Boys Don’t Pray For this.

The first thing Elias Moreno did at St. Augustine's Preparatory Academy was kneel. Not in the dormitory, where the other scholarship boys were already unpacking suitcases held together with tape and prayer. Not in the dining hall, where boys with surnames carved into hospital wings were laughing too loudly over breakfast. He went, instead, to the chapel. His mother had pressed a rosary into his palm at the train station that morning. Promise me, she had whispered, in the Spanish she only used when she was afraid. Promise me you won't forget who you are. He had promised. He had been promising her things since he was old enough to understand what fear sounded like in a woman's voice. The chapel at St. Augustine's was nothing like the small parish church back home in Queens. Here the ceilings vaulted toward heaven in pale, ribbed stone. The stained glass was old enough that the colours had bruised. Candles guttered in red glass holders along the side aisle, and the air smelled of beeswax and something older incense gone cold in the wood. Elias slid into a pew near the front. He folded his hands. He bent his head. Lord, make me worthy of this place. Lord, do not let me embarrass them. Lord, keep my mother proud and my father quiet and my sister safe. Lord - A click. Elias did not lift his head. The polite thing, the trained thing, was to ignore it. But there was a sound after the click that did not belong in a chapel — a soft inhale, then the slow exhale of smoke. He looked up. A boy was sitting in the very back pew, one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, a cigarette burning lazily between two long fingers. His school blazer hung open. His tie was loose. His hair was the kind of dark that wasn't black, exactly, but looked black under the chapel's dim light. He was watching Elias with the bored, faintly amused expression of someone watching a fish in a tank. Elias stared. He couldn't help it. No one smoked in a church. The boy raised one eyebrow, as if he'd asked a question. "You can't —" Elias's voice scraped out, smaller than he wanted. He cleared his throat. "You can't smoke in here." "Mm." The boy took another drag. "And yet." "It's a chapel." "It's a room," the boy corrected, mild. With nice acoustics." Elias didn't know what to do with his hands. He realized he was still holding the rosary, and his knuckles had gone white around it. He forced them to relax. He stood, slowly, the way you stand when you don't want a dog to chase you. "Please put it out." "Why?" "Because , because it's holy." The boy tilted his head. The faintest, faintest smile touched the corner of his mouth, and somehow it was worse than a sneer. "You actually believe in all this?" he said. Not cruelly. Almost curiously. As if Elias were a species he had read about but never seen up close. "All the " he gestured vaguely with the cigarette, ash scattering "— bread and blood and bells?" Elias's throat closed. He had been mocked for his faith before. By kids in his neighborhood who thought church was for old women. By his cousin Marco, who'd gone to college and come back with opinions. He had answers for those people. He had verses. He had patience. He did not have an answer for this. He did not have an answer for this. Because the boy hadn't asked it like a taunt. He'd asked it like he wanted to know. Like the answer might matter. "Yes," Elias said, finally. Quietly. "I do." The boy considered him for a long moment. Then he stood, unfolding himself in one fluid motion — taller than Elias by half a head, lean in a way that suggested rowing or fencing or something Elias's family could not afford to teach a son. He walked, unhurried, down the side aisle. He stopped at the holy water font near the door a shallow marble bowl set into a niche in the wall, the water in it still and clear. He looked at Elias. He flicked the cigarette into the font. It hissed. A small, obscene sound. "Then pray for me," the boy said. "I hear I need it." He pulled the chapel door open. A shaft of late summer light fell across the floor, gilding the stone. He stepped through it. The door swung shut behind him with the slow, heavy finality of something much older than either of them. Elias stood very still. The cigarette floated in the holy water, slowly unraveling. A thin grey ribbon of ash spread out from it like ink in milk. Somewhere, distantly, a bell was ringing for the start of first period. He should go. He should report this. He should - Instead, he walked to the font. He fished the cigarette out with two fingers. He wrapped it in his handkerchief. He didn't know why. Outside, the bell tolled again. Boys' voices rose and fell in the courtyards. Somewhere in those voices, he understood with a strange, dropping certainty, was the boy from the pew. He didn't know his name. He didn't know what year he was in. He didn't know anything about him. But Elias Moreno, who had promised his mother that morning that he would not forget who he was, knew this: He was already a little afraid. And - God forgive him — a little curious. He folded the handkerchief into his blazer pocket, over his heart, where the rosary already lay. Two relics now. One blessed .One burning. He didn't yet know which would weigh more.