PROPHET AT THE MATINEE

In the movie theatre, David tells me he can hear the voice of God.

His blond hair glints like a gun in the dark. His hand covers mine on the sticky armrest, thumb gliding over the basins of my knuckles. David is the pastor’s eldest son. David has friends but they’re more like acolytes. David is my boyfriend and only I know why. In the light of the screen, his face is as sharp as a propaganda poster. Looking at him is like looking at headlights or a nuclear desert. Clean and chemical, so bright he burns.

We would be the perfect couple if it weren’t for Lily.  Lily was a buttoned-up cardigan kind of girl, scandalized by slaughterhouses and sex ed. Always smiling with her teeth. You could insult her to her face and she’d still offer to braid your hair for you: french braids and fishtails, braids so loving they belonged on kindergarten swing sets. We all used to love her. Sophomore year, Lily and David were a surprise couple, cute in that nerd-jock way, the kind of couple no one thought existed outside of Hallmark rom-coms and bland coming-of-age movies. Later, when we started gossiping, we said Lily was secretly all incisors. Candy floss for brains, a vicious slut. Said that what happened to her in the end must have been her fault. Lily was a bonafide whore, even though she still wore charm bracelets from middle school, even though she cried when we found our biology class’ pet rabbit dead in its cage. Lily, who is never going to turn sixteen.

When David asked me out, the entire high school held its breath. They placed bets on how long I would last, on how long it would take for me to turn into pixelated homecoming pictures on the local news hour. Every time they look at me I know they see Lily’s face plastered onto their mother’s television sets: LOCAL TEENAGER GONE MISSING, MORE AT 5. A flouncy tulle dress, mermaid curls. They didn’t find her killer or her body. There was no mutilated corpse, no records of violence. Just lip gloss and gold sandals. Just one more girl dissolving into the night.

I knew David wanted me when I saw him staring at my handwriting. Junior year, AP English. When I was bored, I would practice hand lettering in the margins of my notebooks. Swirling scripts and comic captions and bubble letters. Usually I practiced my own name. Sometimes a song lyric or a line from a book. But that day I had written Lily’s name. LilyLilyLilyLily stacked up neat in bubblegum pink ballpoint. By the time I looked up, David had already seen the page. He looked back at me and his blue eyes were empty. I tried to picture myself through him. My perfect grades and bug-bitten elbows, skirt below the knee. The velvet ribbons in my hair. The wide-eyed guilt of being caught. Someone who liked the attention. Someone sweet and easy. Not white enough to be cared about like Lily, not loud enough to fight for myself. Adorable. He wanted me then. He wanted me real, real bad.

Everyone assumed I wanted him back. And I did. But not because he was popular or handsome, not because he was perfectly all-American, not because he was everything I was supposed to want. I wanted David because I understood him. David’s eyes were full of nothing and I understood him better than anyone else.

David told me about his God-dreams on a windless day. We were in his white car, driving too fast through the neighborhood with the windows down. His God-dreams felt different, he said, sunglasses reflecting the thin horizon. They sat different in his skull. His dreams of six-eyed angels lying facedown on the football field. Dreams of baby deer paralyzed in the center of his cul-de-sac. Dreams of desecrating light, of burning cars and white hot blankness. He traced circles on my thigh as he spoke, fingers long and thin. His words crackled with the static on the radio. I wanted to bite down into his holy dreams. I wanted to swallow all of his secrets. What is a religion without someone to record it? He pulled into the lot of the neighborhood park, abandoned in the dead heat of summer. Next to him, I felt shiny and brand new and shameless.

I kissed him first, that day, in front of the empty swing set and gaping woods. His skin smelled like cotton and smoke. I looked for his eyes behind his sunglasses but I only found my flushed face staring back from the black lens. I closed my eyes. I kissed him again. I kissed him and I kissed him and my only thought was: I know you.

I know David because we shared biology in tenth grade, the first and last year with a classroom pet. Our rabbit was black and white and always shaking. Lily, the teacher’s favorite, named it Spot. Lily brought Spot bits of lettuce back from lunch. Lily would tell Spot about her new sweaters, about her baby cousins. Lily insisted the class needed another rabbit to keep Spot company---rabbits need friends, it isn’t healthy for him to be so alone. When Lily walked into class, Spot would run to the edge of his cage, straining towards her soft hands and straight-toothed smile. Like the rest of us, he was devoted to the warmth of her.

I know David because the day he started going out with Lily was the day Spot died. I don’t know who killed Spot, who crushed his ribs into his fluffy brown bedding. I do know I left lunch early to turn in an extra credit assignment. I know I saw David leave the empty biology classroom with red beneath his fingernails and Spot was found asphyxiated that afternoon. I know the cameras found nothing. I know too much about quiet violence. I know I saw David as he cradled his bloody hands in the hallway. I know he didn’t see me back.

I know David because he and Lily used to drive past my street every Friday. Lily was trembling in the stomach of his glossy car. Wearing a black dress and crooked eyeliner, her pallor pale and nauseous. I watched her decay week by week from my window. Her brown hair burnt flat against her head. Her sunbeam smile disappearing into the dark.

Lily floats in heaven now. Heaven of vanilla ice cream and Christmas lights, of labrador puppies and tinseltown angels. Lily died clean and pretty because she didn’t know what I know. Lily didn’t know she would spend the last year of her life rotting away in cheap mascara and tight high heels. Lily didn’t see the rabbit living beneath David’s square fingernails. The last time I saw Lily, she was as gaunt as a saint and I knew I wasn’t going to heaven. I wish I was as innocent as she was. I wish I could name every facet of my desire. I wish I didn’t want rabbit blood or fast cars or boys who think they can fool me. Boys who think they know God. 

The movie theatre is cold and empty. My hand is freezing beneath David’s. He’s holding onto me so tight his nails cut smiles into my skin. He’s here now, David whispers, leaning in. God. Can you hear Him, baby? Can you hear Him?

But I can’t hear God. There is no warm presence, no fizzing halo. David turns to look at me in the velvet darkness. Into my eyes so hollow they drown prophets. David lets go of my hand. Together, we are so quiet I can hear his throat constricting.