Fade by Robert Cormier Page A

father or my other uncles. Had the fade done this to him? Would the fade do this to me?
    “Come on,” he said, rising.
    I followed him across grassy paths, between tombstones of all shapes and sizes, crosses and angels, some ornate and others merely slabs of slate.
    He stopped at a corner lot where an impressive granite stone stood, the name Moreaux chiseled on its front. A small square of granite had been planted beside the big stone. Daisies surrounded the square, fresh and bright. The name Vincent had been carved into the stone.
    Uncle Adelard knelt down, made the sign of the cross, his lips moving in prayer. I also knelt, and prayed for the soul of my uncle Vincent. It was strange to think of him as Uncle Vincent. He was only twelve years old when he died. I remembered my father's anger because Uncle Adelard had left town before Vincent's funeral.
    We rose to our feet. When I glanced at Uncle Adelard, his face looked misshapen.
    “The grass is nice here,” I said, needing to say something.
    “Vincent died because of me,” Uncle Adelard murmured, his voice so low that I barely understood him.
    “Let's leave this place,” he said wearily, his hand on my shoulder as if my body were a cane to support him as we walked away.

less me, Father, for I have sinned,” I whispered in the darkened confessional, the words hissing against the screen that separated me from Father Gastineau. I had chosen him for my confession because he was the youngest of the three curates at St. Jude's. “It has been June since my last confession. I received absolution and made my penance.”
    The old formula completed, I hesitated, unsure of myself despite my careful plans. To gain time, I called upon my usual ‘start-off’ sin, the venial sin to ease my way into the more important transgressions. “I lost my temper, three times.”
    One of the church's huge doors closed gently, almost with a sigh. Otherwise, all was silence.
    I had chosen late afternoon, the final moments of the confessional hours, to make my move, waiting in a distant pew for the penitents to thin out. I had also argued silently with myself, wondering why I was there in the first place. Since Armand and I had been successful in deceiving our mother about confession earlier in the summer, she had not brought up the subject. Yet, as August dwindled, the sudden cool nights hailing the imminent end of summer, I felt a need to confess and had made a total of all my sins. The total was overwhelming. Get rid of them and die in peace if you are struck by lightning, I told myself.
    Father Gastineau cleared his throat and I swallowed painfully, bringing my lips within an inch of the screen, and said:
    “I have touched the breast of a female, Father.”
    “A female?” the priest asked, his voice muffled, as if he were trying to strangle a cough.
    I had thought long and hard about how I would confess my sin. I could not say that I had touched a girl's breast since that would be a lie. Priests had an uncanny way of knowing whether the penitents were young or old. How could I confess that I had touched the breast of a grown woman without opening the door to a lot of questions? Finally, I had settled on female.
    “Yes,” I said, feeling my Adam's apple jumping. “A female.”
    “And this female, how many times did you touch her breast?”
    It was always “how many times,” the inescapable arithmetic of confession. “Once,” I said.
    “Only once?”
    “Yes.”
    “What happened then?”
    “Nothing.”
    “You did not go—further?”
    “No.” My lungs burned. I had been holding my breath.
    “If you see this female again, do you plan to touch her as you did before?”
    “No,” I said fervently.
    Pause. My fate hanging in that pause, teetering as if on a high wire.
    “Anything more?” he finally asked.
    My first instinct was to say no and end this torture, but I had come this far after all these agonizing weeks and did not want to turn back.
    “Yes.” I lowered my