So God created Man in his own image… 
--Genesis 1:27 

God is not dead, but alive and well 
and working on a much less ambitious project. 
--Anonymous 

In the summer we ran off the muddy banks of the lake as fast as we could in hopes that our momentum would propel us across the top of the water to the opposite side. You could make it across short distances. You ran across that narrow cove where the water turned green and the weeds grew dense and thick. The other children all claimed that you were touching the bottom. But none of them could repeat your trick, though they tried and tried. 

They fell. They tripped. And they sank in the mucky water. You ran past them like a feather blown across the surface. If you stopped to help them, you sank too, and that’s when they called your bluff. 

By the time we were in high school, you could run across the thickest part of the lake in your Nikes and the soles would touch the far bank as dry as when you left. But by that time, word had gotten around that you were a little odd and I was the only one who still went out to the lake with you. I watched you from the inclined bank of the boat launch. You could never figure out how to take someone else across the water with you. Not even me. 

At one time, your mother and mine had been friends. They had a falling out around the time we entered junior high and while I was never explicitly told that it had anything to do with you, I suspected that it had everything to do with you. You would neither confirm nor deny this, though I was certain that you knew because you always knew when other people were lying. It was uncanny and sometimes a little bit funny, but most of the time it was unnerving and you yourself said time and again that it was frustrating. You knew when people were lying, but you couldn’t know why and you couldn’t predict where that lie would take any of us outside of an educated guess and your guesses were fantastically wrong most of the time. After awhile, you stopped making guesses and you stopped trying to fix everyone’s problems and you let us all go down whatever holes we dug for ourselves. 

Three of us went to the fair that night: you, me, and Louis. It was tense because you and Louis never got along; even when we were kids. You didn’t mind it so much when the other children teased you. But Louis was personal. He was the only boy you ever struck. I thought you killed him and I think you thought so too for a minute. Then he came to and sat up, holding a trembling hand to the gash across his forehead where it formed a jagged scar upon healing. 

It was all over a bird. You and I were sitting on the bleachers behind the school. I stole my mother’s Pall Malls and chain smoked them because my parents had a fight and I thought they were getting divorced. They didn’t, but I was twelve and started to take note of the fact that your father was gone and you were a little weird, and I thought that maybe I would end up a little weird if mine was gone too. You weren’t looking at me and I didn’t feel like arguing, so I turned the other way and blew my smoke towards the woods on the other side of the field. 

Louis came out of the woods with two cronies, something in his hands and a BB gun slung across his shoulders. He grinned when he saw me and made a beeline through the field. He had a bird in his hand; a crumpled, bloodied, robin. He held it up to the two of us and gestured towards his followers, “The boys and I went hunting.” 

You visibly paled and I couldn’t inhale for a minute. Then you said, “She’s not dead, Louis.” 

“Sure she is. That’s a lethal shot.” Louis pointed to the bloody smear across the orange chest. He tossed the robin from one hand to another to make his point and I thought, maybe, I saw a leg jerk. 

“Give her to me. I can fix her.” You held your hand out and Louis swatted it away. 

“Can’t fix dead.” 

“I—.” you caught yourself and to this day, I’m certain you were about to say that you could. “Please, Louis. I can fix her.” 

Louis ignored you and walked away holding the bird like a baseball in his fist. You were down off the bleachers and following him onto the deserted field. One of the other boys picked up a broken board from beneath the seats and swung it like a baseball bat and then the robin was flying and breaking and you were screaming. You jumped on Louis from behind and drove his face into the ground. He twisted around like a snake in the grass and you didn’t stop punching until he stopped moving. The other boys ran away and I came down from the bleachers. 

You stopped hitting Louis and I snapped, “Can you fix that?” 

You wiped a hand across your cheek. You left a bright red smudge beneath your eye. You shook your head and started walking towards the parking lot. Louis was moaning and gingerly sitting up. 

That was when everyone started to talk and I wasn’t allowed to go to your house anymore and no one came to the lake to watch you walk on the water. 

Louis didn’t want you to come to the fair with us. He pulled me aside and whispered in my ear, “This was supposed to be a date.” 

It wasn’t though. I wanted Louis the way I wanted a Skip-It when all the other girls showed up at the playground with one. I never really enjoyed playing with mine once I got it and I always stubbed my toe. 

So, Louis wandered off in a huff and met up with his brother and a flask. You bought a book of tickets for the rides and we spent half of them on the Ferris wheel. Every time our seat rose up, I craned my neck and tried to see what was on the other side of the hills before us. You ignored the sky and the hills and the things that usually impress people. You hung over the side, resisting the urge to reach and to touch. Cool blue and fierce red lights glowed along the thick steel spokes. 

We rode the Zipper and the Spider and Roll-O-Planes. I won a poster of a kitten at the dart game and we shared a bowl of halupki on a bench beside the Ferris wheel. “You missed the view while we were up there,” I said. 

You shrugged, “I think carnival rides are man’s greatest achievement. I am constantly amazed by what mankind can build when they really try.” 

“What about atom bombs and gas chambers?” I deadpanned. You didn’t have time to answer because Louis came back reeking of Jack. He pulled me from the bench, not rough, but you glared anyway. 

“Bob left me his truck,” Louis slurred. “What do you say we blow out of here?” 

You stood up, “I thought I was taking you home?” 

Louis started stalking towards the exit gate, weaving between the families with strollers and the sweethearts with overstuffed Scooby-Doos and the ten-year-olds with goldfish. I looked back to you and shrugged. 

“Please don’t leave with him,” you said. “Please.” 

I looked the other way, through the crowd, to where Louis was lighting up near the exit. I looked back to you, torn, and said, “I told him I would go with him earlier. I told him we’d go on a date. I promised.” 

Your shoulders slumped. You shook your head and said, “No, you didn’t.” 

Louis and I didn’t see much of each other when school started, but I made a point of seeking him out the day a crimson cross appeared in the little window of my Error Proof Test. You didn’t question when I asked him to drive me home instead of you. You closed your eyes when we drove past. 

That night, I knocked on your backdoor. I felt things move in ways they were never meant to and I knew, I was certain, that I would not be anything but myself in nine months. I told you this, shivering beneath a blanket on the sofa in your basement and you looked at me the way you looked at that dying bird. You leaned close to my face, smelling like all the good things in life: cut grass and Old Spice cologne and cocoa made with milk and Hershey bars; not powder. You said, softly, “I can fix it.” 

In the morning, I was still bruised because you weren’t perfect. Never were, really. I moved slowly across the floor and up the steps. Your mother already left for work and you were in the kitchen scrambling eggs. You smiled when I came up the steps and slid into one of the chairs at the table. It was a real smile and it filled the little kitchen with sunlight. That was when I saw the suitcase near the door, an Amtrak ticket placed reverently on top. I looked at you questioningly, and you slid half of the fluffy eggs onto my plate and the rest onto yours. You handed me the hot sauce from the door of the refrigerator and the smile didn’t falter until I said “I take it we aren’t going to school today?” and nodded at the suitcase. 

“No one’s going to school today,” you said and slid the morning paper across the table. “Arson Leaves One Dead” the headline screamed, a big crime for a town like ours. I scanned the article. Security cameras caught Louis dumping gas in lobby of the high school. He flicked his lighter, the flames leapt, and the camera went black. Sometime after that, somehow, Louis burned in the fire that he set. 

“Funny how things work out,” you said. 

For a moment, I was afraid of you, but couldn’t articulate why. 

We ate in silence before my eyes went back to the suitcase and the ticket. I bit my lip and spoke, “Did you kill Louis?” 

“No,” an emphatic shake of your head was my answer. 

“But you were there.” 

A nod, “In a way.” 

“What the hell are you?” 

You flinched. 

I thought about a homework assignment in first grade. What did we want to be when we grew up? I said I wanted to be a dinosaur. I thought about what you said and how everyone snickered and thought that your answer was somehow more outrageous than mine. 

“Are you God?” 

You smiled tightly and said nothing. 

“Where are you going?” 

Silence hung in the air. Even the geese flying south for the coming winter refrained from squawking above your roof. 

“I don’t want to watch anymore of this.” You said, briefly running your thumb over the remnants of my split lip. 

“I want to see the beautiful things that people have made. No more of this.” Your fingertips moved to my cheek, the faintest of lavender petals blooming beneath my eye, “I can’t watch anymore of this.” 

“This is all over,” I said. “These things happen all the time.” 

You nodded, “I know... I tried so hard to fix them.”