In the Image of Grace (7 page)

I didn’t know exactly how to answer his question.
Should I share the whole story with him? He only knew tid bits of
my life, he didn’t know about Elizabeth. I never spoke of her death
with anyone else. It was still such a fresh wound. I looked down at
the greasy paper that once held my Italian beef. Pain started
welling up inside of me. I tried to hold it in, but it felt like my
eyeballs were going to burst, a full flood of tears poured out.

“Oh God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“No, it’s just that we had another sister and she
just recently died.”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

“You couldn’t have because I haven’t told
anybody.”

Jeremy got up and came and sat next to me. He put his
arms around me, embracing me in a hug. It felt perfect. I cried in
his shoulder a while and then looked up sniffling. “I’m sorry,” I
said feeling a wave of embarrassment.

“You have nothing to be sorry for.” He reached up and
wiped some tears off my cheek with his thumb. “Ya wanna go walking.
It might help ya out somehow, relax ya.”

“Okay.” We threw our trash away and headed down the
sidewalk. We walked in silence for a bit. The air was starting to
get colder. You could tell winter was on its way.

“I think we were sent to public school because of
Elizabeth’s death. Maybe our dad didn’t want us to be next.”

Jeremy looked over at me and raised an eyebrow.

“She committed suicide.”

“Oh my God.”

“I found her on the bathroom floor. She slit her
wrists.” I was starting to choke up again.

“You don’t have to be telling me this. It’s
okay.”

“No, I have to tell somebody.” I grabbed his hand and
interlaced our fingers. He squeezed my hand in response. “We think
maybe he thinks it’s because he kept us in the house our whole
lives because Elizabeth never really did see the outside world.
Sure we’d go places on occasion, generally events honoring our
father, but we never really interacted with the world. I’m sure
that was part perhaps, but her suicide was much deeper than
that.”

Jeremy just bobbed his head in understanding and bit
his lip with his one bicuspid that occasionally escaped. A person
on a bike rode by, so we moved single file to the side of the
sidewalk. When the biker went by we rejoined hands and continued
walking.

“My sisters and I always said she was haunted. She’d
always have these awful nightmares with this woman screaming, every
night. Elizabeth always said she had a sense of doom about her, and
she actually did, I swear you could look in her eyes and see it. I
just wish we could have done something to save her.” Jeremy
squeezed my hand again. “It was just barely weeks ago. We were told
about a week after her death we were going to regular school. We
really didn’t have time to think about it, about anything.”

“Oh wow,” Jeremy said sounding shocked.

“That’s why we’re searching for our mom now, we owe
it to her. I had this dream that she told me to find our mom, so
we’re going to.” I chose to skip over the part where I thought
Elizabeth was in my room actually talking to me when I was sleeping
and that I was now having the dreams or nightmares as I would call
them with the screaming.

“I will help you guys anyway I can.”

“That really means a lot to me, thanks.”

“My pleasure,” he said giving me a halfhearted smile.
I think he wasn’t sure if it was an appropriate time to smile or
make me feel better or what. I wasn’t even sure.

…………………………………………….

When I got home Clarissa and Isabelle had some
interesting information to tell me. They buzzed me in and when I
got into the house Clarissa grabbed my wrist and pulled me all the
way upstairs to her room. “Boy do we have something to tell
you.”

“What?” I asked pulling off my coat and hat. I sat
down on the edge of Clarissa’s bed. All of our rooms pretty much
looked the same, white four poster canopy bed with coordinating
dresser and shelves with a desk under the window. Except all over
Clarissa’s room was little stuffed animal monster like things she
stitched out of felt. A Clarissa original she called them.

“Well, when Isabelle and I were at the bus stop, I
noticed something that was stapled to the telephone pole that’s
there. I went and looked and it was a pamphlet and on the front it
said,
The Children of Grace
and there was this line drawing
of….”

I didn’t give her a chance to finish her sentence.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I could feel my arms and neck cover
in goose bumps. “Well, what exactly is this, why, how?”

“Wait, let me explain. It seems there is a group,
religious group, cult, whatever you want to call them and they
believe we are all in the image of Grace Fernando,” Clarissa said
scrunching up her face.

“What! Why?”

“Well it appears she is the perfect replica of what
the human species should be and behold and was sent by a group of
people, not of this planet, called the Xtials.”

“No, you’ve got to be kidding.”

“It would be one sick joke, but let me go on. They’re
having a gathering as the pamphlet said and guess who will be
giving what is called the opening address, Dr. Carl Williams!”
Clarissa shrieked.

“What! This is insane. It makes no sense!” I was so
confused. Mr. Carl most obviously knew a lot more than what he was
telling us. “Is this is his way of giving us answers.”

“I’m pretty sure he knew we’d be at that bus stop,”
Isabelle said.

I looked down at the pamphlet. It was on red paper
with black writing and a line drawing of our mother. The top was
ripped from being pulled off the telephone post. The front and back
of the pamphlet was crammed with type. “What’s all this,” I said
referring to all the writing, tossing it on the bed. I didn’t want
to touch the pamphlet anymore. It all seemed so absurd.

“Let me tell you,” Clarissa said. “It’s like their
beliefs and history and stuff. Supposedly there was this guy they
refer to as The Giver of Grace because he found and gave us Grace
and he found out Grace was the one because he was approached by a
man from this extra-terrestrial culture and he told this guy, The
Giver of Grace, that humans are really from another planet,
supposedly Pluto. Underneath all that gas there is a whole
civilization and Pluto got demoted from being a planet because they
weren’t ready for everybody to find out about it yet and they
wanted to take attention off themselves at that time….”

“What,” I yelped totally astonished.

Clarissa smiled and kept talking. “Well, humans were
put on this planet deliberately by these Xtials and were made in
the exact image of them and I guess we were doing good, but then we
started messing things up and stuff got out of control and there
was so much overpopulation mainly with people who weren’t fit to be
here like those with diseases and disorders and unpleasant features
and things and they were waiting for a new perfect human to arise
and that was Grace and supposedly she was to be reproduced and make
everything better again with her perfectness.” Clarissa raised her
eyebrows and shook her head. She looked over at Isabelle who was
looking down at the pamphlet.

“And people believe this garbage?” I asked in a high
pitched voice.

“It seems. They’re having a gathering tomorrow night
to discuss those made in the image of Grace,” Clarissa informed
me.

“So how exactly do we factor into all of this and if
everybody is worshipping her, where is she?”

“I have the slightest fucking idea,” Clarissa said so
naturally as if she had been swearing her whole life.

“Clarissa,” Isabelle snapped her name.

“Uh, oops,” was her response.

“Never mind her swearing, what the hell is going on?”
I asked perplexed.

“Oh, and supposedly tomorrow night this guy The Giver
of Grace is going to be there,” Clarissa threw in.

“Where is there, we have to go, or somebody does. Oh
my God, is our father involved? Are we the ones that she
reproduced?” It was all so crazy. I shook my head. It was too much
all at once. “He has to be involved because they had to, you
know.”

“I’m wondering,” Isabelle said pensively. “What if
their field of expertise in genetic modification has to do with
this? Maybe we’re genetically altered, so we’ll be in her
image.”

“Jesus,” was my reply.

“Our eyes and hair color and everything may have been
chosen so we can carry on whatever crap it is that they’re talking
about,” Isabelle said grabbing her hair for emphasis.

“This is starting to freak me out,” Clarissa
cried.

“I was freaked out the second you showed me that
pamphlet,” I said in a melancholic tone.

The three of us sat on Clarissa’s bed. We didn’t say
anything for a bit. We were all lost in our own thoughts of what
everything meant. It sounded like straight up science fiction.

…………………………………….

I couldn’t sleep that night. Every time I closed my
eyes I heard screaming. I think it was our mother. It was Grace
Fernando screaming, trying to tell me something. Answers, we needed
answers.

I saw Jeremy sitting behind the circulation desk. It
seemed we were the only ones in there, maybe because it was Friday,
but I ran straight across the library to him.

“Why hello,” he said smiling at me.

“Boy do I have some crazy stuff to tell you,” I said
leaning forward on the counter with my forearms. I bent in close to
him because if anybody else was in there I did not want them to
hear what I was going to tell Jeremy.

“Okay, it seems there is this cult and they worship
my mother and Mr. Carl is involved and they’re having a gathering
tonight and I have to go and I want you to come with me.”

“What, are you serious?”

“Yeah, Clarissa and Isabelle found this pamphlet on a
telephone pole and we think Mr. Carl put it there on purpose so we
would find it. Supposedly there is this guy they call the Giver of
Grace and he was approached by someone from a different planet,
they say Pluto and told him to find Grace and he did and she was
supposed to reproduce because she has to carry on what the human
race is supposed to be like and that is in these aliens image and
it’s all a whole bunch of whacky stuff.”

“This is like don’t drink the purple punch kinda
shit. Are you serious?”

I leaned in a little closer. “Yes.”

“I’ll so go with you.”

“Perfect.”

“Hey, what lunch do you have?”

“Fifth.”

“Wanna go to lunch?”

“Why yes, do you have fifth period lunch too?”

“No,” he said with his grin spreading all the way
across his face.

………………………………………….

The two of us sat across from each other in a
restaurant called The Taco Shack. I was feasting on a steak taco
and Jeremy was eating a burrito that claimed to be as big as an
adult male’s cranium. I will say it was rather large. The whole
restaurant seemed to be sticky. The paper wrapper from my taco
stuck to the table and when we got up to leave I could hear my
jeans pull off the booth.

“What about you?” I asked Jeremy as I was drinking my
pop from a red paper cup that had to too much crushed ice and very
little pop.

“What about me?” He asked wiping his hands in a
napkin.

“Well, what’s your life like. I just know the basic
information.”

“I dunno.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I mean what do you want to know? I can tell you I
live with my mom and stepdad and I have an older brother away at
college.”

“That’s a good start. What’s your brother’s
name?”

“Eric.”

“Okay,” I paused. You could tell he didn’t really
like talking about his home life.

“That’s it?”

“Pretty much, I guess. I mean my mom just got married
like two years ago n before that it was just the three of us, but
Brett, my stepdad, you could tell he didn’t want teenagers around,
especially since they didn’t belong to him. He already had a couple
grown kids, so I guess he was all done with that and he’s an ass n
I can’t stand him.”

I nodded. “Well, just think you can go away to
college also.”

“We’ll see. He’s trying to convince my mom not to
help out with paying for college because I want to major in audio
production and he says if I major in that what’s the point of even
going to college n my mom believes his crap.”

“Oh,” I said. “That really stinks.”

“Yep, it sure does. I already applied to where I want
to go and got accepted and everything.”

“Wow, good for you.”

“Without my mom’s help I can’t afford to go.”

“Oh, that sucks. What is your brother majoring
in?”

“Accounting, something which he approves of.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way to go.”

He pushed around what was left of his burrito with
his finger. “I feel like an idiot sitting here n talkin bout my
trivial problems considering everything you’re going through.”

“They’re not trivial problems.”

“Yeah, they kinda are. Anything else ya wanna know?”
Jeremy asked crumpling up his burrito wrapper.

“Your last name is Italian?”

“Yeah, but I’m just part Italian. I’m also Puerto
Rican, Scottish, um,” he said pausing to think. “Oh, and Portuguese
and Cherokee, oh, and a smidgeon Polish.”

“Wow, that’s a lot.”

“I’m what you call an American mutt.”

“I guess I’m kind of muttish too then.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, Filipino, Polish and German.”

“That definitely qualifies,” Jeremy said flashing me
a smile. “You know what, we should start a club at school for all
the mutts cuz there’s the Italian Club, which I could technically
join n there’s a whole bunch of Latino clubs, which I could also
join and then whatever other clubs I would technically qualify for,
but there’s not one for being a conglomeration of ethnicities, ya
know. Would you join? You could be the President or something.”