The boy is sitting next to Jane at the kitchen table when she reads in the paper that his body has been found. Her father is in his new office next to the kitchen. Jane traces the outline of the article with her index finger. The missing boy is still beside her, but he’s opening and closing his mouth like a fish, and no sound comes out. She asks, Are you still here with me? He manages to make a kind of sucking sound with his throat. What happened to you? She reads that his arm was found by a girl her own age. I should have found it, she says to the missing boy. But she imagines the arm, and she’s glad it wasn’t her. The guilt of this realization makes her reach out for his hand, but he doesn’t respond. He can’t move like he used to. He looks to the side of her rather than at her.
Nathan doesn’t hear his daughter go out the front door. She leads the missing boy onto the street. She’s decided that the body was not the missing boy’s after all. The missing boy is still at the beach with her mother, alive and well, and she’s taking the train out there to prove it.
The Abandoned Church
It’s easy to break into the school. Ginny enters first through the main hall, having left Chloe and Rafi on the street, and tells the hall master she needs to retrieve a book from her mom’s office. Her dad is waiting for her outside in the car, double-parked, she explains. The explanation is unnecessary, as the hall master is focused entirely on the weather. The hall master says, “Sure, honey,” without looking up from her phone. “Just get home soon and safe. It looks like the storm is going to be on top of us in an hour.” Ginny says, “Sure, thanks,” and goes on her way.
She finds the side door, which is notorious for being broken most of the time. The sign that warns of the alarm is a joke. All she has to do is hold down the latch as soon as the door opens, and the alarm stays quiet. It just takes nimble fingers and maybe a lookout on school days. Ginny Palm finesses the door open as her mother showed her to. Marion said it could be useful.
Chloe and Rafi are on the other side of the door, trying to avoid the rain, which has just begun, and Ginny lets them in. Rafi is shorter than Ginny expected, shorter than Chloe, but taller than Ginny. He wears a lot of gel in his hair and smells like soup or maybe Nilla wafers. He hugged Ginny when he met her, and Ginny didn’t know where her arms should go.
“You know what we should do?” Ginny says. “The church.”
Chloe coos at the goodness of this idea. “It’s like this abandoned church,” she says. “It’s a structural hazard.”
Rafi grins and says, “Let’s do it.”
Ginny leads the way. The hallways are dark except for the red exit lights. It’s only the three teenagers and the worried hall master, who is already packing up her things to go home. The teenagers are intoxicated with the freedom of being alone with each other in a place where they are usually supervised. Rafi has even brought a joint, and they’re going to smoke it somewhere, if they can find the best, coolest place.
They must pass Marion’s office to reach the church, which is accessible only through the dance studio. Ginny listens for Daniel, who often comes in on weekends. Marion never knew what it was he did. Marion told Ginny that she suspected he was escaping his family, in particular his son. But it’s hurricane weekend, and it seems that Daniel must act like a father in the midst of possible natural disaster. The coast is clear.
The doors to the dance studio swing open, and the teenagers are in what looks to be another former church, but the floor is covered in gray plastic sheeting. The ceiling is arched and vaulted with brown beams, and the windows are large and high. There’s even a structure that looks like a pulpit: a staircase that leads to a small balcony, which is used often by the modern dancers in their choreography. The teenagers turn and watch themselves in a wall of mirrors. Mesmerized by their own reflections, they pause. Rafi asks, “Is this the church?” But the two girls shake their heads. Their school used to be a religious one. Many spaces were designed with an ecclesiastic aesthetic.
Underneath the pulpit there is a door, a small one, and if it is jimmied just so, it opens. The couple follows Ginny down a dank hallway that opens up into the designated building site of the glorious new science wing. The architect has promised to incorporate some of the original architectural features of the church. Such blending of past and future, faith and knowledge, will please the parents and the alumni. The students will miss the sublime unsafety of the church.
Ginny, Chloe, and Rafi are met with the stale-smelling wet air of a room shut up for too long. The narrow vaulted windows have been covered with plywood, but light edges in where it can. The three teenagers use their cell phones to create more light and pad softly into the church. The pews have been removed here as well. Old desks and bureaus are scattered around. A pigeon flaps its wings in the rafters.
There’s a balcony supported by suspect beams, and it sags. The teenagers know not to go up there. It could easily collapse, and that would mean expulsion for the girls, as well as some broken bones.
Rafi whispers that this is fucking awesome. Ginny blushes at the praise. Chloe leans over and mumbles something into Rafi’s ear, so Ginny explores on her own. She’s on the altar when the two call her back to join them. Rafi has lit the joint, and the smell of the weed fills the room, mixing with the humidity from the storm.
The rain on the roof beats a fast pattern. It’s picking up speed. There are holes in the roof, they can see the angry gray afternoon sky, and the rain comes through. They hear a crack of thunder and the church fills with white light. Chloe screams, and Rafi mocks her for screaming, and so she hits him. They stumble, laughing.
Ginny shushes for them to be quiet, but Chloe is up and running away from Rafi. They’re playing a game of tag, but it’s something more. Ginny wants them to shut up and tells them so, because she’s got a bad feeling. Rafi runs up to Ginny and, as in a movie, puts her hair behind her ears and tells her that everything is going to be okay. He licks his lips and leans in as Chloe objects. Ginny is consumed by something emotional and hard and emptying, and she turns from the arguing couple to find her own salvation. The altar of the church is crowded with chairs attached to desks (or desks attached to chairs), but behind is a crucifix. The Jesus nailed to this crucifix is not abstract but also not in pain, and not blond. Ginny begins to climb over the desks and chairs to get to this Jesus, and the doors of the church open wide. The hall master is there, shining a flashlight onto the teenagers. From behind the hall master, a voice in the dark corridor says, “Hello, Ginny.”
Hurricane René