Spirit Fighter (Son of Angels, Jonah Stone) (2 page)

When school started, their mom made Jonah promise he would walk his brother to his class. But that was four weeks ago.
Shouldn’t you know your way to your own room by now?
Jonah thought as he looked down at Jeremiah.

Jonah sighed, knowing it wasn’t worth the argument. “Fine. But I’m not holding your hand.”

He dropped his head a little lower as he walked beside his brother, who happened to be skipping. As a seventh grader, Jonah knew nothing good was going to come from people seeing him walk around every morning with a little kid wearing a Scooby-Doo backpack.

Jonah dropped Jeremiah off at his classroom and then hurried to the seventh-grade hallway, entering his first class just as the bell rang.

“Nice kicks, Stone. Been shopping at the Goodwill store again?”

The boys sitting around Zack Smellman’s desk snorted, and he grinned at Jonah with his arms folded.

Gritting his teeth, Jonah reminded himself that the first day of basketball tryouts started this afternoon. Smellman was not going to get the best of him today.

So he didn’t let it bother him later that morning when he got back his science test and only scored a seventy-eight. He was not shaken when his math teacher gave the class two hours of extra homework. All he could think about was what was going to happen on the basketball court.

Finally, mercifully, the clock struck three. His stomach was doing somersaults, but he was ready. He knew it.

With his gym clothes on and basketball shoes laced up, he took the floor with the other boys. Thirty-nine, to be exact, going out for just twelve spots. He glanced at them nervously, sizing up the competition. Most of them seemed bigger and stronger than he was.

Jonah grabbed a ball to warm up and started taking shots, trying not to let any bad thoughts seep into his brain. He began with free throws. He was really good at these.
Clang. Clang. Clang
. Three in a row went bouncing off the rim. The fourth hammered off the backboard and didn’t even touch the rim at all. At home he would make three out of four, at least. What was going on? Suddenly his lunch felt like it was about to come up.

Coach Martin Nelderbaum, or “Coach Marty,” as he told everybody to call him, was the physical education instructor at the school. He said he had played basketball in high school, but Jonah couldn’t see how. Coach Marty almost had the proportions of a basketball himself, with a huge belly that hung out from the bottom of his way-too-small gray gym shirt. He practically yelled every word that came out of his mouth.

“Hello! My name is Coach Marty! Today is the first day of Middle School Boys Basketball Tryouts! You are mine for the next hour and a half, and you will do whatever I say! Now, don’t take this the wrong way, but a bunch of you are NOT GOING TO MAKE THIS TEAM!”

He had to pause there to take a few breaths, exhausted already from his own scream-talking.

“Try your hardest! I will be looking for the best twelve players on this floor! I want to see one hundred percent effort from each of you!” Jonah zoned out a little when Coach Marty went on like this for ten more minutes, even though he was determined to pick up any last-minute pointers he could—apparently it looked like he would need them. Finally, Coach Marty instructed everybody to get in a line in front of the basket, and the tryouts were officially underway.

No one tried harder than Jonah. But in the running drills, he was one of the last to finish the wind sprints. He missed three out of the five layups he attempted in the layup drill. His free throws bounced off the basket like there was an invisible cover on it. When he lined up to take three-point shots, only one out of four even hit the rim. The rest totally missed the goal. One of them even hit Coach Marty in the stomach when he wasn’t looking. He grunted, glared at Jonah, and tossed the ball to the next guy.

Jonah watched as the coach stared at him with one eye while writing furiously on his clipboard. He swallowed hard. Was he writing something about him?

It was a miserable tryout. He couldn’t stay out of his own way. But Jonah reminded himself that at least there were two more days to prove himself. Coach Marty gathered the boys in the center of the court and yelled at them again, “Saw a lot of great stuff out there today, men! For the most part, you boys did great! Same time, same place tomorrow afternoon! Now, hit the locker room!”

The tired boys were staggering away from mid-court when Coach Marty, still staring down at his clipboard, barked, “Stone, comma, Jonah! A word with you, son!”

As the others left, Coach Marty put his arm around Jonah’s shoulder and spoke in a slightly more normal volume for the first time that day. “Son,” he said, sounding only a little less like the human bullhorn he was before, “do you play any other sports?”

Jonah stared at him for a minute, not understanding the question. When he opened his mouth, all that came out was a sputter of words.

“Well . . . not really . . . I . . . basketball is . . . my . . .”

Coach Marty patted his shoulder and nodded sadly.

“Listen, son, I’ve seen a lot of great basketball players in my day, and I can confidently say that after watching you practice today, basketball is not your sport.”

The words hung in the air, and Jonah felt like the coach had suddenly begun speaking a foreign language.
Not. Your. Sport
. What did he mean? Coach Marty saw the confusion on his face and took a more direct route this time.

“I don’t think you need to come back tomorrow, Stone,” the coach said gruffly. “I’ve seen enough. You’re not going to make the team.”

He patted Jonah on the shoulder hard, twice.

“Truth hurts sometimes, kid. But don’t worry. There are plenty of other sports to play.” Then, as if he had just had the greatest idea ever, he said, “Ever thought about badminton?”

And with that, he walked off the court, leaving Jonah standing there alone, mouth hanging open.

“Basketball is not your sport
.
”
The words started to sink in.
“Ever thought about badminton?” “Not. Your. Sport
.
”
Jonah turned and walked slowly back into the locker room. All the boys were laughing loudly, bragging about all the shots they made in the tryout. Jonah shuffled quietly to his locker, grabbed his stuff, and made a beeline for the door. He just wanted to be invisible.

He tore across the gym floor and pushed the metal double doors open, slamming one of them hard against the brick wall on the outside of the building. How could this happen? How could he have played so badly? And how could Coach Marty have asked him not to come back tomorrow? His legs began to move faster. He was not sure where he was running, but he just needed to go. To get away from everything, from the gym, the other guys. From everyone.

Jonah found himself on the empty soccer field behind the school. He slowed down and began to catch his breath. Suddenly the words his dad had said a million times popped into his head.

“If you’re ever stuck, pray. Trust me, it will all work out
.
”

He sighed heavily as he brought himself to a halt and slipped his gym bag from his shoulder, standing in the middle of the field and leaning over with his hands on his knees. “God, it’s Jonah,” he said, and with that, the words began to erupt. “I know You are there, and I know You love me. But I don’t know what to do. Things aren’t great right now. I can’t believe what just happened at the basketball tryout. I know I haven’t been getting much sleep the past couple nights, but am I really that bad? Everyone thinks I’m a loser. I’m . . . I’m not good at . . . anything . . .”

Tears began to form in his eyes and then run hotly down his face. He wiped them on his shirtsleeve, but that didn’t help them stop. Instead, his shoulders began to shake and his chest heaved as he cried. He stood there until the tears finally dried up.

“God, can You help me? Can You show me what to do? Can You just fix this?”

His dad was fond of calling God
Elohim
, one of His names from the Bible, which in the ancient Hebrew language meant “Strong One.” He also loved to tell Jonah and his brother and sister that praying was the most powerful thing any human could do. And that Elohim listened to them—and that if they would listen back, He would speak. But the truth was, neither Jonah—or his dad, as far as he knew—had ever heard God’s voice. Maybe it was just something his dad was supposed to say. He was a pastor, after all. It was his job to believe that stuff.

Jonah looked up at the sunny sky, hoping for an answer, but all he heard were a few birds chirping in the distance. And even they grew silent. He shrugged his shoulders and began to walk off the field. What did he expect? For God to show up on the field and turn him into LeBron James? What a joke.

He suddenly felt his anger welling up again, at the coach, at himself, at everybody, and he clenched his teeth. A stray soccer ball was on the field in front of him, and without thinking, he charged it, kicking it at the soccer goal as hard as he could.

Then the strangest thing happened.

The ball bounced—no, flew—no,
rocketed
off of his foot. It went up, higher than the goal, higher than the treetops, and kept rising, like it was shot out of a cannon. Jonah’s mouth dropped open as he watched the ball fly up, up, up, so far into the sky that it was a speck within a few seconds.

Then it was gone.

Spotting another abandoned ball, he looked around to see if anyone had seen what had just happened. No one was in sight, so he concentrated on the ball in front of him, ran toward it, and swung his leg.

The ball shot off like a rocket again, blasting over the forest behind the school and—at least it
looked
like it—tearing a hole through a lone white cloud in the sky. Then it disappeared.

Jonah pushed his fingers through his matted hair. He had never seen anybody do what he just did. He was pretty sure that a professional soccer player couldn’t do that. So how did he, a thirteen-year-old kid who had just gotten kicked out of basketball tryouts for not being good enough, kick a soccer ball over the trees and out of sight?

What is going on?
He stood staring at the sky, almost in a trance, as his mind churned.

Finally, he glanced down at his watch. He was late for his ride home. He grabbed his gym bag and quickly made his way around to the front of the gym, still shaking his head and looking at his foot.

TWO
A L
ITTLE
B
ACKYARD
F
OOTBALL

E
leanor Stone was waiting for her son in a rusty white Subaru station wagon in the pick-up lane in front of the school. Jonah climbed quietly into the car.

“How’d it go?” she asked, looking at him in the rearview mirror as she pulled away.

His mind was stuck on what had just happened on the soccer field, and it took him a few seconds to remember that she was asking about the basketball tryouts.

“Not great,” he said, and he told her all about it, how bad he had done, and the talk Coach Marty had with him afterward. He saw his mother’s eyes flash in the mirror.

“He told you not to come back?” she said loudly, slamming the brakes and sending Jonah lurching toward the front seat. “That’s it! We’re turning around. No one is going to treat—”

“Mom, please! You can’t go back,” Jonah said, cringing as he pictured his mother yelling and shaking her finger in Coach Marty’s face, and what Zack Smellman—and probably half the student body—would have to say about it later. “Everyone will see us, everyone will know that my mom came in and talked to the coach. Just . . . leave it alone.”

“Jonah . . . ,” she started to protest again, but she saw the look on his face and just pressed her lips into a tight line.

The rest of the ride home he stared out the window in silence. He sensed his mom’s eyes watching him in the mirror but ignored them. He didn’t feel like talking. The tryouts were one thing. But what happened with the soccer ball . . . it was just off-the-charts weird.

He wondered if he could do it again.

Because if he could, then maybe he could do more than just kick a soccer ball really far. His brain was telling him it must have been a trick ball, or some kind of optical illusion, maybe even something he only
thought
he saw after not getting a good night’s sleep. But he began to feel a nervous excitement. Like somehow he was on the verge of something big. Then his mind continued to circle back to the awful tryout, reminding him of how much of a loser he was.

Jonah needed time to think.

When he got home, he immediately went to his room and locked the door behind him. Snapping on his headphones and plugging them into his portable video game player, he popped in a game and lost himself in a world of spaceships, force fields, and laser beams.

After a couple hours alone in his room, Jonah was ready to talk. He headed downstairs to his dad’s study. Jonah peered through the glass-paned door and saw his dad inside, back turned to him, facing one of the three massive walls of books.

Books of all colors and sizes covered the walls. The desk was stacked high with piles of opened ones—dictionaries, Bibles, massive tomes in Greek and Hebrew. Some lay open; others were precariously balanced on top of each other in various places around the room. Jonah walked in and plopped himself down in his dad’s squeaky old desk chair.