be the first time he’s seeing it. I fumble back against the counter, my hand flying to my mouth. Lev warned me, but I wasn’t prepared. The scars across Rob’s body are a crude imitation of Lev’s, the cigarette burns, lines, the mass of puckered skin on the left side. The skin is so traumatized, so red. It’s not fresh, but it’s like it hasn’t accepted the wounds, still grappling with their violation.
He tried to make himself in my image.
I stare up at Rob, my throat too tight to swallow.
“He cleanses with water. He punishes with fire and the moment you sin or waver, or make any mistake in his eyes, in The Project, you have to be corrected. If he decides you haven’t learned, he makes you walk the path of his faith.” He lowers his shirt, and there’s no relief in it because the image is seared into my mind. “For whom God loves, he corrects.”
“You did that to yourself—”
Before I can finish he’s close to me, in my face, angry.
I flinch.
“Rob,” Father Michael warns.
“No,” Rob says, and it’s all he says, before moving away.
“Nobody would—nobody would just stay there and take that—”
“Oh really?” He whirls around. “Because I did. I did it over and over again and I wasn’t the only one. You come into The Project, this world, and it loves you, and God loves you and He’ll keep loving you, in spite of yourself. And what’s this”—he gestures to his abdomen—“in exchange for that love, Lo? It’s nothing. And every time I’d start to doubt, I’d watch people be held down and burned and when it was over, you know what they’d say?”
“What?” I whisper.
“‘Thank you, Lev.’ And when you see your friends, your family, saying thank you like they mean it—maybe you’re the broken one. Maybe you just weren’t burned enough—”
He starts to cry then, burying his face in his hands. Father Michael stands and makes his way to Rob, grips his shoulder tight, grounding him. I feel like I’m going to be sick.
When Rob finally lowers his hands, his face is damp, flushed.
“And despite all that, you’re changing people’s lives, you’re doing God’s work and you’re making this world a better place and you can see it becoming a better place—how can you argue with those results? And at the end of all of it, you know what he’s promising? He’s promising paradise. That the sinners of this world will burn themselves out and all that will be left is The Unity Project. I didn’t want to be left behind. I’ve been left behind my whole life. And that’s why I stayed. That’s why they all stay.”
“When did you know you wanted to leave?” My voice shakes.
“The first time he burned me, that’s when I really saw him. And I know abusers. I know their true face. And he couldn’t hide it in that moment. In that moment, I saw him … and even though I knew who he really was … I still stayed.”
“I don’t—” I press my hands against my face. “He wouldn’t do that—Lev wouldn’t do that, not after what his mother did to him—”
“Did she?” Rob asks and I lower my hands, horrified. “You know his mother died by fire? He just so happened to be in Indiana at the time.”
I look to Father Michael, then back to Rob. “You have to be kidding me.”
“Once one thing is in doubt,” Father Michael says, “the whole thing is in doubt.”
I turn back to Rob. “You know who I am. You heard of me.”
“We all heard about you, Lo.”
“Then you know he saved my life—”
“You don’t think the doctors might’ve had something to do with that?” Rob asks. “You were in a hospital, that’s what hospitals are supposed to do—”
“They said I was going to die and Lev came—”
“You were young, you fought your way back—”
“I was chosen!”
They both stare at me with pity, like I’m some tragic thing. I don’t want their pity and I’m not tragic.
Only one person has ever looked at me like I’m not.
“I’m so sorry, Lo,” Rob says. “I know how much it means to feel that way.”
My head pounds. I want to ask a million questions and I’m afraid of them all, so my mouth stays shut. I sit down in Father Michael’s empty chair.
“You can’t go up against The Project. After I left, they kept tabs on me. They did everything they could to try to make my life miserable enough to get me