Faking Faith Read online

  But as I read further, I found I was wrong. Of course, the problems the sheltered readers wrote about to Abigail were sort of adorable, but it seemed there was still plenty to fret over even in this protected and seemingly clear-cut culture.

  Q: How can I be sure that my skirt is modest enough for a church event?

  Q: I would like to have a feminine countenance that pleases the Lord, but I don’t want to defraud boys or men. How much makeup should I wear?

  Q: How can I practice godly submission before I’m married?

  I’d gasped when I read that last one, shocked to see how they viewed gender roles in such black-and-white terms. We’re talking, like, “yes, sir” submission. Men are the bosses and women are the helpers. There is a master and a servant, a leader and a follower. The world is that simple.

  At the breakfast table, I glanced across at Mom, who was scowling at her screen and cussing under her breath. Attractive in a kicky middle-aged woman sort of way, Mom didn’t take shit from anyone. Least of all Dad, if their occasional yelling matches in the basement were any indication. I knew exactly what she would say about this submission philosophy, and it would involve her manicured middle finger.

  But even as I was vaguely grossed out by what my bloggers said, I was still fascinated by them. Every last thing about these girls was interesting. From the modest dressing to the gigantic families to the homeschooling to the fact that every single one of them had the same exact goal in life: to get married and have mini-busses full of children. No college or boyfriends or unfortunate incidences with webcam pictures. No choices or chances to screw up.

  They were so different from me. And they were so …

  happy.

  And finally, after two months of avid blog-stalking, I had actually worked up the courage to quit being a lurker. I’d posted a question on Abigail’s site. My sad, pathetic query was,

  Q: What do I do if I made a terrible mistake that I can’t talk about and now I’m very lonely?

  Sincerely, Faith

  FOUR

  My family is not religious. I’m pretty sure that

  neither side of my family has been religious for at least three generations.

  As far as I can tell, the only thing my parents believe in is the doctrine of workaholism and the virtues of an occasional fancy vacation. My grandfathers both worship at the Church of Golf, First United Congregation of Florida. One grandma plays shuffleboard at a practically professional level and the other one painstakingly redecorates her house every six months.

  Basically, no one in my family is interested in pondering the deeper questions of human existence. They like to amass all their possessions in peace, without thinking much about it or where they’ll go when they’re done. And I hadn’t thought much about religion either, except as something other people did on Sundays instead of sleeping in, until I found Abigail.

  Because, clearly, here was a very happy person who had something I did not have.

  So that’s why I chose the name “Faith” for my good girl nom de plume. It was as different from my own boyish name as possible, and it had a good ironic ring to it. As if I knew what the hell “faith” meant.

  Dearest Faith (Abigail posted on her site in mid-February, a week after I had submitted my question in the comments),

  Don’t despair! You know you’ll never be lonely if you fully allow our Lord and Savior into your heart. Call to Him whenever you feel empty and He will fill you up to the brim with joy. Serve your beloved family, find ways to purpose to help even more than you already do in your home. Make yourself a dedicated tool of the Lord. Sit and pray on the Word and turn yourself entirely over to Him. I promise you that you’ll never be lonely again!

  Blessings,

  Abigail

  After I got over the initial thrill of being publicly acknowledged, I laughed at her advice. Well, how easy! If reading the Bible and helping with housework was what it took, why hadn’t I solved all my own problems long ago?

  Perhaps because there wasn’t a Bible in my house and our housekeeper, Mrs. Kowalski, got pissed off every time I tried to help clean up. Mrs. Kowalski was perpetually worried about getting downsized by my parents, and she had shooed me away from rinsing off dishes or trying to figure out the vacuum the few times I’d attempted it.

  I stared at Abigail’s response for a long time, excited to see my words on her page, but also aware that this was the point at which I should make the choice to let this go. I could decide that my odd obsession had gone on long enough, that it had reached a somewhat logical conclusion, and that it was time for me to stop being so … weird.

  Maybe I could find a new hobby, like knitting or walking dogs at the animal shelter or trying to somehow put back together the semblance of a normal social life. Or perhaps I could convince my parents to send me to boarding school far away, where I could start over and pray that no one would ever Google me.

  But instead of any of those sane things, I found myself typing out a response in Abigail’s comments section.

  Dearest Abigail,

  Thank you for your encouraging words. You blessed me greatly. I will purpose to call to our Lord and serve my family whenever I am lonely. You are so full of Godly counsel!

  In His name,

  Faith

  I’d been reading these blogs for months and knew exactly how to word my reply to Abigail. It was a little scary how easily it came out of me.

  . . .

  After Abigail had posted my question and responded to it, unknowingly reinforcing my addiction, I fell face-first into my fundamentalist Christian homeschooled girl blog habit. I checked the sites like a drug addict looking for a fix, absorbing everything I could about their lives, pouring over pictures and links and Bible studies like it was my sole purpose on this planet.

  It’s not like I had anything else to do.

  And being acknowledged by one of them made me want even more. I wanted to be part of things, not just an anonymous voyeur or random commentator. I wanted to be known to them. I wanted to go deeper and further.

  And, in my mind, the logical way to achieve that was for me to set up my own blog.

  Not as myself. Not as Dylan Mahoney, Known Slut and Psycho Window Smasher. What nice girl would ever want to read her blog?

  But as Faith, my perfect alter ego.

  Faith … Faith … Faith.

  Faith had a lovely, wholesome life. She lived on a farm in southern Wisconsin with her three brothers and five sisters. Of course, Faith was homeschooled, loved to wear only dresses, and her favorite things to do were bake sourdough bread from scratch and study the Bible. Just like every other good fundamentalist girl, Faith fervently hoped that someday a godly man would ask her daddy if he could court and marry her.

  I snickered as I wrote that.

  “You girls don’t know how good you have it,” I muttered to my silent dark blue bedroom as I wrote my fake autobiography. After being chewed up and tossed aside by Blake, the idea of a genteel, parent-guided courtship was hilarious. And kind of weirdly appetizing.

  Once I had Faith’s blog set up, I decided that I needed a photo to really give it that personal touch. But not a stolen picture of some random stranger on the Internet. Everyone knows that trying to fake a photo online eventually leads to someone out there recognizing the ruse and exposing the lie. And this particular online world was small and insular—I had one shot to do this right. The picture had to actually be of me.

  I searched through my closet for a while and realized I had nothing appropriate to wear for such a photo. These girls only wore demure, dowdy dresses and skirts, and everything I owned was too tight or dark-colored or modern. So I went to the thrift stores looking for outfits.

  Even though I went alone, it was the most fun I’d had in months. I pretended Abigail was there with me, looking through the clothes and deciding which outfits were modest and proper. Together, we finally found one that worked.

  . . .

  “Wait, why am I doing
this again?” Scottie asked, holding my digital camera.

  We were in the family room after school one Tuesday in early March. I was sitting in an armchair, attired in my recently acquired bleached-denim jumper that any girl in my school would rather die than be seen wearing. My dark hair was in a long braid over my shoulder instead of in its usual careless ponytail. I’d added a touch of pale pink lip-gloss and subtracted the chipped blue polish from my fingernails. I was looking positively pure.

  “Because I’m paying you ten bucks,” I said to Scottie sweetly. “Now no more questions. Just take the picture, please.”

  “Man, you look weird,” Scottie said, aiming the camera. “Like a brainwashed Little House on the Prairie freakshow.”

  I crossed my legs at the ankle and smiled angelically for the camera.

  “That’s the idea, little brother,” I replied.

  Once I had a suitable picture, I felt like I could really get into character. I began to write Faith’s blog entries. First I created an introductory post, talking in detail about my fake family and my fake life and my fake beliefs. I filled out a back story, giving Faith a perfect rustic childhood.

  It was weirdly exhilarating, and ten times better than any of the therapy sessions I’d suffered through immediately after the nastiness with Blake.

  “I have the sweetest Mama and most amazing Daddy in the whole world!” I wrote, in my dark bedroom in my empty house. “They are the best examples of godly parents that I could have ever been blessed with.”

  Okay, the truth is, I did feel sort of squicked out by what I was doing at first. But as I wrote more, I convinced myself it was sort of like a creative writing project. Like for a class. It was educational! I was just making up a story about a girl and her life and posting it online. It wasn’t my business if other people believed it was fact.

  Right?

  After I had a few entries posted, I linked to my site in comments I left on other blogs, and eventually the girls started coming to my page. By April, I had thirty or forty visitors a day. At least a quarter of them left supportive, chatty comments.

  It made me laugh to think about how the rest of the visitors were probably big old voyeurs, like I had been, thinking that Faith was the real deal.

  The morning I got the first comment from Abigail on my blog, I walked around in a happy daze. No one could ruin it. Not even the person who wrote Dylan Mahoney = ugly skank ho on my locker with a permanent marker, in handwriting that looked suspiciously like Blake’s.

  I absolutely adore your site! Abigail wrote. What an encouraging maiden of virtue you are for your sisters in Christ. I wish you lived closer so we could fellowship in person! Please keep it up!

  It sort of felt like being touched by a god.

  . . .

  A few days after Abigail commented on my blog, Amanda walked up as I was staring at my locker. The custodian had scrubbed at the words, but you could still see the faint outline of “skank ho.”

  “Hi? Dylan?” Amanda said softly, hugging her bag to her chest. “I just wanted to ask are … um … are you doing okay? With everything?”

  I took a deep breath and looked at her, a hopeful lump forming in my throat. Amanda! She was talking to me for the first time in almost six months! Of her own free will!

  For a moment, it felt like a reconciliation was possible. That maybe if both of us said the right words in the right order, we could go back to how things were before I screwed up. The world could be normal.

  But then I saw Amanda throw an anxious glance over her shoulder, like she was afraid of who might be watching and judging, and my stomach twisted. She didn’t actually want to be seen with me. I was still disgusting. I was still an exile.

  “Whatever,” I said, slamming my locker and turning to leave. “It’s fine. You don’t have to act like you care. Really.”

  I walked away slowly, waiting for Amanda to call me back. To say she did care and that she wasn’t afraid of being my friend again, no matter what had happened or how much of a mess I’d made.

  But Amanda didn’t say anything, so I kept walking.

  FIVE

  Dad, how come we never go to church?” I asked, over pizza, on a rare Friday night when he was home in time to eat. Dad, Scottie, and I were standing around the kitchen island eating straight out of the box. Mom, of course, was at work late.

  “Huh?” Dad said, confused and only half listening, as he loosened his Important Lawyer tie with a grimace.

  “Did you ever go to church with Grandma and Granddad?” I asked. “Like, when you were a kid?”

  He squinted at me, his eyes tired. Dad’s eyes were almost always tired, unless he was contemplating baseball.

  “Church? What’s this about?”

  I shrugged. “Just curious.”

  Scottie took a moment away from inhaling his slice of thin crust. “It’s because she’s totally obsessed with—”

  I reached over and clapped my hand over his mouth. “It’s for an essay!” I said loudly. “For school.”

  Scottie spit some of his last bite of pizza against my hand.

  “Gross!” I said, mashing the food back into his mouth and wiping my hand on his shirt. This provided sufficient distraction for Dad to forget about what Scottie had said, if he’d even registered it at all.

  “Hey, hey, cut it out, guys,” he said wearily, as Scottie pushed me and I pushed him back. I decided that later on, I’d have to bribe Scottie to keep quiet permanently.

  After my brother and I had finished our customary shoving match, I brought the conversation back to the task at hand.

  “Seriously, though, did you go to church? I’d really like to know,” I said. “For the essay, I mean.”

  Dad shrugged. “Besides weddings and funerals, I guess I remember going once or twice, for Christmas or Easter, I think. But it was with my mom’s parents or great-aunt or something. I think we just went to be polite. Well, you know your grandparents. They aren’t exactly … ”

  “Observant? Pious?” I supplied. “Faithful?”

  Dad looked totally zoned out. “Whatever you want to call it.”

  Like I said, not too interested in pondering the deeper questions of human spirituality. Not even interested in talking about it for more than two sentences. Then something occurred to me.

  “So … are we not baptized?” I asked.

  Dad shrugged again. “When you don’t believe in those things, there isn’t much point to all that ritual.”

  “Wow … ” I frowned down at the pizza, a little scandalized. I knew what Abigail and her family would think about that. Baptism of some sort was the absolute bare minimum for being Saved. I didn’t even qualify on an entry-level basis.

  “Wait, if you’re not baptized does it mean you’re going to hell?” Scottie asked.

  Dad sighed and ripped at the label on his beer bottle. It was obvious he would much rather retreat to his basement man-cave with the big-screen TV and prerecorded episodes of SportsCenter than have this or any conversation.

  “I guess some people would believe that,” Dad said. “Personally, I don’t believe in hell. And I’m not sure what I even think of God. I put my faith in things I can see and touch and feel. I guess I’m fine with whatever gets you by in the world as long as you don’t force your beliefs on others. I’m not going to tell someone else they’re wrong to believe in a white-bearded old man in the sky watching our every move and keeping a tally sheet, but I certainly don’t want anyone telling me that I have to believe in that in order to be a good person.”

  With that, he took a decisive gulp of his beer, looking a little embarrassed.

  I blinked at him. This was just about the longest speech I’d ever heard my dad give on something other than the bullpen of the White Sox or the idiocy of clueless

  clients.

  “Oh,” I said. “Okay then.”

  “You guys are free to believe in whatever you want, of course … ” he said, trailing off. “Just don’t try and get me to dona
te money.”

  I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to laugh at that or not, so I didn’t.

  We were all silent for a few awkward moments, then Dad’s cell phone rang. He looked at the display and swore softly. “Hold tight, kids, I have to take this.” He wandered off toward the living room, muttering, “One of the junior associates. Incompetent little twerp.”

  My brother and I glanced at each other, knowing Dad was done with the fatherly portion of the evening. Scottie grabbed another slice and headed toward his room. I sighed and picked at the pizza carcasses, half-listening to Dad bark into the phone at the poor associate who saw him more than I did.

  . . .

  Later on, I was in bed with my computer, working on a new Faith entry and trying not to obsess over how pathetic it was to be home on a Friday night, when Dad knocked on my door.

  He peeked in. “Is everything okay, Pickle?”

  I blinked at him in surprise.

  Pickle used to be my parents’ nickname for me (get it? Dylan, Dyl, dill pickle? Hilarious, right?) but Dad hadn’t called me that in years. Even prior to the whole webcam picture thing, my relationship with Dad had taken a turn for the distant after I grew boobs and turned into a definitive girl. It hadn’t helped when I’d quit my soccer league in eighth grade, which had been one of the only things he could ever be persuaded to leave work early for, and one of the few subjects we ever had to talk about. He’d transferred all of that sort of attention to Scottie.

  And since the Blake Incident, he’d barely spoken to me at all. I guess that being called into the principal’s office about topless pictures of your teenage kid being published on the Internet would be awkward for any father-daughter relationship. The phrase “excruciatingly humiliating for everyone involved and then never spoken of again” comes to mind.

  I mean, Mom and I had gotten into plenty of shouting matches in the last few months, but Dad had more or less been treating me like we were casual acquaintances.