The Rich Boy in a Rock Band

Song 2 ♪ A Cross and A Girl Named Truth

I'd only ever seen a nun on TV, because my ma and I hadn't grown up as faithful or regular church goers. But I couldn't say this aloud.

She was really young, I noticed as she smiled. "You must be Vera."

The guard leaned a bit closer to the nun. "Be nice to her, the poor girl came in running on foot."

The word poor was so on point it was almost like he knew me and my family.

The nun said, "We're always fair."

It took me a second as I was walked into the room to realize she hadn't said they'd be nice to me. But fair. Fair meant they were definitely going to consider my lateness. I was screwed.

I stood in front of another nun, older and with an air of authority, that sat by a man with crinkles on the corners of his eyes.

"Please take a seat," the younger nun said, pointing at a plump chair they had in the middle of the room. Once I sat and she joined as well, I realized that the set up put us all into a circle of sorts. And that was nice, because at least I didn't feel like I was facing a line of people with an invisible wall between us. "I'm Sister Louisa, this is Mother Superior Evangeline, who is the headmistress of this school, and this is Robert Burlington, the head teacher of the senior year."

I placed my hands neatly on my lap and hoped they wouldn't focus on the sweat stains on the maid dress. Or focus on the maid dress.

"Pleased to meet you," I said in what I tried to make my most pleasant voice. "I'm Vera."

The headmistress lowered her glasses down her nose to give me a better look. "I Googled your name." Whatever I thought she'd say, it definitely hadn't been that. "There are a couple of ways it can be interpreted. You could say that it means faith or truth. Faith to Mary, mother of God or the True Mary, the true mother. Very pretty, I like it."

With eyes wide as saucers I said, "Thank you."

I realized right then that I was totally out of my depth. I wasn't religious at all and I was going to have to fake it to get in. Which I was sure was some sort of sin.

I swallowed.

"My mother chose it for me, hoping it'd bring me blessing." I stretched the truth and laid it thick there. All my mother had ever said about my name was that Vera was the name of her grandma on her dad's side, and that she'd always liked it. "We're very devout to the Lord."

A bolt of lightning should have stricken me right there and then.

"That's good," the man spoke then. "You'll be surprised to know that not all of our students are Catholic, but we do hope to convey in them the sense that there is something greater than what they can see and it's a lot easier to educate them when they already believe."

I plastered a smile on my face that made my cheeks hurt. I had to shift the topic somehow before they started asking me if I knew my prayers.

"Ah, I'd like to apologize for being late." I squirmed, really meaning it and hoping that I wasn't shooting myself in the foot by attracting attention to my obvious mistake. "This is not a habit I have, but I didn't realize that my um, workplace, was not as close by as I expected."

The man nodded and the Mother Superior asked, "Workplace?"

Ah, shit. I hoped that wasn't a big no-no.

"Yes, ma'am. I help my ma clean houses sometimes."

They murmured unintelligible words that had me breaking into a sweat.

"That's fine, child," she continued. "But you do know that were you to be admitted into this institution you would have to cease all such activities, correct? While we do value and praise hard work, we want our kids to focus all of that energy into their grades and extra curricular activities."