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nutty and they mimicked the customers quite wickedly. They also didn’t go to Delbrook, so they didn’t have any history with me, which was a relief, and I felt guilty feeling this relief. Youth Alive! was concerned that my constant exposure to semiclad skin, sun and non- Youth Alive! members would make me revert to the World-as if listening to screaming babies and groping for the last purple Popsicle at the bottom of the freezer bin could be a test of faith or tempt me into secular drift. Lauren and Dee and some of the others visited me a bit too often, and I don’t think a night ever went by without returning to my car at shift’s end and finding an Alive! er eager to invite me to a barbecue or a hike or a Spirit Cruise around the harbor.
    By the end of that August, Jason was going mental for me. He came into the city on weekends from his job up the coast, surveying for a mining company. A sample conversation from this period might go:
    â€œCheryl, God would never have made it feel so right or so good unless it was right and good.”
    â€œJason, could you honestly hold up your head and say to Pastor Fields or your mother or the Lord that you’d been fornicating with Cheryl Anway? Could you?”
    Well, of course he couldn’t. There was only one way he could land what he wanted, and that was marriage. One weekend in my bedroom, he said we could get married after graduation. I removed his hand from near my right breast and said, “God doesn’t issue moral credit cards, Jason. He’s not like a bank. You can’t borrow now and pay later.”
    â€œMy strength-Cheryl, I’m losing it.”
    â€œThen pray for more. God never sends you a temptation that you aren’t strong enough to overcome.”
    I did want Jason but, as I’ve said, only on my own terms, which also happened to be God’s terms. I’m not sure if I used God or He used me, but the result was the same. In the end, we are judged by our deeds, not our wishes. We’re the sum of our decisions.
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    During none of my lunch-hour confessions, whether at the White Spot drive-in eating fries with the Bunch, or at an Alive! weekend seminar on kingdom building, did I ever once confess how much I needed Jason, in every sort of way. Even thinking of him made me drunk, and all the teenage girl stuff that came with it: bees needing flowers; wanting to dissolve like sugar into tea.
    Of course, everybody else in the school was going at it like minks. Nothing was forbidden to them, so why not? It’s indeed a mistake to confuse children with angels. And while the ever-present aura of casual sex saturated the school likelocker aroma, I didn’t surrender to my own instincts, though I really did have to wonder why God makes teenagers so desperate. Why could we see Archie and Betty and Veronica on dates at the malt shop, but never screwing around in Archie’s dad’s basement covered in oil stains, spit and semen? Double standard. You can’t do one without implying the other. Preachy me.
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    Dear Lord,
    Protect our children, while they…Lord keep them as…Sorry. I can’t pray right now.
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    Dear God,
    What’s hardest here is that I simply can’t believe this is happening. Why do You make certain kinds of events feel real, but not others? Do You have a name for this? And could You please make all of this feel real ?
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    As I was saying, silence.
    In the first few moments of the attack, I remember briefly seeing a patch of sky out the window and I remembered how crisp and clean the day was.
    Then one of the boys shot his gun in that direction and stemmed the exodus. I know nothing about guns. Whatever they were, they were powerful, and when they cocked them, it sounded industrial, like a machine stamping something flat.
    Under the tables we all dove- thumpa-thumpa-thump .
    Don’t shoot at me-I’m not making any noise! Look! Look at How! Quiet! I’m!