Rachel Vincent - The Stars Never Rise

I’d been mentally fighting the choice for months, scrambling to find some other way to make things work, but my miracle had failed to materialize, and wasting the rest of my senior year wasn’t going to change that.

I couldn’t officially join until I turned eighteen, which was still a year and four days away, but early commitments were encouraged, and the earlier I pledged, the more likely I was to get my first-choice assignment.

Teaching. In New Temperance. Near Melanie. That was the whole point of pledging, for me.

“I was thinking of doing it during the afternoon service.” I took a deep breath and swallowed a familiar wave of nausea. “Today.”

“Oh, Nina, I’m so happy for you!” Anabelle threw her arms around me as if nothing had changed since I was a needy twelve-year-old, desperate for friendship and advice, and she was a senior, already pledged to the Church and assigned to mentor the girls in my seventh-grade class. Anabelle knew about my mother’s problem—she’d known even way back then—but she hadn’t told anyone. She trusted me to take care of Melanie and to ask for help when I needed it.

Sometimes talking to her still felt like talking to an older classmate, but the powder-blue cassock and the brand on the back of her hand were stern reminders of her new reality.

She was Sister Anabelle now. The Church owned her, body and soul.

Soon it would own me too.

“I have to admit, I’m happy for me too,” Anabelle said, and her smile was reassuring. If she loved her job so much, pledging to the Church couldn’t be that bad, right? “I was hoping you’d decide to pledge before the consecration. I didn’t want to miss your big day!”

“Oh, I completely forgot!” Anabelle had been selected for consecration into the leadership levels of the Church just five years after she’d joined, much sooner than the average. Unfortunately, after the annual ceremony—just a few days away—she would be transferred to another town, to learn under new guidance and to experience more of the world than New Temperance had to offer.

I could hardly imagine school without Anabelle. Even with our age difference and her Church brand standing between us, she was the closest thing I had to a friend.

We were three doors from the kindergarten wing when the rain started, an instant, violent deluge bursting from the clouds as if they’d been ripped open at some invisible seam. Even under the walkway awning, we were assaulted by icy rain daggers with every gust of wind. Anabelle and I sprinted for the door, but the knob was torn from my hand before I could turn it.

The door flew open and Sister Camilla marched past us into the rain, dragging five-year-old Matthew Mercer by one arm. If he was crying, I couldn’t tell—he was drenched in less than a second.

“Blasphemy is an offense against the Church, an insult to your classmates, and a sin against your own filthy tongue!” Sister Camilla shouted above a roll of thunder.

Yes, Matthew Mercer was a brat, and yes, he had trouble controlling his mouth, but he was just a kid, and everything he said he’d probably heard from his parents.

I stepped out from under the awning and gasped as the freezing rain soaked through my blouse in an instant. Anabelle pulled me back before I could say something that would probably have landed me in trouble alongside the kindergartner.

“Blasphemy is a sin,” Sister Anabelle reminded me in a whisper.

Of course blasphemy was a sin. A lesser infraction than fornication or heresy, but a grievous offense a strict matron like Sister Camilla would never let slide. Even in a five-year-old.

Especially in a five-year-old who’d already demonstrated a precocious gift for profanity.

Anabelle and I could only watch, shivering, as Sister Camilla dragged Matthew onto the stone dais in the center of the courtyard, then forced him to kneel. She was still scolding him while she flipped a curved piece of metal over each of his legs, just above his calves, then snapped the locks into place, confining the five-year-old to his knees in the freezing rain.

The posture of penitence. Voluntarily assumed, it demonstrated humility and submission to authority. And contrition. Used as a punishment, it was a perversion of the very things it stood for, just like anything accomplished by force.

In third grade, I’d once knelt in the posture of penitence in the middle of the school hall for four hours for turning in an incomplete spelling paper.

I’d never failed to finish an assignment again.

Sister Camilla marched toward us in the downpour, wordlessly ordering us inside with one hand waved at the building. At the door, I looked back to see Matthew Mercer bent over his knees, his forehead touching the stone floor of the dais, his school uniform soaked. He’d folded his arms over the back of his head in a futile attempt to protect himself from the rain.

“Pray for forgiveness,” Sister Camilla called to him over her shoulder. “And hope the Almighty has more mercy in his heart than I have in mine.”

Well, I thought as the door closed behind us, he certainly couldn’t have any less.

“Okay.” I crossed my legs and angled them to one side, trying to get comfortable in a chair built for five-year-olds. On the other side of the room, one of my fellow seniors had her own group of six kids assembled at the reading center while Sister Camilla taught math to six more at a table covered with little plastic counting cubes. I was in charge of the faith unit. “Who can name one of the four obligations of the people to their Church?”

Five chubby little hands shot into the air; five eager faces stared at me, hoping to be called upon. At some point between the ages of five and fifteen, that eagerness would be replaced with indifference, but in kindergarten, they still cared. They still wanted to please and to be rewarded for their effort.

“Elena.”

All five hands sank and four frowns emerged, while Elena beamed at me from her chair in the semicircle. “Devotion!” Her brown eyes sparkled with triumph. “That means we love the Church and we’ll love it forever!”

“Good!” But on the inside, some vulnerable part of me shriveled a little more at her enthusiasm for a child’s happy lie, which would surely mature into an adult’s bitter burden. “Who else?” The other four hands shot up again. “Dillon?”

He picked at the cuff of his white school shirt. “Obedience.”

“And what does that mean?”