Brandy liked to keep two things by her bed: the Bible and a ripe red apple. The Bible was easy to explain. Mrs. Oakes urged her children to read a chapter or at least a verse at night before they went to bed.
“That way, while you’re sleeping, all that goodness will trickle into your dreams. And if you keep it up, you’ll be able to say you’ve read the Bible three times all the way through by the time you’re finished with high school, just like I did.”
Brandy was all for it, because she like the Bible—from the hush and fanfare that surrounded the birth of baby Jesus to what she called “holy horror stories,” like the time Jesus cast a team of demons out of a possessed man. He drove those spirits right into a herd of dirty pigs, who dashed themselves to pieces over the edge of a cliff.
But the apple was a relatively new addition to her fancy white bedside table, the one with the phone shaped like a dolphin on it (Brandy was very particular about her room, and saved up all her babysitting money to make it look just right).
Temptation had entered her life in the form of Joshua French, a boy on the wrestling team. At 16, he was two hears older than Brandy and he was hard to miss. He slouched in the back of her geometry class, spitting steadily into a cup.
“I’m trying to make weight for my match today,” he explained when she asked about it.
Usually Brandy was very particular about keeping clean, and she’d always considered all the spitting and hawking and burping guys did to be gross. But lately, the devil himself had come over her. She had begun fantasizing about Joshua spitting on her. When she thought about it at night—which she tried not to do, then tried to do, then tried not to do—she felt like she was burning inside. If she’d explained it to anyone, she’d say, “I feel twitchy, then tired afterwards. And then I feel bad.”
But how could Brandy tell anyone about her weird fantasy. Her friends were all so normal, and the only thing they talked about was kissing boys. What’s more, they sounded so calm about them. Brandy was not so
lucky. When she talked about boys, she always felt like she was cranking up a high rollercoaster that was about to drop. She’d had to clap her hand over her mouth to keep from shouting out the time she’d mentioned that she thought a guy in math class was cute.
So that’s where the apple came in, a red Granny Smith from which she’d removed the sticker. Brandy liked apples but she didn’t want to eat this one. It was a test she’d set for herself. Eve had given into temptation by eating a forbidden apple and look where it had gotten her. It seemed like all the trouble in the world started with one crunch. Well, Brandy was better than that. She wouldn’t let any thoughts of apples, or boys, keep her from being what Mrs. Oakes called “pure of spirit.”
As crisp as that apple looked, Brandy knew that if she could resist a snack kept right within arm’s length, she could stop thinking about that spitting boy and the
way his hair fell into his eyes, and the time she saw him in his wrestling uniform that was so strange—like a tight version of the bathing suits people wore back when movies were silent.
Somehow knowing that piece of fruit was there untouched, like her room was its own Garden of Eden, reassured Brandy. I am in control. I will not think weird thoughts about a stupid boy. And yet the image flashed into her mind again, unbidden, terrifying, delicious, welcome.
“Hi Brandy,” he would say, lifting his shy smile from the soda cup of backwash. “Would you like to go out with me?”
And then his lips would suddenly purse, and a bubble of saliva would form at the corner of his mouth as he prepared to. . .
“Stop!” Brandy yelled out loud. She was possessed alright, and Jesus was nowhere around to help her. And Mr. And Mrs. Oakes, who had barely let her get a cat the year before, certainly did not have a herd of swine around.
At that moment, Brandy decided she liked the way this Joshua story was going. Hadn’t she done her homework? Gone to church? Read her nightly chapter of the Bible? So if she felt this way, it was either God’s plan or his fault.
She leaned back on the pile of pillows she liked to sleep on, covered with pretty purple-and-white flowered pillowcases. She reached out for the apple, palming it like a small basketball, and took a bite.
Brandy felt happy for the first time in months. She
realized that, just as sure as she liked that image of hell-bound pigs, she liked that first mealy bite of apple (an apple a day keeps the doctor away). And she wanted to know just what would happen after a beautiful boy spit on her. She closed her eyes.
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