Fake Me To Church

Chapter 1.1 - The Prodigy Son

- STEVEN -

Until that year, I'd never thought about the way our school building towered into the air—how the tops of its pointed gothic frames seemed to disappear in an otherworldly haze whenever fog fell beneath an ominous gray sky. When I was in middle school, I imagined on wispy days that gargoyles lighted atop the high-curved archways and searched with evil, ravenous eyes for willowy bodies to mangle as they paraded in sordid revelry.

Until that year, I never thought anything could be worse.

****

The middle of October had never been particularly exciting, with every warm body under seventeen trapped beneath the weight of teachers' glares, mindless homework, and jealous classmates. Freshmen were still bumbling through the hallways as they tried to figure out where classes met each day; sophomores were busy reveling in their newfound schoolyard status; juniors were scurrying about with stress over impending PSATs.

And then there were the seniors—calm, relaxed, and only a bit entitled. At two months in, it already felt like school was a distant memory. Classes were a joke, no matter what the teachers told us. We ruled the gym, the hallways, the cafeteria—and the classroom was no different.

So when October seventeenth rolled around, I thought it would be like any other day. I walked into fourth-period Psychology and nonchalantly shoved past a congregation of no-name juniors with whom us seniors shared the class.

"Quit blocking the walkway," I spat as I strode through. "Dorks."

I took my seat on the back row and fished my phone out of my backpack. Two new notifications from my dad and my girlfriend Grace were there to greet me. 

I swiped up and started typing.

Grace was easy enough to blow off—a simple I love you, babe. Can't wait for fifth period was all it took.

My dad was another story. He'd been hounding me all week about sharing my "testimony" at Youth Group. We both knew I didn't have much to say: "Hi there. I'm Steven. I was born a preemie, and I survived. God is good. The end."

Still, Dad wouldn't let up. "If you're going to take my place as Senior Pastor at Edgeway, you're going to have to start taking on a more active role at the church, son," he'd said over and over.

Every now and then, a few of the guys'd tell me I was lucky—must be really cool being a preacher's kid. And every time, I'd promptly roll my eyes.

Being a preacher's kid is full of crap.

And it's even crappier when the "church" you attend is also the main sponsor of the private school you go to, meaning every teacher knows your name...and your father's name.

But hey, at least Daddy Dearest was nice enough to constantly breathe down my neck about taking over the church. After all, we couldn't have me ending up like my older brother—a massive, college-educated disappointment who'd found a job as an engineer and couldn't care less about some pointless mission to sanctify the souls of the lost.

Whatever the heck that meant.

I'll have something by tomorrow Dad, was all I could manage to send him before the bell rang, signaling the start of class.

"Good morning, everyone," said Mr. Slatt, our fourth period teacher, as he plodded through the classroom door at the sound of the bell. "I hope you've all had a fun and restful weekend." He ruffled his brown coat before shedding it, then wrapped it around his cushioned desk chair as he took a seat. "And I can't wait to get a look at all your presentations."

Man, this is gonna suck, I thought to myself, rolling my eyes. How am I supposed to make it through fifty minutes of this?

Mr. Slatt had assigned our class a genealogy project—we were to trace our family lines back six generations, then share about the most common psychological disorders reported in our ancestors' hometowns.

In another universe, I might've found it interesting. But I'd honestly had enough of the whole thing the second Mr. Slatt announced it.

The twenty minutes it'd taken me to copy and paste from Google was enough; the fact that he was going to force us to sit through every other stupid presentation was ridiculous.

The first guy to present was this total numbnut named Carl Finnish. As soon as he got up in front of the class, he tried to make some stupid joke about how his family was really German, not Finnish. Thankfully, no one but him actually laughed—a few students groaned out loud, and even Mr. Slatt looked a little disgruntled at the quip.

While Carl droned on, I heard a single blip as it pinged from the computer on Mr. Slatt's desk. The moment he turned to check the notification, I reached inside my backpack and grabbed the first notebook my hand could find. I quietly pulled out an empty page and ripped off the top corner, rolling it together into a crinkly sphere. I stuck it in my mouth and wet it with my tongue; then, checking again to make sure Mr. Slatt wasn't watching, I hurled the spitball forward.

Carl had just turned around to point something out on his pasty tri-fold poster; he didn't even notice when the spitball landed in his wavy ginger hair.

But everyone else did.

Laughter erupted like a red-hot volcano. Two other guys I knew from the basketball team followed suit and ripped pages out of their notebooks to ball up and throw.

Carl tried to speak up and defend himself, but he couldn't get two words out before the class shouted him down.

Mr. Slatt glanced up from his computer just as a chorus of boo's rang out, and one student even hurled a tomato that he had doubtless planned to eat at lunch.

"Hey, stop that!" Mr. Slatt tried to yell, but the booming roars of my riled classmates were far too overpowering.

"Oh, shove it already!" one guy yelled at Carl through the noise.

"Yeah! Just sit down and shut up!"

More spitballs flew, inundating the front of the classroom with paper and saliva, pelting Carl as he helplessly held up his arms in defense, begging for mercy.

I was still chuckling in my seat when Mr. Slatt finally slammed his hands explosively against his wooden desktop:

"THAT'S ENOUGH!" His words blasted through the air, almost deafeningly loud as anger flushed across his face.

The boisterous sea of spitballs and pejoratives ceased, all eyes but mine suddenly falling to their individual desks as our teacher seethed mere feet away from me. I glanced over at Mr. Slatt, a naughty grin riding up the side of my face.

He turned to me in a rage. "Have you lost your mind, Steven!?"

It was all I could do to keep from bursting out cackling. I turned to the front of the classroom again, where Carl was folding up his poster and attempting to gather whatever shreds of dignity he had left.

A single tear rolled down his cheek, and that's when I lost it. A roaring wave of laughter spewed out of my mouth, loud enough for Carl and everyone else to hear me.

Hey, maybe today won't suck too bad after all.