The air of the ebony night sky seemed to sparkle with cold. Silence enveloped everything. Then I saw something.

My name is Tony Lopresti and I’ve been a lector since I started high school. The section at the beginning of a Catholic Mass is called The Liturgy of the Word. During that part of the Mass, a lector proclaims the readings of the day drawn from the Hebrew and the Christian scriptures.

A few aisles later, the boy stopped in his tracks. He looked up at his mother, his eyes wide with horror.

The one closest to me had his hoodie up and his back to me. The other wore his hoodie down, facing his friend.