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The Boy Who Called God “She”
    Nancy Springer
    So there’s this new kid in school, see? One of my suckups, little freshman punk, saw him go in the office and let me know. So me ’n Brent take a stroll to peep him out, because the two of us basically run the school, I mean the important stuff, like who gets to yank lunch money and jump line and go in the bathroom whenever they want.
    “Loser,” Brent says to me out of the side of his mouth.
    “Geek,” I agree, because the new kid is skinny and dorky looking with a softie face and purple fruity-ass hair, thinks he’s hot snot but he’s not. Like, he is actually dressed to code. This is a Christian school and boys are supposed to wear dark slacks and a button front shirt and a tie. My parents send me here because they say it will teach me a sense of order and discipline. Yeah, right. My parents don’t go to church or anything but they think Jesus is good for kids, kind of like Santa Claus. Like, they sent me to Sunday School when I was little. What I mostly learned was that I gotta be good or I go to Hell. So I figure I’m gonna go to Hell, because I am definitely not good and I like to beat up on geeks, and it looks like God just sent me another one.
    Just as I’m thinking this, buttface Mrs. Miller clops up in those horseshoes of hers. “Put your tie on, Derek,” she snarfs at me.
    “It is on.” Tied around my head.
    “Put it on properly.”
    Stupid old hippie, doesn’t she know a proper headband when she sees one? “But Mrs. Miller, it’s keeping my hair orderly and disciplined.”
    She isn’t buying it. No damn sense of humor. I take the tie off my head and duck into the bathroom like I need a mirror or something and stick the tie in my back pocket. Then me ’n Brent have a smoke. Then we hang out. By third period we get bored and go to class. I pull my shirt tails half out of my pants to give the teachers something else to bother me about.
    Third period is Religion class—like all the classes ain’t religion? I mean, in this school we got Jesus algebra, for Christ’s sake. But anyway, the new kid, I mean candy-ass, is there. It turns out his name is Julian, which doesn’t make me like him any better. I dump my butt in a seat in the back of the room and stare at Julian’s skinny neck and his purple grape-jelly hair without thinking much about him or listening much to anything until up goes his hand and he says it.
    “I don’t think God means for us to be scared of Her,” he says.
    Her??
    That bumps me up straight. I’m staring at this weird kid. Everybody is staring. Including the teacher. He can’t seem to think what to say. There is this awesomely total silence, like a white hole of no noise at all.
    Finally the teacher—Reverend Weltzer, he’s a preacher at some church on Sundays—finally he says like each word is an egg that might break and make a slimy mess, “You refer to God as ‘Her,’ Julian?”
    And that geek Julian says “Yes” with kind of a question mark on it, like, isn’t that okay?
    Weltzer says, “May I ask why?”
    “I, uh, I just do.” The fruithead doesn’t sound real sure of himself.
    “But our Lord Jesus was male,” Weltzer says. “And he referred to God as his Father.”
    “Because it made God easy for him to talk to!” Julian lights up, dorky happy.
    “I, um, I suppose so…” Now Weltzer isn’t sure.
    Julian says, “See, that’s it. For me God’s easy to talk to if She’s a Her.”
    Just listening to him I want to crawl under the chair. Embarrassed to be human. I mean, what an unbelievable loser.
    Reverend Weltzer thinks so too. I can see it in his face. He goes on talking about obedience or whatever and doesn’t call on Julian anymore.
    After class I pass Julian in the hall and knock him good with my shoulder. Brent lays in right behind me and goes, “Ew, a bug!” and whacks him hard on his fruit-loop head.
    “Hey!” the dork yells at both of us, but we just laugh and keep walking.
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