Left Alone

Dishonesty

Intellectual

-

"That's an odd name," her roommate commented when she introduced herself. Her roommate's own name was painfully plain, not even Elizabeth but just "Betty."

"It's from the bible. My mother picked it." Adalia laughed quickly. "It's actually a boy's name, it turns out. She didn't research it well."

"So, then you're Christian?" Betty had a short chain around her neck with a small, unornamented cross.

Adalia nodded. "Yeah." She'd gone to church her whole life, except for a gap when she had been very young, after her mother died and before her father remarried, and the few miscellaneous Sundays she'd missed over the years. She hadn't really thought much of it, and although she wasn't intending to at the time, when Sunday rolled around she'd decide to stay in bed.

"Oh, that's good," Betty said. She sounded a bit relieved. "My father was kind of worried, you know, there are a lot of wiccans in college these days."

Adalia didn't know much of anything about Wiccans, so she agreed and they shifted easily over to discussing how they'd divide up the room.

It was several months later that the issue of rapture first came up.

She'd never heard of it, and said as much.

Betty's eyes had nearly sparkled with the excitement of a chance tell her, and she immediately launched into an with gusto. The Rapture itself would be practically the opening act, Adalia gathered, as Betty continued to say that afterward, there would be the tribulation, with things like the rise of the antichrist, seas turning to blood, and a one-world government.

Adalia had laughed when she heard that last part and said jokingly, "Well, we're a long way off then."

Her roommate shook her head gravely and said in a serious undertone, "The U.N." But then she'd lightened up and added, "But neither of us have anything to worry about, because we'll be Raptured up before it all begins."

By then Adalia wasn't so sure of that. She'd been taking introductory philosophy and world history courses, college requirements, and learning about so many other views she'd never even thought of before. She'd gone to the local church twice, feeling adrift, only to feel more lost after hearing the sermons. The pastor there was completely different than the one in the church she'd gone since she was a baby, speaking about things like social responsibility and environmental stewardship. Not only were there all sorts of other religions and beliefs, but even the one she thought was her own turned out to be as strange and diverse as the rest. Christian was turning out not to be a single label, and she wasn't sure any longer it even applied to her.

She didn't share this with her roommate, who tended to dismiss large chunks of the college curriculum. They got along well because Adalia rarely had any strong feelings about the subjects Betty did, and she just agreed. If she mentioned something like that, Betty would simply respond with whatever she felt was the right thing, no explanation needed, which wasn't Adalia's problem at all.

"You should read..." her roommate would begin occasionally, and list one piece or another of apocalyptic Christian literature, usually followed by the twin recommendations that Adalia would love it and that it was virtually gospel in truth, modern-day prophesy of what was to come soon yet never did. The first few times, Adalia picked them up, but she never liked them. They were about something she felt no real connection to, dropping references to things Betty had probably grown up with but her own church had never so much as mentioned, and she felt some subtle unease reading them that she couldn't quite articulate. She usually stopped reading them at some point midway through and left them unfinished, only reaching the end of a book twice and both times leaving the sequel untouched.