- Now we are reading Creed.doc, the story Torey wrote down:
- Torey is in Steepleton, at church with his best friend, Alex, thinking about how boring church is, but since everyone in town is super Christian, there's no use trying to get out of it.
- He sees his other friends, Ryan, Eddie, and Pat, and thinks about how shallow and kind of dumb they are.
- Then he sees the stained glass window up above, with Christ wearing a loincloth to cover up his nakedness, which is confusing for Torey. He thinks about why people have to change the truth just because it's uncomfortable.
- A while ago, he even asked the pastor, Reverend Harmon, about it, but he brushed it off and made a joke out of it.
- Noticing he's being stared at, Alex asks Torey why he's staring at his ear and calls him abnormal, which triggers Torey to think even more.
- Torey does feel a little different, and thinks his friends barely know how abnormal he really is because of how much he thinks about stuff, but he just tells Alex that he's thinking about band rehearsal.
- Reverend Harmon announces that the Creeds are there and want to speak to the congregation, and Torey recalls gossip around school that Chris was gone.
- While everyone waits, the Creeds walk up and Torey sees that Mrs. Creed is a take-charge kind of woman, while her husband is silent.
- Speaking to the crowd, she thanks them for their help in searching for Chris's body and says they have hope that he's alive.
- Just then, Torey remembers some of the stupid stuff kids at school were saying on Friday about how he might have committed suicide and took bets on how he might have done it.
- Torey doesn't think it was funny, though.
- In church, Mrs. Creed circles around the weirdness of the disappearance by asking for any info on why Chris might have run away, which sends Torey into thinking about the situation.
- The strange thing is that Steepleton is a super safe, upscale suburban neighborhood. Suicide would be weird here, but at least if Chris were dead they could deal with it and move on.
- And even though Steepleton is as normal as it gets, full of normal people, there are still some weird kids there, and Chris is one of them.
- Torey thinks about how the most abnormal part about Chris before he disappeared was how goofy-friendly he was, even after people told him to leave them alone. He acted like he didn't remember ever being hit or spoken to rudely, never being uninvited—he was like a dopey puppy.
- The Creeds finish their speech by saying that Chris was never radical and instead quite normal, so they don't understand why he would have run away.
- Huh? Torey cannot believe they didn't even know their own kid. Chris was anything but normal to the kids around town.
- We learn that in high school, the undesirable kids are called boons because they are from outside of town, the boondocks.
- The scariest and biggest boon is named Bo Richardson, and he pushed Chris off some bleachers a year before, hurting him pretty badly.
- When everyone chants the Apostle's Creed, Torey wonders why they all say the same creed over and over, and thinks that it's just a normal thing to do—and that normal things get done not because they are right, or sensible, but simply because they are, well, normal.