dear diary,

the devil game players have invited me to their homes. michael wheeler is a frog faced boy with an annoyingly loud personality. he is nancy's little brother. barbara holland says that michael is a sweet boy, just a product of his family. she says the same about nancy. i have heard the rumors about her. they call her a slut, and more often than not, a temptress. they say she should save herself for marriage, like a devote catholic. nancy has never stepped inside her church, and the wheelers say blasphemous things around it.

steve harrington came to our church today. he was there in a nice suit and loads of bruises. he looked like he'd been kissed by a fist. he smells of sadness and desperation. he also smells like death. i can't seem to understand why he smells like a corpse.

i've noticed his sluggish movements and his guilty expression. i have met the spirits of people who have taken their own lives, plagued by the satanic thoughts that wormed themselves into their minds. i don't think steve will take his own life. i hope not. i'm sure there are some girls who would want to kiss him one more time.

forgive me father, for i have sinned. i often say it in the shower, when i have nothing else to say. sometimes i ask god to let me un hear the secrets of the dead. it isn't normal to hear them. i haven't told a soul other than the club of boys and their satanic ritual of a game. forgive me father, for i have sinned, i say when i'm alone in my bedroom when my mother is at the bar and drowning her sorrows in endless cans of beer.

my mother is a good woman. she has her own ghosts, but i never speak to them. i never could. their lips are glued shut, and they never bother trying to haunt me. just my mother. my mother's ghosts do is stare. i will always stare right back.

forgive me father, for i have sinned. except i never know if it's my sin, or someone else's.

best wishes,
taylor