Chapter 1

I found cigarettes.
In my older sister's purse. Her old purse. Hidden in her bottom drawer, with her winter sweaters.
Found is a bit of misnomer.
I watched her hide them there when she came home from work. She underestimated the stealth of her younger brother. That mistake cost her two cigarettes out of the crumpled pack a week later. My mother accused her of smoking that night, sniffing at her hair like a police dog. My sister steadfastly denied it. When my mother would not relent, she fell into standard teenage plan B for being caught smoking. She blamed the scent on a friend of hers that she knows my mother already doesn't like.
Plan C would be to remind my mother of her complete lack of understanding for her daughter's situation and feelings, and mention, only if necessary for escape, the recent divorce.
My mother, being happily distracted with listing the sins of the maligned friend and warning of my sister's association with this girl, never thought to question the likelihood that the best friend, who is afflicted with severe asthma and every allergy under the sun, would spend her evenings blowing cigarette smoke into my sister's hair.
I took a lighter, too. The green camo one.
She has enough of them. A large collection lining the windowsill in her bedroom. Ostensibly, to light the scented candles she has recently fallen in love or maybe for lighting her friend's (the one with the bad reputation, runny nose, and my mother's happy derision) cigarettes.
Mine is the perfect crime. My sister can no more report the theft than I can report the contraband. We are bound together now by our childish infractions and our desperate need to keep everything calm in house.
My father's removal has given our home, our life, our family, a calm that is unnatural to us. It's nice. Better than nice. But it isn't what we know and all of us, my mother included, find themselves drawn to creating little pockets of drama and chaos. Broken memories of what our life used to be when he was here. We just don't know how to settle with our newfound peace.
I took two because I think it's better to be prepared if I get a taste for it. Two cigarettes are better than one. The pack, although so far forgotten by my sister, only had seven cigarettes in it. Two is an easy miscount for a pack of cigarettes she stashed a week ago in a hurry. Any more would have made the theft obvious.
The lighter she'll notice.
The lighter I can always put back.
The cigarettes, by their nature, cannot be replaced as easily.
I decide to try smoking my first cigarette in the sacristy. I must stage the funeral service for the following morning and Father O'Brien smokes in there. The lingering stale smell of his two-pack-a-day habit should provide enough cover. The only time he doesn't smoke is during mass and that hour is a struggle, such a struggle that he has the shortest homilies in the parish, despite being the oldest priest there. The next oldest priest can drag a mass out for another hour on his homilies. If only he would take up the habit, any habit to seduce him away from the sound of his own voice. The entire congregation would be grateful.
My mother never sniffs my hair and gets angry.
If I smell like smoke, cigarette or heavy incense, I've been at church.
And that makes her happy.
My sister, for all her teenage posturing, is a good girl with good grades, who helps around the house and works part time.
And that makes her happy.
And her happiness matters. It has a magical quality, my mother's happiness. It's infectious, that happiness. When she is happy, we are happy, as well. It's new, like the peace, and has a surreal quality to it. It's too new to completely trust. We know we like it. But that's all we know.
So as much as I want to break the rules and see what a cigarette tastes like, I don't want to make anyone unhappy. Not even my father.
And I don't want to disappoint anyone. I take great pains not to disappoint. Ever. If I can help it, that is.
I plan my attempt, carefully.
I'll get the keys for the church from the hook in the rectory and set up everything for the seven o'clock mass and the funeral service scheduled for eleven. And I'll smoke while I work. Another cigarette butt in the overflowing ashtray of them won't be noticed. The filters are the same, the brand is the same. The smell of smoke will blend into the incense scented air and old wood smell and go unnoticed.
I can ask for forgiveness after I'm done. For the theft and for the subterfuge. Conveniently, I will be in a church.
I like being in the church alone.
Which is probably why I've adjusted more easily to peace than either my sister or my mother.
I've felt it before, and they haven't.
My name is Thaddeus Whitacre, and this is what I remember about when I was fourteen. Before everything changed.
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Chapter 2

He was there before I heard him. Directly in front of me. His arms folded across his chest.
I'm sitting in the big leather chair in the back office, leaning hard over the desk, trying to light the cigarette with shaking fingers and eyes closed.
The planning of the act was significantly easier than committing to it. That part was fun. Putting a flame to the tip of that stolen cigarette was a Rubicon moment. Until that, I could put the cigarettes back, put the lighter back and just set up like I'm supposed to.
After that, I'm a thief and a cigarette smoker.
And doing it in the church.
Well, not a church technically, in the office off the sacristy where the priests often smoke, occasionally tell jokes, some dirty and some, more often than not, racist and even drink. So, if they can do all that than why would God strike down one altar boy smoking one stolen cigarette?
I'm sucking so hard on the filter that my lips are crushing it. I open one eye and squint long enough to get the flame closer to the tip, then slam it shut and start sucking hard again. I remember thinking this was necessary. A hundred packs later, a thousand packs later, I can light without looking and draw smoke through that cylinder and into my lungs without even trying. But on this night, I had no such experience, and the whole procedure lacked any form of grace.
"I wouldn't do that," he says.
And that's when I see him. The small, narrow-faced man dressed in a suit made of the dirty brown of sackcloth.
I drop the lighter, which is a relief as it was taking so long, the metal was digging into the flesh of my thumb and burning the pad of it.
The cigarette stays stuck on the flesh of my bottom lip, dangling there before painfully tearing the skin off and dropping onto the desk in front of me.
I hadn't planned for this scenario. For getting caught. All my meticulous planning, I never thought of this scenario. I've set up a dozen times, by myself, in the dark hollow of the church and never once been interrupted.
"Your lip is bleeding," the man says.
I bring a fingertip up to my lower lip and come back with a speck of blood on the tip.
The man leans across the desk, a maneuver that elongates his already long triangle of a face, picks up both the lighter and the cigarette. He lights it with a careless ease that I will remember and emulate for the remainder of my life.
He releases a circle of smoke, then another. "Thad, is it?"
I nod silently.
"Thad, we need to talk."
I don't say anything, just stare at the man through the haze of smoke.
He steps back and looks around for a chair. There are several, but they are old chairs from the basement, and he finds none of them satisfactory. This room is nothing more than a clubhouse for priests; it is full of functional castoffs. The good stuff is in the rectory.
While he is examining chairs, I consider my options. He's not a priest, and he isn't anyone I recognize from the parish. I might not be in as much trouble as I initially thought.
But he did know my name.
I decide to test the waters. "I'm supposed to be setting up for the masses tomorrow."
He turns around, cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth. He looks amused.
"You have time," he tells me, then abandons a search for comfortable chair and returns to the desk. He hoists up one ass cheek onto the edge of the desk and looks down at me. This close I can smell something else, through the smoke, an earthy scent that wasn't here before. He leans toward me and the scent is overpowering - it fills my nostrils and coats the back of my throat. "Now, how about that talk?"
I decide to confess. "Sir, I know I wasn't supposed to be smoking but technically, I didn't smoke, so I didn't really do anything wrong."
He smiles, showing narrow, bright white teeth. "You're always the smart ones."
"Excuse me?"
"The betrayers," he says, then leans further across the desk and smashes the cigarette out in the ashtray. Then he holds his hand out to me, palm up, wiggling his fingers.
"What?" I say and push myself back and deeper into the chair to make up the distance he just ate up with his move.
"The other cigarette." Another impatient twitch of his thin fingers.
I swallow hard and lick my lips. "It's my sister's."
He smiles wider. "She'll never miss it," he says, "she's not destined to be a smoker in the family. If you get what I mean."
I hesitate.
"Either give me the cigarette or I start drinking the altar wine."
I give him the cigarette.
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Chapter 3

"You're in eighth grade, right?" he says after he lights his second cigarette.
I nod. I think I'm better off if I keep my answers either nonverbal or as close to one-word answers as possible. He already has more information than a stranger who cornered me alone in a church office should.
"Catholic school?"
Another nod.
"When did you start as an altar boy?"
"Fourth grade," I answer, then shut my mouth tight.
"That's good," he says exhaling smoke. "This always goes much easier with true believers. You wouldn't believe how difficult atheists can be about it."
I don't understand what he means but I don't ask him to elaborate. I use the toes of my sneakers to slowly push the chair back further from the desk, giving myself room to run. If necessary. I'm a pudgy kid but I'm fast. The trick of outrunning him is getting myself out of the chair and my legs out from under the desk.
I was so worried about being caught that my brain didn't think other more terrifying things through. It's finally gotten around to that. Cigarettes and theft are the least of my problems.
"You, Thaddeus, have an important job to do," he continues, oblivious to the small movements I am making to free my legs from the confines of the desk.
Keep him talking, my brain tells me. "Is that right?" I say, "How much does it pay?"
He looks startled by my sudden gregariousness. The smile evaporates and his face goes sad. The scent that clings to him, enshrouds me, making my eyes tear. "Your kind always gets paid in the end," he says.
My kind?
"Do you believe that God has a plan for all of us?" he asks.
Another slight move and my left leg is outside the cage of the desk. "I dunno, I guess."
"What if I were to tell you that you have one of the starring roles?"
I don't say anything.
"I mean," he shrugs, "even if it was the villain of the piece or one of the villains, it's still the role God gave you, right? And it's an important one. Some of the others are nothing more than filler, believe me."
"Okay."
"You know what the passion play is?"
"Yeah."
"Good, great. It's God's favorite," he says and draws on the cigarette again. "It's such a favorite that in times of turmoil he likes to watch it over and over again." He rolls his head back on his shoulder and I notice a thick band of scar tissue around his throat for the first time. "It's my job to tell the actors to be ready, just in case, he wants to watch it."
I swivel the desk chair a couple of inches to the right. "That sounds like a great job."
He drops his head back down in a jerky motion. Now, he's angry and the smell of him takes on a flinty quality, the smell of charcoal before it's lit. "You think so, do you?"
I respond by moving my right leg closer to my left and gauging the distance to the door behind him. He's so slight and precariously balanced on the desk, one foot on the floor, the other extended out. If I push him, he'll go sideways into the old file cabinet. Do I push him, or do I go right for the door?
"Don't push me and don't go for the door, and for God's sake, put your fucking legs back under the desk," he hisses.
That scares me. Scares me enough that I pee a little.
"I think you have the wrong kid, Mister. I'm not a good actor and I don't want to be in any play."
"I'm not here asking you," he says. "I'm here telling you."
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Chapter 4

I stay frozen where I am. I don't put myself back in the position where I'm hampered by the desk. I refuse to give up one of the inches I've gained. I don't move at all - either toward the door or complying with his order.
"Stubborn little prick," he mutters, then chuckles. "Look, you may not even be tapped.
The last three weren't. God's been...kind of...distracted recently."
"I don't understand what you are saying."
"You don't have to," he says. "If it starts, you'll play your part, like the rest of them. I'm here to tell you what's your part and to give you a brief outline of what's expected, the rest is ad lib mostly. "You'll feel compelled to do the major stuff but the..."
"No."
"Excuse me?" He leaps over the desk and smashes out his cigarette with such force that butts jump out of the ashtray and land on the desk.
"No, thank you," I edit.
"This isn't something you can refuse. You've been chosen."
"Don't you have a runner-up or an understudy or something? Give it to them. I'm sorry but I'm too busy. My mom relies on me for a lot and I've got a job..."
"Running point for Mrs. Epstein while she recovers from hip surgery. I know about your job," he says dismissively, then reaches up and rubs the scar on his neck. "It's not like you have to do it right now. You won't have to do it for years and only if you are tapped, like I said..."
Without realizing it, my brain is seduced away from fear by curiosity. The normalcy of his tone, the strange intimacy of his knowledge of my life weaves a spell around me like a lullaby.
"When would I have to do it? If it's not now, like, how old would I be?"
"Your part, if it is called upon, and there's no way to know if it will, normally happens somewhere between twenty-two and thirty-four."
That's eight years from now. I can agree and it will get me out of the room. When I'm twenty-two and older and not scared shitless, I can say no.
"Is that the same for everyone?" I ask.
He smiles. "You're a curious little guy, aren't you?"
I shrug.
He shakes his head. "Nah, for the faithful, it can go all the way up to fifty. For the faithless, even higher and the Judge has no age limit whatsoever. I've seen them as young as thirty and as old as seventy-four."
"What's my part?" I ask without realizing it. Not knowing the words are there until I taste them in my mouth.
He grins. "I thought you'd never ask." He lowers his hands from his throat, slapping them on his thighs. "You are the betrayer."
I stare at him, uncomprehending. "What?"
"You're the Judas." He leans over and fishes one of the longer butts out of the ashtray and straightens it out and picks up the lighter.
"That's one of the best roles," he tells me and lights the butt.
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Chapter 5

I stare at him, my mouth open.
This guy is crazy. Crazier than I'd thought. Scary crazy.
I need to get out of here. The rectory is the safest place to go. It's the closest. It's still early enough for the secretary to be there. She never leaves until the priests are seated for their dinner. That means the door will be open. Once she leaves, it's locked and you must ring the bell and wait for one of the priests or the ancient housekeeper to answer it. That would take too long.
But she's still there and that door is still open.
That's good. That's lucky. I can use some luck. I close my mouth and think of ways to forward the conversation. To keep him talking and occupied. "And I have to perform this play when I get older..."
He holds up a finger. "Only if you are tapped."
"Right, only if I'm tapped," I lean back in the chair and in doing so, push further back from the desk. "Then someone will call me and tell me what I have to do?"
"I'll do it in person," he says. "It's better that way."
"And I perform in a play..."
"Not in 'a' play, in 'the' play. The real one." He pushes smoke out of his long nose. It rolls over his lips and creates a pointy beard of smoke, white and silvery gray.
"All right," I say, "I think I've got it."
"You don't," he says, and gestures with the cigarette. "Want to know how I know you don't get what I'm saying?"
I stare at him blankly.
"If you understood what I'm telling you, you'd be arguing or begging or bargaining. You'd try to refuse. You can't, but you'd try."
"I'd like to leave. If I agree to act in your play when I'm older, can I leave now?"
"Judas gets a bad rap," he continues talking as though I haven't spoken. "Sometimes messiahs are dangerous, sometimes betraying them is the act of a hero. Not always, but sometimes. The betrayer is always necessary, even when the whole world thinks he's wrong."
"Good to know."
He shakes his head, clearly displeased. "If it's any consolation, it's one of the leads."
I don't say anything. I look past him toward the door leading out to the sacristy and then to the altar.
"Go ahead," he says and snubs out the cigarette.
I look back at him "Excuse me?"
"Go ahead and run. I won't stop you. I won't have to."
I don't need to be told twice. I push off from the chair hard, and run past him.
"I'll see you in a couple years, Thad," he whispers as I race past.
The sound of his voice soft and close, in my ear, makes me stumble and slam my shoulder into the doorway hard as I go through.
The pain is excruciating but it doesn't stop me. I make it out of the office and into the hallway, checking to make sure he isn't chasing me. I can't see him, but I can feel him and smell the odd perfume of him. Surrounding me. Enveloping me.
I keep turning around to check to make sure.
That's how I trip on the bubble in the carpet runner, the one caused by the warped wood beneath, the one everyone knows to step over, the one that Father Gibbons calls the Holy Spirit's rump and drop all my weight onto one awkwardly placed knee. A knee bent against the metal runner rail at the base of the floor as it drops and is driven into the sharp metal angle by the momentum of my body.
That's what stops me. The shattering of my kneecap.
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