Miracle (11 page)

I rested my head on the steering wheel and slid my shaking, sweaty hands under my knees, feeling them tremble hard and fast even though I was now sitting on them.

I felt like I was going to die, and I didn’t want to.

Realizing that only made everything worse. All I could
think was that I could die, that I might die right here, right now, and my teeth started chattering harder, almost violently, my whole body shaking so hard it almost hurt. Something was wrong with me, so wrong, and I thought about my dream, Carl reaching for me as the fire moved closer . . .

“Megan.” I looked up, startled, and saw Margaret peering at me through the driver’s side window.

“I don’t mind if you want to sit out here,” she said, “but you’ll need to be out of the parking lot by two because we’re having it resurfaced.” She paused for a second and then said, “Why don’t you come inside and sit down? You seem a little upset and I can call your mother or father and have them come get you.”

“No.” That was the last thing I wanted, to have to be Miracle Megan right now. “I—can I just come in and sit down for a minute? I just . . . I need to . . . I need to not be in the car right now.”

She nodded and so I got out of the car and went inside.

Margaret’s office was small; it had a desk that held a computer and printer, two chairs, and a small bookcase filled with monthly Bible guides that the church sold. Some of them dated back to before my parents were born.

“Here,” she said and pointed at the chair on the other side of her desk. “Sit.”

I sat, and she left and came back with a glass of water. She
gave it to me and then got out her purse and dug around in it for a while before handing me an old-fashioned peppermint candy, a red and white swirled circle wrapped in plastic. “Eat this. I thought I had a candy bar in here but the Gaines girl must have taken it last Sunday after the service. If her mother would stop telling her she needs to lose ten pounds, she’d probably stop running around taking candy out of people’s purses when she’s supposed to be setting up the covered dish supper.”

“Emily Gaines?” Emily was a very pretty tenth grader who was almost as awfully thin as I used to be. If she lost ten pounds, she’d be nothing but Barbie hair and bones.

“Yep. Finish your water.” She sat down at her desk and started typing. “No school today?”

I put the glass on the floor by my chair, looking down as I did. “I—I’m doing a special project. So I get to leave early.”

“Nine in the morning is pretty early.”

I shrugged. Her fingers flew over the keys. “You type really fast.”

“That I do. You’re practically born knowing how to type now, but when I grew up we all had to take typing and didn’t pass unless we typed sixty words a minute. I got along fine till computers came along and then . . . well, you can guess what kind of adjustment that was.”

I nodded, even though I couldn’t. I couldn’t even picture
not having computers, and the only time I’d seen a typewriter was in an old movie I had to watch for school in seventh grade.

When Margaret was done, she printed out a couple of pages and got up, motioned for me to follow her. “You can help me make the bulletin for next week’s service.”

We photocopied pages on a tiny copier that jammed a lot and then folded the bulletins. It took forever because Margaret said I didn’t line the edges up right. When we were done we took them over to the church and put them on a table in the hallway just inside the front door, and then Margaret said she’d make me lunch.

I said, “Okay.”

When we got to her house, she made me drink another glass of milk. I got up to look at the plants in her living room and dumped half of it on them while she made peanut butter sandwiches. Next to the plants was a picture of Rose, smiling and holding a bingo card. I wondered if Margaret missed her, then thought of the bedroom I’d seen and how it held so much of Rose, and knew she did.

“You did tell your parents you were here the other day,” she said after I finished eating my sandwich.

I nodded. She squinted at me and then slid her glasses back up her nose. “Good. I hope you don’t want dessert, because all I have is applesauce.”

I shook my head. “Look, about the other day, I don’t want you to think that I think you and Rose were—well, you know how some people in town are. But they’re totally wrong. Rose was great. Not that you’re not nice too. It’s just that I never thought—I mean, I know that plenty of people are . . . you know. But I just didn’t think about it in Reardon.”

Margaret raised both eyebrows. “How eloquent. But I think I understand what you’re saying, and yes, Rose and I didn’t go out of our way to talk about our life together. I love Reardon, but it’s a small town and people here, especially back when we first bought the house—they had very definite thoughts about things, and we just weren’t up to trying to change that. We’d spent enough time trying—and failing—to make people see what was really going on in Vietnam after we got back from the war. And I also had my parents to think about. They were very old-fashioned, but I loved them dearly.”

She got up and went into the living room, came back with a photo that she handed to me.

I looked at it. It was of a much younger Margaret and Rose, standing in front of their house. Margaret had one arm around two older people who had to be her parents, beaming and holding a
SOLD
! sign, and Rose was staring at the camera, her hands clenched tight by her sides.

“My parents died about a year after this was taken,” Margaret
said as I gave the photo back to her. “I hadn’t expected to lose them so soon.” She touched both their faces, and then rested a finger under Rose’s unsmiling face.

“I was so worried about Rose back then. She had a rough time our first year here. Lots of nightmares she wouldn’t talk about. She felt bad too, like she wasn’t herself, she’d say. Like she wasn’t real. And I knew there were things she couldn’t remember about the war, that she—that I think she wouldn’t let herself remember. But whenever I’d ask, she’d pretend everything was fine.”

“What happened?”

Margaret put the photo down and looked at me for a long moment, like she was considering something. “She got through it as best she could. She remembered some things and made her peace with what she couldn’t or wouldn’t. It was always with her, of course, but the parts of her that were so hurt got better. The mind—” Margaret tapped her head with her fingers. “It’s very resilient.” She looked at the photo again and then said, “Do you talk to your parents about the crash?”

“I—no.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you should.”

“I don’t—I don’t need to,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Believe me, I know what they think. What a miracle I am.”

“I think you’re underestimating your parents,” Margaret said, but she was wrong.

When I got home, Mom was there, in the kitchen, defrosting chicken.

“The school called,” she said, “so I came home early to see how you’re doing.” The microwave beeped and she opened the door, poked the chicken with a shaking hand, and then restarted it. “You’re feeling all right, aren’t you?”

I knew why the school had called. I hadn’t shown up for any classes. They had to call.

“I’m fine,” I told her, and waited to see what she’d say.

“Of course you are,” she said—
of course, of course
—and smiled at me. “Do you want something to eat?”

“Sure,” I said and ate chocolate chip cookies while Mom finished defrosting the chicken and then put it in the oven. She didn’t ask me anything else, and her hands never stopped shaking. I ate cookie after cookie but I still felt hollow inside, and when I went upstairs and lay down I knew I didn’t want to close my eyes.

Sixteen

After that phone call, things started to change at school.

My teachers started asking me to pay attention. They started asking me why I hadn’t done my homework. They asked me to please stop looking around and focus.

I didn’t pay attention. I didn’t do my homework. And I kept looking at the empty seats in my classes, and Carl or Sandra or Henry or Walter would be there. They could sit and wait for me forever. They had nowhere else to go. They’d never told me that, but then, they didn’t have to. Just them being there was enough.

Too much.

The extra time I’d been given for tests disappeared. I started getting them back with red Fs scrawled across them, and the understanding nods I’d gotten when I presented my
empty hands instead of homework were replaced with frowns and more scarlet Fs. My guidance counselor pursued me in the halls, pressing me to turn in part of my independent study and set a schedule for the rest. She suggested that I come by her office, told me that we needed to talk. She said she noticed I’d been absent a lot. She said some of my teachers were concerned.

She didn’t mention my parents.

After that phone call, things changed at school, but not at home. There everything was the same. Everything was
fine
, and on Sunday, I sat between my parents in church, squeezed in by their love, and wanted to scream.

I didn’t, though. I just sat there, standing when I was supposed to, sitting when I was supposed to, a smile pasted on my mouth and my hands clamped into fists, nails digging into my palms. I saw Margaret looking at me, but pretended I didn’t see her.

The next day, David said he didn’t feel well. Mom made him go to school and that night, at dinner, he sneezed and coughed the whole time.

“I’m cold,” he said as we were supposed to be eating our meatloaf, and sneezed twice in a row.

Dad looked at him when he said that, concern on his face. Mom did too, and watching David light up under their gazes made something inside me hurt.

“Why don’t you excuse yourself and watch whatever you want on TV. If you’re getting sick, I don’t want Meggie to catch it,” Mom said. Dad nodded and the two of them looked at me. Me, not him.

David stood up and pushed his empty chair into the table hard, making it rattle. No one said anything when he left the room.

I asked to be excused after that and went to the living room, stood in the doorway looking at David. He was lying on the sofa watching some cops arrest an old guy who was driving on a suspended license. I wanted to say something but David turned up the television as soon as he saw me.

“David,” I said, and then paused because I didn’t know what else to say. He looked at me, and then he turned the TV up more, coughing as he did. Mom and Dad still didn’t come to check on him.

At home things were the same, but at school they kept changing.

My guidance counselor called Mom and Dad to talk about the work I wasn’t doing and the deadlines I’d missed for my independent study. They never told me about the call. I only found out because of Coach Henson.

He came up to me in the hall as I was leaving school, as I pushed past Carl, who was standing in a corner tapping one fist against his chest.

“Meggie?”

I jumped when I heard Coach’s voice, and when I looked over at him he was frowning, the lines on his forehead and between his eyes mirroring his mouth. I forced myself to smile, and knew it hadn’t come out right.

“I need to talk to you,” he said, glancing away from my bared teeth. “I was in guidance earlier, and they’re calling your parents. Apparently they’ve talked to your mother before but . . . anyway, it sounds like you’re having some problems with your grades and your independent study.”

I shrugged.

The furrows on his forehead and between his eyes grew deeper. “Look, no one is saying you aren’t capable, and I’m telling you about the calls because I believe in you. I know there have been big changes in your life and with change comes . . . well, change. But turning your back on your talents, your team, and not following through on assignments—that’s not acceptable, not on any level. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I wasn’t sure he even understood what he was saying, but I could tell he meant well. Everyone did. Everyone wanted me to keep being a miracle.

“Thanks, Coach,” I said, and went home.

Mom and Dad didn’t talk to me about the phone calls. Instead, Mom came up to my room that night. I was sitting
cross-legged on the bed, staring gritty-eyed out the window. Once in a while I checked the clock to see how much time had gone by. It was always less than I thought.

“I came to see how you are,” she said, and put an arm around me. I looked at her fingers, felt them tremble on my arm.

“Fine,” I said and felt her hand relax.

“Studying?”

I looked at the closed books on the floor by my desk, the notebook lying caught in the footboard at the end of the bed. Dust was starting to mark its edges.

“I thought we might talk,” she continued, as if I’d answered her question. “You seem—you haven’t been talking about school much. How is it?”

Was she really trying to talk to me? Was she finally going to say she knew something was wrong with me?

“It’s—I don’t know.” I took a deep breath. “I don’t feel like I used to. I feel . . . different.”

“Of course you do. You haven’t exactly had a regular summer, you know. So it’s no wonder that things seem a little strange now.”

“It’s more than a little strange,” I said, and looked at her. “I don’t feel like I’m really here. I feel like part of me is . . . different.”

“Part of you is different, Meggie. I believe that when a
miracle happens it changes that person, and a little piece of them belongs to . . .” She pointed up at my ceiling and then smiled at me.

I stared at her.

I stared at her, and I—I wanted to hit her. I wanted to hit her so badly I was shaking with it. “You think that how I feel is—you think I’m part God?”

“No, nothing like that.” She reached for me and I drew back, pushing myself as far away as I could. Her smile trembled, but she kept talking. “You’ve been touched by Him and I just—I wanted you to know that your father and I love you and that we know how special you are. Maybe other people don’t see how much, or don’t understand what you’ve been through, but we do. We know—”