I sigh heavily. The waist string is cutting so tightly into my skin that the area around it feels numb, and my pockets, bulging with stones, are pulled tight against my thighs. “Don’t remind me, okay? I was worried. You’d been gone for so long. I didn’t know what happened.”
“Wow,” Honey says. “Didn’t you almost tell a lie last week when Christine asked you where your consecration beads were?”
I nod, automatically moving my hand to the wooden beads around my neck. “But I didn’t.”
“Still. An almost lie last week. And now a real, full-blown one. What’s happening to you, Agnes? You’re never going to end up in The Saints’ Way if you keep going like this.”
For a moment I am genuinely stung. After everything I have just gone through for her, she is still not going to give me a break. Still. I open my mouth, ready to tell her off, when she turns her head. A blue bruise has blossomed on her cheek, wide and dark as a plum.
“Oh, Honey.” I reach out to touch it with my fingertips and then, thinking better of it, withdraw my hand. “Does it hurt?”
Honey pokes at the mottled skin roughly and then winces. “Sore.” There is a pause. “But not half as sore as my ass.”
I bite my lip. Given the situation, now is not the time to start reminding her of the sinfulness of curse words. “He was hard on you,” I say quietly. “After Peter and I left, I mean.”
Honey gives me one of her Sometimes I can’t believe we’re even friends, you’re so stupid looks. “Um, yeah.” She takes a deep breath and then shakes her head.
“Do you … want … to talk about it?” I ask gently.
“Well, you know, the man’s a perfectionist,” Honey says. “Gotta get it just right every time. The bastard.” I gulp hard. It makes me nervous when she speaks ill of Emmanuel—even if he did just punish her. Emmanuel never punishes us unless we really deserve it. Honey may not think so, but kissing a boy—with your tongue no less—is definitely a sin. A carnal one, too, if you want to get really technical about it, which is one of the worst kinds.
“But I screamed my head off,” she continues. “Made a whole big scene, just like I always do. Pissed him off royally.”
I stare at the sky. Emmanuel has a no-crying rule in the Regulation Room. No matter how bad it gets, if you cry out, it will only get worse. I’ve learned to hold my breath, taking tiny gulps here and there so that nothing but air emerges from my mouth, but Honey always carries on like she’s being tortured or something, just to make him mad.
“ ’Course, I paid extra for that,” she says bitterly.
“What do you mean?”
She rolls back over so she is lying on her stomach. “Lift my shirt up.”
“What?”
“Lift my shirt up. Take a look at my back.”
I sit up on my knees, tucking my robe beneath my legs. Honey’s never asked me to do anything like this before. Sticking out my arm, I let my fingers hover tentatively at the edge of her shirt before dropping them again. “I don’t want to.”
“Oh, just do it.” Honey sighs, letting her forehead drop against the ground. “God.”
I lift her shirt gingerly, as if it might hurt, and hold my breath. Nothing prepares me for what I stare down at. Underneath the slashes of violet belt stripes there are letters scrawled in red marker, large and sloppy, across the tender skin:
H-A-R-L-O-T
My nose starts to wiggle, a habit of mine that started when I was three years old. Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle. Somehow it prevents the tears from coming.
“Nice, right?” Honey asks, craning her neck to see over her shoulder. “That was Veronica’s idea.”
“Veronica?” I repeat, letting go of her shirt.
Honey nods. “Yup, Veronica. Sweet, pure, chaste Veronica who can do no wrong.”
I stare disbelievingly at a blade of grass, feeling the blood pound behind my eyes. If Emmanuel is Mount Blessing’s spiritual father, Veronica is our spiritual mother. She’s second in command here, just one rung below Emmanuel, and is just as holy and virtuous as Emmanuel himself. The story of Emmanuel finding her twenty years ago while teaching one of his advanced divinity classes at a college in Iowa is legendary at Mount Blessing. Dad has told it to Benny and me numerous times over the years. My favorite part is when Emmanuel finally approached Veronica, who, as a college sophomore, had answered yet another one of his theological questions with a wisdom well beyond her years.
“You have an almost otherworldly knowledge of divinity,” he had said to her. “Have you ever studied it before?”
Veronica was really shy back then, so shy that she could not even look Emmanuel in the eyes as he addressed her. She was also very self-conscious of a skin rash that covered her arms and hands. It was so severe that it made her skin bleed, forcing her to keep her hands hidden inside her shirtsleeves at all times. “No,” she answered. “Never.”
“Then how do you know so much?” Emmanuel pressed.