marched for peace; he got beaten up!'

‘Jay was there on his own, it was nothing to do with church. He was beaten up by anti-war protesters, Bridie. People from your side, students probably, like the police said. They must have seen his placard and got the wrong idea, just like you. They thought he was pro-war.'

‘What did his placard say?'

‘Jesus loves our soldiers.'

All this time I'd assumed Jay and I were on the same side, that it was skinheads, pro-war marchers, who had attacked him. And maybe he wasn't exactly
for
the war, but it seemed he wasn't exactly against it, either. I covered my mouth with my hand.

Without warning, Elliot swerved the car and pulled over to the side of the road. He turned off the engine and swung around to face me.

‘I wasn't there,' he said abruptly. ‘He asked me to go with him, and I said no. I knew this might happen. I knew people would think he was supporting the war. I didn't want to be … tainted. But I should have been there. I should have been looking after him. He's my little brother, you know? I let him down.'

‘It wasn't your fault,' I said. ‘You couldn't know what would happen.'

‘The stupid thing is, I do think Jesus loves our soldiers. But I think He loves the other side's soldiers too.'

‘Even if they don't believe in Him?'

‘For sure. Look, if God's real – if God's love is real – He can't have favourites.'

‘
If
God's real?' I said in a small voice.

Elliot let out a deep breath, and looked away. ‘Sometimes … sometimes I wonder, these days.'

There was a pause while cars flashed past us.

‘You're not too sold on the creation thing either, are you?' I said.

‘I don't know, Bridie. Your mum gave me a lot to think about in those lectures last year. I believe God created the universe. But not in six days! I know my Bible, I could practically recite the whole Book of Genesis to you right here and now. But it's
poetry
, yeah? It's symbolic, a myth, a beautiful story. It's the spirit of it that's important, not taking every single word literally. But Dad says––' Elliot fell silent, clearly not wanting to say anything disloyal about Pastor Matt. ‘I shouldn't be talking to you like this,' he said softly. ‘I'm supposed to help you overcome your doubts, not tell you mine.'

‘It's like we're in the same place,' I said. ‘We're both on the edge of believing – only you're inside looking out, and I'm outside looking in.'

Elliot breathed a soft, surprised laugh. ‘Yeah. That's exactly right. Fringe dwellers of the faith, that's us.' He turned his head, trying to see my face in the dim light. ‘Bridie, are you and my brother …?'

‘No,' I said at once. ‘No, we're just friends.'

Elliot shifted in his seat. He leaned in my direction and, with a shock like electricity, I knew, I just knew he was going to kiss me. I twisted my body towards him, but the seatbelt caught and held me. For a split second we were stupidly frozen, straining toward each other. And then Elliot pulled back and turned away. He didn't look at me.

‘Better get you home,' he said, and twisted the key in the ignition.

I stared straight ahead without seeing the road, my heart thumping. When we reached my suburb, Elliot asked for directions, and I felt a fizz of disappointment that he couldn't remember where I lived.

He stopped the car outside my house. I could hardly breathe, wondering if he was going to try to kiss me again, but he stayed locked in his seat, hands clamped to the wheel.

‘If you ever want to talk, you know, you can ring me,' I said.

Elliot's eyebrows shot up. ‘That's what I'm supposed to say to you. I'm the youth leader.'

‘Well, you need someone to talk to, too.'

‘Yeah.' He looked straight ahead, and repeated it softly.

‘Yeah. Thanks, Bridie.'

I watched him drive away. The tail-lights vanished round the corner, and he was gone. The street was empty, and I felt empty too. I fumbled in my bag for my key, and let myself inside.

FOR THE NEXT couple of days I moved around in a kind of muddled haze.
You'll have to make a choice
, Mum had said. I hadn't wanted to believe her, but now I had too many choices to make.

Overnight, Northside had stopped feeling like home. They thought the war might be a good thing; they rejected evolution. I always rolled my eyes when Mum raved on about science. I made out I wasn't interested, but it seemed that science had seeped into my bones. It was part of who I was. I couldn't deny it. But would they let me belong to Northside if I didn't deny it? Had Stella been right all along?

And as for the war, even Elliot seemed to think that it might be worth killing thousands of people and destroying cities, to throw out a bad government. But I couldn't bring myself to believe that, and I couldn't believe that God wanted it, either. There had to be a better way.

I imagined arguing about it with Elliot. In fact, I couldn't stop thinking about Elliot, about that moment in the car when he'd leaned toward me. At school, on the bus, in bed at night, I dreamed that the moment continued, that his arms folded round me, his lips brushed mine, then crushed against them.

I tormented myself wondering if I should tell Jay. But tell him what? It wasn't like anything actually happened; maybe I imagined the whole thing. And it wasn't as if anything had ever happened between me and Jay, either. I didn't owe him anything. Did I?

I knelt in my bedroom and tried to pray.
Dear God, give
me a sign. Does Elliot like me?
But I disgusted myself. Surely Almighty God had better things to do than send down a lightning bolt to help me with my teenage crush. You can't ask God to perform party tricks.

I opened my Bible at random and scanned the pages for a message. But it only offered disconnected words like
May this
water enter your stomach and cause it to swell up
, or
The second
beast looked like a bear standing on its hind legs.
So much for seeking guidance from the Word of God. I knew there was wisdom in these pages, but it was muffled by so much static I couldn't hear it.

I felt like I was losing God. He was withdrawing behind the curtain. Maybe it was Northside I had believed in all along, rather than God. But now I'd lost my faith in Northside, I didn't know where else to look for Him.

I couldn't go back to the way I was before; I couldn't pretend that God wasn't there. He wouldn't let me. I knew He wanted to be part of my life, and I wanted to be part of Him. I just wasn't sure how to do it any more.

Maybe it wasn't God that was lost, maybe it was me. I couldn't decide what to do about the forum, whether to go and hear Mum speak, which meant inviting Stella, or to stand outside with the Northsiders and their monkey suits. Not going at all would be just a big wuss-out.

On Saturday I was sitting in my room worrying about it, pretending to study but actually flicking through the Bible, when my phone rang.

‘Hi, Bridie. It's Elliot.'

I froze. ‘Hi!'

I waited for him to speak, but he stayed silent. An explosion of happiness went off in my chest; of all the people in the world, he was the only one who might possibly understand how I was feeling. It was like a sign, the sign I'd asked for.

I clutched the phone to my ear. ‘I'm so glad you called! I really need to talk to someone. I'm so confused, I don't know if I can go back to church or not. I mean, I
want
to. I still want God in my life, you know? It's just I'm not sure if— Elliot? Are you still there?'

There was a pause, then Elliot said, ‘Bridie, I'm sorry, but I don't think I'm the best person to talk to you about this right now.'

‘Okay,' I said uncertainly. ‘How come?'

Elliot took a deep breath. ‘I'm not … I've decided I can't be a youth leader any more. I don't feel very strong in the faith at the moment.'

‘Right,' I said slowly. ‘Does that mean you've stopped believing in God?'

‘No, no.' A pause. ‘I don't know what I believe, Bridie.' Elliot was quiet, and I could picture him rubbing his hand across his forehead the way he always did. ‘There's Jay, his eye … Since I started uni, I've met people … Not everyone thinks the same, you know? And that doesn't mean they're evil; it doesn't mean they're stupid. I'm starting to realise, there are other ways to live. Maybe Jesus doesn't have all the answers, after all. Maybe
Dad
doesn't have all the answers. The other night, when we were talking …' His voice trailed away. ‘Listen, Bridie. You're a great person. Just don't … don't rush into anything, okay?'

I gripped the phone. I didn't know what to say. The ground seemed to shift under me. I hadn't realised how important Elliot's faith was to me. Even if the rest of Northside had revealed themselves to be, well, not as perfect as I'd hoped, I thought I could count on Elliot. I knew he was asking questions, but I assumed that underneath, his faith was solid. It was as if Jesus was a dazzling friend Jay and Elliot had introduced to me, and now Elliot had turned around and said,
No, sorry, I don't trust
him
. If Elliot, who'd belonged to the church all his life, could walk away, was there any reason for me to stay? If Elliot didn't believe in God, could I?

‘Are you okay?' I asked.

‘Um … not really. But thanks for letting me talk. There's no one else. My uni friends don't get it, you know? And everyone at Northside – they just tell me to get over it, not to be negative.'

‘Yeah. I know.' I pressed the phone to my ear. I was about to ask,
Do you want to meet for a coffee or something?
I'd taken a breath to say it. We were fellow fringe dwellers of the faith, weren't we? He'd said so himself.

But then Elliot said abruptly, ‘Anyway, thanks. I'll see you round, yeah?'

‘Yeah,' I said in a small voice. But he'd already gone.

Next morning when Lorraine knocked at the door, I peeped out at her. ‘I can't come to church today. I'm really sorry. I don't feel very well.'

‘Oh, no.' Lorraine peered through the crack. ‘What's wrong? Anything I can do?'

‘Just a bit fluey. Don't want to give it to everyone.'

Lorraine edged forward as if she were about to force her way in. ‘You don't
look
sick.'