Jeri Smith-Ready: This Side of Salvation

I toss the phone on my bed, following it with clean boxer shorts, sweatpants, and a T-shirt from my dresser. I use a stray towel to wipe the accumulated grime off my chest and arms, knowing I should shower but not wanting to miss Kane’s reply, or a call or message from Bailey.

Naturally, I think of her as I strip off the swim trunks. Was it only two hours ago we were alone together for the first time in weeks? Those minutes in the pool house feel like a lightning flash in the middle of a long, dark storm. In those minutes, I could see, with blinding clarity, who I was and what I wanted.

Once dressed, I sit on the bed and stare at my phone’s empty screen. We haven’t found Mom’s phone yet. Mara ran around the house, listening for our mother’s goofy ringtone of the week, while I collected the shrapnel of Dad’s BlackBerry, wishing my pitching coach could see the dent it left in the wall.

At the thought of calling Bailey, my head gets light and swimmy, as if that one swig of Jack Daniel’s in the hot tub was an entire bottle. Are we back together now? Maybe our time at the party was just a fun good-bye. I never figured out how to ask, “Are you my girlfriend again?” without sounding clueless. Obviously I didn’t anticipate the night getting cut short by cops.

Time to man up.

I dial her number and immediately reach voice mail: “Hey, it’s Bailey. Leave a message and I’ll call you back. Leave a creative message and I’ll call you back faster.”

Her voice calms my racing pulse enough for me to speak. “It’s David. I know it’s”—I look at the clock—“oh, wow, four a.m. Sorry.

And I’m sorry I ran out on you at Stephen’s. I had to get Mara away from the police. You saw how she was.” Getting off topic. Reel it in. “Anyway, I hope you’re okay. Let me know as soon as you can. I, uh, I’m worried. About you. About a lot of things. Also, I realized I never said I was sorry about what happened last month. It was my fault too. Probably mostly my fault. Maybe totally.” After an awkward pause, I add, “I love you.”

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.”