It’s a nice sunny day outside as my family drives to church. Everyone is in good spirits today, my parents casually chattering about this or that in front of me. I do not hear a word that they say, however.

Though I am with my family, whom I have known my entire life, I now feel as disconnected from there as if I were a member of some other species. It’s as if nothing they do or say is real. Or maybe it’s that nothing I do or say is real?

“You alright, little sister?” I hear Derrick ask from the seat to my right.

I turn to look at him, giving my best impersonation of a comforting grin. “Yeah, I’m alright!” I tell him. “Just still wiped out from that game.” The football game has indeed been a convenient excuse for my change of behavior.

“Really? Still?” Derick scoffs. “I feel fine, and I was the one out there with the ball!”

I would like to say that he spent most of the game on the bench, but that would be rather rude to bring up now.

My family seems to have mostly chalked my behavior up to having difficulty adjusting to high school. I suppose that is not technically wrong, but it’s only a fraction of the truth…

Only I know about Tuesday, when my friends introduced the idea that my best friend Ashley may be a lesbian. They thought so just because she had been hanging out with someone else who’s a lesbian (or something. I haven’t quite figured out what’s going on with her yet.) I suppose it’s a silly reason to suspect such a thing about someone, but in the end, they were right, weren’t they?

They certainly don’t know about how I felt afterwards. How this idea scared me… but, somewhere deep down, it also excited me, elated me, and that made me even more scared…

How I’ve felt trapped in my own mind, at the mercy of impulses I do not understand. How everything circles around me, like a storm. This strange jubilee… which I fear, but also crave like a drug… and how I also fear the wrath of everyone in my life… but how, despite myself, I still trust Ashley, more than I could ever logically explain… and the doubts… spying, lurking, attacking everything in sight… I’m on the edge of the Earth if there ever was one, and I fear falling off, falling into the fire below… but I also can’t help but hope that, if I take the leap, I will find something which I never could have dreamed existed...

I have to bring my musings to a close when I see that we have come to a stop in the parking lot.

As we walk into the church, I see Terra standing near the entrance way, alone. She’s wearing a white dress with a flower pattern, and her brown hair is pulled into a bun. She grins at me cooly while I walk in through the entrance; it seems as if she was waiting here specifically for me.

“How are you this morning, Zoe?” she asks me, stepping forward.

“I am doing well!” I say, and try my best to mean it. But by the way she’s intently looking at me, I can’t help but to think I’m not fooling her.

“Let’s have a one-on-one chat,” she tells me, still smiling. “It’s about what we discussed earlier.”

Air seems to be caught in my throat- I had been afraid of that. Still, I can not see a way out of this without being rude, so I follow her up the stairs, to where the balcony is.

“The truth is, I’m sorry about how that conversation went,” Terra explains to me. “It was not the kindest way to introduce that idea to you, I know. You know how Diana is; once she gets into gossiping, she can be pretty blunt. I always say that girl is too big of a loudmouth.”

I don’t say anything. Terra is not as tall as Ashley, but she still has a little bit of height on me, and so she looks down at me, with what I think is an attempt at a friendly expression.

“But we told you that for your own good, Zoe. Nothing good comes from hanging around people like that.”

“But you… said that they were only… h-hanging out together,” I stammer. “That doesn’t… I mean, you don’t know if…”

“Ah, but it’s not just that. She seems to have a fondness for physical affection, does she not? I you too hugging on Friday night, before you left… and Yonca tells me that she saw you two hug by the bathroom… don’t worry, I told her not to tell anyone else. I’m not trying to get you into trouble.”

I open my mouth, perhaps to say that it’s not that weird for girls to hug each other if they are friends… but I can’t bring myself to say anything. I feel as if I’m trapped.

“Sin doesn’t just enter our lives through bold, open attacks, you know. More often that not, it creeps in without notice, using the things we love, the things that are familiar, to keep us from God. It can come from friends or loved ones, or in thoughts we have in the sleepiness of the morning…”

I can hear music playing from the sanctuary, which means that service must be about to start. Terra hears it too; I see her looking over her shoulder.

“You’ve got a good heart, Zoe,” she says as she walks back for the stairs. “Don’t let evildoers tear it apart…”

As we had planned before, I go over to Ashley’s house after church. Her mother seems to be out of town, so her dad drove us home. When we get inside, her dad leaves to go practice his trombone, so Ashley leads me down the hallway on the side of the house and straight into her room.

She shuts the door behind us, and then walks over to the chair by the window and starts rummaging through her backpack. “Been a weird first week, hasn’t it?” she says conversationally.

I feel like a fool for it, but I am crying before I can stop myself.

“Oh, Zoe…” she says, turning around as she hears me. She pulls me over to bed and sits my down, wrapping her arms around me. And I hug her back at once. It’s the only thing that helps. I just let myself cry out onto her chest, releasing everything that’s been inside me this weekend so far… and she starts doing it again, she starts running her fingers through my hair… I just want it to never stop...

After a few minutes, when I’m a bit calmer, she says, “I know that you wanted to ask me about… whether or not we’re doing something wrong. Well, I… really don’t think we are.

I want to believe her so badly… but then I hear a voice in my head… Sin doesn’t just enter our lives through bold, open attacks, you know... It can come from friends or loved ones… Is she just trying to lead me astray?

But then, I hear another voice in my head too, from much earlier… You don’t get to choose who you have feelings for… The way you are is not going to change.

“How long have you… you know… been… into girls?” I ask her.

“I suppose ever since I could’ve been, ever since I began my adolescence,” she explains to me. “One summer I was re-watching some old movies from my childhood. When I watched the Little Mermaid, I felt the strangest rush when I watched them kissing at the end… then, I realized that I was imagining myself in Eric’s place, not Ariel’s as I should have been…

“And I tried everything in my might to get out of it. I hoped that it was just a phase that would pass… or that my feelings for my friend Aiko were just me being confused about our friendship… then, when that didn’t work, I thought that I could just be bisexual. I even wondered if I was actually a straight man in a woman’s body…”

Ashley sighs heavily. “But no, there was no way around it. No amount of researching, or hoping, or praying, ever seemed to make a difference for me.”

I can’t help but to marvel at her for a little bit. I almost never hear her open up like this.

“How long… did you have feelings f-for me, then?” I ask her.

“Pretty much since we first met. Since I first looked into your eyes. Of course, I made myself promise that I wouldn’t ever tell you.” She pauses. “Not unless you told me first.”

Then, suddenly an idea comes to me in a rush… Sin can come from friends or loved ones … but that can’t be what this is… she never would have told me she loved me. It was I who came to her first…

I look up at her, into her face. “So… you were this way… before you ever even moved here?”

“Yeah, for at least a year before,” she explains. “Of course… you may not be wrong to say that I have been since I was born…”

“Why weren’t you going to tell me?” I ask her. I hope she understands that I’m not asking this because I’m angry with her.

“Well, at first, it was because I didn’t want to get hurt,” she admits. “You see, I did tell Aiko that I liked her back in the day, and it didn’t really turn out in my favor… But as time went on, I had an even bigger reason to keep it from you. I didn’t want to pull you into my struggles, to make you suffer as I had.” She gives me an odd smile. “But I suppose we’re in this together after all, are we not? I am sorry, Zoe.”

“So… there’s definitely no way… to change, then?” I ask her timidly.

“That’s definitely been my experience.”

“So… what do we do, then?”

“Try and live with it, somehow or another. Be open and honest with yourself about it. Or, you can try to repress it all… that’s up to you to decide. But I don’t think that repression is the right thing to do.”

I finally feel calm enough to pull away for her, and I look into her eyes curiously. “You don’t... think so?”

“No.” She has an intense, piercing look in her eyes. “After I moved here… after I had hoped and prayed for so long, and nothing changed, I had a crazy thought… one that has kept me alive ever since.

“Since I can’t change myself, maybe, just maybe, there was some reason I am this way. I have no idea what it is, and at the time it seemed to defy everything I thought I knew, but… well, really, now it’s the only thing that seems to make sense. After all… You formed my inward parts, You knitted me together in my mother's womb…”

“Psalm 139,” I say, almost automatically.

She raises her eyebrows at me. “Wow, you knew that off the top of your head… that’s impressive.”

I have to admit that I do feel better after talking to her. I hug her again, this time out of affection instead of desperation.

“Oh Ashley… I never expected any of this to happen,” I confess, “But… I trust you. I really do trust you.”

“What do you mean, you never expected it?” she says, a rare hint of teasing in her voice. “You’re the one who told me you loved me…”

I smile despite myself. I suppose she’s right, what did I expect? Maybe I thought she would kindly rebuff me, or tell me how to get better… but also, maybe I knew all along, deep in my heart, what was going to happen.

The next day…

Ah, Memorial Day. The day in which we remember those who have fallen in war. What’s really important about Memorial Day, however, is that there is no school on that day.

So on this hot, sunny Memorial Day, I decide to go pay a visit to my Aunt Kierstyn. Though my mother tragically died when I was only seven, I get some comfort in getting to know her sister; it’s almost like I still have a piece of my mom left on this Earth.

Before I head over, I call her cell to let her know beforehand, as she has told me to do. Then, I knock on the door, and she answers after a few seconds.

If you were to take a look at my aunt on the street, you’d probably never guess that she works for the government. She has short hair that’s dyed black, and wears a black leather coat, with matching black leather boots and a belt that is studded with spikes. Definitely a very goth appearance. Or would it be emo…? I don’t know, I can never keep those straight in my brain. (Then again, I can’t ever keep anything straight in my brain. Ha! That’s a good one, I need to remember that.)

“Come on in, Anja,” she says, closing the door behind her and then walking back towards the living room. She has a pretty stoic, detached manner; not too unlike Ashley, now that I think about it.

I consider my own house to be a bit on the messy side, but her house turns it up to another level. On my left I can see a room that is mostly just a bunch of boxes laying on the floor, one of them containing a really old Windows computer. There is also a desk crammed in the corner which has papers strewn across it. Passing by the living room, I see the red couch which I’m pretty sure she usually sleeps on, and the television. The whole house is filthy, and reeks of cigarette smoke; there is dust hanging over everything, and the floor looks like it hasn’t been swept in years.

The dining room table is also strewn with papers. Most of them are just a bunch of legal jargon and news clippings, but there is one that catches my eye: the outline of a map of Texas. There are a bunch of red x’s all over the map with names written next to them. (I see an x slightly north of here that has the name “Roberto Antunez” on it; I wonder if they’re related to Ruth?)

“Oh, you don’t want to look at this stuff,” she says, sighing and shoving a bunch of the paper out of the way so there’s a small part of the table clear. “It is a sad thing. I’ve been asked to keep track of recent teen suicides… for prevention purposes, of course. Depressing shit.”

She takes a seat across from me, and starts to light a cigarette. Seeing the pile of papers on the table reminds of something I was going to ask her…

“Hey, can I ask you something?”

“If you want.”

“Do you know about a red and black symbol that looks like an eye?”

For a split second, I swear I see something like fear flit across her face; but it’s gone as soon as I notice it, and she’s casually exhaling a puff of smoke. “Where would you see something like that?” she asks me.

“It was an app on the phone of one of my friends,” I explain. “And I swear I’ve seen it here, on one of your papers.”

“Hmm… you’ve got an eye for trouble, Anja,” she says seriously. For a moment, she looks at me intently; perhaps sizing me up? Then, she reaches into the pile of papers, and pulls out one in particular; a sheet of paper with a drawing of the exact symbol I was just talking about. “Is this what you saw?”

“Yes, that’s it!” I say.

“That’s… very interesting.”

For a while, she just sits there, puffing and staring at the wall, seemingly in deep thought. It’s very tempting to interrupt her, but I stay quiet with the hopes that I’m about to learn what’s so interesting about it. Finally, after what must be several minutes, she starts talking.

“That eye is the symbol of a group that called themselves ‘The Thieves In The Night,’ who operated in the early 1990s. This group used supernatural means to change the hearts of those whom they found corrupt or impure.”

“Supernatural means?” I ask. I’m not a believer in the supernatural, but I have to admit that this sounds quite fascinating… “What does that mean?”

“The Thieves knew how to access a sort of parallel world, known as the Metaverse, which can be used to alter the consciousness of others.”

Whoah. “How do you know all of this?”

She pauses again, and then says, “I used to know someone who was involved with them.”

She sighs heavily, and starts twirling the cigarette in her hand. “Of course, this group has been inactive for a long time. They made a lot of enemies with their actions, and so most of them have been hunted down and killed since then. So, if anyone ever asks, you didn’t hear this from me, okay? It’s extremely dangerous to go around talking about The Thieves.”

“What did they do to get people after them?” I ask, spellbound despite myself.

“Well, when you mess with the social order, it tends to mess back,” she explains. “Of course, even to this day they’re pretty popular among the occult population… your friend’s app was likely created by a fan.”

I consider this for a moment. The occult population? Ashley? I thought she was a Christian. That doesn’t really seem to add up. Could she know something…?

But as fascinating as this topic was, there is a knock on the door, and the impending arrival of pizza drives my musings about the supernatural from my mind. For now, at least...