The Retreat by Annesly Pruitt
Outside, a church bell rang across the empty grass field, curving its way through the half-constructed swingset and around the cabins at the end of the field, looping back to the mess hall. The ringing bounced off the wall-to-ceiling glass at the mess hall entrance and resulted in a dull thumping sound indoors. Cam could almost make out the invisible waves against the window, the smallest threads breaking through. They wove through tiny glass atoms and into his ears. He flipped over his devotional booklet and began sketching out the curvy, unpatterned lines that science couldn’t see.
The bell signaled devotional time. The mess hall doors spilled open with a herd of teens, finding a place somewhere to be alone with God. Cam stayed seated. The counselors didn’t move either, waiting to see how the group would disperse. Two of the counselors were young and married. This fascinated Cam — he’d never associated those two terms together. They sat close so that their bodies looked like one.
She touched her husband’s leg and got up to sit by the big window overlooking the field. He sat there for a few minutes, feeling the loss of her, then wandered outside through the door in front of her.
Cam scanned the room and saw the rest of them settled in. He opened up his booklet. On the first page was a single devotional question: “Do you believe God sees you?” He scanned the room. The remainder of those there, counselors and students, were deep in thought, noses buried in Bible’s and pens scribbling across their booklets. He closed the book softly, as if someone might see him, then opened it back up and flipped through the pages to see if he missed the more interesting questions. The same simple questions ran across his sight. He looked up again, this time with a mixture of disbelief and awe. Pens kept scribbling. Heads stayed bowed.
His eyes rested on the married counselor, sitting right in front of the window. She stared straight ahead; head unbowed, pen unmoving. Nothing but the long expanse of grass lay before her. He watched her for five silent minutes. She never moved.
Before he could think, Cam was on his feet headed toward her. He realized midstride, and instead of turning around, angled himself for the door next to her. As he stepped out into the bright, cold sunlight, he began to make a plan for where he was actually going. He could imagine himself in her gaze, entering her line of vision. The heat of her stare scorched his back.
Since he wouldn’t dare to look backward, he looked around, hoping to find what was catching her attention. He saw two girls under a pavilion, giggling in the corner together. Three boys lounged near an unfinished swing set, leaning on the broken chains to see if they would hold up. Cam passed a grove of trees where several boys sat, several feet apart, wishing the male counselor hadn’t made his way down there.
A rustling above him caught Cam’s attention. In the tallest tree, there was a group of sparrows flitting from limb to limb. Their chirps rang out in high, pure notes across the quiet field. Cam was surprised he hadn’t heard them before. He watched with fascination as they hopped around aimlessly, sometimes going right back to the branch they were just on. They seemed to be making a pattern. Cam traced the patterns in his mind, drawing golden lines where the hopped and silver ones where their chirps rang out, and soon there was a kaleidoscope of shining images floating around and shifting into one another like the sky had broken open from a different world. Shapes molded into new shapes, shapes he had never seen passed over the sky and through the sparrows as their voices changed and sounded more urgent like they were pleading for him to join. He felt the pull of the unearthly, dancing sky deep in his chest.
At that moment a phrase, unsummoned, popped into his mind: Ask and you shall receive.
“God,” he whispered, “if you’re there, let me grow wings.”
He stood, arms slightly outstretched, waiting in eternal stillness under the ever-undulating air above him. The dance, twirling away from itself and back into itself, self-contained yet boundless, eternally complex yet simple, existing apart from yet dependent on Cam’s presence under that tree. It was ancient, original, continuing to change and ever-present. It needed nothing yet called out for everything to join it.
A growl in his stomach interrupted Cam’s prayer. Lunch flashed in his animal mind, and then the mess hall, and then the thought of the girl watching him at the window. He looked down at his feet, remembering where he was, and as his gaze dropped so did the weight of the world, crushing the kaleidoscope into jagged lines that disintegrated into the air. In a matter of moments, Cam saw only the top of the tree and a group of sparrows flitting back and forth.
He stood dumbfounded, then heat flushed his face. He had to turn back now; he felt the piercing stare on his back again. He must’ve been watched the whole time. He hurried back, head down and face burning. He prayed for it to cool off as he drew closer to the window. He couldn’t see inside from this distance, but he imagined all of the girls and counselors inside gathered around the window, laughing at him for walking nowhere and gawking at the birds.
He kept his gaze at the ground as he passed through the door. He was nearly in line with her chair at the window, and at the last moment he cast his eye just centimeters to the side. In his peripheral he caught a few lines, straight and curved, coming out of a remnant of his vision and into stillness, outlining a bowed head and moving pen in front of the window.