Salvation City (28 page)

“And a little child shall lead them.”

“If you do not change and become like little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

On this point Scripture was clear. It was the small fry on earth who’d be the big fish in heaven.
Look to the child for the way.
It was because of this that rapture children were now more sought after than ever, and though child preachers were nothing new, congregations could not get enough of them.

Earlier that summer, during a service at a church in Denver, a three-year-old named Dewdrop had toddled down the aisle, cutting the minister off in midsentence by tugging at his trouser cuff. When the minister asked her what she wanted, she said, “I want to preach.” Struck (as Reverend Gates later explained) by the authority in her tone and the meaningful way she locked eyes with him, he lifted her up to the mike. And in a voice that managed to be at once like honey and a clap of thunder, she said, “Obey the Commandments. Love and forgive. Pray to the Lord, who is near.” Like a tsunami, was how members of the congregation described the wave of emotion that swept through the church. Many broke into loud weeping, flinging their heads back or their arms into the air. Others hurled themselves to their knees in the aisles, crying out to be saved. All was caught on camera, and soon more than a million people around the world had sent messages to Dewdrop asking her to pray for them.

 

 

 

There wasn’t really much of the child anymore about Clem Harley, who most people probably would have taken for older than his age of thirteen. He often seemed (people said) like a man in a boy’s body (the way Pastor Wyatt often seemed like a boy in a man’s body). With Pastor Wyatt too sick to do his duty, the Church of Salvation City’s boy preacher was called to step in. But those who’d seen videos of Dewdrop or of other famous baby preachers couldn’t get too excited about Clem. He had a crackly voice and a droning inflection, the complete opposite of Pastor Wyatt. And unlike Pastor Wyatt, Brother Clem never smiled.

Not that Clem wasn’t a prodigy. But knowing the Bible backward and forward as he appeared to do just made him seem even less childlike. No one complained, of course; no one would have wanted to hurt his feelings. Though his feelings must have been hurt anyway when people nodded off, as at least some did every sermon.

It was now common practice to ask if any children in the congregation had received a word to share with their fellow worshippers. Pastor Wyatt had started doing this at every service, but so far (in spite of some whispering and sharp elbowing here and there) no child had stepped forward. Each time, the disappointment in the air seemed to grow a little thicker. Then Pastor Wyatt would chide his flock for lack of faith and for the sin of impatience, quoting from Lamentations, “The Lord is good to those who wait for him,” and from the book of James, “Be patient, then, my brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord.”

And, according to Clem, “If they hadn’t been so darned impatient, Adam and Eve would still be in Paradise.”

“I KNOW ABOUT YOU AND MASON.”

Had he actually said it? Starlyn’s face left no doubt that he had. And instantly Cole was sorry. And he was even more amazed: where had he got the nerve?

They were alone in the house. An hour ago, someone had called to say that one of Boots’s grandsons, Jeptha, a leader in the Christian Zionist Defense League, had been killed by rocket fire in the Holy Land. Tracy and PW had gone to be with the Ludwig family.

Starlyn was using the computer in the kitchen while Cole waited his turn. He wondered if there’d be a message from Addy. He hadn’t heard from her in a few days, which was unusual, but he figured it was because of the heat wave. The last time they’d spoken, Chicago was having power outages and Addy was in full-frontal freak. She had called from her cell, warning that it was almost out of power and they might get cut off.

“Yesterday it hit a hundred and seven. When there’s a blackout all Lara and I can do is lie on the bare floor with wet paper towels stuck to our skin. Hello? Last night you could smell fire and hear sirens and gunshots and alarms going off—it was like a war zone. Hello? You still there? In the bad neighborhoods people are afraid to go out no matter how hot it gets. Some people have died because they were too scared to leave their windows open and their apartments turned into ovens. They say it’s like—hello? They say it’s like the flu all over again, with hospitals shutting their doors and the morgue running out of—hello? I feel like if I have to stay here much longer I’ll lose my mind. I’m going to—” End of call.

Cole hadn’t heard from Addy since, but he thought he knew what she’d been about to say. She’d been about to say that she was coming to Salvation City, where it was several degrees cooler and where so far they’d had only one little brownout and of course no arson or looting at all.

Before the heat wave began Cole and Addy had talked about another visit and how maybe this time, instead of her coming to him, he’d go to her in Chicago. Not that PW and Tracy were down with this plan, and Cole himself had mixed feelings about seeing Addy again so soon. But the idea of being back in Chicago was irresistible, something he’d started to dream about even before Addy came. And so he was disappointed to think that now the trip might not happen.

But then, this was becoming a season of disappointments. What with Addy dropping like a bomb into their lives, and the deadly weather, and PW’s shingles attack, there hadn’t been any more camping trips, either.

But even if he never made it back to the woods, Cole was happy with his Remington and with his decision to learn how to shoot—though shooting turned out to be much harder than he’d been led to think it was. (Tracy’s idea that a person who could draw well could probably shoot well, too, proved to be nonsense.) He discovered he was anything but a natural marksman, though he did at least a tiny bit better with a rifle than with a pistol. Not that he found it all that much fun, either. Firing at soda cans and plastic jugs and Satan’s silhouette was no big thrill to him, and he was still not keen on the idea of hunting. Funny, he almost got more satisfaction from cleaning the rifle than from firing it. The series of snaps and click-clacks made by disassembling and reassembling the parts, the smells of the solvent and gun oil—these gave him real pleasure (oddly enough, since he couldn’t recall ever getting pleasure from cleaning anything else before). But he discovered it was true what he’d been told, that he’d feel better, “more comfortable in your skin” (Boots), once he knew how to handle a gun. No denying. And when he saw on the news the gangs wilding in Chicago, he wondered how someone as defenseless as Addy could protect herself. He felt afraid for Addy and for whoever this Lara was, and he felt inexplicably guilty, too. As if protecting them was somehow
his
responsibility.

Bad a shot as he might yet be, were anyone to break into the house right then and dare touch a hair on Starlyn’s head, Cole swore he would not flinch; his aim would be true.

And yet it was he who had put those tears in her eyes. How messed up was that?

“All yours,” she’d said, getting up from the computer and starting to leave the room.

Maybe that was it. Maybe it was desperately wanting to keep her there that had made him blurt out those words. Which certainly had kept her there.

Or maybe he just couldn’t stand the suspense anymore.

Was she or wasn’t she sneaking out to see Mason? Were they kissing, et cetera? How far had they gone? These questions would not leave Cole alone. He knew that Starlyn had made a commitment to God to remain pure until her wedding day, and that she belonged to her church’s virgin club. But everyone knew that teenagers who made this commitment weren’t always able to keep it, and that when this happened, though you were judged to have fallen, you weren’t punished; you were forgiven.

If he told her what he already knew, maybe she’d tell him more?

For sure he’d never have been so bold as to speak if she hadn’t started being nicer to him. But that summer it had seemed to him they were even becoming friends. Not that she ever completely lost her air of detachment and superiority or gave him reason to believe he could be anyone seriously important to her. But when she wasn’t off with Amberly or some other BF, she seemed happy enough to hang out with him, playing cards or video games. Or she would sit and let him sketch her head or her hands. (He was really dying to draw her feet, but even when she was barefoot he was too shy to ask.) She said she thought he was mad talented and even offered to collaborate with him on a comic: “Your art and my words.”

Up till now she’d shown little interest in his art and no curiosity at all about his past. But one day she surprised Cole by asking about his parents and what being in an orphanage was really like. Another day she wanted to hear what it was like to have almost died from the flu. These were, of course, the top three subjects Cole was least eager to talk about. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t grateful to be asked. He was grateful for any attention from Starlyn. And she had listened when he told his stories, and he could tell she was moved, as he was moved when she said she was sure his parents had been good people.

She said she knew—sort of—what it might be like to lose a parent because she had no father herself. “He’s alive but I’ve never laid eyes on him.”

Another new Starlyn thing that summer was how often she would say—usually out of the blue—how much her aunt and uncle loved Cole. “I don’t think it’s possible for two people to love a body more.” It was hard for Cole not to suspect she had been put up to this. “I’ve been praying for God to do a work in your heart so you’ll know this is where you belong.”

But when he was honest with himself Cole knew the real reason he’d spoken up was to make himself look good. He wanted Starlyn to know. All summer he’d been dying to tell her, dying for her to know that he’d discovered her secret months ago and never said a word.

How could such loyalty fail to impress her?

How could it not bring the two of them closer?

And what on God’s green earth did Cole want more than to be closer to Starlyn?

The thought that she would not always be there (in fact, her mother was coming to fetch her that weekend) made him deliriously sad.

As for Mason, Cole did not like him anymore. He did not trust Mason. He was only a molecule away from hating Mason Boyle.

 

 

 

“Please,” she said thickly. “Please, don’t.”

Even if he’d stopped to think before shooting off his mouth, he’d never have predicted this. Don’t
what
? As if he were about to get violent with her!

“Gosh, Starlyn, I was just saying. I won’t tell anyone, if that’s what you’re thinking. I promise I’d never do that.”

She dabbed a spilled tear with her fingertip (he
felt
this, as if she had literally grazed his heart). She hiccupped once and said, “Well,
th-that’s
good to know.” As she grabbed a tissue from a box on the kitchen counter and blew her nose, Cole delicately looked away. He thought she would leave the room then. Instead, she opened the cookie jar sitting on the counter and took out an Oreo.

He held his breath as he watched her eat the cookie, slowly and thoughtfully, as if she were consuming important information. The sound of her deliberate munching filled the room, and he felt that, too: her teeth, her tongue. Her wet eyelashes made him feel weak.

She was wearing her hair up today. Cole tried not to stare too obviously at her ears. (Sketching her once, he’d been struck by the thought that some ears, at least, really could be compared to seashells.)

She thumbed crumb dust from her lower lip and said, “I know you’re a good boy, Cole.”

Talking down to him: something she’d stopped doing recently, making it all the more humiliating for him to hear her do it now.

“Like, maybe you saw something or heard something you’re too young to understand?”

Cole nodded, then blushed in confusion because of course he hadn’t meant to agree with this.

“I’d never ask you to lie for me. But remember, a promise is sacred.”

This time his nod was emphatic. He wanted nothing more than for her to understand that her secret was safe with him.

“If you were older,” she said, “I could explain everything.” Something withered in him. She was brushing him off, like the cookie crumbs. But at least she wasn’t upset anymore. At least he hadn’t blown everything and made an enemy of her.

She opened the cookie jar again and took out another Oreo. But this time, instead of eating it herself, she offered it to Cole. He didn’t want it, he had no saliva in his mouth, the cookie tasted like grit, but he ate it anyway because he thought this was what she wanted. What a wonderful life that would be: day after day, doing nothing but what she wanted. “All I can tell you is, something awesome is going to happen.”