I Have Friends in Holy Spaces

4: Rub A Dub Dub I Love Me Some Ice Cream In A Tub

As we were waiting for the night to arrive, Pete and I lounged around his house, mindlessly watching whatever was on the TV. I think it was some show about a mother and her daughter or something, but I wasn't really paying attention; the dialogue instead just served as background noise to my thoughts.

    I had nothing much to think about actually, everything was already settled; we were to spend a night at my house while having our local priest perform an exorcism on it. But that's what got me thinking, Father Way.

   By the age of six, I had stopped attending church. It wasn't because I wasn't believing in God or what the Bible said, I just ended up being busy on Sunday's and could never make it back. These days, I'm free, but it would feel weird to return so I never do unless it's a major Mass like Christmas or Easter.

   The Ways came to Belleville about six or seven years ago from New York. Apparently their grandmother had died and her house was left to the kids when they were old enough, but their parents decided just to get situated there early. I never met Father Way, he was a senior when I was about ten, but since Mikey was a grade above me, he and I got along very well.

   Nobody knows why Father Way became a man of cloth; over the years he had proclaimed that he would be an artist working for a comic book company and he even went to art school. But just one random day, my parents had come home from church and told me how they had gotten a new priest and it had been him.

"What if none of us wins?" Pete asked out of the blue. I turned to him, seeing that he was messing around with a Rubik's Cube, trying to get it back to one color, but Lord knows that that's impossible unless you're some wizard prodigy like Harry Potter. Shrugging, I replied, "Then I guess we don't have to do anything, unless the Father has his own stakes."

    Pete turned the Rubik's Cube a couple more times until he chucked behind him, bored of the dull task he was performing, "I doubt he will, he doesn't even know us."

   I picked up the remote and changed the channel, now wanting to actually watch something instead of having it as background noise. There was nothing interesting on; although Goodfellas was coming on in an hour and that was a great movie. After a couple more channel flips, I settled on this movie with Will Smith in it.

    "Doesn't he know your parents though?" I turned to Pete who was now focusing on the movie. I swear to God that man has the attention span of a goldfish. He'll do one thing for a certain amount of time, forget what he's doing or get bored of it and start another task, repeating the cycle. Shrugging, he replied, "Yeah, he'll go up to my parents and have some conversation with them, but I doubt he knows of my existence. I think he knows Brendon though since he's been to Mikey's house."

   I nodded, returning my focus to the movie. It was weird though, we're not that big of a town; everybody knows each other and whatnot, but I knew nothing of Father Way. It was like he was a recluse or hermit, not wanting to socialize much after a service or something.

   Deb had come home from the grocery store at about five, carrying tons of bags with her and planting them on the counter with a thump. She turned to us, who were staring at her from the couch and said, "Come on, go help. I'm not feeding you because I love to do community service, I'm feeding because you're my mules now yah children," she made a whipping motion and signaled for us to get groceries.

     Pete and I stepped out of the house and made our way to the car; the trunk was open and an abundant amount of groceries were inhabiting the back. I took as many as I could with both arms and Pete did the same. Unfortunately, we had one bag left in the trunk which meant we either did Rock Paper Scissors for the second trip or left the bag there out of sheer laziness. If I'm honest, I have about as much energy as a stone, in fact, it might have more energy than me.