This Is Our Sweet Blasphemy

I was dying of hunger when I reached the Gatwick Airport in London. Yeah, I ate on the plane but still, the food was cold and I wasn’t that hungry at the time, I was hungry now; about two hours later. I was also tired, I don’t know how people can sleep in planes but I can’t, especially when there’s a drooling old lady to your right and a hyper-active toddler to your left. I was also mad, at my parents. They talked about this before? Great, now I’m sure they were just waiting for the opportunity to send me far away from them.

I quickly got my luggage, and no, I did not almost fall and humiliate myself while getting the large one, I’m quite strong you know? *please note the sarcasm*.

Anyway, I was really, really hungry while passing through the glass electric doors, in which are useless being glass since you can’t see through them because they stick this fluid paper thing which really stresses me out, especially when I’m hungry and the only thing I want to do is to spot and bolt to the nearest Subway. I was a few feet from the door when it opened automatically revealing various strangers, some with signs like ‘Welcome Back’ or just purely ‘Welcome’ that seemed like they were written by little girls of about five years old, it was really cute, how they dotted their ‘i’s with little hearts and it looked like they tried their hardest to make every letter with just a bit more curves than usual. I felt like every eye was on me. Even the little girls who were waiting for Uncle Joe to show up stopped and looked at me. Of course they weren’t really looking at me, I knew that, they were just trying to find their loved ones, or not-so-loved-ones, I don’t know. Or maybe they were staring at me, I did have blue hair after all and that attracted the little kids a lot. I mean a lot, it got annoying sometimes when they would tug on their mom’s sleeve and point at me saying ‘Look mommy, her hair is a rainbow!” or even teenagers sometimes would just look at me like I was so weird for trying to be different, I guess the most hilarious would be the elders, they looked at me like I was an alien and that would be really funny sometimes when I would be walking down the street and they would stop whatever they’re doing and look at me. So yeah, I felt like I was being watched.

At the very edge of this wall of eyes, I found a paper sign written in outstanding nice handwriting ‘Welcome to London Mrs. Victoria Adams’, the sign was being held by a man in a tuxedo and polished shoes. I didn’t know exactly what to do right then, I could leave him there and run away so I would never have to enter an all-girls catholic school ever in my life, I had money with me and I could find a job at Starbucks and live my life without the stress my mother put on me. So I did what I had to do: I went up to the man in a tuxedo.

He had a warming smile, which made the corners of his sea-green eyes wrinkle, not one of his blond hairs were out of place, if he were my age I guess he would’ve been pretty cute. “You must be Mrs. Adams. It’s nice to meet you.” He extended his hand and I shook it. Such a weird form of ‘hello’ in my opinion, we literally shake hands. Like ‘Hello! Let me balance your hand up and down because we just met!’

I smiled halfheartedly back “Yep, that’s me.” He kept looking at me, waiting for me to look back at him, but I didn’t; I didn’t like keeping eye contact for too long. It was disturbing.

“Come with me then.” He folded the piece of paper and walked towards the nearest coffee shop and gestured for me to sit down in front of him, I did. “Are you hungry Victoria?”

“Yes.” I think I might have said that a tad too quickly and a bit too loud and I think my eyes widened a pinch too much. The man grinned, half way to laughing, and pulled out a wallet, his wallet I supposed, because on the front was a cross and underneath was written ‘In God We Trust’, I caught myself before rolling my eyes at the stupid pun. The man who’s hair is too perfect pulled out 20 pounds and handed it to me, I shook my head and was about to say that I had money with me before he stopped me, raising his hand. “I’ll be waiting for you here” he simply stated. So I got up and roamed around.

After a few minutes I found a sushi bar and sat down, the 20 pounds clutched in my hand. I looked down quizzically, wondering why a man I’ve never met would just give me 20 pounds. These London people are really nice.
***
I was sitting in the backseat of a black Maserati and Logan, the tuxedo man whom I found out what his name was a just a while ago, was in the driver’s seat, we were in front of a very tall and very wide silver gate. There was an old man sitting in a booth to our right looking awfully bored and picking at his fingernails. The driver’s window rolled down and Logan greeted the bored-looking man with a quick smile “Hello there Sammy.” Sammy looked up at him and gave a small wave; he looked down again and pressed a button. The gates opened slowly, taking their time like I wasn’t dying inside of anxiety.

The gates finally opened completely, and Logan pressed on the gas, going slowly, I felt like he was making fun of my anxiety, the fear I felt inside in discovering this new world in which I didn’t belong.

Logan stopped the car in a little parking space surrounded by grass. There was a whole yard with small flowers popping up here and there. Logan appeared opening my door and stepped aside so I could get out without toppling over him. I did and just stood there for a moment; the school was stupefying. I could look at it for days and still not see all of the details. There were various sculptures of all sizes all around the walls. It was really beautiful.

I felt a soft hand close my mouth, I didn’t even notice it was open in the first place, and I saw Logan standing next to me, he looked at the building in front of us “If you think that’s amazing you better check out the insides of the church.” He chuckled.

I awed some more and finally snapped myself out of it and made my feet walk to the back of the car to get my luggage with Logan, I was about to get one of the two when Logan stopped me for the second time today. “The priest will be waiting for you in the church over there” he pointed to the far right area, where I could see a fairly big building with a huge thin cross on top “He’ll show you around.” That’s when he pushed me gently to start walking to the church. I glared at him from over my shoulder and he just smiled.

It seemed like the walk to the church took hours but my watch showed that it’s been only 5 minutes. It was equally huge like the school, but with less sculptures; at least on the outside. I pushed the heavy, tall doors and took a look at the inside. There were various paintings, sculptures of angels and colorful-glass with the image of Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus, it was really beautiful, it shocked me that people spent their entire lives dedicating themselves to something they weren’t even sure existed. I went to one of the paintings; there was a table with the Bible opened to one of the pages which described the painting underneath. I was wondering were the priest was and almost had a heart attack when I heard a low voice say “You must be the new student.” I turned quickly and saw a man standing behind the pulpit. A Bible was open between his elbows and his jet black hair was falling over his face, his amazingly blue eyes seemed like they were looking right through my soul.

“Holy shit, I... didn’t see you there.” I didn’t move; I just looked at him. He was wearing a leather jacket with a plain white shirt and a black tie. He had rosy lips and his cheekbones and jaw line were perfectly defined. His piercing eyes bore back to the book in front of him, he didn’t seem really interested in what he was reading though, it seemed like he was studying for a boring history lesson.

“Blasphemy.” He said. I looked at him in confusion but didn’t say anything. He caught up on my silence and looked up, he sighed “Since it’s your first day, I’ll give you a three strike rule, by your third act of blasphemy, you’ll get an hour of detention.” His voice was strong and low and so sexy. When he said ‘three strike rule’ I struggled to not burst out in laughter. I’ve been living with this rule my whole life; I really don’t think that’ll help me from getting an hour of detention.
The mysterious man closed his so important Bible and descended the few steps making his way to meet me. I took off my hood, revealing my faded blue hair, which earned me a raise of eyebrows from Mr. Hottie, but he soon regained composure and put himself in front of me, extending a hand. I guess this place could be fun after all. “Welcome to Saint Angela’s Catholic School, my name is Andrew, I’m the new priest.”

Or maybe not. Oh my god. He was way too young to be a priest. At least that’s what I thought. Him being this close to me allowed me to see a little hole on the left side of his so perfectly shaped nose, and another one in the corner underneath his beautiful lips, just like mine. I hoped he didn’t catch me checking out his lips; that would be embarrassing. I shook his hand slowly; he had soft, bony hands and long fingers. And that's when I understood the concept of hand-shaking, it was to allow each of the people to figure out just a bit more about the person in front of them. He let go of my hand which left me longing for his touch once more.

“You’ll be attending this church every morning at six o’clock.” Um… not wanting to be disrespectful here, but six in the morning? I barely woke up at seven to go to school on a normal day back home, why do they think I’ll suddenly go to church at six? I guess I had a weird facial expression because Andrew smirked. He walked passed me heading outside, I followed. He was heading towards the school, I accelerated my pace so I could walk by his side, I felt his head turn to look at me, but I kept looking forward. He turned his head to face the school “Your roommate will help you out with classes and all that stuff, I’ll just lead you to your room, diner is at 7:30.” He said.

‘All that stuff’? I found myself smirking when he said that; very professional of you Andrew. He opened the door that lead to the inside of the school, he went inside first, not waiting to check if I was behind him. There was a long corridor and we just kept on walking until Andrew stopped in front of a door with the number ‘16’ in eye level. “Hold out your hand.” What? Why was I going to hold out my hand? What was he going to do? Give me his phone number?

I did as he said and he dropped a key in my hand. Oh, right, no phone numbers for me then. I opened the door but didn’t see anyone inside. There were two beds; one on each side of the wall, my luggage was on top of my bed. “Ivy must be working on a project or something, to get to the cafeteria you go to the end of the corridor and turn left.” He said, looking over my shoulder.

He was about to leave me there to fend for myself when I stopped him, “Wait, aren’t you a bit young to be a priest? How old are you?” I blurted out the questions because I didn’t want him to leave me, I didn’t want to be alone in a place which I didn’t know anything about. He looked a bit confused and surprised that I asked him such question, don’t the other students here talk to him?

“Yeah, maybe, I guess. I’m 23.” He shrugged and paused a moment before saying “I’ll see you at diner.” He then turned his back and walked away. His answer only brought me more questions.

Notes

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