St. Michael's Legion

Chapter 3: The Abbey

The following day was a blur, the cough syrup knocked me out faster than expected, but my dad woke me up early in the morning. He needed my help going through bank statements at his accounting firm, monotonous work we spent all day doing. At least it occupied my mind and kept me from spiraling into the abyss. I could not be happier when the day finally came. I woke up at 6am that morning, getting ready in seconds. I opted for a comfortable pair of black leggings and a loose short-sleeve gym shirt. I added a strappy black sports bra underneath, which complimented the leggings and contrasted nicely against the white shirt. I threw on some sneakers, decided that makeup was not a necessity when visiting an abbey and headed straight to Laurie's room. From the silence, I figured she was still asleep. I gave her door two resounding knocks.

"Rise and shine, we got places to be!". I heard her groan from behind the door. "If you're not up in 10 minutes, I'm going in there and dragging you out of bed forcefully".

"I'm up!", I heard the mattress springs whine as she got up. I smiled to myself and made my way to the kitchen. I had no intention of cooking anything but I did make some coffee and toast, enough for Laurie and I. She came down as soon as I finished smearing cream cheese on our toast. I handed her the plate along with a mug. She looked sideways at me with both suspicion and shock. "Thank you?", she said confused.

"Eat up and let's go, it's a 40 minute drive to the abbey", I commented, scarfing down my toast and taking two large gulps of coffee.

"Did you take drugs or something this morning?", Laurie asked chuckling.

I stopped midbite, "That's none of your business", I smirked, a huge chunk of toast hanging from my mouth.

...

The drive was peaceful, we drove west on rt 3 until we had to merge north. The scenery started rapidly changing after the merge. The suburbs I was used to seeing quickly depleted and the beautiful NJ landscape started to appear. Hills and mountains contrasted against the brilliant blue sky. A beautiful day, I thought, a nice change from the normal grey. Exiting the highway, the GPS directed us to turn onto a single lane road that climbed upwards following the curves of an enormous hill, the asphalt was unevenly paved and full of gravel.

"I'm sure glad you're driving", I announced, "my little sedan would not get us through this".

"Your little sedan can barely make it past the driveway, so...", she laughed.

"First of all fuck you, it gets places just fine, so long as they're not backroads like this. Second of all, it's not my fault dad was in a tight spot when it was my turn to get a car", I snorted, "he spent all his savings on this one".

"That's not true, he just got me an SUV because I was going to the University of Delaware. I couldn't be going back and forth during break in a sedan".

"Sure, you keep telling yourself that", I said and ran my hand over the smooth leather interior and continued to stare out into the landscape. "Are we close to Pennsylvania right now? I just saw a sign saying the Delaware river is a few miles head".

"Yeah, PA is like 5 miles farther, but the abbey is before that, it should be just up this hill". At the end of the interminable hill, we found tall iron gates and a white weathered sign saying, 'Order of the Angels: Benedictine Monastery'. Laurie suddenly braked hard, despite the seat belt, I put my hands up on the dashboard to keep myself from hitting it.

"What the fuck?", I shouted in shock, "What is your problem?".

"Sorry, but what if we don't go", she paused frantically searching for words, "what if we just go home and everything can go back to the way it was". Her eyes pierced mine, pleading.