MEGAN: Why do we think it’s real? It’s starting to seem made up to scare people into doing what they say.
GRACE: But what if?
MEGAN: Then it would be horrible.
If someone told us we had to obey Artemis or we’d be tormented by Hades when we die, we’d laugh at them. I think we worry now because we’ve believed it was real forever.
I didn’t want to tell her these things, but getting these ideas out of my head—giving them form—was the only thing keeping me sane.
Grace refused to let me off the hook: How would we know any God besides the one of the Bible? If “decency” is the standard, how could we say what violates it if there are no Scriptures? Is homosexuality wrong? And adultery? And abortion? Without the Bible, how do we know when we make mistakes? What made you change on July 4? All these questions you ask me, wondering how we know the God of the Bible is the right one—did they come from C.G.?
I had never felt so ignorant, but I was glad she was forcing me to think on these questions. I answered, trying to deduce principles of morality as best I could. I knew that Grace was suspicious of C.G., that she hadn’t approved of the closeness she’d sensed between us the year before—but when she asked about him, I told her the truth: that he’d never said anything of the kind. That he’d been shocked when I messaged him that day. That it was reason that brought me here.
My sister was unconvinced.
Meanwhile, C.G. had questions of his own. Two weeks had passed since I first spoke to him of leaving, and on the news that day, a tragedy: twelve people had been murdered—a shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. One of the victims had been an active Twitter user named Jessica Redfield. The words of her friends and colleagues were circulating on the platform, and like so many others, I found her profile and read. It shook me to see the words of a woman who had been alive not twenty-four hours before, to know that she had no idea what was about to befall her. Even more chilling was the fact that just the month before, she had escaped another shooting at a mall in Toronto: she’d gotten a strange feeling and walked out just seconds before someone opened fire in the food court. My heart ached for her and her family.
MEGAN: I just starred a tweet about JessicaRedfield. Had you seen that? Look at her timeline. She had no warning. Scary and sad.
C.G.: I heard about her. I will.
I still don’t know if I know you. 30 days ago, you’d have been saying “God sent the shooter” today. Today: I just sense that you have empathy and that’s it.
Which?
MEGAN: The latter. I just feel disconnected from all that. It was kind of happening a little at a time (e.g., on issues like tragedies; I told you it didn’t make me happy). As soon as I started to actually let myself second-guess it, it’s just drifted so far away …
I don’t know that I could get it back even if I really wanted to.
* * *
Grace and I had been close for years, but after those few weeks of avoidance, this period brought us physically closer than ever before. When we weren’t arm in arm, we walked close enough to stumble over each other’s feet. At pickets, we stood inches apart, holding two signs each in the outside hand—as if they were a buffer to keep anyone from penetrating the protective cocoon we were building around ourselves. She had slept in my bed on occasion, but now it was almost every night. Always trying to discern which way was up. I even took to carrying her on my back, like I’d done when we were kids. It was comforting to think that among all the casualties we were about to sustain, at least we would get to keep each other.
Neither our closeness, our sadness, nor our joy was acceptable to the elders. My father got wind that Grace had sat in my lap at our hymn-singing one evening, and instructed us not to do it again. He did the same when he found out she was sleeping in my bed. When an uncle of ours caught us jumping on the trampoline