She’d never seen so many people crying at once. Sobbing into sleeves, clasped hands, each other’s hair. It was the last night of the Hope Community Church retreat, and the Holy Spirit was going around making people lose their shit. 

       Jude didn’t like crying. She didn’t like people who cried, or maybe it was more that she never knew what to do when it happened.

       To her right was her cabin-mate, who she called Prayer girl. She had long blonde hair with dark roots, blue eyes, and French-tipped nails—overdue for a fill—that were now raised toward the auditorium ceiling. In the past few days, Jude had never once heard her say a curse word or complain. In fact, Prayer Girl was so good that Jude felt bad just by being around her. A worship song was playing in the background, the bass of it shaking Jude’s insides. Each kick of the drum felt like it might loosen a kidney. The lyrics all sounded the same––some half-assed metaphor comparing God’s love to a father, or a river, or a breeze. Fathers were so overrated, she thought, in the Christian theology. She didn’t even hate her own father. He wasn’t that bad, at least not compared to the other ones around town, but she didn’t really feel any attachment to him. She wondered vaguely whether she’d care more if her dog or dad died. 

       “Are you okay?” Prayer Girl asks, reaching out for Jude’s hand when she tries to shuffle past. 

       “What?” Jude shouts over the music. 

       “Are you okay?” Prayer Girl repeats. Jude can’t see her clearly in this light, but the tears streaking her cheeks are visible—so is the unsettling smile stretched across her face. The hand not holding onto Jude is still raised in the air.

       “Fine,” Jude says. Although she’s not fine, she wants to get the fuck out of here. She shakes Prayer Girl’s hand off of her. 

       Prayer Girl looks at her peculiarly, but she doesn’t stop her. “I’ll pray for you,” she finally says, and Jude doesn’t have enough energy to argue against it. 

       She’s always surprised by how many of her classmates show up to these retreats. It’s practically the entire high school class of three towns combined—almost seven hundred kids—crammed into a bunch of cabins in the woods, trauma dumping while sitting in circles on the floor. 

       The light stabs her eyes as she opens the door and she squints, pausing until her vision adjusts. The air is cooler. She breathes deep and fans her shirt, trying to air out fan off the sweat. The door opens again, and with it, the sound of screaming and singing and drums. “Where are you going?” 

       She turns. 

       It’s one of the youth pastors: light-blue polo, khakis, gold-rimmed glasses that make him look uncannily like Jeffery Dahmer. If he wanted to, he could probably kill her, she thinks. Take her into the woods, slit her throat, take a jackhammer to her bones. She once heard that Dahmer ate the hearts of his victims. She wonders what happens to the body that consumes another. “I need to go to the bathroom,” Jude says. 

       “You can go after service.” 

       Jude tries to think of some excuse. 

       “I really have to go.” 

       “God rewards the patient.” 

       “I just got my period,” Jude lies. “Does God reward free bleeding?”

       He takes a quick step back. “Just hurry up,” he says. 

       Jude smiles and walks to the bathroom. It smells like pine and Febreeze. There are two stalls. The first stall has a pair of boots behind it so she tries the second. There’s an unflushed piece of shit in that one. She steps out and waits three minutes. 

       Three minutes pass. The boots don’t move. 

       She knocks on the door. 

       “I have to pee,” she says. 

       “Use the other one,” a voice says—lower than she expects. She wonders who the fuck is in the stall. 

       “There’s shit in it.” 

        “Then flush it.” 

       Jude exhales, eyes shut, tries to bite the irritation back down from where it’s rising in her chest. 

       “You’re not even using the bathroom,” Jude says. 

       “Yes, I am.” 

       Jude mutters something under her breath and returns to the shit stall. She tries flushing. The water rises. 

       “It’s clogged,” she says. 

       Finally, the other stall door opens and a boy steps out. She doesn’t recognize anything about him besides the big brown boots that she saw beneath the stall. He sits down and takes out a book, and Jude goes into the stall. The seat is still warm when she sits down, and after she flushes, Boots Boy is still sitting on the floor, legs stretched out, with a book open. She crouches to read the cover.

       Fear and Trembling. Søren Kierkegaard. 

       “Pretentious,” Jude says, and he looks up. When he doesn’t respond, she asks, “What are you doing?” 

       “Skipping service.” 

        “Why aren’t you in the boys bathroom?” 

       “There’s a youth group leader in there making sure no one’s skipping. Or smoking pot.” She cocks her head. “Why isn’t there one here?” 

       “Girls aren’t doing those things?” he says, more a question than a statement. Jude considers washing her hands and going back to worship. Or, she could sit here until someone notices she’s gone. Neither sound great. 

       “Do you smoke pot?” she asks. 

       “Sometimes.”

       “Do you have any?” 

       He closes the book and stands. “Do I look like a pothead?” he asks. 

       “No,” Jude says quickly, unsure if his tone implies he’s mad or intrigued. “I’d just smoke a joint if you had one. That’s all.” 

       Silence stretches between them. She washes her hands. Worship sounds better than sitting in a small room with a stoner-not-stoner, she decides. 

       Her hand’s on the door handle when he asks: “Would you smoke now?”

—

       “If I’m lighting this, we’re finishing it,” Boots Boy says. 

       His real name’s Thomas, but he remains Boots Boy in her head. When she told him her name, he’d asked if it ever bothered her that it sounded like Judas. She’d never made the comparison until he said it. It bothers her now that he pointed it out, Jude wanted to say, but instead she just said no. 

       “Will no one notice we’re gone?” she asks, pulling her zipper up to her chin. The wind cuts through them, leaving her cheeks cold and frosting red. 

       Boots Boy shakes his head. “They forget. Plus, it’s the last night. Most people stay in worship until sunrise.” 

       Jude watches as he lights the joint. She always loves that first flick of the lighter—the brief flare of orange and the small hiss as the paper curls in surrender. Boots Boy takes a long drag, coughs into his fist, then inhales again, slower. 

       “Where’d you get this?” she asks, taking it from his hands. On her first inhale, she breathes in longer than she has before. She wants him to find her cool.

       “My brother,” he says. 

       “Is that your only sibling?” she asks. 

       “Yeah. You?” 

       “An older brother. He lives with my mom.” 

       “Divorced?” 

       She nods. 

       “Was it messy?” 

       Jude shrugs. “Not really.” 

       “Do you like one of them better?” 

       “My dad,” Jude responds easily. 

       “Interesting,” Boots Boy says. After a beat: “Why?” 

       Jude’s laugh crumbles from her mouth. “I don’t think my mom likes me very much.”

       Boots Boy makes a small sound, something like a hum, and doesn’t ask anything else, which Jude’s is grateful for, because she doesn’t really feel like talking about it. The divorce happened when she was much younger, and all she really remembers is that when the fights turned physical, her dad filed the papers and split things cleanly. 

       “I wish my parents would get divorced,” Boots Boy says. 

         Jude waits for him to expand, but he doesn’t. Instead, he takes a drag from the joint and spits into the dirt. 

        She can tell he wants to change the topic and offers him an out: “So how’d you end up here?” 

       “My dad’s a Jesus freak,” he says. 

       “In a good or bad way?” 

       “Is it ever in a good way?” he asks, and Jude laughs. “What about you?” “My mom’s convinced I’m going to Hell. She said she’d give me a hundred bucks if I came back a Christian.” 

       “Are you?” 

       “Hell no,” she says. “I don’t think I’d be able to even if I tried.” 

       He laughs, and then they go quiet. The joint passes back and forth between them. The world seems to loosen around its edges. Jude doesn’t smoke often, and now everything feels slow, suspended. Her thoughts are drifting just out of reach, slipping past her like headlights through fog.

       Boots Boy drags a stump beside hers and sits. 

       Their arms touch. Stay touching. 

       “So what do you think about God? And stuff?” Boots Boy asks.

        Jude tries not to groan. She couldn’t think of a worse way to kill the mood. “I think everyone in that fucking auditorium is bat shit crazy.”

       He stares down at the joint and then back up at her before looking at the sky. “So you don’t believe in God?” 

       “Obviously not,” she says. Then, “Do you?” 

       “Maybe. A little. I guess. Actually, yeah.” That catches Jude off guard. 

       “Are you Christian?” she asks. 

       He opens his mouth, says something, cuts himself off. Finally, he settles on saying: “It’s complicated. I don’t like putting a label on it.” 

       “Do you believe in God?” Jude asks. 

        He nods. 

       “What about Jesus?” 

       Nod. 

       “The Bible?” 

       He nods again. 

       “Then you’re Christian,” Jude says flatly. 

       “It’s so totalizing when you say it like that.” 

       “It is totalizing.” 

       “Maybe,” he says, but he doesn’t sound convinced. 

       His face is close to hers. Closer than she realized. She wonders if he’s about to move or if she should. She wonders what’s going on in his mind. He throws the joint filter on the floor. Then, he kisses her.

—

       “What’s wrong?” Jude asks. She’s trying to get on top of him, but he keeps squirming. They’re both naked now, the sheets twisted around their legs. Jude only shared her room with two girls: Prayer Girl and another strange, traumatized one who spoke like she was taught language phonetically at a monastery—yes, please, thank you, God the Father. Sometimes, Jude felt bad for her and put chocolates on her nightstand. At first Jude didn’t think she’d eat them, but the next day, she found a green foil wrapped in the trash can. Normally, since the rooms were strictly gendered, she’d worry about sneaking a boy into her cabin, but since it was the last day at retreat, she knew everyone would be in the auditorium all night. 

       “I don’t really—” he shifts, moving his arm from under her—“want to do any more.” Jude stares down at him slack-jawed. Her hair’s falling over her onto his collarbone. “What?” 

       “I don’t,” he says again, voice catching. “I don’t want to go further.” 

       Jude groans and flops to the other side of him. The cabin is cold. The sheets smell faintly of detergent and sweat, and she yanks them from under him to cover her chest. Beside her, she can still feel the pulse of Boot Boy’s heart through the mattress, the sound of his breath shallow and uneven. When she looks at his face, he won’t meet her eyes. Instead, his gaze is fixed somewhere past the window—maybe on his reflection in the glass, maybe on the darkness beyond it. 

       “Is something wrong?” Jude asks. 

       “No. Sorry,” he says. The bed is a twin, the mattress little more than springs and fabric. They can both feel it now—the frame jutting into their backs, their hips. “I just feel bad. For you.”

       “It’s fine,” Jude says, though what she really feels is stupid. Another second later, the stupidity is replaced with annoyance, less about the fact that she sucked him off for nothing, and more that while she was doing it, instead of thinking about being inside her, he was picturing God’s face. 

       “I can finger you.” 

      “No thanks,” Jude says dryly. She doesn’t even like doing that herself. “So you and sex. Is that like a Christian thing?” 

       “I guess.” 

       “So you really think you’ll go to Hell? If we fuck, and you’re not married. That’s how it works, right?”

       “Sure.” 

       “But I can suck your dick.” 

       He puts an arm over his face and tries to sink down. His voice comes out muffled. “I didn’t ask you to.” 

       “So I’m the one going to Hell then?” 

       “No,” he says, unmasking his face. “No one’s going to Hell,” 

       “Not yet, you mean. Only if we have sex.” 

        He nods. 

        She hums and kisses him some more. His face feels soft in her hands, as if his features are still being formed and she could press them into shape. She likes the feel of his skin against hers—had almost forgotten how nice it is to touch someone and be touched back. The only light comes from the reading lamp by Prayer Girl’s bed. It’s a hard white glow that, at certain angles, makes parts of him look lit from within, the way she used to imagine angels would look coming down. They make out for a little while longer before falling asleep. Neither of them remembers drifting off—but they must have, because when Jude wakes up, it’s to screaming. And light. Light so blinding she thinks she’s dying. 

       It takes Jude a moment to fully register that it’s Prayer Girl. She’s standing by the door in an All I Need Is Jesus t-shirt and light blue jeans. Her eyes are red-rimmed––probably from crying––and wide open. Feral. Like she’s walked in on a homicide. 

       Besides Jude, Boots Boy jerks awake, reaching for the sheet and leaving her bare. “Oh my goodness,” Prayer Girl screeches. “What are you doing?” 

       When no one responds, Prayer Girl speaks again, but quieter. “I can’t believe it. Both of you. You.” She points at Jude, finger aimed squarely at Jude’s bare breasts. “You did it. At retreat.” She speaks every word like a slur. 

       “Calm down, we didn’t do it,” Jude says, dragging out the word it like she’s explaining something to a child. “And we already covered the entire Hell conversation, so can you get out until we put some clothes on?” 

       Boots Boy is quiet beside her. 

       “I need to report this,” she says. 

       “No,” Jude and Boots Boy say at once. 

       For a moment, Jude can hear nothing but the rush of her own pulse. If she went to the youth leaders—and if the youth leaders went to her mom—Jude doesn’t even know what would happen. She definitely wouldn’t even get her hundred bucks. And her mom would probably sign her up for an exorcism or something. After that, maybe they’d send her away. 

       “I have to report it,” Prayer Girl says. “It’s what Jesus would do.” She held up her wrist, showing off the light blue WWJD bracelet. Jude wants to rip it off with her teeth.

       “Jesus is dead,” Jude says, and Boots Boy elbows her so hard she grunts. Fine, she thinks. New tactic.

       “You believe in forgiveness, right?” Jude says, softening her voice. “Redemption and all that?” Even as she says it, she can feel the words scraping against her throat. Her cheeks burn as she thinks about how small she sounds. “What if we go back to worship? Repent or whatever. We’ll do that.” 

       Prayer Girl thinks. She doesn’t say anything at first—just stares at them, head tilted up slightly.

       “Even God forgives people,” Jude says when Prayer Girl doesn’t respond. “Not if they’re sinning on purpose.” 

       It takes every part of Jude not to scream. 

       Finally, Boots Boy speaks: “It wasn’t on purpose,” he says. “This was a mistake. We know that now.” Jude can’t tell if he’s being serious or lying, but either way, she’s mildly offended. “We’ll repent anyway,” he added, “but forgiveness isn’t up to people. Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” 

       Jude blinks. What the fuck is he talking about? And why does he actually sound sorry? She’s picturing her hundred bucks going up in flames when Prayer Girl says: “You’re right.” Jude thought she heard her wrong until Prayer Girl says it again. “You’re right. Jesus wouldn’t be so quick to judge. He even ate with the prostitutes.” She gives a pointed look towards Jude. “I’ll see you guys back at the auditorium.” 

—

       Worship ends with the sun. In the auditorium, people are all around them, but her, Boots Boy, and Prayer Girl stand together until morning. Around 4:30 AM, everyone takes a break to eat cup noodles. In the dim yellow light, steam rises between them, and behind it, Jude listens to the people around her talk. They speak about families and fears, eating disorders and boyfriends. Someone’s mom died four days before the retreat. Another says he wanted to kill himself but doesn’t anymore. It’s all a lot less about religion and more about pain than Jude expected. By the morning, Jude’s legs are stiff. Her back’s aching. She’s never stood for this long, and watching everyone with their swollen eyes and smudged makeup shuffle back to their rooms, she feels something like admiration for all these teenagers who know God better than themselves.

       “Did you repent?” Boots Boy asks when he finds her again. 

       All seven hundred of them are outside now, holding their duffle bags and waiting for the buses to come. Despite eating, Jude’s stomach feels unbearably hollow, like it could collapse in on itself. Everyone’s clutching their bags and talking to another with an intensity she’s never seen. Retreat High––that’s what they call it. The pastor said it to them as he ended worship: “Don’t let the high disappear,” he said. “Don’t forget what God can do for you.” Jude looks at him and says, honestly, “I don’t know.” 

       Sometime during the night, she clasped her hands, closed her eyes, and said some things in her head. She wasn’t sure exactly what a prayer sounded like, but she thinks it’s close enough. Maybe she wasn’t repenting, per se, but she was saying something. 

       “Did He say anything?” 

       Jude looks at him incredulously. “Yeah,” she smirks. “He told me to keep my legs closed for a while.” 

       Boots Boy rolls his eyes. 

       “Did you––I don’t know. Repent?” she asks. 

       “I did.”

       “Did he say anything to you?” 

       “No,” he says. “But it made me feel better.” His fingers twist around the blue strap of his bag, pulling until the velcro creaks. “I think God understands.” 

       She nods. She’s not sure if the nod happens reflexively or because she really agrees, but she catches herself mid-nod, because what he’s saying is fucking ridiculous––or at least, it should be. I think God understands. The sentence clangs in her head. 

       Jude shifts her weight from one leg to the other. No one ever talks about how much retreat hurts—the legs, the head, the lower back, the soft hollow beneath the ribs. There’s a dull pounding behind her eyes, and hours ago she stopped being able to tell whether it was a headache or the pulse of her own heart. She wonders, as the bus pulls in, if this is the kind of pain that turns into something holy.