Free Back When You Were Easier to Love by Wing Smith Emily Page A

don’t like the culture, but I do like the belief. That was never an issue with me. It was too late before I realized it was an issue with Zan.

ONE LAST THING
    It’s never just one thing. If it were, U.S. history would be a two-week course, not something you study your whole life. The Civil War wasn’t just about slavery, and the Revolutionary War wasn’t just about freedom. World War I wasn’t just because some guy got assassinated, and World War II wasn’t just because of Nazis, and the Beatles didn’t break up just because of Yoko Ono. It’s never just one thing.
    That’s how it was with Zan leaving. Zan leaving high school, Zan leaving Haven, Zan leaving me. It wasn’t just one big, concrete thing. He didn’t stop loving me. He didn’t stop believing in the church. That’s too easy, and too easy isn’t Zan. Zan’s never simple.
    Instead, it’s just bits and pieces that I try to put together into a story that makes sense.
    I remember that Sunday last summer. Zan and I usually didn’t go to church together since we lived in different wards, but that day was different because Greg Weyland, a guy in my ward who’d just graduated, was leaving on a mission to Brazil. Greg would be delivering his farewell address in church, and I persuaded Zan to come with me, even though he didn’t even know Greg that well.
    I remember sharing a church pew with Zan, his white shirt wrinkle-free and spotless, his navy tie crisp against it. I remember the sacrament tray moving from hand to hand down the bench, everyone taking a cube of bread before passing it along. We swallowed it in quiet reflection, or at least in an attempt at quiet reflection since between the occasional baby’s scream and toddler’s tantrum there were a lot of interruptions.
    And Zan handed me the tray without letting it linger over his lap. Not that I was supposed to notice. Taking the sacrament was personal, not something anyone should look at or judge. But I’d noticed, and he hadn’t taken it, and why? The only reason you don’t take the sacrament is if you’re unworthy.
    My heart started pumping ice-blood, the way it did whenever I was terrified, or just really cold. Zan said it was physically impossible for a mammal to produce ice-blood, but I told him science was always wrong, anyway, so why wouldn’t it be wrong about ice-blood?
    I looked at him but kept my head bowed so he wouldn’t notice. Nothing in his face told his secret. Sure, he wasn’t freshly shaven—the scruff around his chin had grown past the pokey stage, into the long, soft stage my legs sometimes got to when I hadn’t shaved all winter. It was customary for men to shave before church (most men in Haven didn’t even have beards or mustaches) but it was just cultural. It didn’t have anything to do with our religion, not really.
    I thought about our trips to the Sev, just off the freeway outside of Haven. It was a trucker exit, mainly; nothing was out there but oil refineries and the lone 7-Eleven. Everybody else hung out at DQ, which was why we didn’t.
    I’d get a piña colada Slurpee, or maybe a cherry/orange hybrid. He’d started ordering Mocha Java, a definite Mormon no-no no matter where you lived, but I didn’t mind. I figured the coffee had less to do with a crisis of faith and more to do with Zan flipping off Haven culture in his usual over-the-top style.
    But what if it went deeper than that? And if it did, why hadn’t he told me? He told me everything. Didn’t he?
    And I remember that night, after church, when he invited me to the Sev one last time. And it was so late and too dark, and there were mosquitoes out, lots of them, because it was late, but not cold, and dark, but not still. I remember that night in flashes, like a dream you remember some of, but not all, so you’re not sure whether it’s a dream or if it actually happened and just felt like a dream.
    It was real, though. Every day I live with how real it was.
    All I remember is the one line