In the
Beginning
©2008 The Angst Guy (theangstguy@yahoo.com)
Feedback (good, bad, indifferent, just want to bother me,
whatever) is appreciated. Please write to: theangstguy@yahoo.com
Synopsis: Brittany Taylor is hiding a guilty pleasure. How
will people react when they discover what she’s been doing, and how long will
she keep lying about it?
Author’s Notes: This Daria
story began as an entry in a May 2003 Iron Chef contest
on PPMB. MMan asked for stories about guilty pleasures, secret things that
certain characters in the Dariaverse did that they enjoyed.
Acknowledgements: Thanks to MMan for the contest.
*
In the beginning was the word, the word
That from the solid bases of the light
Abstracted all the letters of the void;
And from the cloudy bases of the breath
The word flowed up, translated to the heart
First characters of birth and death.
—Dylan Thomas, “In the Beginning”
In the
beginning, it was easy to lie about it. Later, it wasn’t.
“Dad?
Ashley-Amber?”
“In the
kitchen, Brittany.”
“Is Dad
around?”
“No,
he’s still at work. You going out?”
“Yeah.
I’ll be back about nine, nine-thirty.”
“Cheerleading
again?”
“Uh, no,
not really. I’m not a cheerleader anymore. I graduated.”
“Oh!
Stupid me. New guy?”
“Oh, um,
no. Just going out.”
“It’s
not that Kevin guy, is it?”
“No, we
broke up. It’s not him. I just want to go out, maybe shop or something.”
“Oh!
Okay! Drive safely!”
“Okay!
Bye!”
“Bye!”
The key
turned in the ignition of the white Mustang, a gift from her dad. The engine
roared, the garage door opened, and Brittany rolled down to the street, turned,
and headed out of Crewe Neck. She took with her a paper bag in the glove
compartment, her purse, and her guilt.
It was
impossible to shake a nagging guilt over what she had just done. She didn’t
feel guilty about what she was doing, actually, just guilty that she wasn’t
being honest about it with anyone. It was a big secret, what she had started
doing on Tuesday nights since mid-June after she’d graduated high school. It
was a secret because if everyone knew what she was doing, they’d . . . well,
they think she was even more stupid that they already thought she was, and that
would be pretty stupid indeed. It would make her unpopular with a lot of
people, maybe with everyone. Brittany had always been popular. What would she
have left if no one liked her?
However,
not being honest about where she was going was . . . well, it was a sin,
especially since she wasn’t being honest with her Dad or Ashley-Amber. That was
definitely a sin, even if Ashley-Amber wasn’t really her mother, but she was
Brittany’s stepmother and that was close enough.
Brittany
felt her face turn red, and she frowned. Distracted, she negotiated the streets
through Lawndale, heading for the west side. This was dumb. It was really dumb.
She knew she wasn’t the smartest person in Lawndale, the smartest person in
Crewe Neck, or even the smartest person in her family (her mother in Los
Angeles was the smartest, she suspected), but even so, she knew she was doing
something wrong when she lied like she had been lying. Some lies she told were
okay, of course, like if she lied to a guy about what a great lover he was, or
lied to Brian that she didn’t know why his pet mice kept disappearing, but that
was okay, no one got hurt. Lying about what she was doing now, however, was
just wrong.
She
swallowed, feeling bad. She’d have to ask about this tonight, definitely, after
the meeting. The light ahead of her turned red, and her Mustang rolled up to it
and stopped. Brittany reached over to her right and popped open the glove
compartment and reached in, pulled out a paper bag, and emptied it on the seat
beside her.
A small
Bible with a black leather cover slid out of the sack. Brittany tossed the
paper sack to the floor and put her hand on the Bible—her Bible, with her name
written on the inside after she secretly bought it at Books by the Ton a month
ago. She tried to will herself to feel better, but touching the Bible didn’t
help. She had been lying about attending Bible study classes for three weeks
now, and it was eating her alive.
“Well,
what difference does it make if anyone knows, anyway?” she abruptly said to the
red light. “I’m grown up enough that I can go to Bible study classes. I’m
learning a lot, and I’m not doing bad things, and I’ve made some good friends
who like me because I know stuff about life and not because they’re trying to
go out with me, I think, and I know all this really wild stuff about Genesis
now, all about God making the world in five days and creating the weekend, and
the Hanging Gardens of Eden, and the Leaning Tower of Baby-bibble
or something, whatever, and Noah’s Ark and all the animals except the dinosaurs
and aliens and stuff, and why he had to take even the gross things. I know a
lot now, so why should I be ashamed because I don’t want anyone to know I’m
going to a Bible study class? I don’t—”
She
reached up and wiped at her eyes. A car honked its horn behind her. She
realized she was talking to a green light and started through the intersection,
more embarrassed now. “Sorry!” she called to the car behind her, though its
driver couldn’t hear her.
She knew
pretty much why she was going to Bible study. Her life had changed too much
lately, and it was uncertain and loose and scary now. She broke up with Kevin
weeks ago, but she still sometimes wanted to see him. Ashley-Amber always
reminded her that it was no good seeing a guy who wasn’t going to college like
she was, which was what Brittany had said to Ashley-Amber in the first place
but now Brittany wasn’t remembering her own advice so well. She had all sorts
of guys who wanted to go out with her, guys from other schools even, but even
with all that she was lonely and sad and felt lousy most of the time. She
wasn’t the happy, perky Brittany she used to be. At least Kevin knew her enough
to cheer her up, so it was hard to keep away from the phone so she didn’t call
him and ask him over or go see him, but she was doing fairly well so far, most
days.
And
college was coming. College scared her, though it didn’t used to scare her when
she applied to Great Prairie State and got accepted with the other
cheerleaders. After graduation, Brittany began to think too much about college,
even though she knew thinking too much would lead to trouble. She couldn’t help
herself. The more she thought about it, the worse she felt.
College
was really for smart people like Brittany’s former classmate, Daria
Morgendorffer, who knew an incredible amount of stuff that made her an
incredible brain even if it made her miserable sometimes, too. Once she was in
college, Brittany would learn a lot of stuff, too, and she was afraid it would
make her miserable like it had made Daria miserable. “It’s not good to know too
much!” Ashley-Amber liked to say, but sometimes it was not good to not know too
much. Brittany frowned. Had she gotten that right? She went through it again.
Yeah, it sounded right, sort of. Even if knowing stuff made you feel bad, it
was sometimes better to know the truth, like the way Brittany knew her dad was
working late because he was seeing someone at his office, his secretary with
the long black hair and big bust, and Ashley-Amber didn’t know that but
Brittany wouldn’t tell her because . . . well, she couldn’t. It was better,
sort of, to know what was really going on, though knowing what her dad was
doing made Brittany feel rotten and ashamed and terrible. He was her dad, after
all, and he shouldn’t be messing around with someone else when he had
Ashley-Amber, who was sweet and tried to do mom kinds of things and really
liked Brittany and even tried hard to like her little brother Brian, who wasn’t
easy to love or like or even tolerate for a short while.
“Damn
it!” Brittany said, because she was going to cry and she couldn’t afford to get
teary while she was trying to get to Lawndale County Christian Church for her
Bible study class. She was only halfway there, but her vision was all blurry,
so she pulled over to the side of the road near a warehouse and found a
handkerchief in her purse and wiped her eyes clear. Now, two blocks ahead of
her, the railroad signals at Twelfth Avenue began flashing. She groaned and
briefly considered gunning the engine and racing through the crossing, but she
had seen a picture once of a car that tried that, and it didn’t look like a car
anymore. She didn’t want to know what the driver had looked like, after.
Brittany
put the Mustang in park and turned off the engine and waited, hearing the train
horn blare across the late afternoon sky. She had plenty of time to get to the
church for her class, but she had hoped to get there a little early and ask Dr.
Martinson about whether it was a sin to lie about going to Bible study. She
sighed and reached for her Bible. It was light in her hands, and she flipped
through its pages: Numbers, Judges, Kings, a bunch of long names she couldn’t
pronounce, Luke, John, a bunch more names she couldn’t pronounce. She had never
read anything much in it, since the last time she’d been in church had been, um
. . . a long time. In the last three weeks, though, she’d read more Bible stuff
than she’d ever imagined possible—and they weren’t even out of Genesis yet.
She
flipped the Bible shut. It was stupid to even ask Dr. Martinson if lying was a
sin, and she knew it. She had to stop lying about it sometime and just tell
everyone where she was going. And when she did, her dad would just . . . and
Ashley-Amber would . . . they’d . . . they might . . .
Brittany
shook her head, her eyes closed. No, they wouldn’t understand. The train horn blared louder, still some distance off but coming.
Her dad would blow up. She knew it. He’d say, Why the hell do you need to go to a Bible study class? Whatever possessed
you to do something dumb like that? Her dad said he loved her, but he
didn’t know her and when he couldn’t figure her out, he called her dumb. She
would say, Dad, I just had so much on my
mind with school out and Kevin and I breaking up and college coming and—
No, couldn’t say anything about his cheating —and all kinds of stuff, and my head hurts
and I just have to think about things and it helps me to think about things
when I go to Bible study. It makes me feel better, you know? But her dad
didn’t know. He would never understand. You
don’t need it! he’d say. Go see Kevin
or someone else, go to a party, have something to drink, but stop this stupid
class!
Thinking
about this extremely likely scenario, Brittany had a gut feeling that if she
talked about the Bible, it would scare her dad even more than going to college
scared Brittany.
And
Ashley-Amber was really sweet and lots of fun, but she would be all confused. Why do you want to go to church, Brittany?
she’d ask, even after Brittany had explained that to
her dad, and Brittany would say, You
remember when Dad had that big party for me last year, and he gave me that big
crystal glass cheerleader’s bullhorn, but Quinn Morgendorffer leaned on that
music thinger and the shrieking noise made the crystal bullhorn break? I was
really bummed, but I thought about it and I wondered if maybe it was for a
reason, you know? Like maybe God or someone wanted to show me that the bullhorn
wasn’t so important, even if Dad spent a lot of money on it for me, and maybe
other things were more important, which I know now is true, like—
No, she
couldn’t go any further. She would be about to mention her dad’s cheating
again, which was definitely more important than a crystal bullhorn getting
smashed, but she couldn’t talk about it with anyone, especially not
Ashley-Amber. Or her dad. Or anyone else.
The
train horn was ten times as loud now, much closer.
And
Brian. Brittany shook her head again, looking out of her car to the side. Brian
wouldn’t understand at all. He was into dumb boy stuff like knives and guns and
shooting things and blowing stuff up, and he was also into experimenting on pets
and other animals in really bad ways, and Brittany had to watch him like a
hawk, even more than she used to watch Kevin to make sure he didn’t cheat on
her. Brittany had freed lots of little animals from Brian’s room and let them
run away outside, but she had been too late sometimes to save others and when
that happened, it was awful. Her dad was thinking about taking Brian to see a
doctor about this, but he never did anything, even when Ashley-Amber saw one of
the failed experiments and freaked out and screamed and cried rivers and
complained to her dad about it, too.
Brittany
rubbed her forehead. She was getting a headache, and the train’s ear-blasting
horn was getting on her last nerve.
When
would she be able to tell her dad and Ashley-Amber about her Bible study class?
When would she tell anyone, and stop lying? She had started the classes because
she was curious and wanted to get her life sorted out and thought the classes
would help, and they had turned out to be fun, lots more fun than she’d imagined,
but she was so afraid of what others would think of her, now it wasn’t so much
fun. How was she going to work this mess out?
The
Mustang vibrated all over from the approaching train’s thunder. Brittany picked
up her Bible and opened it and read the first thing she saw. The book opened at
the place where Brittany had found Psalm 23, which she had heard before on TV
or maybe the radio, and she had marked the page with the built-in bookmarker.
However,
it was the Psalm before that that caught her eye, Psalm 22, which began: My
God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?
The
train shot through the crossing two blocks ahead of her, rumbling Brittany’s
insides and her bones and her head as it went.
Where are you, God? Brittany thought,
staring at the passage. Where are you?
Can you bail me out of this? Can you make everything okay for me? I’m so afraid
everyone will laugh at me, or call me stupid, or make me quit going, or . . .
Brittany’s
thoughts faded. She read on, struggling with unfamiliar words and strange
phrases: But be not Thou far from me, O Lord: O my strength, haste thee to
help me. . . . Save me from the lion’s mouth. . . .
The book
fell shut in her hands.
Whoever
wrote Psalm 22 had felt just like she was feeling now. Alone. Abandoned. About
to be made ashamed of doing something she thought was good, which seemed as bad
as being eaten by lions, sort of.
Psalm 22
had no solution that she could pick out.
But the
writer had understood her.
Brittany
sniffed and put her Bible aside. The long, loud train had passed. The crossing
ahead was clear.
“I’ll
tell Dad and Ashley-Amber tonight,” she said aloud. If her Dad wasn’t home,
she’d tell Ashley-Amber first, since she might have to explain this a bit, but
she wouldn’t mention what her dad was doing late at the office. If her dad
wouldn’t listen when she told him, fine. She could deal with it. She’d still
go.
Maybe
Ashley-Amber would go with her to Bible study next time. She probably wouldn’t,
but it was worth asking. If she ever found out about her husband’s fooling
around, she might want to go to Bible study just to find out what to do about
it.
Brittany
started her car. She would tell the truth tonight when she got home. For the
first time in weeks, she didn’t feel guilty about the only pleasure she had
left to her, this last summer in Lawndale.
She only
hoped Dr. Martinson wouldn’t be mad at her for skipping ahead in the book. They
weren’t supposed to read past Genesis yet. Maybe he would understand, too,
though. It was about time that somebody did.
Original: 05/18/03; modified 07/22/06, 09/22/06,
10/02/06, 10/23/08
FINIS