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Chapter One- I See A Light, A Crazy One

“Amen,” Pastor Josh announced proudly after his hour long prayer.
“Amen!” I repeated, not because I agreed with what he said, because I didn’t even really know, but because his prayer was finally over.
My mom gave me one of those ‘Don’t you start somethin’, boy’ glare as she stood up and stretched.
“I’ll meet you in the foyer,” she told me. To me, back then, it meant, ‘Ha! See you after the pastor yells at you!’
I always had respect for my mom; it’s just that sometimes she seemed so mysterious. I guess that we never had much quality time together. She had to work almost all the time. My mom worked as a maid at this rich guy’s mansion. For all that he had around his waist, he lacked for in humility. But don’t think because she worked that I didn’t have to either. I had to work at home and tend to our own farm. Plus, sometimes I would work on old man’s farm. The old man was really nice; sometimes he would give me crops and milk to take home for free. Man, that guy was the closest thing to a father that I ever had, even though he was near fifty years in age.
All of that work was due to my real father. He abandoned me and my mom when I was just three months old. Or was I younger than that? I don’t know. In fact, I don’t even remember it. But I swore vengeance on it. I was going to make my father go through the pain that he had put me and my mom through. Or at least, I really wanted to. That idea was unrealistic.
But back to my mom.
I can’t complain much at all; she only worked so much so that we could have food to eat and so that she could support me as a growing child. I loved my mother a lot and cared for her too, but she just didn’t tell me that much about herself, her past.
She was doing me a favor.
“Alright,” I responded to her remark stoically, quietly. To others, I might have seemed a little on the shy side, but my friends knew better than that. Friends? Can I even call them friends? I didn’t have one for more than a month. My supposed friends always said that something was strange about me. And they always had some kind of bad influence on me that left eternal, emotional scars. Some would hang out with me for a week, and then scream at me, saying that I was a weirdo and often cussing me out. But they were my only promise of life.
At least, so it seemed.
But I did have one friend who hung out with me often and didn’t ditch me. And that was Ginny Miller. She was a great friend until... one day.
After about an hour of waiting, and by an hour, I mean at the most ten minutes, Pastor Josh signaled for me to come to him. I got up from the back pew I was sitting on slowly, stretched, and shuffled my feet towards him. I was not looking forward to this ‘big talk’ that he wanted to have with me. Not at all.
We walked to his office in silence. Once we got there, which didn’t even take a minute (the church was so small), he gestured for me to go in first. I walked through and sat down in the chair that I had come to know very well. It was a chair made of oak wood that had deep blue padding for the sitter’s butt and back. He then came in, walked past me, and sat behind his desk. His desk sure was clean. I wondered how and why he kept it that way. Pastor crossed his hands on his desk in very a formal way. I sat there, slouched and definitely unimpressed.
“Gerad,” he started.
“Pastor.” I smiled him a meek, little smile, as if to say, ‘Hiya!’ He smiled back one of those yeah-your-a-pain-in-my-butt-let’s-just-get-this-over-with-even-I-have-better-things-to-do smiles. Just priceless, I know.
“Well, I hope you went through those flash cards that I gave you last week.”
Flash cards? What flash cards? Oh right. Those flash cards that he gave me last week and told me that he was going to test me on next week. Wow. Those seven days sure went fast. Perhaps too fast
“Let’s begin, Gerad.” He flipped through a deck of cards, almost as if he was deciding my fate or something. “Alright who were the first humans to be ever created by God?”
“Um” A thought crossed my mind but unfortunately didn’t reach to my reflexes. Run, Gerad! Run for your life! “Bert and Moses? Maybe?” Gosh. I sure was a stupid thirteen-year-old. Five year olds could’ve answered that question.
“No.” He gave me a stern look like he was trying to read my mind to see if I had gone through the cards or not. I just sat there like an ant stuck under a magnifying glass light beam. Or maybe more like an ant frozen in an ice cube.
“So the answer?” I asked in a tiny voice, trying to be as small as possible.
Pastor just kept staring at me. I’m pretty sure that he had high blood pressure and needed to calm down. He closed his eyes for a second and breathed out slowly. Then, he opened his eyes to meet mine.
“You know Gerad, forget the flash cards. I’m only going to ask you one question.”

“Yeah?”
“Gerad, in all seriousness, who was the guy that died on a cross for all of our sins and then rose three days later by the power of God? He’s God’s son,” he asked me. I’m sure glad that I know the answer to that now, and as I look back on this, I realize just how confused and stupid I really was.
“Moses?”
“Forget Moses for now.”
“Then who was he?”
“Forget Moses, you idiot child!” he yelled.
Jeez. Just calm down, why don’t you?
He let out another huge sigh to calm himself down.
“Try again,” he continued.
“Um, Eve?”
“Son,” he repeated for me. Just for me.
“Oh. Adam,” I concluded.
“So now you can answer my first question?”
“What?”
“Never mind. Just continue.”
“Moses? Yeah, Moses!”
“Jesus!!!” he screamed. Someone was angry.
“You know, it’s against the Ten Commandments to swear like that,” I said in a know-it-all tone. Of course, that was about one of the only things I knew. That and solely the name Moses.
“The answer is Jesus,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “Idiot, Gerad,” he then whispered to himself. Or at least, he tried to. But he was so mad that I heard his whisper anyway. I just presumed the position of sitting in my chair, clenching to the armrests in unconscious fear.
He sighed. “Because you failed that question, I’ll give you another one.”
When he looked down to think of a question, I secretly rolled my eyes at him.
After a moment of silence that felt like it could’ve been my eternity, he finally asked me, “Gerad, who created mankind such as you and me and your mother?”
“God; I’m not that stupid!”
“So, God created mankind?”
“No, Moses did.”
He buried his head in his hands, utterly ashamed of me and my response. I think that he was trying his best to remain calm. The keyword being trying.
“No, Gerad. God created mankind,” he corrected me. “You can leave now.” Pastor Josh said this through clenched teeth, and even back then I could tell how stupid I was. I just didn’t know how to fix that fact.
“See ya,” I said in a happy tone, really joyful that I was finally let free.
“Wait, Gerad,” Pastor said as my foot reached outside the door. He was beginning to calm down.
“So close...” I muttered to myself. Turning around to see Pastor Josh, I noticed that he looked really sad about something. I couldn’t tell what it was.
“Yes?” I asked in a false happy tone, as best as I could manage.
“Gerad, I want you to promise me something. Something that’s been laid upon me to ask of you.”
“Yeah? Well, let the cat out, por favor.” I smiled at myself, proud to have used some of my Spanish knowledge for the first time outside of school.
“Promise me that you won’t give up. That with whatever’s tossed your way, you won’t give up. Will you promise me that?”
I bit my lip, thinking about my response and what would happen if I did promise him that I wouldn’t ever give up.
“Why?” I logically asked the question that was bugging me the most.
“Because I believe that it will help you become a better person. Promise me, your pastor. It’s not like you have to tell the world. You don’t even have to tell your mother.” The look in his eyes had a begging; even though his voice covered the desperation, his eyes showed it all.
He pulled out a cross from his desk drawer and held it in his hand.
“Gerad,” he dangled the cross from his index finger to show me, the cross resting in his lower palm, “this was my cross throughout my teen years. My mother gave it to me the day before she died. She received it from her pastor. This cross became my comfort throughout the time I spent without a mother. The cross still is my comfort, but I know that God’s always with me now. And I want you to have this cross. Perhaps it will help you out. But promise me that you won’t give up, because God’s always there for you. It’ll remind you that God’s with you and that you can’t give up. It’ll be a symbol of your promise to God. Please? God really needs you...”
“Alright. I promise.” I stood up and took the cross from him gently. It shone brightly in the light leaking through his window behind his desk. I could make out some strange inscriptions on its surface, although I had no idea what it said, and it had a gorgeous gem in the middle of it. The cross itself was a rusty brown color, like sepia, and the gem in it was a light shade of gray. It looked strange, the gem, and I wondered about it for a moment. But my curiosity was taken over by my desire of wanting to leave.
I looked up to Pastor Josh, and he smiled one of his priceless smiles at me. He was stern, but only because he cared so much. And as I think back on it, he was a wonderful man, brilliant, wise, and right with God.
“Well, uh, bye?” I said. Well, more like I asked.
“See ya, Kaheen.” That was his pet name for me. Of course, it was just my last name.
I walked out of Pastor’s office, and I put the cross around my neck. A happy sort of feeling washed over me. I turned around to look at my pastor. He smiled me, but I could see remorse in his eyes, a kind of sad vibe around him. It was so bizarre.
I walked down the hallway that led to the foyer of the church where my mom would be waiting for me. Remembering the cross, I took it and hid it in my pocket. It made one less thing for my mom to worry about.
On my way down the hall, I contemplated all that I was told and had seen. But I was disrupted when my half-friend, Ginny Miller, came walking up to me. I saw her as I turned a corner and we met in the hallway, which was very close to where my mom was waiting.
She stepped in front of me, stopping me from getting to my mother.
“So, how’s it goin’?” she questioned me with a semi-peppy tone.
“Nothin’ much is going on. I’m just tired.” It was true. I wanted to go home and sleep, but I had our farm to tend to when I got home; the animals, the crops, I had to tend to everything. All of the crops were beginning to ripen, and I had to feed the animals and get milk and eggs and wool from the cows, chickens, and sheep. Fun, am I right?
“Oh. Well, I’ll see you in school, I guess.”
“Yeah.” I lowered my head. School? I didn’t want to think about school.
“Gerad?” She put her hand on my shoulder.
“Uh, yes?” I responded, wary as to why her hand fell on me. I looked up to her through long tuffs of brown bangs. My mom should’ve given me a hair cut sooner.
“I feel funny,” she muttered, almost whispering. She shook her head kind of slowly, as if trying to shake off a bad omen.
“Are you ok?” I felt real concern for her. She was the only true friend I had, so I did everything in my power to watch over her, even though she never knew. My senses suddenly became alert, sharp. I thought that she was going to faint.
She shook her head slowly again, as if she was in denial. I saw her shake violently for a split second, but it ended before I could comprehend anything that had happened.
“I’m fine,” she responded. “I’m fine, Gerad.”
She looked up, and our eyes locked. A cold chill was sent down my spine.
“I’m fine,” she reassured me.
I realized then that I was grasping her shoulders in an eagles grip, and released her quickly, embarrassed. Looking down, blushing, I apologized to her.
“It’s ok,” was her response to my asinine behavior.
There was a break of silence as we both stood there with nothing to say.
“Well, not to repeat myself, but see you in school tomorrow,” she remarked, breaking the silence and releasing me to go home.
“Yeah. See ya.” I waved my hand, nodded at her, and then made the endeavor towards my mother again. Finally, I reached the end of the hall and walked out into the foyer. It was ghost quiet.
I looked around, hoping to see my mom. Not only did I look once, but twice, three times. She wasn’t there. The only thing that made sense to me was that she had left for work already in fear that she would be late. Her boss would fire her if she was late. This wasn’t the first time my mom left without me. She did this multiple times, and I had had multiple conferences with the pastor previous times. She was at work, and I was still at the church.
I walked to the exit slowly. For whatever reason, I turned around and eyed the beautiful church. I could visualize all the people talking conversing, laughing. I saw the foyer filled with everyone and their neighbor. When I was done, I realized that my vision was improbable. No way would that ever happen to our tiny church.
I’m ashamed to admit it, but I felt like crying at that moment. It was like all my closed up feelings and emotions wanted to burst out, with my consultation or not. But they needed to. Too many times I hid what I was really feeling from everyone. My ego was huge; no way I’d let anyone see me cry.
The feeling of remorse washed over me as I simply stood there envisioning the scene, the people. I hung my head low to the ground, and began to sob quietly. The hidden emotions flooded out of me.
“No,” I told myself. “I don’t cry.” I wiped my eyes dry and then drew a quivering breath. “Settle,” I whispered in the empty foyer, my soft voice bouncing off the walls and reverting back to my ears.
Standing there, I tried to rid myself of the emotions and calm down. That is, I stood there until I heard footsteps pierce the ghostly silent air. Whether it was Ginny or Pastor Josh or whoever else, I didn’t want anybody to see me crying in the church. I didn’t want anybody to question me, anybody’s sympathy. That just wasn’t like me. I never wanted attention brought to the multiple issues I had in my messed up little life. I was tough and strong-willed, even a little quiet and shy.
I went out the door quickly, so as to make sure that no one saw me. Pride surrounded me as a kid that age, and it was a phobia of mine to let anyone see me cry.
As soon as I rushed out the door, a wave of bad odors of New York City blasted in my face. Uhg. Sure, I was used to it, but that didn’t mean that I liked the smell. It was full of cigarette smoke and smog, sewage, and the smells from all of the fast food joints around the city. The smell almost made me gag. New York City sure had a lot of pollution. Gross? Gross is an understatement.