Mom washed the chicken slime off her hands and took the cordless phone. Her face went from polite boredom to horror. Did someone die? I wondered.


She glanced at me over her shoulder, shifting into the sunroom to talk to Mrs. Martinez. I finished chopping the zucchini and went to throw away the stalk and the part with the brown spot. The trash can was close to the sunroom door, which meant I could eavesdrop.


“He always seemed like such a nice boy. And to think how many times he slept over here—in David’s room.”


Wow, word travels fast in this neighborhood.


Mom came back into the kitchen, hung up the phone, then approached my father. “Can I talk to you for a moment? Alone?”I’d barely been in my room five minutes when Mom came to my door, which I’d left open, hoping in vain to overhear their discussion.

“Your father and I have reviewed the situation. We’ve decided to show some flexibility with your dating rules. During the last two years, you’ve demonstrated your trustworthiness, making curfew and obeying our entertainment guidelines.”

Her formal tone was confusing, but then her meaning dawned on me. I leaped up from my desk. “I can go to the movies Saturday?”


“Yes, but nothing—”


“Thank you!” I hugged her and kissed her cheek, knowing how happy it’d make her. “You’re the best mom ever.”


“Oh. Well.” She patted me on the back. When I let her go, she was blushing. “As I was about to say, nothing rated R. And if the situation develops with Bailey—or another girl—we’ll revisit our rule about one-on-one dates, depending how you handle this privilege.”


“I won’t let you down, I promise.”


“I know you won’t, sweetie,” she said, but her nervous smile told me she didn’t believe her own words. “Dinner will be ready at six thirty.”


When she was gone, I pumped my fist and whispered, “Thank you, Jesus!” before picking up my phone to update Kane.


“No fair!” Mara’s voice came from my open doorway. “They never bent the rules for me, not once.”


Mrs. Martinez’s call, Mom and Dad’s change of heart  .  .  .  I explained the obvious cause and effect to Mara.


She slapped her forehead in mock frustration. “That’s where I went wrong. No lesbian friends.” She crossed her arms and leaned against my doorjamb. “We’re going to hear about Kane over dinner, you know. Leviticus eighteen: twenty-two.”


“Oh, no.” I’d prepared myself for the day my parents found out about my best friend, when they would no doubt trot out the allegedly anti-gay bits of Scripture. To me it seemed obvious that God wouldn’t condemn someone for love, especially not a good guy like Kane. I’d prayed over it a hundred times, wondering if I was missing something, and I never got an answer contradicting my instincts. Sure, I was biased—this was Kane, after all—but since Jesus didn’t say one word on the subject, I figured it was up to each of us to decide for ourselves.


I knew the “love triumphs all” angle wouldn’t sway my parents. So to defend Kane, I’d armed myself with both historical facts and religious arguments.


But the timing couldn’t have been worse. “I can’t get into it with Mom and Dad now,” I told Mara. “If I piss them off, they might not let me see Bailey this weekend.”


“So you’ll just, what, smile and nod while Dad rants about homosexuality being an abomination?”


I couldn’t betray Kane like that. “We have to avoid the topic, at least until after Saturday. Help me come up with a diversion.”


“Sorry, you were smart enough to get yourself into this mess. You can think your way out again.” Mara turned away and pulled my door shut behind her.


I opened my laptop. The clock on the screen said 6:20. Ten minutes until dinner, so there was no time to waste being mad at my sister’s lack of support.


I needed a distraction, and I needed it fast.

“.  .  .  Thank you, Father, for this bounteous feast and for the good health with which to enjoy it.” My mother paused near the end of her usual pre-meal grace, then added, “Please strengthen this family against Satan’s temptations and all the world’s unholiness. Amen.”

“Amen.” I launched into my distraction before Mom or Dad could continue in the unholiness vein. “You remember a few years ago when that preacher said the Rapture was going to happen on a certain date?”

My parents nodded, my mom adding an eye roll. “He bilked so much money out of people,” she said. “Disgraceful.”


From the head of the table, Dad added a gospel quote: “But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”


“Exactly. That’s why all the real churches warned people against that guy.” Even though I was starving, I took as small a serving of chicken and rice as I could get away with, hoping for a short dinner that wouldn’t include talk of Kane. “Anyway, I just saw online that there’s this woman pastor who says the Rapture’s going to happen next year.”


“A woman, really?” Mom motioned for Mara to pass her the Adam and Eve salt and pepper shakers (which featured their heads only, obviously). “I suppose con artists come in all forms. Is she young or old?”


“About forty.” I knew better than to say that was old, since Mom was forty-six. “She’s not asking for money. She doesn’t even have a ‘donate’ button on her website.”


“That is odd. Most churches are all about—” She cut herself off with a glance at my father, then turned back to me. “So when does this woman say the Rapture will happen?”


“May eleventh of next year, at three a.m. And she doesn’t call it the Rapture. She says people laugh at that word now, thanks to the last preacher who got the date wrong. She calls it the Rush.”


“The Rush?” Mara snickered. “Like a fraternity?”


“No.” I didn’t let her dumb question derail my explanation. “It’s a different translation of the Latin word rapiemur from Thessalonians. That’s how the Wycliffe Bible in the fourteenth century translated it.” One of the many fascinating facts from the Rushers’ website that I’d crammed into my brain over the last ten minutes. “Meaning to ‘take away’ or ‘catch up.’”


“For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout,” my dad said, “with the voice of the archangel, and with God’s trumpet. The dead in Christ will rise first.” He lifted his fork with a flourish, sending rice onto the table and floor. “Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air. So we will be with the Lord forever.”


As he continued with the story, I shoveled food into my mouth so I could excuse myself from the table as soon as possible. It was best for my appetite to tune him out and not think about what happens after Jesus Raptures the true believers.


Everyone left behind will endure seven years of Tribulation: plagues, wars, storms, earthquakes, meteors, rivers of blood, demon locusts from hell. The Antichrist will rise to power, and a third of the people on earth will die.


Then comes Armageddon, the infamous battle of good and evil. God wins, of course, and begins a thousand-year reign of peace, making the world beautiful and clean again. No more pollution. No more wars. No more pain. Until doomsday, when the devil and sinners are hurled into the lake of fire for all eternity.


It sounds like a total horror show, unless you’re one of the Raptured. Then it’s still a horror show, but you’re a front-row spectator instead of a participant. Everyone at Stony Hill—including me and my family—was 100 percent positive we’d be among the Raptured. We couldn’t wait for Jesus to come back.


Or so we claimed.


What separated Stony Hill folks—all evangelicals—from the Rush cult is that we thought the Rapture would be a surprise. The Bible makes it crystal clear that we needed to be prepared, because it could happen anytime, day or night. Not on May 11 at 3 a.m.


“So what’s this lady preacher’s name?” Mom asked in a flat tone.


I should have lied. I should have “forgotten.” I should’ve wondered why my mother would even ask, rather than blowing off the entire subject of the Rush. Saying Sophia Visser’s name made her real.


But I gave it all up, as I scraped my plate clean. The name, church, location, everything I’d learned. Then I asked to be excused so I could finish homework.


I made it to my room, safe from the Leviticus 18:22 lecture about abominable gays. Only one more dinner to go before Saturday’s date with Bailey, and that was our family’s traditional Friday pizza-andmovie night (the cheesily named Super Duper Cooper Night), when we paid attention to the TV instead of one another.


I opened my laptop to work on a paper about the Boston Massacre for my community-college American history class. The browser window still showed Sophia Visser’s website. In the header she wore a white dress that hugged her figure, her face uplifted to a golden light. Her arms stretched out, palms up, as if collecting falling sunbeams.


She looked like the kind of happy I hadn’t felt since I was a kid, swimming in the ocean at the Jersey Shore. I could go out as far as I wanted, because John was always there, ready to save me from sharks or jellyfish or drowning. Dad was always back on the sand, catching up on paperwork.


Below Sophia’s photo, in a flowing font, were the words, “Are you ready for the Rush?”


I closed the browser tab. “Nope. Not yet.”

CHAPTER 11

NOW

Kane prepares to cook omelets while we tell him everything we know. Since it isn’t much, we’re done talking before he even finishes breaking eggs.

“You know I’m not your parents’ hugest fan,” he says, turning on the gas stove, “but even I can’t believe they’d just abandon you.”

I eat a slice of bread while two more are toasting. “You think they were kidnapped?” I ask him, feeling less paranoid for having had the idea myself.

“Or otherwise coerced into leaving. You should call the police.” “No way!” Mara sloshes orange juice outside of the glass she’s trying to fill. “I’m only seventeen, so I can’t be David’s guardian. If we call the police, Social Services will put us in foster care. We could end up separated.”


“Better than ending up orphans.” Kane scoops part of a bowl of chopped onions, peppers, and ham into the sizzling pan, then starts to beat the eggs. “Is it possible one of your parents was having an affair?”


Mara gives a harsh laugh as she wipes up the juice. “Have you met our parents?”


“Hey, the world is full of pious people getting a little side action.”


The toaster beeps, so I replace the toast with two fresh slices of bread. “If one of them was having an affair, why would they both leave?”


“Maybe it was a threesome.” Kane taps the whisk against the inside of the bowl. “Or more than three, like on that show about the dude who has all those wives.”


Mara snorts. “Yeah, Kane. Our parents ran off and left us so Dad could start a harem.”


“Or your mom. There are such things as male harems.”


“In your dreams, maybe,” she says.


“Definitely in my dreams. But also in reality. I’m just saying, guys, there are way more plausible explanations for your parents being gone than the Rush.”


“We’re not saying they were Rushed,” I tell him, “but it can’t be a coincidence that they disappeared last night. There must be a connection.”


“Maybe. The important point is, they’re out there somewhere, which means you can get them back.” Kane shakes the spatula at us. “It’s your duty as their children to save them.”


“Even from themselves?” Mara asks.


“Especially from themselves.”


“We couldn’t do that while they were here,” I point out. “God knows I tried.”


“And if He doesn’t know,” Mara says, “He’s not paying attention.”

Kane and Mara and I take breakfast down into the family room, because there’s no one to make us eat at the kitchen table. It’s well past time for church, but our parents’ fringe beliefs alienated us from the congregation, so we haven’t been attending much lately. Which means, sadly, no one will miss us.