It was the first time that I held a Bible in several months. Scratch that-- several years. The pages coughed up what must’ve been a pound of dust as I flipped through them; my arms instinctively held it away until the debris finally settled. The pages weren’t worn down or written on (only a little yellowed), and not a single corner was torn. In fact, wrapped in thick drafting paper, the book looked practically new. A guilty twinge pulled on my heartstrings. It wasn’t so much concern for the Bible specifically as it was that I had mistreated a book, period.

I took it to my bed to read and poured over it, familiar scriptures coming back to greet me like an old, unwanted friend. Why was I reading this? It had been so long, but I still remembered most of the words:

I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; none shall see my Father except through Me.

That was just one verse out of the many more stored away up there in a dusty attic room of my mind-- there, shoved carelessly in rotted-away cardboard boxes that were more tape than cardboard.

This was the religion I was born into, the faith I grew up wishing I knew more about. The stuff built just out of dreams and hope (And maybe a smidgen of crack, as my friend would say. Which could be seriously possible from what I read of Revelations; those verses were pretty whacked.) that had been around for millennia. Millions, billions of people were caught under its spell. I closed the Bible and held it in my hands, hefting it as if I was a weighing scale. I wasn’t one of those people. The believers.

At least, I didn’t think I was.

But I had been. I was once the good little girl who went to church and behaved, who shushed other children if they made too much noise. I was the one who spent time reading, learning, memorizing Bible stories until my brain went numb with thought-provoking pondering that only my dad could straighten out for me. He still does, if I ask him nicely.

To be honest, the only reason I had pulled my Bible out at all was to compare it to the description my role model, Lora Innes, gave of hers. I knew they would be different, but I was taken back by exactly how much.

Lora’s was meaningful. Personal. Hers. Scribbles in the margins, memories on the cover pages.

Mine could have been bought from a store just yesterday.

It wasn’t too much of a big deal, really. I was always careful around books, constantly obsessing over ripped edges and folded corners, so it wasn’t so much of a surprise as it was a non-chalant realization. I guess the real question I should have been asking myself was not “Why was I reading this?” but “Why did I stop?”

Many reasons, I guess. I could sit here all night and name all of them, but it would just get depressing after awhile. I still remember the “last straw”, though, clear as window glass when the sun shines through it in the summer.

---

But in the hospital that morning the musty windows were fogged up with October chill, threatening to ice over. The hustle-bustle of the hospital seemed distant, surreal; a moment in time that one usually ignores because of its insignificance. I was sitting near a vent and letting wave after sickening wave of heat attempt to warm me. It wasn’t doing a very good job; the small jolts of electricity that would run down my back made me shiver and break out into cold sweat.

In contrast Garret was completely still in the bed. A metal railing on the side prevented me from lying down closer to his head-- instead, I had to make do with being half-asleep at his feet. Even now there was something calming about being there next to him, and I couldn’t reason that it was his breathing. Dead people don’t breathe. Everyone knows that.

He looked so unbelievably war-torn and handsome, pale and grave with bandages wrapped around his head and chest and a solemn look on his face. I had tried to make him smile before, but touching the cold body had gotten a bit too strange for me. It still bothered me, though. Garret never had such a monotonous look on his face.

“Hello. You must be Beatrice.”

I jumped at the voice that penetrated the still air in the hospital room and turned. A priest stood in the doorway, clothed in black. I scowled. “Yeah? What’s it to you?”

He approached me and put a hand on my shoulder, making me involuntarily cringe. “I was sent in to talk to you…you’re Catholic, yes?”

“You can say that…but what does that have anything to do with anything?”

“I know you were close to him…a friend. Girlfriend, perhaps?”

Best friend. Lover. What do you know?

“…None of your business. Go away.”

A sigh. “Garret…is in a better place, now.”

I felt the hesitation in his voice, heard the pause, knew what he was going to say.

Don’t say it. Don’t you dare.

“It’s going to be okay.”

I don’t see how anyone could believe that anything would be okay-- maybe in a few months, a few years, maybe not ever-- definitely not now. I didn’t want him to be here, I didn’t want to be comforted…that’s God’s problem, thinking people always need consolation. Sometimes it’s better to just cry.

“Have you…lost, anyone? Before?”

The priest looked up, holding a bible in one hand and his opposite wrist in the other. “No, thank the Lord.”

I winced, as if he had hit me. “Yeah. You do that.”

The Lord giveth, and so the Lord shall taketh away.

“Take your stupid logic out that door and leave me alone,” I heard myself mutter, feeling nauseous. “I read every story, every verse, every passage. I analyzed the damn scriptures more than most adults. I understand most of its concepts even though I don’t want to. It doesn’t help me. It doesn’t help anyone unless they’re brainwashed enough to believe it. Where did it get me? Where did my faith get me? Nowhere, because I’m not fucking…delusional.”

A real, honest-to-goodness God doesn’t take good people from the world who could have helped him. His reasons may not be the same as a human’s, but that still gives him no right. This wasn’t his fault, or mine. This wasn’t free will. This wasn’t an accident. It was bloody murder.

“Sometimes,” I added, my face in the blanket, “stories are just stories.”

It’s been awhile since then. I’ve grown up a bit, but I still get defensive when talks of car crashes or religion come up. I still cry every once in awhile, most of the time without warning. I still think God is unjust and unfair.

I used to believe in fairytales. Sometimes I still do. I like to toy with the idea of soul mates, and not the ones you find on eHarmony. Like a little girl, I wish that maybe one day a prince-like boy will come and sweep me off my feet. Like the little girl I once was, I hope that, sometimes, there is a God out there that listens to me when I talk to no one in particular. But that’s all it is to me: a hope. A prayer. Nothing more.

Yawning, I search for my slippers under my bed and go to put the Bible back. It slides easily in between the two folders where it had stood before. Already I could see the dust gravitate towards its pages like a magnet to iron.

Maybe one day I’ll pick it up again and the words will have new meaning. One day I’ll do more than understand, or have a delusional faith.

One day, I’ll believe.