Inclination by Mia Kerick

eyes are pulled back to the
traffic. “I remember that you used to be in Our Way, too. Freshman year, and
maybe for a few months in the fall of sophomore year. Am I right?”
    “Yup. You’re
right on the money, dude.” I can’t see his face at all now, but I can see the
frosty breaths that come out of his mouth each time he replies to me.
    “Why did you
leave us?” And then there is quiet. In fact, it’s a long enough period of
silence that I reconsider my question. “Never mind, Gandy. That’s none of my
business. Shoot, I’m really putting my foot in it with you today, huh?”
    David turns
around. He does it slowly, and when I see his face, I can’t miss that his
intense eyes seem to be dull. “I had to
leave. Not my choice.”
    He offers nothing
else in the way of an explanation, and I badly want him to tell me the rest of
the story. For some strange reason, it’s like I care. “What happened?”
    “ Alls I’m gonna say is, my family
switched churches. And now I help run the youth group there…and it works better
for me.”
    “Where do you go
to Mass now?”
    “We don’t go to
Mass. We go to Sunday Service at Journeys Worship Center.”
    I make a sort of
strangled, OMG-David-Gandy-isn’t-a-practicing-Catholic-anymore sound in
acknowledgement of his words.
    He glares at me
and asks, “ Wanna know the name of the youth group I
run up there, at Journeys?”
    I nod mutely.
    “His Way. Pastor
Sutton let me change its name from The Journeys Youth Group to His Way .”
    He put the
emphasis on the word “his.” I stop and wonder why. And then it hits me—David
moved from Our Way to His Way.
    “Come on, Del Vecchio , let’s get back inside before we freeze our butts
off. I think the next thing we ought to
do is search for a couple of stellar rodeo photos and we can arrange them
chronologically. Let’s start with black and whites of Gene Autry and….” David
rambles on about our rodeo power point, but he’s got me dwelling on much more
than bull riding.

A Choice
    Sitting in the
church basement at five minutes before seven o’clock on the Thursday night of
February vacation week, everything feels so freaking wrong. It isn’t as much
the fact that it’s a Thursday, or that it’s seven at night, or that it’s winter
vacation week, but what feels so strange is the sheer emptiness of this place
that’s usually teeming with life. (Teeming is a vocabulary word I’ve never
before had occasion to use, but now that I’ve used it, I pretty much own it.) I
sit there in the silent void, waiting for Mrs. Martine to come down the stairs
that lead from the crying room.
    After yet another
night of disturbed sleep, marked by nightmares about forced poison Kool-Aid
drinking, I decided it was time to bite the bullet on Tuesday afternoon, and I
called the rectory to make an appointment with Mrs. Martine. It’s probably
going to kill me to do it, but I’m planning to confide “The Problem”. Before I
placed the call, I reminded myself that the woman is a youth group leader and
she’s probably quite experienced in dealing with youth “in crisis”. Like me. I’m holding out hope that she’ll
able to guide me in terms of understanding what God wants me to do and helping
me do it.
    Mrs. Martine is
not exactly what I’d call “a warm and fuzzy people person”, but then neither am
I. She’s what I’d describe as efficient and capable and qualified. As a retired
high school math teacher, she knows her way around teenagers, and she has high
expectations of what we can accomplish, even as young people. I’ll put it this
way, where I never have to suppress
an urge to hug her, I often have
occasion to compliment her on her matter-of-fact effectiveness.
    “Anthony, it is
nice to see you. Thank you for being punctual.” She descends the narrow
stairway, her low heels clicking in time to carefully measured steps, looking
every bit the schoolteacher. Tonight her hair is fastened in a neat gray bun
perched on the