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and other things that get hazy because he’s not sure what they are. He lets himself study the way his thing changes shape. It grows and shrinks and grows and shrinks. Later, when he’s exhausted and all that’s come out are clear little teardrops that thread like corn syrup on his finger when he touches them, he wonders if he made the stain. He flips through
Wait . . .
in search of the description. He knows he’s failed—in God’s eyes and Satan’s—because he’s sinned, but not even correctly, the wrong stuff came out, he’s still doing it wrong. And he lies awake, feeling unclean and inhuman, wishing he could die instead of sinning like this. Wondering what God does to sex addicts like him. Terrified of the rapist serial killer he will become when he grows up. Promising God yet again that if He forgives him, just this one more time, it will never happen again. That’s lying, too. It gets so bad that one night—a night when he is actually able to resist, though in order to do so, he has to make a rule that his hands stay above the covers—he wakes up with teardrops all over his underwear.
    Convinced that if he doesn’t change his ways soon, his chances at a conversation with Jesus—forget getting into Heaven—will be lost forever, Shawn reads the Christian comic books from Shepherd’s House and listens to
Small One
and
The Kids’ Praise Album
and the whole Monarch collection of children’s records that teach the Fruits of the Spirit and the Ten Commandments and the Seven Seals of the Apocalypse. He asks himself, about once every minute, What Would Jesus Do, though with no word from the Man Himself, he never comes up with an answer. He tells himself it’s not too late, that if he does everything so right that he becomes the rightest person on Earth, God might still catch him in the floodlight He uses to peer into people’s souls and say to Himself, “Gosh, that boy, Shawn Casper, he’s really something. Look at him, Saint Peter. Moses, come see this. He’s only in fourth grade and he’s already the best Christian ever. You don’t see him? Right there. The one with the halo. I’m shining My light on him. It tickles Me all over when I see a kid like that.”
    But Shawn knows he’s no longer a kid like that.
    On Wednesdays, the Casper family’s busy day, when Shawn’s mother and father both go straight from work to their evening meetings—he’s on the church council, she’s in the choir—Shawn rides his bike home from school to the house he must inhabit until nearly bedtime, long after dark, alone. He tries to remember that God will protect him, but each Wednesday as he pedals slowly home, he remembers the Wednesday last week, when he hid in the hall closet, or two weeks ago, when he cowered in the shower staring at his hands, or the one before that, when he curled in a ball beneath the covers of his parents’ bed and cried. He remembers all the Wednesdays since his parents stopped hiring sitters last year, each one so much like the others—him shivering, shaking, afraid of he knows not what. Each new Wednesday picks up where the last one left off. The minions just keep getting stronger.
    Please Jesus, please let me get through this hump day without doing anything to make You mad at me. I promise I won’t watch the TV shows Mom and Dad don’t like me to watch. I won’t turn the radio to the bad stations. If You please help me, I won’t do anything wrong. Let me not have the bad thoughts that I sometimes have. Let me pass through the darkness and into the light. And, Jesus, can You let me not be scared, never again? Thank You, Jesus. A-men.
    This Wednesday, the minions are especially active. And worse, Shawn suspects his father of conspiring with them. Last night, even though he gave up smoking for Lent and promised this time it would be for good, Shawn saw him sneak a cigarette out in the garage. How could he do this? It’s horrible! Not only does smoking disappoint God, but to make a