Early one Saturday morning when I was twelve, my father rustled me awake. I patted my bedside table for my tortoise-shell glasses, then rose heavy-footed to pull on a sweatshirt and lace up my sneakers. I maneuvered past the sleeping dogs on the floor of the kitchen and tiptoed over the detritus of muddy boots and Lego.

I climbed into the truck and the high rumble of the muffler echoed through the morning mist. My father made the right onto Route 4, and we wound our way through those dark roads, passing Southern Calvert Baptist and the AME church and dozens of tobacco farms, the plants barely visible beneath the mist. At the 7-Eleven, bearded men in camouflage jackets sipped from Styrofoam cups of coffee as they gassed up, raising a two-fingered salute at the passing cars.

My father was in his prime then — tall, black-bearded, broad-shouldered, his thick body mostly muscle. He knew the names of all the trees, sassafras and birch, poplar and oak. He could pick out a hawk from a quarter mile away or see the faintest splash in the milky-brown water and know if it was a skate or a rockfish or just a bit of flotsam. He did the same thing with people too, sizing them up in a minute, calling them weak, like most of his clients, or strong, like Pastor Jim.

Years later I’d decide that was part of the reason why he chose the faith he did — it had a name and label for everything in the world. Certain things were clearly correct and right: honoring your elders, obeying your parents, submitting to your husband. And then there was pure evil: homosexuality, abortion, divorce.

There was little room for neutrality, and that was a great comfort to my father. He had grown up without religion, without any kind of moral compass. His mother was a hard-living, chain-smoking waitress who had married five times. My father broke away from his family early on, and while he craved moral absolutes, he also had the notion that to succeed in the world, you needed to be savvy, not soft.

Maybe that was why, of all the ponytailed girls we ran around with at church, my father chose Molly and Emmy to bring along to the beach on Saturdays. Their father was out of the picture, and he saw some spunk in them, the same kind of spunk that had allowed him to overcome the loss of a father and make his way through the world alone. Maybe he thought if he took them under his wing he could set them on the right track.

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But even then it was too late. Molly and Emmy were already showing up for youth group with gold hoops swaying from their ears and sullen expressions, jean shorts pegged so high up their thighs that Miss Kathy, the youth group leader, made an impromptu decision to read from Proverbs 31, the chapter about the industrious woman.

I sat wide-eyed during Miss Kathy’s presentation, trying to memorize the list of acceptable dating behaviors (hanging out with boys in groups, courtship) and the things that weren’t okay (any kind of petting or kissing before marriage). The little I knew about sex came from the thick letters my parents received every week, mass-mailed from Colorado Springs and bearing the signature of Dr James Dobson, the head of Focus on the Family.

Every week the letters related another travesty — teenage pregnancy, child molesters, gay teachers trying to convert our youth. From those letters I knew that when two married people had sex, it was fine because the Lord wanted there to be more children in the world. But when sex went wrong — outside of marriage, in unnatural configurations, there was nothing the Lord hated more.

I did my best to toe the line. The rare times that I dared to imagine the carnal act, I made sure to imagine a wedding first, so that it wasn’t too sinful. When I pulled on my pajamas and found my mind drifting over to a wiry, brown-eyed boy in my youth group, I counted sheep to put those thoughts out of my mind. When he tracked me down in the parking lot one Sunday after church and asked me to be his girlfriend, I shook my head no and didn’t dare to look up as he slunk away. I felt a dull thumping in my chest and knew this was sin, making itself alive and known to me.

The entire next day, I stayed in bed with a feverish feeling. Whenever I thought of his hand in mine, guilt bubbled up from the pit of my belly.

By the time we started seventh grade, Molly and Emmy had lost interest in the beach, and by then I’d finally convinced my parents to let me go to public school.

But while Molly and Emmy flirted with boys and learned to use mascara, I whiled away long hours reading novels in a blue beanbag chair in my bedroom, the only place I was free of my brothers’ endless whooping and wrestling or my mother’s pleas to go outside. I grew paler and skinnier and quieter by the day.

One day in that beanbag chair I came across a quarterpage advertisement in the Calvert Independent for four-year scholarships to the private high school at the northern side of the county. I wrote a note in careful cursive asking for more materials, and a week later a thick manila envelope showed up in the rusty mailbox at the end of the driveway.

Inside was an application for the Calverton School and a bound viewbook with thick, cream-colored pages. On the cover was a girl about my age with green eyes and straight yellow hair tied up in a ponytail. She was wearing a blue crewneck sweater and a plaid skirt, and she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Inside the book were full-color photos of perfectly groomed children in navy-blue plaids and striped ties looming over microscopes and algae pools, wielding tennis rackets, sitting rapt as bow-tied professors scrawled on old-fashioned chalkboards.

When sex went wrong – outside of marriage, in unnatural configurations, there was nothing the Lord hated more

Over lasagna a few nights later I built my case. I didn’t talk about the free college counseling or SAT classes, the rigorous curriculum or the long lists of colleges where Calverton graduates had been accepted. Instead I focused on the alternative. I reminded my parents that there were only two choices — Calverton or Calvert High School. And everyone knew that Calvert High School was a den of iniquity. The cops were always making drug busts in the parking lot. If I went there I’d be lucky to make it out alive, much less go to college.

My brother screeched for my mother to give him seconds and she scooped some more lasagna onto his plate. She said she wasn’t sure about Calverton. She’d heard it was a pretty liberal school. They celebrated Halloween and most of the kids didn’t go to church. I gulped and prattled on about Calverton’s mission, stressing the honor code and their commitment to family values.

For weeks I became newly helpful, taking a terry-cloth towel in hand and sticking by my mother’s side, extemporizing about the value of education and helping her wipe surfaces and dry silverware. When she finally gave me permission to send over my handwritten essays, the kitchen glimmered.

My father’s truck broke down again just before the admissions test for Calverton and a guidance counselor offered to pick me up. When I saw Miss Weems pull into our rutted driveway in a sporty red coupe, I suddenly felt embarrassed by the knee-high grass, the old refrigerator on the porch and the broken-down tractor in the middle of the yard.

Miss Weems wore lip liner and small, tasteful gold earrings. She had a stylish bob that curled under at the ends. When she turned on the engine, strains of classical music came out of the stereo. She shook her head when I apologized for tracking mud in on the floor.

“That’s fine, dear,” she said, nodding briskly and moving the little leather trash bag from the passenger-side floorboard into the backseat. “I’m just glad I found this place! I thought that dirt road would never end.” She rolled down the window and cooed goodbye to my mother, who stood on the corner of the porch waving exuberantly. I shivered at the blast of cold, pine-scented air that flowed from the vent. I hadn’t been in a car with a working air-conditioner since my aunt visited from California a few years before.

“Such a charming spot,” Miss Weems said, but her mouth looked grim. She maneuvered her way past the broken-down Datsun and the cage of ducks in the yard, keeping an eye on the old mangy brown mutt that stood guard at the end of the driveway.

“I have to tell you, my dear, how thrilled we were to read your essays. Of course nothing is final yet, but I can say that you’re just the student we’re hoping to find. Someone who can thrive if they are placed in the right soil.” She winked at me, and I told her how grateful I was for the opportunity to go to Calverton.

The tests went well, and a few months later my mom and I were in Walmart buying white and blue polo shirts. When I tried on those clothes in the stuffy fitting room my heart soared. I thought I’d blend in with the rest of the students and slip into the fold. But of course I was wrong.

I knew that from the first day, when the teachers called roll. Parren, Weems, Briscoe, Ewalt, McNatt. Their names were all over town: etched on the signposts in front of local businesses or the steel plates in the lobby of the hospital that listed all the donors.

When my turn came I mumbled my name. A tall, blond girl lifted her head and glared at me from the front of the room, and I recognized the girl on the cover of the viewbook. She looked me up and down and whispered something to the boy sitting next to her, and he snickered.

I knew then that I wasn’t fooling anyone. My polo shirts were $5.99 each, three for twelve dollars. The material was missing the pockets everyone else’s polo shirts had, and the buttons were made from plain white plastic, not patterned in white and brown. Even my cheap Bic pens gave me away.

But I didn’t give up entirely. Over the next four years I purged my speech of Southern lilts and sloppy grammar, carefully training myself to say Washington instead of Warshington, refrigerator instead of icebox. On casual Fridays, when my classmates wore silky sundresses and freshly ironed khakis, I put together bizarre combinations of colorful thrift store clothes and earned a reputation as an iconoclast. When my father’s latest pickup truck came motoring into the parking lot an hour late, filled to the brim with landscaping equipment, I registered the amusement and pity in the headmaster’s eyes and quickly said my goodbyes. I counted coins so I could join my classmates for field trips and pre-prom dinners. I winced when the tears ran down Pastor Jim’s face on Sunday mornings when he spoke of the blessings of the Lord, when my classmates at school asked why I wasn’t allowed to celebrate Halloween or read Sweet Valley High, when my mother launched herself into one battle after another over my heart and mind. First there was a skirmish over evolution, then another over sex education, then a full-on war over the fact that my tenth-grade English teacher assigned the immoral novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez.

I started making minor rebellions. I hid racy books from the twenty-five-cent shelf at the used bookstore under my mattress. But I still followed the letter of the law. I never cursed. I never used the Lord’s name in vain. I’d still never kissed anyone — maybe because no one seemed interested in kissing me.

One Sunday my family drove to Baltimore for a dedication service for our sister church, which was finally trading their old storefront space for a custom-built megachurch. The service was an all-day affair with hours of choral performances, fire-and-brimstone sermons, and spontaneous bursts of prophecies, worship songs, and altar calls. The Spirit was running thick.

My right temple began to throb, and the sanctuary started to feel less like a temple and more like a cage. A refrain echoed and buzzed in my head: None of this is true.

I looked around and saw all those beaten-down mechanics and plumbers and carpenters, their wives shushing their babies, everyone trying to live like their lot was enough. They didn’t seem particularly blessed by God, but still they tucked envelopes stuffed with cash into the offering plate and passed out quarters to their children, so no one would be empty-handed when the deacons passed the offering plate. Everyone came to church hoping for a lift, only to slump hours later when that charged feeling faded.

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I stood up and slipped past the worshippers, slowly making my way to the ladies’ room, where I sat on the toilet fully clothed and held my face in my hands.

It had been in a bathroom just like this that I had first felt the Spirit coming to me. When I received my prayer language, it felt like proof the Holy Spirit had X-rayed my life from up in heaven and called it good. It was my key to the kingdom, my guarantee that when the seventh trumpet sounded and Jesus returned in a cloud of glory, I’d be summoned up to meet the faithful.

But now, four years later, I was ready to turn that key in. It had become too heavy. If I kept carrying it around, then I couldn’t pick up anything else. So I sat there in the bathroom at that church in Baltimore and whispered to God that I was bowing out. To soften the blow and make it less terrifying, I told God I was taking a sabbatical from believing. A break. I’d probably be back, but for now I needed to go off on my own.

I dug a ballpoint pen out of my white patent leather purse and scribbled a note on a torn scrap of paper.

November 5, 1995

Jessica Wilbanks is no longer a Christian.

For a long time I sat there staring at that slip of paper, horrified at my boldness, half expecting some earthquake or thunderbolt to rip me from my perch on the toilet.

But all I heard was the dull hum of the heating system and a few stray voices coming in from the hall. The Holy Ghost had departed from me. No longer were there evil spirits lurking close by, to dive in at the slightest sign of trouble or joy, no angels watching from afar to offer protection. Now I was simply myself — a clump of cells directed by a series of synapses and neurons. I had a feeling that there would be no going back.

When I returned to the service with that talisman in my pocket, my heart was no longer soft and pliable. I stiffened up during the endless hymns, mouthing the words but refusing to let the melodies trickle into my marrow. I kept my eyes on the ground instead of closing them tightly during the final prayers.

Within a few weeks I found myself on the same beach I used to walk with my father and the twins. My friend Sophie, a transfer student at Calverton, finally agreed to let me tag along with her old friends from Calvert High as they partied on the beach. Someone handed me a can of Miller Lite and I popped the top open and took a long swig like it was something I did every day. The more I drank the looser the world seemed.

The sun went down over the top of the cliff and the air grew chilly. One of the boys made a fire from cast-off bits of driftwood and I pulled on a sweatshirt. A girl with kohl-lined eyes and long, tangled hair gave me a Camel Light. As she lit my cigarette I felt the soft pillow of her breasts against mine and my insides suddenly felt hollowed out. She was so much more beautiful than any of the acne-scarred boys throwing things into the fire. She and I talked softly and the night shrank around us. I felt like a different girl. Not the good girl, not the bookworm. I felt more like my old friends Molly and Emmy, swinging their feet from the brick wall at the middle school, taunting the world loudly and laughing when it answered back.

In another few years I’d be able to leave that town, with its endless acres of woods and miles of shoreline, cut through the middle by that one long ribbon of a highway. I’d need to be careful until then, covering my tracks. I’d be one girl on Sunday morning and another girl the rest of the week. At church I’d pretend to take notes during the sermon and no one would know I had stopped recording the pastor’s words and had started writing down my own thoughts instead.