Ferris Beach by Jill McCorkle

had been renamed, because we all had to give each other
new
names for the retreat. The girl, newly named Charity,had studied me a long time before coming up with it, ignoring a whispered suggestion that I be named Cain. Cain, with his face marked like a cow branded for slaughter. The suggestion came from R.W. Quincy, who had read to page three of the Old Testament and had retained this bit of information since it had just filtered in that very morning. “She’s a marked woman,” he said and elbowed Merle Hucks, laughing.
    “That means God’s love,” Charity said. She was real plain and quiet until she took her role as the Woman at the Well and then she was in with the best of them, clapping and singing, responding to “Hello, I Love You” with “Bend Me, Shape Me,” which she said was a modern version of “Have Thine Own Way.” You were supposed to wear your new “reborn” name on a tag all weekend; I’d hear “Agape” and I wouldn’t even turn around until tapped on the shoulder. For one thing instead of putting that accent on the end, I simply heard the word as
a-gape,
like my mouth was most of the time, and that was because of the frightening proclamations I heard around me: “Jesus is coming. He is coming soon.”
    “To which theater?” R.W. Quincy asked. “The Cape Fear or the Clemmonsville?” Misty and I laughed, until we realized that it was just as bad to be on R.W.’s side as that of the girl who had given me my name and the others who spoke in scripture all day long. The retreat cost fifteen dollars for the weekend, and everybody knew that R.W. and Merle Hucks were there on donation gifts from Mrs. Poole’s Sunday school class. Dexter was not there because he was with his biker club, which R.W. said he was going to be joining soon. R.W. said that the only reason he and Merle had come in the first place was because it was free, free food, and free women who were in need of a man in the worst way.
    Much to my horror, I was instructed to rename Merle, and it took most of the weekend to do it. I’d watch him creep up into the woods to smoke a cigarette, and rack my brain for somethingappropriate. I kept thinking “Whitey” because of his pale straight hair, but there was nothing in the Bible that matched. I thought of Samson because his hair was long and scraggly and because he was one of the strongest boys in eighth grade, but I was afraid that he’d think I liked him. It was
after
Misty and I had laughed along with R.W. that she suggested names for both of them.
    “It’s easy,” she said when she had gotten everyone’s attention. “You are Frankincense,” she said, pointing to R.W. “And Merle is Myrrh.” She threw back her head and laughed, her hair frizzing all around her face, her hands on the hips of those red-white-and-blue spangled jeans she had had a fit to buy; she had lost five pounds and had squeezed into a size thirteen to prove it.
    “You mean he’s Frankenstein,” Merle said, and held his arms up in monster position.
    “Frankincense,” I repeated. “That’s the perfect name for R.W. Quincy.” I surprised myself and Misty by speaking out. Charity had given Misty the new name Bathsheba, because they had had a little disagreement over the
exact
words of “Bend Me, Shape Me.”
    “Why is Frankincense such a good name, Agape?” Charity asked, the feigned sweetness with which she had named me diminishing as fast as you could say “Day by Day” or
Godspell.
Charity and her friend, Brotherly Love, were saints until you crossed them.
    “Because he has a very distinct smell,” I said, and braced myself for bolts of lightning and rolls of thunder or, worse, those who were now going to say that they would pray for me. Merle grinned at me, I think more impressed than anything, and R.W. was not fazed. He just started saying that I had “leopardsy” just like in the Bible. Merle slapped R.W. and called him “Franko,” looked at me again and grinned.
    My greatest