Lauren looked around the shop and up at the ceiling like she was examining the construction of it, making sure the roof wouldn’t fall on our heads, and then said, “So why are you wearing a suit?”
“I do that sometimes when I take a day off school to do research.”
“What are you researching?”
“Aging and the possibility of adult happiness.”
“Jesus can make you happy.”
I laughed and said, “Do you talk about anything else besides Jesus?”
Lauren smiled and said, “So why have you been ignoring me for a year?”
“I haven’t. You’ve been ignoring me.”
“I have not been ignoring you! I try to catch your eye whenever I see you at the train station, but you walk by so quickly without looking. I’ve actually been quite hurt by your snubs.”
I noted that she was doing the cat-face femme-fatale thing again. She was now back in trap mode. “What about Jackson?” I asked.
“What about him?”
“I bet he doesn’t want you talking to me.”
“He would be happy if we talked about God. He believes we should save everyone too.”
“Then why doesn’t he help you pass out Jesus pamphlets?”
“He used to, but he’s at college now. And he’s not my boyfriend anymore.”
That bit of news got my heart pumping. “Is that why you’re having coffee with me today? Because you no longer have a boyfriend?” I said, hoping for the right answer, but the waiter came back with our peppermint mochas.
Lauren sipped hers and said, “Yum!”
That made me smile. I sipped mine and it tasted just like a melted York Peppermint Pattie.
“Maybe I could take you to dinner sometime, what do you think?”
“Are you asking me out on a date?” Lauren said.
“Okay, scratch that,” I said, because her eyebrows got all scrunchy and her eyes got all squinty, and not in the sexy cat-face Bacall way either. “Maybe this right here could be our first date and then we won’t have to worry about the asking and saying yes part. We could just start now.”
“Well, I only date boys who are Christian.”
“Oh,” I said. “I see.” I wasn’t really that daunted at first because it seemed like such a silly thing to me—something we could easily overcome. I didn’t realize how limiting her Christianity actually was.
“Do you want to talk about Jesus?” she asked.
“That’s your favorite topic, huh?”
“Yep.”
“Don’t you have any other interests at all?”
“Sure. But we have to clear this hurdle before we move on to those. I don’t want to waste your time or mine.”
“But doesn’t your religion tell you that everyone is important? I mean, that bum obviously didn’t believe in Jesus and you still gave him a sandwich.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to date him!” Lauren kind of rolled her eyes at me all adorable and then sipped her peppermint mocha.
God, I loved her so much at that moment, mostly because she had just implied that she’d consider dating me—that my dating a girl was actually a possibility.
“Leave it to me to fall in love with a Jesus freak,” I said and then laughed to make it seem as though I was only being playful and kidding.
“You don’t even know me,” she said.
“But I’d like to.”
She sighed and looked out the window.
Then we just sort of sipped our mochas and watched people pass outside for fifteen minutes or so.
Afterward, we walked to the train station together and then sat side by side on the ride back to Jersey. Our elbows were touching through our coats and that gave me an embarrassing hard-on, which would have been a problem if it were summer and I had no coat to hide under.
I could sort of tell that she was feeling something too, regardless of whether she wanted to or not.
When we got off the train she made the Bacall cat face again and said, “It was nice having coffee with you. Maybe God will change your heart and we can continue our talk about Jesus. And then who knows?”
She said that in this really flirty way that made me even harder than I already was. My hands were in my pea coat pockets and I was sort of holding the stupid hard-on to my abdomen like a loaded and cocked catapult. I couldn’t have spoken if you paid me so I just nodded.
“I’ll be praying for you,” Lauren said and then waved good-bye by bending the tops of her right-hand fingers three times, just like a little kid would. She spun around and then walked away from me.
I kept thinking she was trying to trick me again—using her sexuality like female teachers do, flirting to control you. That she was nothing but a trap. But I had to know what it was like to kiss her. I just did. I didn’t want to fake being interested in Christianity again, because I was so tired of faking it with everyone else in my life. So I decided to think long and hard about the possibility of god, since that was all Lauren wanted to discuss. I thought up a list of questions and I asked her a new one at the train station three times a week.
Why would god allow the Holocaust to happen?
If god made everything, why did he invent sin to trick us and then hold our sins against us?
Why are there so many religions in the world if god created the world and wants us to be Christian?
Why does god allow people to fight wars over him?
What if you were born in a different culture and never even heard of Jesus Christ—would god send you to hell for not being Christian? And if so, do you believe that’s fair?
Why are men always the leaders in your church? Aren’t women capable of leading too? Isn’t such a patriarchal system sexist in this day and age?
Why do so many babies die?
Why are there so many poor people in the world?
Did Jesus visit any other planets in distant unknown universes?
Stuff like that.
The next time we saw each other it was a warm spring afternoon and she was wearing these shorts with pockets on the sides and I couldn’t stop looking at her creamy thighs, which were perfect. In front of the subway station, she was all smiles and said, “HELLO, LEONARD! I’ve been praying for you! God’s given me a special peace regarding our friendship. I know it will be for a reason.”
But the more questions I asked throughout the summer, the quieter and less enthusiastic she got, and the less I enjoyed studying her various exposed body parts.
It was like she thought I was beating her down with my words when all I really wanted to do—besides look at her wonderful body—was understand and have an honest conversation.
Lauren never really answered my questions, unfortunately. She just quoted Bible verses and repeated things her father had told her, but I got the sense that she didn’t really believe the things she was saying so much as she was clinging to those answers because she didn’t have any other answers and maybe having the wrong answers was better than having no answers.
I don’t really know, but the more questions I asked, the more she started to hate me—I could tell—which was just so so depressing.49 She also started to notice that I was checking her out, which got kind of awkward, especially when she started wearing these really baggy longer shorts, which ruined the view and sent me a pretty clear message.
The last time I saw her was maybe a week ago. When I walked up to her at the train station, she frowned and said, “If you want answers to your questions, you’re going to have to speak with my father. He says your questions are dangerous and should be answered by a church elder.”
That depressed the hell out of me.50
“Listen,” I said, as several sad briefcase-toting suits flocked by in a depressing, emotionless rush. “No more questions. I realize that maybe you and I are incompatible. I’m not going to harass you anymore, but can I ask you just one favor?”
“It depends,” she said, looking me in the eyes in this way that could have been flirting or could have been leave me alone. It was hard to tell. “What do you want?”
“Will you keep praying for me?”
Her eyes got wide for a second—like she was really excited that I asked her to do that—but then her eyes shrunk into little black peas, and she said, “Don’t make fun of me, okay?”
“What?”
“After listening to all of your weird, endless questions, I don’t think you really believe in prayer, Leonard.” Her voice was harsh, and reminded me of Linda’s when she’s “reached the end of her rope”51 with me, like she’s always saying.
“I’m going through some rough stuff I haven’t told anyone about and it would really help if I thought you were praying for me,” I said. “You can even lie if you want, but if you’d just say you’d continue to pray for me, I think I might be able to make it through this bad stuff, because at least I’d know one person was pulling for me in her own special way.”
Lauren looked at me like she thought I might be tricking her, but then—without making the femme-fatale cat face—she said, “Okay. I’ll pray for you. Every day. And I don’t lie. Ever.”
I smiled and walked away quickly before she could change her mind or say anything else that would convince me of her insincerity.
Thinking about Lauren praying for me every day helped a lot at first; it really did.
But then after a week or so, it stopped working—I know because I started to feel like I really wanted to kill Asher Beal again—which made me wonder if she had quit praying, and then as my desire to kill amplified, I convinced myself she definitely had.
TWENTY-THREE
Just like I’d hoped, after school today, when I arrive at our town’s subway station, I find Lauren handing out tracts, or rather holding the tracts out to everyone who passes by and doesn’t say a word to her or even give her a glance.
I wonder what crazy bit of propaganda she’s peddling today and what scary pictures are inside—hell flames and bloody saviors and all sorts of Christian gore.
I didn’t come here to mess with Lauren’s head or argue with her about religion or logic or ask for favors or anything else.
I just came to say good-bye.
Lauren’s cut her hair into bangs that hang out under the home-knit beret-type hat she’s got on. A little curtain of blond shields her forehead. The hat’s so homely and old-ladyish that it makes me crush on52 Lauren again so much—even if she did stop praying for me.
It’s like she’s not even aware that she’s so horribly out of fashion. She’s not wearing the hat in any ironic way, like some of the black-nail-polish girls in my high school would. And Lauren’s also got on this off-white jacket that goes down to her knees and makes her look like she’s wearing a robe from far away—like the stereotypical angel a child would draw.
God, she looks perfect.
And no one is paying her any attention but me.
Since I’ve been watching her, I’d say at least thirty people have passed and she’s extended her mitten-clutched pamphlet to every single one and yet no one has even glanced at her.