The Miracle Stealer by Neil Connelly

Author:Neil Connelly
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2010-11-23T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Wednesday morning I found myself once again wide awake and waiting for the sun to rise, though now I was in my old bed across the hall from my brother. Trying to think in the hours between midnight and dawn is one of the dumber things you can waste your time on. Every problem is either impossibly complicated or its solution is ridiculously simple. But with the morning light comes the recognition that neither extreme is accurate. Hard problems are hard, nothing more and nothing less. At night, you should sleep.

That particular evening, instead of resting and dreaming, my mind had been floating between the Anti-Miracle Plan, the day I had ahead of me, and Reverend Castle. I found myself oddly obsessed with his scars, and I played out endless scenarios imagining their origin. Perhaps he’d rushed into a burning orphanage or pulled a pregnant woman from a wreck wrapped in flames. Maybe he’d had acid splashed on him. The most far-fetched notion that occurred to me was that the wounds were self-inflicted. I’d read about monks who whipped themselves to show their obedience to God, and I wouldn’t be surprised if someone like him would scar his flesh as a demonstration of his faith.

To be honest, though, this bizarre thought went against my general impression of him. Although we’d had just that brief encounter, there was a calmness that radiated off him, a deep ease I admired and envied. And then there were those strange, perfect lips and the melodious lilt of his voice. It had that deep hypnotic rhythm that you expect from most Bible-thumping preachers, but without the underlying hint of uncontrolled lunacy. He was a mystery to me, one I felt compelled to investigate.

But there wasn’t much I could do at three a.m. The day ahead, I knew, would be an eventful one, with a trip to the bank and then to Stacy Wilbert’s, the town’s only notary public, where Mr. Dettweiller would meet me after lunch to do the paperwork for the Skylark. Since I’d already wasted another two hours on the blood concoction down in the shed after Reverend Castle and his choir left, I was contemplating a drive up to Scranton. Surely I could find one of those chain costume stores, one that might simply sell fake blood in the same aisle with the wigs and the pirate patches. Maybe I could track down Jeff and see if he wanted to come along for the ride.

Rolling around in my old bed, sleepy and anxious in the premorning’s deep blue glow, I thought about Jeff, the two of us alone in the Skylark. Nothing could be more repulsive to me than being a damsel in distress, but when I was with him, I felt safer. I imagined him putting his arms around me, that big backseat, and my mind moved on its own in ways I couldn’t stop. For a time, I found myself distracted from Anti-Miracle Plans.

When I finally did get up, I showered and brewed a quarter pot of coffee.

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