Free Leaving Fishers by Margaret Peterson Haddix Page A

on a rock. “This will be our altar,” he said. “Will you come forward and leave your sin behind? Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior? Will you be cleansed for all eternity?”
    “I will,” a girl called out. She stepped forward and Dorry saw that it was Janelle.
    Others followed, tentatively at first, then in bunches. They crowded around the rock, kneeling and praying.
    Dorry bowed her head. “God?” she calledsilently. “Will you save me?” She didn’t hear a clear voice, the way Angela evidently did. But she suddenly felt a sense of peacefulness like she’d never felt before. She wasn’t worried about anything anymore. Was this what the Holy Spirit was like?
    Angela gently pushed her forward. “You’re ready, Dorry.”
    Dorry knelt with the others. Pastor Jim lay his hand on Dorry’s head and called out, “Dorry Stevens, your sins are forgiven. You are a new creation. ‘The old has passed away, behold, the new has come.’”
    And it really seemed that it had, that she was a new person.
    Dorry wasn’t sure how long she knelt there, not really praying, not even thinking. She was barely aware of Pastor Jim laying his hand on others’ heads, calling out the same words. Then on some cue Dorry missed, everyone began standing up. Someone started singing, “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder,” then “Kum Ba Yah” and other songs. Pastor Jim led them out of the ravine a different, flatter way. When they reached a road, the Fishers’ vans were there waiting. Pastor Jim directed them to climb in.
    “Where are we going?” Dorry whispered to Angela.
    “Ssh,” Angela said. “Don’t talk. Trust us.”
    In the van there was more singing. Dorry tried to hold on to the feeling she’d had when Pastor Jim laid his hand on her head, that she was totally forgiven, totally pure and totally clean. She must not do anything bad or think anything bad again.
    The van stopped and Dorry realized with a jolt that they were at the apartment-complex clubhouse where the Fishers’ parties had been. She turned to Angela and started to ask, “Wh—” Angela silenced her with a shake of her head.
    Everyone trouped into the clubhouse. What seemed like hundreds of people were silently waiting for them. Dorry passed through a gauntlet of hugs, mostly from people she barely recognized or didn’t know. But the feeling of love and belonging was overwhelming. She was surprised to end up by the side of the indoor pool. Pastor Jim was in the shallow end, the water halfway up the legs of his jeans.
    “The Bible says, ‘Repent and be baptized,’” he proclaimed, his voice echoing in the atrium over the pool. “Jesus himself was baptized by his cousin, John the Baptist, in the River Jordan. If you are to follow Christ, you must do the same.”
    Becky and Mark led Janelle down the steps into the water.
    Dorry watched, puzzled. “Angela,” she whispered. “I—”
    “Ssh,” Angela hissed. Others around them turned to stare.
    “No, I have to tell you this,” Dorry insisted. “I’ve already been baptized. When I was a baby. So I shouldn’t do it again, should I? It’d be a sin or something, wouldn’t it?”
    “No,” Angela shook her head, and whispered back. “Infant baptism is wrong. If you aren’t baptized in Fishers, you’re going to hell.”
    Dorry considered that. She didn’t remember being baptized, and she’d certainly never felt like this before. Angela knew a lot more about religion than Dorry did.
    “Dorry,” Pastor Jim called. Dorry stepped forward. Angela and Brad walked into the water on either side of her. The smell of chlorine filled her nose and she held back a sneeze, but the water was warm and inviting. She wondered if the River Jordan had been cold or hot—it certainly hadn’t smelled of chlorine. Then she pushed away those thoughts because she was supposed to be thinking about God.
    “Dorry Stevens, do you renounce all sin and evil?” Pastor Jim asked.
    “Yes,” she said.
    “Do you