“Oh my god I am hardly sorry for having offended thee an—” The priest coughs. It is a constrained cough.

“You mean heartily sorry.” He speaks from the other side of the red curtain. His voice has that ecclesiastic sound to it, with an exterior gentleness, and an interior coldness. I imagine the white collar riding up against his gargantuan Adam’s apple. 

“Do you know what heartily means?” Monsignor Bucci’s voice sounds neutral and impersonal, but I imagine that he knows I fell asleep during his last homily. 

“No,” I answer and look to my shoes, clanging them against the kneeler. I do know what heartily means. I can just tell from the tone of his voice, and the way he struts around in his cassock, that he enjoys correcting the mistakes of others. I’ve never seen a priest so happy to hear his parishioners’ sins.

“It means that you are sincerely, and genuinely sorry for hurting God with all of your sins,” Monsignor answers. I can hear him smirk.  

No it doesn’t, I think, remaining silent. Heartily can’t possibly mean all that at once. 

Taking my silence for agreement, he absolves me for all of the sins that I have committed since I saw him two months ago. All I listen for is, “I absolve you from your sins. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” because it means I am almost free. I make the sign of the cross, and I have to think which side I cross first, because I always mess up and cross myself backward. “Go in peace,” he says. 

I mutter, “Thanks be to God,” and hightail it out of there as fast as I’m able. 

I am stopped from completing my reconciliation by Thomas, a fellow classmate. He puts a freckled arm out and grabs my wrist. “Which one is in there?” he asks nervously, watery blue eyes shifting toward the closed door. Thomas is the sort of kid who takes the shortest time possible in confession when he should be taking the longest. We all worship him. 

“Monsignor Bucci,” I whisper. I search for Mr. V, my history teacher that took our class down the hill to church today. We aren’t supposed to be talking. It’s time to be sorry for all grievances against God. 

“Shit,” he mutters under his breath. Nobody wants Monsignor Bucci. He gives you harder penances than Father Ed. Plus he makes these weird noises in the back of his throat, like he knows who is going to go to hell for uttering God’s name in vain. I have to do two decades of the rosary in front of the tabernacle. If I had Father Ed, I’d probably have to say one Our Father and one Hail Mary when I go to sleep tonight.

“Conley! Viglotti!” Mr. V waddles over to us. He looks like he swallowed an inner tube. His stomach is that fat. 

“Monsignor is waiting, Conley.” He never calls us by our first names. “Go do your penance Viglotti.” I run away, along the wall with the bloody depictions of the Stations of the Cross. Somebody always faints during the stations, with all the kneeling and standing and crossing, and incense burning, and genuflecting, but luckily that’s a month away.  

I don’t feel any better after my confession, especially since I made up all of my sins. I lied about every single one. I’m not very creative though, so I don’t think Monsignor noticed. They were normal sins: stuff like stealing my sister’s cookie and blaming it on our dog. We don’t have a dog. 

I don’t even know why I did it. I’d like to think it was an act of rebellion against the church, but that isn’t true at all. The truth is that my cheeks are always red with shame for things hardly anyone else would be embarrassed about. But I’m slowly learning that’s part of being Catholic. At seven, I’d rather go to hell than feel embarrassed or ashamed. And in an act of last resorts, if all I have to look forward to is a life of perpetual sinning, then I figure my sins are my business. Anyhow, I asked my dad about it, and he told me that I should just make something up. They expect you to. Just like you’re supposed to lie about the last time you went to confession. 

I slow down when I reach the tabernacle. It gives me the creeps, with the incessantly burning red candle and Jesus’ body all locked up just inches from me. Even at seven, logic tells me this transubstantiation thing is impossible. I genuflect quickly and kneel down to say my penance. My heart threatens to beat out of its chest, afraid I’ll screw up the order of the prayer somehow. I make sure to pray with my fingers straight. My religion teacher says that if I pray with crooked fingers my prayers will go to hell. I always pray straight, though most of the time I don’t really think anyone is listening.  

I only get through eight Hail Mary’s because I keep messing up and my mind drifts to my lunch. It’s hard to be pious when you’re seven and lunch is in a half an hour. This makes me feel a little guilty, because of Jesus being in that desert and probably getting hungry and everything. Plus, the kneeler is hard and hurts my knees. When I reach down to rub them, I notice that I somehow managed to tear a hole in my stockings, right in the back of the knee. I also notice Ian Patterson is standing right behind me. He is waiting for me to relinquish my kneeler. Usually I would have heard him breathing before he got so close but this time he somehow snuck up on me.

 I am trying to hurry up my prayers and finish, but I can’t concentrate because of Ian’s breathing. It’s a strange sound, somewhere between asthma and an obscene phone call, and everybody ridicules him mercilessly for it. Now he is muttering his prayers as a sort of punctuation to his breathing. I don’t really want to be here anyway, so I consider myself done and get up. 

While most kids try to get out of their confession as quick as possible, Ian strives to raise the bar. Twenty two minutes is the current record at St. Michael’s. He’s the sort of kid that everybody’s mom adores. He’s probably never sinned in his entire life, though not really, because only the Virgin Mary has done that. This is according to Mrs. Wicks, the religion teacher, but Mrs. Wicks still thinks dead babies who haven’t been baptized go to limbo. She is just that old, and weird.  

If you ask most kids what they want to be when they grow up, they’ll say that they want to be doctors or firefighters, or nurses or vets, or even the president. Ian Patterson wants to be a martyr when he grows up. If he can’t be a martyr, he’ll settle for being a Jesuit. 

*     *     *

We walk back to school in the melting snow. It is early March and we are filing through the parking lot in two separate lines, separated by sex. Lucky me, I’m stuck with Thomas Conley across from me, who I like, but unfortunately, Ian Patterson in front of him. I’m afraid Thomas is going to do something to push Ian’s buttons and get us all in trouble. Thomas and I have bomber jackets on, with the St. Michael’s crest. Everybody on the basketball teams can get one, and since not joining a basketball team is social suicide, everybody has the jackets. Except Ian Patterson. He has an L.L. Bean anorak on. They are not cool. But Ian doesn’t care because while we are all going to hell and he’ll be in heaven with his nerdy anorak. 

“So I bet you had a lot of sins to confess,” Ian says piously to Thomas.  

“Yeah, I committed adultery with your mom.” 

Ian turns around outraged and his pink ears flap in the wind. I hear Lauren Ireland laughing beside me. He clenches his fists, but he’s wearing mitten. So no matter how angry he is on inside, he looks absurd. “Be quiet about my mom!”  

“Stop acting like such a douche then.” Thomas knows all the good words because his brother Edward is three years older than us. 

Ian stops in his tracks, holding up the rest of us. Somewhere back in the line some kids purposely back up into each other. Someone yells their complaints up to the front of the line. Mr. V blows his whistle. “Hurry up you lot!” he bellows, as his neck flaps back and forth softly like a turkey’s wattle. “Don’t touch the snow Conley!” Thomas drops the snowball he was aiming for Ian’s head.

*     *     *

“Use Bridget’s Pringles!” Molly hollers ecstatically, trying to pry them out of O’Brien’s hands. It’s recess now, and the five of us are playing under the large willow tree.  

“No, I’m hungry!” Bridget says, running around the rotund trunk as Molly chases after her.  

“We’ll fail our first communion if you don’t give us your Pringles and nobody will give us any money or presents!” The plaid ribbon that matches our jumpers falls out of her hair, and Molly stops to pick it up. Her knee socks fall down to her ankles and she takes time to roll them back up. 

“They’re too big anyway,” I say, heading toward my lunch box. All I have left though is string cheese. 

Colleen looks in her pink lunch box and says, “Wait, I’ve got Doritos!” 

“Perfect!” Stephanie drops her jump rope. “Can I be the altar girl?”  

I nod and decide. “Then I’m the priest. You guys can receive it.” Colleen hands Stephanie the Doritos, who passes them to me, and just as I hover over the Doritos and whisper, “This is the Lamb of God,” we catch sight of Thomas Conley and his cronies: John Naradillo, Kyle Evans, and Sean Dooley. John has a football under his scrawny, tanned arm. All their shirts are untucked, the knees of their trousers are streaked with mud, and they carry their coats over their shoulders. They are cool. 

“What are you doing?” Thomas asks me, as his three stooges shlump over with him.

“Playing Eucharist,” Colleen says. “Emma’s priest and Stephanie’s altar girl,”  

“Girls can’t be priests,” John says. “Let Thomas be priest.”

“Say’s who?” Molly asks, placing her hands on her hips. She towers over John. 

“The Pope? I dunno.” John says.  

“More like Poop John Paul II,” Thomas says, snorting and we laugh as if it is the funniest thing we have ever heard.  

“I don’t even wanna be priest. I don’t remember any of that religion stuff anyway,” Thomas says proudly.

“All right, then line up and stuff,” I say, clearing my voice and standing up straight. I clear my throat again, purse my lips and say, “Now children,” just like Monsignor Bucci. We all laugh again.

I skip all the weird mumbling chanting bit and say, “This is the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Happy are those who are called to his supper.” Stephanie opens the Doritos and pours out a couple into my hands. Colleen comes up first. We look at each other and smirk. 

I clear my throat, suck in my cheeks, and I raise the holy host up to the sky. I look toward it and say as reverently as I can, “The Body of Christ.” 

Colleen sticks her tongue out, teasing me. There is no way I’m putting it in her mouth. Nobody does it that way anymore, unless of course you’re Ian Patterson.

She says, “A-men,” instead of Ah-men, and I put the Dorito in her hand. She chomps on it and makes the sign of the cross, bows, and moves to the side so Thomas can step forward to the front of the line.  

I raise a Dorito to Thomas’s eye level and I notice to my surprise that he is looking at it with great reverence. I am midway through “the body of Christ,” when we hear Mr. V’s whistle blow. All nine of us turn our heads toward the direction of the whistle. I lower the Dorito in my hands and eat it, without crossing myself. We see Ian Patterson first, followed by Mr.V whose looming body hides the lanky Monsignor. Ian struts confidently, for God is on his side against the heretics. Ian arrives first to point out the guilty party to Mr. V, who is bending over slightly to catch his breath. Monsignor Bucci sticks his chin out, scowling.  

“Ah, Jesus Christ!” Thomas curses, unaware of the irony of our situation.  

“What-the-hell-do-you-think-you’re-doing?” Mr. V says breathlessly, clutching part of his stomach.  

“Practicing for first communion,” Thomas says nonchalantly.  

“The lot of you line up here. Now!” He points to the designated spot and we hurry. I clutch the bag of Doritos in my right hand.  

“Give me those!” He says sternly. “Patterson here was telling me of your blasphemous activity!” He pats Ian, our Judas, on the back. Ian sneers at us.  

“How are we supposed to pass if we don’t practice?” Thomas speaks up for us who are scared to the bone. 

“It doesn’t work like that. You don’t get a grade,” Monsignor Bucci darts his gray eyes toward Thomas, then settles on me.  

“Do you know what transubstantiation is Emma?” He asks me a question—for the second time that day. 

“Yes.” I answer this time. 

“Well, then I’m disappointed in you. Eucharist is a very serious matter that you are playing with.” He stares down at me, and I want to say that I think transubstantiation is total crap. His whole church is crap and I feel all bitter and cold for being tricked and terrified into believing it. “You should not mock it. Of course, nothing will happen when you pray over anything.” 

“She wasn’t mocking the Eucharist,” Thomas says. I am shocked at his boldness. He’s a martyr if I ever saw one. “She’s mocking y—” 

“ENOUGH!” Mr. V’s face is beet red. He looks like he might hit us. But Monsignor Bucci remains calm.  

“Two demerits!” He points to Thomas. “And two for you too, you little ring leader!” He adds, taking his pen out of his pocket. “Give me your cards!” 

He’s not supposed to do that. The rules say that a teacher can only give out one demerit at a time. Four demerits equal one detention. My dad is going to kill me. I hand over my card, biting my lip so I don’t cry in front of them. I already have three demerits from refusing to play dodgeball during gym. I’m scrawny and I can’t see too well when my glasses slide down my nose. I’d rather be crucified than play dodgeball. Thomas fiddles in his pockets for his card, and hands it over to him. His eyes are wet, more so than they usually are.  

“And the rest of them?” Monsignor asks.  

“One each,” Mr. V says. “And we’ll take one away from Ian’s.” 

“I don’t have any sir,” he says proudly.  

I’ve only had detention once before when I had to take out the rectory’s trash. Sean swore that once he had to fiddle his thumbs for half an hour one way, and then half an hour another way. Thomas has had loads of them during which he copied most of the bible. Molly once spent an hour picking staples out of a kindergarten room carpet, and John told us all of the time he had to scrub the floors of the school with a toothbrush.  

The bell rings while we stand there to receive our demerits. Bridget cries, and Colleen sniffles. My eyes haven’t burned so much in my entire life. The second bell rings and we have to line up, again, in our class lines. We’re always lining up in this stupid school. The blacktop takes forever to cross. Everybody is staring at us, from the lowly kindergartner, to the mighty eighth grader. They point and whisper and their eyes gleam with something like awe. I catch one kid giving Mr. V the finger when he turns his back and I smile.