I still sort of felt like I was walking on mushrooms, though. Some of those blisters on the soles of my feet had gone hard as rocks.

“When,” Father Dominic asked, “were you going to tell me about you and Jesse?”

I blinked at him. I was sitting in the visitor’s chair across from his desk where I always sit while we have our little chats. As usual, I had fished a toy out from the good father’s bottom drawer, where he keeps the juvenile paraphernalia teachers confiscate from their pupils. Today I had hold of some Silly Putty.

“What about me and Jesse?” I asked blankly, because I genuinely had no idea what he was talking about. I mean, why would I ever suspect that Father Dom knew about me and Jesse…the truth about me and Jesse? I mean, who would ever have told him?

“That you…that you two…” Father Dom seemed to be having some trouble choosing his words.

That’s how I got his meaning before he ever even got the whole sentence out.

“That you and Jesse are…I believe the term these days is an item,” he finally blurted.

I immediately turned as red as the robes of the archbishop, who’d be descending upon our school at any moment.

“We—we aren’t,” I stammered. “An item, I mean. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. I don’t know how—”

And then, in a burst of intuition, I knew. I knew exactly how Father Dom had found out. Or thought I did, anyway.

“Did Paul tell you that?” I demanded. “Because I am really surprised at you, Father, for listening to a guy like that. Did you know that he is at least partly responsible for my blisters? I mean, he totally came on to me—” I didn’t feel it was necessary, under the circumstances, to add that I hadn’t resisted. At all. “And then when I tried to leave, he sicced this Hell’s Angel after me—”

Father Dom interrupted me. Which is something Father Dominic does not do often.

“Jesse himself told me,” he said. “And what is this about you and Paul?”

I was too busy gaping at him to pay attention to his question.

“What?” I exclaimed. “Jesse told you?” I felt as if the world as I knew it had suddenly been turned upside down, topsy-turvy, and inside out. Jesse had told Father Dom that we were an item? That he had feelings for me? Before he’d even bothered to tell me? This could not be happening. Not to me. Because incredibly good things like this never happened to me. Never.

“What, exactly,” I asked carefully, because I wanted to make sure that, before I got my hopes up, I got the story straight, “did Jesse tell you, Father Dom?”

“That you kissed.” Father Dominic said the word so uncomfortably, you’d have thought there were tacks on the seat of his chair. “And I must say, Susannah, that I am disturbed that you said nothing of this to me the other day when we spoke. I have never been so disappointed in you. It makes me wonder what else you are keeping from me—”

“I didn’t tell you,” I said, “because it was just one lousy kiss. And it happened weeks ago. And since then, nothing. I mean it, Father D.” I wondered if he could hear the frustration in my voice, and found that I didn’t even care. “Not even nothing. A big fat nothing.”

“I thought you and I were close enough that you would share something of this magnitude with me,” Father Dominic said all glumly.

“Magnitude?” I echoed, smashing the Silly Putty in my fist. “Father D., what magnitude? Nothing happened, okay?” Much to my everlasting disappointment. “I mean, not what you’re thinking, anyway.”

“I realize that,” Father Dominic said gravely. “Jesse is far too honorable a young man to have taken advantage of the situation. However, you must know, Susannah, that I cannot in good conscience allow this to continue—”

“Allow what to continue, Father D.?” I could not believe I was even having this conversation. It was almost as if I had woken up in Bizarro World. “I told you, nothing—”

“I owe it to your parents,” Father Dominic went on, as if I hadn’t spoken, “to look out for your spiritual welfare as well as your physical well-being. And I have an obligation to Jesse, as well, as his confessor—”

“As his what?” I yelled, feeling as if I might fall out of my chair.

“There is no need to shout, Susannah. I believe that you heard me perfectly well.” Father Dom looked about as miserable as I was just beginning to feel. “The fact is, that in light of…well, the current situation, I have advised Jesse that he needs to move into the rectory.”

Now I did fall out of my chair. Well, I didn’t fall out of it, exactly. I tumbled out of it. I tried to leap, but my feet were too sore for leaping. I settled for lunging at Father Dom. Except that there was this huge desk separating us, so I couldn’t, as I wanted, grab big handfuls of his vestments and shriek Why? Why? in his face. Instead, I had to grip the edge of his desk very tightly and go, in the kind of shrill, girl voice I hate but couldn’t stop emitting at that point, “The rectory? The rec- tory?”

“Yes, the rectory,” Father Dominic said defensively. “He will be perfectly content there, Susannah. I know it will be difficult for him to adjust to spending his time somewhere other than—well, the place where he died. But we live very simply at the rectory. In many ways, it will be much like what Jesse was accustomed to when he was alive….”

I was really having a lot of trouble processing what I was hearing.

“And Jesse agreed to this?” I heard myself asking in that same shrill, girl’s voice. Whose voice was that, anyway? Surely not my own. “Jesse said he’d do it?”

Father Dominic looked at me in a manner I can only describe as pitying.

“He did,” he said. “And I am more sorry than I can say that you had to find out this way. But perhaps Jesse felt…and I must say, I agree with…that such a scene might…well, a girl of your temperament might…well, you might have made it difficult….”

And then, from out of nowhere, the tears came. My only warning was a sharp tingle in my nose. The next thing I knew, I was fighting back sobs.

Because I knew what Father Dom was trying to say. It was all there, in hideous black and white. Jesse didn’t love me. Jesse had never loved me. That kiss—that kiss had been an experiment after all. Worse than an experiment. A mistake, even. A horrible, miserable mistake.