Penance

Three exits.

Chapel door, west side. Confession booth, if I break the lattice. Stained glass window behind the altar, but that's a twenty-foot drop.

I count them every time. Not because I'm planning to leave. Because knowing I can makes the staying bearable.

The chapel smells like old incense and wood polish. Two a.m. and the saints in the glass are dark, just shapes. No light to bleed through them.

Elias Crane buttons his shirt beside me. Third pew from the back. His hands are steady. Mine aren't, but I hide them in my pockets.

"Same time Thursday?" he says.

I don't look at him. "Sure."

He's beautiful in the way school brochures are beautiful. Symmetrical. Forgettable the second you close the page. I don't want him. I never wanted him.

I wanted the risk.

The confessional smells like cedar and someone else's guilt. That's where we go. The curtain pulled. The lattice between the priest's side and the penitent's side pressed against my spine. Elias on top of me, and for twelve minutes I stop counting anything.

Then it's over. And the counting starts again.

Fourteen pews. Six candle stands. One crucifix. Three exits.

He leaves first. That's the rule. I wait seven minutes. I count them.

Four minutes in, I hear something.

A creak. Not the building settling. Not wind through the old pipes. A deliberate sound. Weight shifting on old wood.

The balcony.

I look up. The choir balcony hasn't been used since the school stopped doing midnight Mass. Dust and empty chairs up there. Except tonight.

A lighter flicks.

Small flame, cupped by a hand I can't see. It illuminates nothing except itself. Then it's gone.

I can't move. My legs are stone. The pew is solid under me and the chapel is enormous and silent and someone was up there.

Someone watched.

I stand. Walk to the door. My steps echo and I hate them for it. Each one sounds like a confession.

At the threshold, a voice from the dark above.

"Three exits."

I freeze.

"You missed the one behind the organ."

Male. Low. Not mocking. Not threatening. Just stating a fact, the way someone might say the time or the temperature.

I don't turn around. I push through the chapel door into the cold Oregon night and I walk across the quad and I don't look back.

My fingers won't stay still the entire way.

Seven minutes to my room. I count every step. One hundred and forty-three. Tomorrow I'll count them again to make sure.

In bed, I press my palms flat against the mattress. Left then right. Ground. Real.

Sleep doesn't come.

I lie there and think about a lighter flame in the dark and a voice that knew exactly how many exits I'd found.

And the one I'd missed.