My heart is open. I can feel it. It’s never open. This can’t be a coincidence. This—

Her head is hung in anguish. She has opened the window. She is telling Satan to leave our house. She is upset with us.

I wanted them to think that I'd developed some sort of heat resistant super power. "This?" I said. "This is nothing," even as sweat dripped down my forehead and into my eyes. 

I had no brothers or sisters, so I received a single white envelope. I took my time opening it. I watched as those around me opened theirs. One of my friends started crying. Breathing deeply, I read mine.

He was super into God. He was super into church. And he was super into me

This was the summer after seventh grade, and all my thoughts were sinful, according to the church. The year before I had confessed all my crimes and a man in hip waders held me under water until all the evil in me had fled the power of Christ’s approach, but now, in the early stages of my adolescence, I was obsessed with the opposite sex.