September, 2011

By the beginning of September, she hated the dresses they made her wear; they were hot, didn't breathe, and itchy. She hated getting up at five in the morning to help the other junior counselors prepare games and activities for the younger kids. She hated that the boys were allowed to wear shorts and t-shirts, and she wasn't.

And she found herself arguing with the camp pastor in her head.

Have you even MET any gays? She thought to herself as the man droned on and on about how they were unnatural and evil. Max couldn't stop thinking about Steph; while they were a little standoff-ish for a while after that first competition, Max did still think of her as a friend. And she was one of the nicest girls in school. She certainly wasn't trying to recruit Max, like the pastor was warning about.

The camp pastor went on and on. The younger kids nodded, absorbing his every word. The other teenagers, having heard the sermon dozens of times, looked bored. Max just resented him.

Max knew the earth wasn't six thousand years old anymore. Hell, even the Pope agrees with that! Max thought angrily, careful not to let her face betray her emotions. She knew that the dinosaurs had been real. The outside world was NOT desperately trying to destroy the sacred bonds between Man and God. It was everything to keep her frustrations off her face.

Even worse, there was nobody she could talk about when it came to her thoughts. The reasons she couldn't fall asleep at night, especially when she thought about her crush on Victoria. One of the junior counselors had already been sent home for talking to another teenager about his feelings towards other boys. The rumor in the teenager's building was that he had found himself at one of 'those' camps.

Max shuddered. She swore she wouldn't go to a camp like that. She'd heard terrible stories. Read about them on the internet at school, where her father still couldn't monitor her.

She still didn't understand how it could be so bad. She still thought about Victoria sometimes, at night, and her cheeks grew warm. Especially when she thought about what she'd seen in the locker room. She is really pretty...

She finally left the camp the week before school started, and she was eager to start her sophomore year.

She met and caught up again with Victoria and Steph; Nathan had transferred to another school. They quickly found a new student to replace him with before their first competition, just after Max's sixteenth birthday.

"Did your parents get you anything good?" Steph asked when they were all in the cafeteria over lunch, a couple of days later.

Max shrugged. "A necklace," she replied, digging it out from under her shirt. She showed them the silver chain and ornate cross. "It's a family heirloom. It belonged to my great-grandmother."

"Oh, that's pretty." Victoria nodded. "I think mine are going to get me a car this year. They've been dropping hints about me finally being able to drive myself around."

"Boy, I wish I had parents who were loaded." Steph smirked. "My mom got me the boxed set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, though, that was pretty badass. I binge-watched it in, like five days."

"Nerd." Victoria snickered, then glanced at her watch and got up. "I gotta go. Taylor wanted to grab something from my locker. See you girls after school."

Max watched her go, trying not to let her eyes linger; Victoria was wearing shorts again. She turned back to Steph and bit her lip, hesitating.

"What?" Steph took another bite of her lunch. "You okay?"

"How did you know you were gay?" Max blurted out.

Steph's eyebrows arched in surprise. "Wow," she commented. "I'll be honest. Wasn't expecting that. Why do you ask?"

Max's face got red, and she didn't answer.

Steph glanced around. "Max..." she hesitated. "I told you last year, if you want to-"

"I'm just curious," Max interrupted.

"Uh-huh." Steph put her sandwich down and folded her hands. "I... well, I've always known, more or less. Ever since I was old enough to be interested one way or another."

"Interested?"

"In boys or girls, Max." Steph shrugged.

"Oh." Max fell silent.

"Max..." Steph caught her eye. "Do you want to talk about something?"

Max sighed. "No," she said remorsefully, leaning on her elbows.

"Are there any boys or girls YOU want to talk about?"

Max's face grew hot again. "Not really."

Steph hesitated. "This… Max, does this have anything to do with your church's legal problems? From this summer?"

"Legal problems? What legal problems?" Max glanced back at Steph, puzzled.

"Oh… you didn't know." Steph bit her lip. "Maybe I shouldn't have said anything."

Max leaned forward. "Steph, what are you talking about?"

"If you don't know, I'm not sure it's my place to tell you." Steph glanced around. "I'm gonna go. Just... I'm always here if you want to talk, Max. Okay?"

Max couldn't get what Steph had said out of her mind, so during her study hall that afternoon, she got a library pass and did something she'd never done before. She sat down at a computer, and Googled the First Light of Christ church.

And her belief shook to the core.

The Wikipedia page that came up was terrifying. Max's mouth dropped in horror as she read through it. She found entries going all the way back into the 1970's, revealing the numerous church officials that were arrested for polygamy, some of their wives as young as twelve. The page detailed accounts of the abuse endured by the child brides of the church.

This can't be real, Max thought in horror. No. No, this is just a bad example. I've never seen anything like this. I've never even heard of any of these families.

The paragraphs didn't get much better as Max caught up to current events. Max found one less than ten years old, where an investigative reporter uncovered millions of dollars in financial fraud, going back to the church's beginnings. Another paragraph detailed the arrest of several church members for covering up the crimes of a pastor. Crimes involving children of a terribly young age. Max involuntarily shuddered as she pressed on.

The next paragraph shed some light on why Max was forced to go to public school after her first six years of education; the academic credentials of the schools run by the church were revoked. The government had forced them to close, after their curriculum was found to be entirely based on the bible. The entry stated everything had come to light after a student ran away from the high school, which had placed him in a "punishment chamber" for hours at a time, for the offense of questioning the decision of a teacher.

Max finally found an entry that had been added over the summer. She read how Pastor Rogers had been arrested for assault and battery, after a young man had been beaten with a blunt instrument so severely that he required surgery. Max's lip quivered as she went to the cited article and read about the boy who had confided in his "homosexual thoughts" to another teenager at her summer camp, and had been promptly reported and taken to the church for "treatment".

The article used a word Max had never seen aimed at her church...

Cult.

The members are essentially brainwashed to believe numerous lies, such as...

... children, some as young as six, taught at a summer camp to...

...parishioners tithing as much as thirty percent of their income, leaving many on food stamps...

And then Max found the sentence that made her heart drop.

Pastor Michael Rogers' attorney, Ryan Caulfield, made a statement to the press the afternoon following his client's arrest...

Her dad was the lawyer defending the pastor who'd almost killed a teenager. For thinking he was gay.

Max closed the browser window and ran out of the library, straight for the closest bathroom. She found the closest stall and slammed the door shut, locking it behind her as she sat down.

And she cried.

Everything she thought she'd known was a lie.