My uncle raised an eyebrow. “No it’s not.”
She looked startled. “But—”
“We’ve always appreciated the arts in Catholicism. We dress up for events, holy days.” Huh. Maybe Uncle Bryan wasn’t an intolerant monster after all, despite his harsh words in the confessional.
“But—”
“Demonic costumes? We’re not Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
My aunt wilted under his words. I wondered if she even had a reason for being anti-costume, or if she was just suspicious of anything different. She cleared her throat. “Do you sew anything that isn’t . . . that?”
I wasn’t sure what to say. “You mean not-costumes?” I shrugged. “Not really.”
Uncle Bryan glanced at his watch. Before Aunt Anne Marie could say another word to me, he said, “I have to get back to church.”
“So soon?” Aunt Anne Marie asked, rising to her feet.
Uncle Bryan kissed her forehead. “A lot of people are struggling with their sins. Someone needs to help save them.” He then walked around the table to embrace me. “I’m truly happy you’re here, Alexis.”
His embrace was a little different than before, like he wasn’t sure what to make of me. “You should talk to your Aunt Anne Marie about sewing. She’s very good.”
“Really?” Vaguely, I remembered the whir of her sewing machine, my fascination with watching her. I swear, she was making me a Halloween costume. So what happened between then and now? And why would she think costumes were demonic if even my uncle was cool with them?
Aunt Anne Marie shrugged, but I could see a flicker of pleasure on her face. “I try to stay humble. People spend so much money on clothing, it’s easier to make one’s own.”
“I’d love to learn a few things from you, if you didn’t mind.”
For a second, I thought my aunt would burst into tears. Instead she got up to clear the table.
By the time I got back to my room, a confession was already in progress. Grabbing my notebook, I hopped onto my bed, ready to begin the process again.
♱♱♱
Oh. My. God.
Could there be anyone more pathetic on the planet?
Maybe I was still in a bad mood from Elizabeth’s confession earlier. But it was definitely becoming clear that most confessions weren’t big deals. Things I couldn’t help with, like someone wracked with guilt for eating that extra slice of pie (what did people have against pie?) or someone who “couldn’t help but cheat” (and okay, maybe their significant other received an anonymous email because seriously, screw that guy).
But this dude was the worst. Like the type of person who’d tell everyone “I’m such a nice guy” while crying into his coffee about being single. He was weeping the second he stepped into the confessional. He could barely get out the words, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been one day since my last confession.”
One day?
I rolled my eyes. This was going to be bad. And boring. Blubbering messes wouldn’t be able to do something awful like rob a store because they’d get caught in two seconds.
“What troubles you?” my uncle asked. He sounded possibly a little annoyed. I didn’t blame him. It was tempting to scream into the vent, “Get over it, loser!”
No. That was something the old me would have said. I was going to be nicer. More like girl-me. And if the guy was at confession, it meant he was trying to get better, unlike all the jerks I used to be friends with. Especially . . .
No. Don’t go there. Do not go there.
Pen poised, ready to take notes, I waited.
“I don’t know what to do,” the guy began. “It’s my girlfriend. She cheated on me because I would not engage in pleasures of the flesh without marrying first.”
Seriously?
Dude was confessing because his girlfriend cheated? Not him. His girlfriend! Gag me.
My uncle sighed in the way that suggested he was barely containing a groan. “We’ve talked about this before. You abstained from sin. If she continues sinning, that is her fault. Not yours. Hers.”
“I got her to break it off with him. But then I went on her computer. She’s still emailing that man saying how much she loves him. And she told him she’s only with me for my money. But I’m in debt! I keep trying to pay everything off, and she keeps spending what I have.”
I suddenly felt a lot less snippy than I had five minutes ago. A couple of my exes had cheated on girl-me, dumped girl-me for someone better. Not that they were really long relationships, maybe two or three weeks, mostly online after fan service at a con. Maybe some people wouldn’t think those relationships counted, but I did. I think I started when I was fourteen or fifteen, the hand-holding sort of stuff. I was a lot of people’s first kiss. Everyone acted like it was such a big deal. Earlier this year someone made a joke that I was breaking college one-night stand records at just seventeen. Everyone laughed. Well, everyone except me.
You know what’s weird? Boy-me never was dumped. Not once. Of course, whatever gender I was, I was still the same person. But while girl-me tended to see the best in people, boy-me got bored quickly. As Aleks I was more about hookups, sexual exploration. And I know for a fact that I broke hearts.
Hearing this guy fall apart reaffirmed how horrible rejection felt on both sides. Boy-me would cringe when people crushed on me. It didn’t help that a bunch of my friends were really into yaoi, the m/m kind of anime, sometimes used as a convenient general term for boy/boy love. I’m not a character, I wanted to scream more than once. Boy-me envied girl-me for having the freedom to love, to crush.
“Envy is a difficult thing to admit,” Uncle Bryan was saying in the confessional. “You should not have gone on her computer. Fortunately, this is easily absolved, but that still leaves you with a larger choice to make. You need to break up with her. There are many good women out there who respect the will of God.”
“Is that the only way to be absolved?”
“Eliminating the problem gets rid of the source of the sin, so yeah. I think so.”
“I’m just so lonely. I just wish—I wish I had someone . . .”
Yeah. And I wish I had something to punch after listening to this moron. He must have incredibly really low esteem to stay with a known cheater.
Ugh. Losing patience right after remembering my own heartache and loneliness was super shitty. So many times, especially before I got connected to the anime world, I’d been the loser wishing I had someone. And so many times, I’d been willing to give people second chances they didn’t deserve. I’d learned the hard way that it wasn’t worth it.
“Anthony, you need to break up with her and get her name off your bank account. Close it.”
“But how am I supposed to come up with twenty-five thousand dollars?”
“That’s a separate issue. Right now you need to focus on cutting this negative influence out of your life . . .” My uncle’s words faded into the background like white noise. Twenty-five thousand dollars in debt? That would be hard to pay off. I could understand why he felt trapped, hopeless.
I scribbled down the name Anthony, then quietly tiptoed across my floor. As soon as I got outside, I headed back to my hiding place behind the trash can.