Jeri Smith-Ready - This Side of Salvation

I hang up and head downstairs. In the event Bailey calls back tonight, I’ll sound a lot less crazy if Mara and I can figure out what’s going on.

I find my sister in the kitchen, yanking open the junk drawer. She’s wearing pajamas and glasses now, but her hair is still pinned up in the straggly remnants of her trip to the salon.

“What are you looking for?”

“Mom’s phone.” She slams the drawer shut. “Since we couldn’t hear it ring, I thought maybe she stuck it in a drawer and the battery ran out.”

“Are their phone chargers here?”

“Dad’s is on the table, can’t find Mom’s.”

I spy the leftover pizza I left on the counter and pick it up. “Laptops?”

“Check their room. Did you search the cars?”

“For what?”

“Duh. Clues!” Mara flaps her hand at me. “How can you eat at a time like this?”

On the countertop, her cell phone bleeps with a text. She grabs it, hands shaking, but her face falls when she sees the screen. “It’s just Sam. ‘Home safe. How about you?’ That’s nice of him to check in.” “Told you he was a good guy.”

“I’ll say I’m home, but I’m grounded and can’t see him this week.” She started thumbing in a message. “No one can know Mom and Dad are gone until we figure out where and why.”

I take the pizza upstairs to the master bedroom. Both laptop cases sit against the wall beside the dresser, with the computers inside them.

Mom’s browser window is open to the website of Sophia Visser, the preacher who convinced my parents that Jesus was returning to “Rush” His beloved followers to heaven. At the center of the page is the animated countdown clock that was scheduled to turn to zero about an hour ago, signaling His coming. The clock currently show’s “-4:05:32,” which would’ve been about eleven p.m., when Mom and Dad went to bed.

As the laptop connects to the wireless network, the animation on Sophia’s website automatically updates before my eyes. The clock slowly dissolves, replaced by six words stretching across the screen:. . . like a thief in the night . . .

THREE YEARS TO SLIGHTLY LESS THAN TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE THE RUSH

After my confession and saving, my parents decided that public school was a “corrupting environment” for their juvenile delinquent son. So Mom quit her real estate job to homeschool me and Mara.

Surprisingly, it rocked. As long as we didn’t fall behind, we could make our own work schedules. I finished two years of math, English, French, and history in nine months, along with a semester each of chemistry, geography, religion, and earth science. After the first year, we took online courses and community-college classes, rather than being taught by Mom. It was almost like being a grown-up.

Rather than turn into asocial shut-ins, we had more outside activities than ever. Mara followed her two passions: choir and cars, while I still played for the high school baseball team. My fastball was reaching legendary status across the Delaware Valley, and scouts were sure to start sniffing around next spring.

Mara and I joined an accelerated-math homeschool group taught by a community-college professor. “Math Cave” was the students’ affectionate-turned-official term for the classes in Mr. Ralph’s basement. It was like a one-room schoolhouse, with a whiteboard and desks for the twenty or so students split into two sections. We ranged in age from twelve to sixteen, though we were all taking eleventh-grade trigonometry.

One day, halfway through what would have been my sophomore year, I was at my desk before class, double-checking my homework. Francis (the kid from Stony Hill who’d told me, “Dude, we just got saved”) was sitting in front of me. He kept turning around to allegedly get hints on the last problem, but I suspected he was just checking out his current crush sitting behind me: Mara.

My sister was talking in a hushed voice on her cell with her best friend, Jackie, discussing Middle Merion High School’s Valentine’s dance.

“I do like Sam, but I can’t go to dances until I’m a senior. Mom says they count as one-on-one dates, even if we go as a group. Besides, I can’t subject Sam to my dad’s inquisition.” She snorted. “No way I can sneak out. They changed the security on our bedroom windows so the screens can’t open without setting off the alarm. Only my parents know the disable code. Thank my criminal brother for that.”

She flicked the back of my head, hard, but I ignored her. Mara was lying to Jackie—we all knew the disable codes. She just didn’t want to risk her status as the “B-E-T-T-E-R child,” as she would chant at me while doing a little shimmy dance, whenever I screwed up.

From the front row, Eve and Ezra Decker turned around with the precision of synchronized swimmers, giving us the stinkeye.

When Math Cave had started in the fall, I had insta-hate for Ezra, a skinny, thin-haired guy with a triple-size Adam’s apple. He wore shirts and ties to class, used any excuse to mention his perfect SAT scores, and spoke to girls’ chests instead of their eyes. The kind of guy who gave homeschoolers’ social skills a bad name.

His little sister, Eve, was only a year younger than me, but she always smelled like bubble-gum-scented shampoo, the kind little kids use. She hardly ever talked. Maybe the Deckers had a spoken-word-sharing plan—the way some families share cell phone minutes—and Ezra was using them all up.

Francis turned around again, whispering, “What’s Mara’s favorite snack?”

“Why?”

“Study group’s at my house tomorrow.” He rubbed his nose hard, then gave in to a sneeze. “I want to have what she likes.”

I tried to think of a nice way to say, Trust me, you don’t have what she likes, but my attention was drawn to the basement stairs beyond him. The door at the top had just opened, letting in a new voice. A girl’s voice.

A golden shaft of sunlight streamed down the stairwell, illuminating a pair of bright blue high-tops. Then tan legs that kept coming and coming and coming, ending in tight shorts that matched the shoes. Then a bare arm cradling a notebook against a lacy pink tank top. A thick, dark-blond braid swung over one shoulder.

The place went silent as the new girl descended the stairs, sun-yellow shoelaces flopping with each step.

“Jinx!” Mara shrieked.

Jinx was Mr. Ralph’s cat, who loved to stretch out on the third stair from the bottom, a cat who was the same beige as the carpet and therefore camouflaged.

Geographically, I wasn’t the closest guy to the new girl, but I was the first out of my seat as she slipped on the cat, yelped, then faceplanted at the bottom of the stairs.

I dropped to my knees beside her. “Are you okay?”

She winced and cradled her right wrist as she rolled over on her back. “What happened?”

“Jinx happened.”

“Huh?”

“The cat.”

“Oh no, is she okay? Or he?”

I tore my gaze away to see a ruffled Jinx on the bottom step, vigorously grooming her right side. “She’s fine, see? If she was hurt, she probably couldn’t lick herself.”

“Bailey, are you all right?” Mr. Ralph hurried down the stairs, his thin face full of panic.

“Mostly.” With her left hand, she pushed herself to a sitting position and frowned at her scattered books. One notebook was splayed open, showing a doodle of a squirrel wearing a jet pack. “But I think I hurt my arm.”

“I’ll call your mom,” he said, “and tell her to meet us at the emergency room.”

By this point, the other students had crowded around, the guys jostling closer to Bailey. Francis started to reach down for her trig textbook. I snatched it away and gathered the rest of her books and notebooks into my arms.

“That’s okay,” I told Mr. Ralph. “We’ll take her.”

As I’d guessed, Mara was happy to skip class to take Bailey to the hospital. At sixteen and a half, my sister had just earned her junior license and therefore jumped at every chance to drive.

“That poor cat.” Bailey clutched the ice pack Mr. Ralph had given her against her right wrist. “I hope I didn’t crush any of her internal organs.”

“She’s probably fine.” I was more worried about my own innards, knotted up in her presence as I sat with her in the backseat.

My eyes were drawn again and again to her bare legs. Was that a bird tattoo peeking out of the top of her Chucks? Why was she wearing shorts in February? Then again, it was almost seventy degrees, one of those weird Pennsylvania warm spells usually followed by a foot of snow.

“Bailey, where did you move from?” Mara asked.

“I grew up over in Swarthmore,” she said. “My mom’s a psych professor there. But she had a temporary teaching gig at McGill, so we’ve lived in Montreal for the last two years.”

Il fait plus froid là, non? I wanted to say, asking about the weather there, but by the time I’d reviewed each word for accuracy, the moment had passed.

One of Mara’s favorite songs came on the radio, by some Christian pop band. She turned up the music and started singing along softly.

“How’s your wrist?” I asked Bailey.

“Hurts like hell, but let me check something.” She lifted her uninjured left hand, slid her tongue along the side of it twice, eyes closed. Then she brushed the same hand behind her ear, like a self-grooming cat. Finally she looked at me, sliding her ring finger beneath her mouth to wipe her chin. “Can’t be that bad, since I can still lick myself.”

I just stared at her.

“Isn’t that your criteria?” she asked me. “You said Jinx was okay because she could—”

“I know.” My pulse slammed my throat so hard it hurt, like when I’d run on a cold winter morning. “It’s just that, I kinda missed it, so if you could do that again, only slower . . .”

I met her eyes, which widened briefly, then narrowed as she smirked and turned her face to the window. “You wish,” she said with a guffaw.

Mara turned down the radio. “What’s so funny?”

“Never mind,” I told my sister. “You had to be there.”

Bailey cringed as she adjusted the ice pack against her wrist. Then her shoulders twitched in a sudden shiver.

I slipped off my Windbreaker, leaned over, and draped it across the back of her bare shoulders. “Sorry, I should’ve offered sooner.”

“Oh. Thanks.” She tugged the material over the seat-belt strap to cover her right arm. The gesture drew my attention to her chest and what the cold air was doing to it.

Look away, I commanded myself. If she catches you staring at her nipples, that’s a game changer.

“Bailey, was that your Volt parked in front of Mr. Ralph’s house?” Mara asked, thankfully breaking my reverie.

“It’s my dad’s. Why?”

“I’ve never driven an electric car. Do you like it?”

“It’s awesome. I’ll let you guys try it out if you want.” She smiled at me. “As a thank-you.”

“David can’t drive yet,” Mara said. “He’s only fifteen.”

I glared at my sister. Not that I would’ve lied to Bailey about being younger, but I would’ve waited to tell her after she liked me—if she ever liked me. Now she could disregard me right off the bat.

The car lurched as it went over a pothole. Bailey cried out and clutched her wrist.

Mara covered her mouth. “Sorry!”

“It’s okay,” Bailey gasped, but her face was turning so pale, her freckles seemed like its only color. Traffic was getting thicker, so it’d be almost ten minutes to the ER.

I had to distract her from the pain. “It’s a tradition in my family, when we drive people to the hospital, that we play Twenty Questions.”

Bailey gave me a look that said, You’re making this up, but I’ll play along. “As in, I’m supposed to guess what you’re thinking of?”

“No, twenty random questions about each other. Three rules: We take turns, answer only yes or no, and always tell the truth. Wait— four rules. No pauses: just ask the next question that pops into your head. Ready? Go!”