Pastor Lewis’s lips stilled, but Jesse kept the camera on him for a few more silent seconds, allowing the full effect of his words to linger, dense and electric in their implications.
Just as I was thinking we’d reached the end, the scene changed again. It was me, on Christmas Eve, hands dragging down the mural of the nativity as my sobbing body sagged to the floor. I gasped, pressing against my dad’s arm to steady myself. I hadn’t thought Jesse had been there that long before he’d called out to me—would never have guessed that his camera had been on me that whole time, the bright recording light blinking red as he captured my fall.
My first instinct was to scream, to accuse him of completely violating my privacy. But then I saw the reactions that Hannah and my entire family were having, and I held myself back. Every cheek was shiny wet with tears, all eyes riveted by the scene—the round-bellied girl, the mother-to-be, so symbolically close to another mother. Another mother who mirrored so much of what she was experiencing in her own extraordinary life, two thousand years later.
And I realized that maybe—just maybe—that scene could actually change peoples’ minds. Soften them at the very least. Because how could that girl, that poor aching, breaking girl, be a fake, an impostor? And why would she? Why would she, or anyone, willingly put themselves through this experience? This kind of judgment?
That girl, that girl up on the screen, she was real. She was real, and she was hurting, but she was also determined and resilient and proud. She was the Mina I wanted to be.
She was the Mina I wanted the world to know.
I don’t know how the girl knew where to find me, but she did. She was sitting on the steps outside of Dr. Keller’s office, her small chin propped in her small hands, waiting as my mom and I made our way to the door. I didn’t pay any attention at first, not until she jumped up and latched on to my waist.
“Mina, Mina, Mina!” she screamed, her whole face lighting up in a big smile, adorably crooked from her two missing front teeth.
I stepped back a little, startled. I looked to my mom, and she shook her head at me, just as confused.
“Excuse me. I don’t think I know you?” I put one hand on her shoulder as I gently pushed her back to get a better look. Red braids, freckles, a sparkly pink jacket. She could have been Gracie’s age.
“No, but I know all about you. My whole family does. And I need to ask you a really important favor.” Her grin disappeared, and she looked suddenly much older, more serious.
“My mom is the one who needs you, but she was too sick to come. She’s really sick. And they won’t tell me much because they think I’m too little, but she has cancer. I’m scared she’s not going to be okay. Not ever maybe.”
A sob rose up my throat, but I forced it down. I took my mom’s hand instead, squeezing it as I steadied myself.
“I’m really sorry to hear that . . . ?”
“Katie.”
“I’m so sorry, Katie.”
“I told her that I would find you, though. I thought maybe if you pray for her, she might get better. Or maybe . . . maybe you could give me something to take back to her? Like a bracelet or a glove or something? Just something that you’ve touched. Like a good luck charm to help save her.”
“Katie, I . . .” I stopped, struggling with what to say. It felt morally wrong, deceitful to give her the hope that anything I could do would make any difference for her mom.
But at the same time, was it so awful to give someone hope? Wasn’t hope sometimes all we needed to be stronger? To pass through something hard—to make it to the other side.
Maybe hope isn’t always about the perfect ending. Hope is making the journey easier.
“Sure,” I said, before I could change my mind. I slipped a thin silver band from my thumb, a random find from a Saturday thrifting with the girls at the local flea market.
The look of pure joy on Katie’s face erased any regret I might have felt.
“Thank you, Mina,” she said through happy, glistening tears. We hugged, and she ran off, anxious, it seemed, to get the ring to her mom as soon as possible.
“I don’t even know her last name,” I said, looking up at my mom as Katie disappeared down the sidewalk. “I’ll never know if her mom gets better.”
“You did the right thing, sweetie. You did what you could do.” Mom sighed, tugging me gently toward the door. “It’s out of our hands now.”
• • •
“Everything looked great in the exam room today,” Dr. Keller said, “perfectly normal and on schedule.” I sat up straighter in my chair, trying to focus on what she was saying, but my thoughts were still with Katie. I considered calling my mom in from the waiting room, worried that I probably wouldn’t remember anything about the visit without her listening in.
“One more week and your baby will be full-term, Mina. Strange to think about, isn’t it? It feels like just a few weeks ago that you first came in here, so scared and confused. You hardly even seem like the same girl. Or the same woman, I should say.”
I nodded, still only half listening.
“Mina?” Dr. Keller leaned over her desk to stare at me straight on. “What’s going on? I guess that’s a silly question, though. I’m sure it’s been an interesting month, with everything that’s been happening after that video of yours.”
“Interesting,” I echoed, staring back at her. I smiled. “Interesting is probably the best word for it.”
When Jesse’s video went out to the news circuit, it was like a brilliant, blinding comet had burst from the roof of my house—fanning out its shimmering trail across the country, around the world. News stations played clips during prime-time broadcasts, the whole video could be found everywhere online, and people—well, people certainly watched. People were engrossed. The Virgin Mina website and online network was stronger and more active than ever, and the page was quickly becoming less of a trashy high school tabloid and more of a streamlined public forum for critics of all ages. I had my detractors, yes, the cynics, the disbelievers, and the angry zealots. People were still calling my house, still shoving notes in my locker, in our mailbox. People were still posting cruel accusations and compromising pictures that had been taken of me in private, unsuspecting moments. Even some of the more bored, indifferent kids at school had started getting angry with me now. Not because they cared about why or how I’d gotten pregnant, but because—as I’d heard one stranger put it while ranting to friends at her locker—I’d become a “total media whore who would do anything to stay in the spotlight.”
But . . .
There were other sorts of outspoken people surfacing, too, people who were speaking out not against me, but against those who were pointing their fingers and publicly flagellating me. They saw me as a human being who deserved privacy and the right to live my own life. And there were also people like Katie. People of all different ages, religions, and nationalities who could accept the unexplainable, open their minds to new possibilities. They were people who wanted hope. People who needed hope.
And I, somehow, had become their source.
“You’ve heard,” I said, “that I have ‘followers’ now, I’m sure. I saw one of them on my way in, actually. That’s why I’ve been so . . . distracted.”
She nodded, and I kept going, suddenly needing to talk.
“Some days I don’t know who I’m more scared of, Dr. Keller: the people who hate me or the people who claim to worship me. I got a letter the other day from a Muslim woman in Indonesia. Written in Arabic, so we had to take it to the police to translate. A woman in Indonesia knows about me. And she hates me, too, according to the letter. Told me all about how this is not ‘the Day of Resurrection,’ and I’ll pay the price for all my lies in the afterlife. It was nothing I hadn’t heard before, but still . . . she lives across the world. It’s absurd to even think about her knowing about my life, let alone caring about it.”