Of Saints and Sinners

Smoke made the entire second floor boy’s bathroom hazy and it stung my eyes that were already tinted red from not sleeping the night before. I looked over to my right when I heard someone cough and wheeze. Fucking freshman couldn’t handle the one drag from my buddy’s cigarette without nearly coughing his lungs up. Said he had asthma and shouldn’t even be in here. “Do you want to go get your inhaler and we can tell everyone that you pussed out after one puff or do you want to give asthma the bird and be cool? Like us?” I countered, cocking a pierced eyebrow.

The freshman squeaked, yanking the cigarette out of my hand that I’d lit and held out to him. He choked and sputtered smoke, his face going red from all the coughing. I laughed as I blew smoke out of my nose, it curled right into his face. One of my favorite past times was corrupting and soiling the freshman that came in every year. It was how I added to my crew, I figured out which ones could hang and which ones needed to skedaddle right on back to church. In my five years of being at this stupid ass Catholic boarding school, I had expanded my “group” to only five. No one else seemed to be able to handle the lifestyle I lead. I didn’t blame them, though; sometimes I was a little too wild for myself.

As the minutes passed, smoke seemed to take up the entire bathroom and was as thick as a morning fog. The room was sticky and humid; I could feel sheen of sweat start to gloss over my skin like one of those protectant seat covers my grandma used to put over her ugly ass furniture. I felt a bitter half smile curl and play at my lips as I thought of my gran. She had been the only one against sending me away to this hell hole. She was the only one who had ever been on my side, no matter what I’d done.

“Julian, I hear someone coming!” Jaime, the only Hispanic in a thousand mile radius of this place and my best friend, called over to me. His wide brown eyes flicked over to me and even through all the smoke, I could see the almost unnatural gloss that his wild eyes always held. His eyes were the gateway for him to get any skirt he wanted; morning, noon, and night.

I shrugged, blowing a ring of smoke up into the air. “Let ‘em come,” taking another drag from my cigarette I held in the smoke before releasing the smoke as I said “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been in trouble or anything. Besides, I think Sister Agatha is starting to dig me – if you know what I mean .” I snorted at my own joke, thinking of Sister Agatha’s many moles that seemed to have more hair on them than I had on my head all together. I wasn’t kidding completely though, as she often gave me these suggestive looks when she said she was going to have to punish me. That nun was one –

About that time, the bathroom door swung open to reveal a less than happy Sister Agatha. She looked like she was a fire breathing dragon, steam seemed to swirl from her nose and ears as she crossed her arms hatefully and even her moles seemed to stare in distaste. “Julian Pierce! Headmaster’s office. NOW,” she roared, reaching over to turn the bathroom fan on. Smoke was moving out into the hallway now, making it easier to see and breathe in the cramped bathroom.

I walked out of the door, being sure to drop my cigarette right by Sister Agatha and stomp it out with the heel of my boot. She scoffed, pushing me down the corridor. “And as for the rest of you, detention and Saturday school for a month!” she squawked. I thought she’d let me walk to the Headmaster’s office by myself, but I was wrong. Instead she pulled me down the hallway by my elbow and even though I was taller than her, my feet were fumbling along under me as I had a hard time keeping up with her long, quick strides. Her meaty, greasy sausage fingers dug into my arm like the talons of a vulture.

“You should be ashamed of yourself, Julian! Ashamed!” she scolded me over and over again as we made our way down a seemingly endless corridor. Pictures of Jesus and Mary that hung on every open space of the walls blurred together and seemed to stare at me with distaste. I sighed as she went on; I’d heard this speech before. She’d tell me I needed to be ashamed of myself and if my parents weren’t being incredibly generous and paying the school enough tuition for five children just for me, I’d be kicked out of this school too.

“Julian Pierce, you ought to know that if your parents weren’t such good people and at their wits end with you and paying such hefty tuition fees, you would be out of Our Lady of the Mountains this very instance!” she spewed predictably. I rolled my eyes as we finally came to a stop outside of the headmaster’s door. The lettering on the door was fresh, as a new headmaster had just been hired. I fucked the last headmaster’s wife at a school event and he was so humiliated after the divorce was final, he coincidently got transferred to some Christian school in Milwaukee. The new headmaster was also the new father of our church that was located on campus; we were supposed to call him Father Lukas.

Sister Agatha swung the dark stained wood door open so hard it slammed on the wall behind it, causing the new headmaster to jump nearly out of his skin and knock his stack of Bibles he gave away to problem children off his heavy, weathered wooden desk. “Father Lukas, I’d like to introduce you to Julian Pierce. You’ll probably be seeing a lot of him in your office until he graduates. If he graduates,” she huffed, motioning for me to sit in one of the well broken in chairs. It was my chair, the one I sat in every time I was in this office. It had the perfect imprint of my ass in it and may as well have had my name branded onto it.

The headmaster shot me a watered down smile and shook his head in slight disapproval. “It’s my first day here and we already have discipline problems, Sister?” he asked, motioning his head towards me.

Agatha hummed under her breath and mumbled a slight prayer under her breath; I was really testing her today. “Of course we do, Father. Julian Pierce is a thorn in my side and if there’s ever a day that he isn’t causing a problem, it’ll be the day that – excuse my language – Hell has frozen over!” she cawed, sounding like an old crow.

“Sister, you’re too cruel to this boy. Mr. Pierce, was it?” he asked and when I nodded in response, he continued “Mr. Pierce, what is it that you’ve done that has Sister Agatha so upset?” He had large, brown eyes that seemed to sink into his head and a large nose with a bump in it. I couldn’t stop staring at the bump.

I opened my mouth to speak to tell him that clearly, Sister was overreacting and needed to get her panties out of a wad. Before I could, though, of course Agatha had to cut in garishly with “He was smoking in the second floor boy’s bathroom! Smoke was flooding into the hallway under the crack in the door! There were children with asthma in there! You know that smoking is prohibited not only in educational facilities but is highly frowned upon in our holy institute.”

Father Lukas shook his head and made a clicking with his tongue. “Is this true, young brother?” he questioned, looking to me for conformation or for me to defend myself. I simply nodded; there was no use in lying my way out of it. I reeked of cigarette smoke and my eyes were still rimmed red from all the heavy smoke.

Sighing, the middle aged man laced his fingers together and stared at me with pity in his eyes. “Mr. Pierce, I regret that this is true, but I do appreciate you for being honest instead of trying to lie to me. Honesty is highly respected in not only my eyes, but God’s.” I inwardly rolled my eyes and sighed as he got off on a babbling speech about how God was righteous and would lead me along the right path if I let him. Finally, I heard a word that was most associated with my name ‘punishment.’

“Your punishment, since you were honest with me and seem deep down like you’re a good young man,” his last statement made Sister Agatha snort and he shot her a dirty look, “I will only sentence you to mandatory youth group meetings and you must attend every our church service every Sunday and Wednesday evening for three months. I hope this won’t really be a punishment, but I will expect to see you at every service. I’ll know if you attend or not. If you do not, I will unfortunately be required to extend and harden your punishment. You may leave now, Mr. Pierce, have a blessed day.”

I nodded and grunted, not bothering to reply to him. I pushed past Sister Agatha and slammed the door behind me, rattling a picture of the last supper on my way out. Jaime jumped out around the corner at me, causing me to nearly jump out of my damn skin. “What the fuck, wet back?” I swore, calling him by a seemingly offensive name, but was really a term of endearment between the two of us.

Jaime laughed and shot me a crooked smile, showing off a pair of metallic braces. He was probably the only kid older than fifteen with a pair of braces, but he liked them and had actually refused to have them taken off. “Ay, punta, que tal?” he questioned, speaking in Spanish just to aggravate me. I knew what he meant, but he always laughed when I refused to respond to him because I paid fuck all attention in Spanish class freshman and sophomore years.

“I fucking got bible thumped,” I responded, taking a cigarette out of Jaime’s outstretched hand and lighting it as we walked outside to the court yard, the underclassmen staring in awe as we carelessly ignored the fact that we were smoking on school property. They knew who we were, but they hadn’t yet learned that Jaime Garcia and Julian Pierce couldn’t be bothered to give a damn about what anyone said.

“What do you mean, man?” Jaime asked, blowing smoke right in the face of a staring freshman. The freshman coughed, running off with his nerd heard in toe. The breeze was blowing, making the smoke waft right in the direction of other students who only sneered at us. Jaime flipped them off and turned back to me.

“I mean that that new fucking headmaster, Father whatever the fuck his name was, has made my punishment fucking retarded. I have to attend every church service and youth group meeting there is for three goddamn months. If I don’t, he’ll probably try to exorcise the demons out of me. Or worse, ship me off back home to my parents. I would rather be in Hell than go back home to that bullshit, especially when they’re paying close to a hundred thousand a year for me to stay at this gay ass place. They’d really be pissed if I got expelled from here too,” I explained, stealing another smoke from Jaime’s back pocket.

“Damn, Julian, that fucking sucks. All I got was a week’s worth of detention and two weeks of Saturday school,” he replied, handing me his pink slip to show me. Jaime wasn’t nearly as bad as I was; he tried to be somewhat well behaved, as his home life was almost as bad as or worse than my own. This place might have sucked, but there would have been nothing worse than getting expelled and shipped back home.

I sighed, blowing more smoke into the wind. “Think they’ll let me wear my motorcycle boots to church?” I asked absentmindedly as a cynical joke, knowing that the next three months were going to be some of the worst of my life. Bible thumpers and church were two of my least favorite things and I was getting ready to plunge into the depths of both.