Worthy of Rain

by Elizaveta Fehr

  The light reflected off the water and turned into millions of miniature suns. The rolling hills rose and dipped in the distance, creating valleys and rounded peaks. I put my hand over my eyes to see farther.

  There was a good-sized crowd gathered at the top of a hill. Just past them, a large body of water sat in a cradle of hilltops and plateaus. I walked towards them, hoping to see better. There was a figure standing with his back against the water. His arms were spread open wide.

  I was not sure where Jace was. He could honestly have landed anywhere. I knew he would find his way here. I had a feeling this may have been the thing he wanted to show me.

  And I was right.

  Because the man standing at the front of the crowd was Jesus.

  My heart rate picked up. Back in the city, he seemed so far away from up in the tree. But now, he was standing right there. A few steps away. Up close and personal.

  I stayed on the outskirts of the crowd and tried to inch closer to the front. Some people sat on the ground while others stood in the back to lean against a boulder or tree. I kept moving forward.

  “That’s the sin of this world.” His voice got stronger as I moved closer. “Everything of the world is temporary. We choose the Lord our God over everything else, but we have that choice. He doesn’t force it. He does it because he loves us, even when we aren’t worthy of his love.”

  I exhaled. He was absolutely captivating. The crowd didn’t move or fidget. No one yawned. They only looked at him with curious eyes and renewed hearts. As my eyes scanned the crowd, I caught sight of Jace sitting cross-legged in front of the group. His hair was flopped to one side and he was sitting directly beneath Jesus. Hanging onto his every word.

  I’d never seen Jace so happy than in that moment. I smiled. I got it now. I really and truly got it. This is what it all came down to. Jesus, coming to save the world from itself.

  I looked out into the sparkling water. We’d finish the project and we’d do it the right way.

  All we had to do was speak the truth.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  “You ready for this?” Jace whispered to me from across the desk.

  My head nodded, but the rest of my brain and body turned in somersaults. We were up next.

  “Jace and Genesis,” Mrs. Whitaker announced as the previous group sat down. They did a presentation on the Black Plague. She didn’t even look up at us.

  My legs were numb. Like all the blood rushed out of them and now all that was left were pale, hollow logs. All the blood seemed to have drained from Jace’s face too. I nodded to him and he left the room.

  “He has to go get the project,” I said awkwardly. I stood in the front of the room with my index cards shaking in one hand. It was worse now that I could see everyone’s blank stares. At least before, I could stare at the desk and pretend like no one was talking about us.

  Jace walked back inside the room, wheeling in the covered diorama. I glanced over at Mrs. Whitaker. She lifted her eyebrows. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  I visualized myself inhaling and exhaling. You can back out now. It’s not too late. I looked over at Jace and remembered him sitting at Jesus’s feet.

  “No.” I didn’t even realize I was praying until I said it. “You already have me, God. There’s no turning back.”

  I remembered that moment of choice in Daniel’s story. When I had to decide to stand up or kneel. When I chose neither.

  Suddenly, the world was spinning, and I was falling. Falling…falling…falling. And then it just…stopped.

  “Genesis, begin.” Mrs. Whitaker said impatiently. I stared at the index cards in my hand. Dates. Facts. Numbers. Statistics. Theories.

  The words blurred in my vision, but my head instantly felt so clear. I knew what I was going to say.

  Speak the truth.

  I looked up. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” I set the cards on the table and reached over to uncover a portion of the diorama. In it, clouds were suspended over a painted lake. The class leaned forward to look. I could see Jace staring at me wide eyed from the corner of my eye, but I kept going.

  “Then God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” I circled to the back of the diorama and felt around to find the switch. A light bulb shone light into the clouds.

  “And God saw that the light was good. Evening passed and morning came, marking the first day.”

  Jace reached over me and uncovered the diorama further. “Then God said, ‘Let there be a space between the waters, to separate the waters of the heavens from the waters of the earth.’”

  I smiled. He was catching on.

  The lake now flowed into a 3D painting of a waterfall. The water droplets looked like they were suspended midair since they were painted over a wood carving. Someone in the front row gasped.

  Jace found my gaze and held it. “And evening passed and morning came, marking the second day.”

  “Then God said, ‘Let the waters beneath the sky flow together into one place, so dry ground may appear. Let the ground sprout with vegetation—every sort of seed-bearing plant, and trees that grow seed-bearing fruit.” I lifted up the covering more to reveal a lagoon with lifelike plants clustered around the edges. A painted carving of an apple tree sat near the edge of the waterfall.

  “‘Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let these lights in the sky shine down on the earth.’” Jace continued after me. He flipped another switch and miniature light-up stars and a moon appeared around the clouds. I rolled up a background of the sky with a painted sun.

  “Let the waters swarm with fish and other life. Let the skies be filled with birds of every kind.” Jace pulled out a wooden crane and two koi fish and placed them in the lagoon.

  “Then God said, ‘Let the earth produce every sort of animal—livestock, small animals that scurry along the ground, and wild animals.’” I reached in the bag and pulled out several more wooden figurines. A racoon, a horse with a bridle, an elephant, a wolf. Every detail stood out of the wood like they were drawn with a needle.

  Wow. Jace really outdid himself.

  “Then God said, ‘Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us,” Jace continued. He pulled out a figurine of the outline of a man and set it on a boulder at the bottom of the waterfall. He pulled out a final figurine, the outline of a woman, and placed it next to the man.

  “Then God rested on the final day and declared it holy,” he finished.

  By now, the whole diorama was uncovered. The opposite side had a mountain with painted trees and streams running down the sides. Evergreens dotted the entire landscape to create one massive collage of earth itself.

  “And…you made this all by yourselves?” Mrs. Whitaker said skeptically.

  I nodded and Jace answered, “Entirely out of wood, clay, and paint.”

  “And Styrofoam,” I added.

  “My grandpa does woodwork,” Jace shrugged. “He taught me a thing or two.” Mrs. Whitaker raised her eyebrows but kept quiet. I tried to hold back a smile.

  “And this,” I gestured to the project, “was creation. It was what started the beginning of the world.”

  “The beginning of a fantasy world, you mean.” Mrs. Whitaker called out.

  My heart dropped in my stomach. The rest of the class turned to look at her.

  “I…but I mean—”

  “You mean to tell me our whole earth was created in seven days?” she scoffed. “Please. People only made up God because there’s nothing else to do. It’s not even scientific.”

  “But that’s just it.” I blurted out. “Believing in God isn’t about science, it’s about faith. God wants us to choose him despite what we can see.” I could hear Jace’s words echo in my head and I could see my mom’s smiling face. Faith gives us hope, darling.

  I went to my backpack and picked up the Bible. “This,” I said, holding the book up, “is entirely God’s word. And it’s the complete truth.” I exhaled
. “At first…I didn’t believe it either. I didn’t even know there was a god people believed in. But believe me when I say He is as real as I am standing in front of all of you.” I looked back at the class.

  “I’ve felt Him, but not with my hands; I’ve talked to Him, but never with my mouth; and I’ve seen Him, but never with my eyes. And yet, He’s more real to me than anything I could have ever touched, spoken to, or seen. It’s amazing. It’s amazing to feel Him.” My voice choked. “But you can’t unless you let Him be in your life and commit to Him with all of your heart.”

  I looked over at Jace. He had tears in his eyes. I gave him a small smile.

  The class was dead silent.

  Then, Mrs. Whitaker stacked up her papers and placed them back on the desk. Her face was expressionless.

  “And that, students,” she began, “is how you get kicked out of my classroom.”

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  “Are you kidding me, Gen?”

  My dad still had my backpack in one hand, a green slip of paper in the other. The kitchen counter never looked so interesting before now.

  “You got an in-school suspension?!”

  I rubbed my temple. “I guess getting kicked out of a class and getting suspended come in one big package,” I answered half-heartedly.

  He dropped my bag on the ground and started to pace the kitchen floor. “It’s that Jace Anthony kid. I knew he’d be a problem.”

  I looked at my dad. “What are you talking about?” And then I realized that my dad never knew Jace was my partner. He’d never actually seen us together. Until now.

  “I need to make some phone calls,” he said, ignoring my question.

  I watched him stride out of the kitchen. His shoulders were tense, his phone already held up to his ear. I sighed and laid my head on my arms, defeated.

  I was an idiot.

  A complete idiot.

  My words from today replayed in my head like a spinning top. Over and over and over again. Did I take it too far? We weren’t forcing everyone to believe us. What did we say wrong? Somehow, the pit in my stomach wouldn’t go away. The pit of regret.

  That was when I realized I felt guilty not because of what I said at all.

  It was because of what I didn’t get a chance to say.

  “Okay, we’ll fight it. I’ll talk to you soon.” I heard the click of the phone. His footsteps creaked against the wooden floors of the hallway.

  “Dad?” I called out quietly, almost mouse-like. The creaking stopped, started, and he reappeared in the entryway. His brow was furrowed and he was typing furiously on his phone. His patience was slipping away as fast as he was typing.

  I wanted to ask him about everything. But I changed my mind last minute, afraid to anger him even more. My dad rarely ever got mad unless it was something about mom. So this…this was foreign ground.

  “What are we eating for dinner?” I said instead.

  That night, I tried not to think about the events of today, but somehow, they unfolded out of my head like a rolled-up canvas, one memory merging into the other. I was aching to talk to Jace. I didn’t see him at all after Mrs. Whitaker sent us to the office. Dad took my phone as soon as he picked me up, so I’d have to wait until tomorrow.

  The adrenaline rush I’d had standing in front of that class, heart beating and mind spinning, had now subsided to a faint remembrance of what I thought was there. Had I imagined it all along?

  I subconsciously grabbed the Bible underneath my pillow. I traced a finger along the spine and the feathered pages in the dark. No. I hadn’t imagined it. God was more real to me than ever before, even without the Bible in my hands. And despite the humility of my unfortunate punishment, or even my uncanny feelings towards my dad tonight, I felt a swell of satisfaction grow in my chest as it rooted a warm embrace that spread out to the tips of my fingers.

  I wondered, before I let myself slip into blackness, if this was what it felt like to be a Christian.

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  This was definitely something I couldn’t have imagined.

  I was either paranoid or bizarrely intuitive because I could have sworn every person I passed kept their eyes on me long after I had already walked several steps down the hall. After about the fifth person, I stopped looking back to see quick eyes darting to some random poster or locker, or even someone pretending to be interested in a blank wall.

  I hooked both hands on the straps of my bag self-consciously and looked straight ahead. I needed to find Jace. ASAP.

  My feet naturally took me to the library, aching to be somewhere where it didn’t feel like I was walking on thin ice. The best thing about the library was that I could hide in it and never get in trouble for being there. No one would ever find me because who would be in there at 7:30 in the morning?

  Jace would.

  Well, yeah. Him.

  Jace. Maybe Jace would be in the library.

  My feet quickened on the hallway tiles. I crossed my fingers.

  The main area was hushed as I entered. The librarian was nowhere in sight, so I meandered through the aisles on my own to look for Jace. It was a big library, bigger than most people at the school thought because most of them stuck to the deflated bean bags and pillows towards the entrance.

  I was nearing the romance novels when I felt myself being pulled backwards, someone using my backpack as a handle. A smile crept across my face.

  “Okay, Jace. Was that really necess—” I cut myself off as I turned around to see, not Jace, but Aven sneering down from above.

  “You’ve got a real nerve,” she smirked, stepping back to cross her arms. She leaned against the bookshelf with one shoulder. I glared at her and scrambled to grab the folders that had spilled out of my bag.

  “What’s your issue?” I tried to stuff them all back inside, but they wouldn’t fit. As I stood, Aven chuckled and stood up straighter, holding her ground.

  “I don’t have an issue,” she smiled. Her teeth were clamped tight.

  I frowned and tried to back up. “Okay…” I backed right into another body and I whipped around. It was Alex in her usual getup.

  “What’s this?” Aven crooned, and her friend kicked something heavy across the floor. I watched it skid across the carpet.

  My Bible.

  I tried to lunge for it, but Aven swooped in and picked it up too quickly. She put her hand out to stop me from grabbing it.

  She chuckled again and held it up out of my reach. “Well, well, well, the bane of my existence. Never thought I’d touch one of these in my life.”

  “Okay, can you just give it back? That’s mine.” My voice sounded more desperate than I wanted it to sound.

  “Someone cares too much about a little worthless book,” she said, shaking the Bible in her hand. I watched painfully as the worn binding started to loosen in her fist.

  “Aven, please, you’re going to rip it.” I tried to jump to snatch it but she swung her arm in a wide arc to avoid me.

  “You think any of this is actually real? I thought you were smarter than that, Genesis. What a shame. Another brainwashed mind. I truly feel sorry for you.” I could sense the ugliest bit of pity sitting in the back of her throat.

  What happened to my best friend?

  Tears started to pool in my eyes as my frustration bubbled to the surface. A page flew out from the binding and fluttered to the floor like a leaf sashaying in the wind. My heart leapt into my throat.

  “Aven, stop,” I begged.

  “Give it back, Aven,” a familiar voice said from behind the bookcases. My heart caved.

  Jace stepped out from behind me and strode to meet Aven in the center of the aisle. His eyes were dark. Aven involuntarily took a few steps back, but she smirked, unfearful.

  “You two make me sick,” she responded.

  “Just give it back.” Jace’s voice was teetering on the edge of threatening. I’d never seen him so angry before, not even at me.

  Aven waved the Bible above our he
ads playfully, but then stopped and glanced up at the Bible in her raised hand.

  “You know, how about I do you a favor and make it easy for you?” She looked at me, ignoring Jace. My heart dropped.

  My brain didn’t register what was happening until I saw them. Bits of paper fluttered to the floor like snowfall in the night, harmless and unseeing and carefree. Like they didn’t know they were being ripped to shreds in that very moment.

  “No!” I cried out, and I lunged forward again. But it was too late. Aven, in four swift movements, had half the Bible scattered across the floor of the back of the library.

  She didn’t stop there. Not when I screamed at her to stop. Not when Jace tried to grab it from her. Not when I finally got the rest of the book free from her hand. She kept tearing anything that was left in her disgusting, destructive fingers, until her goal was accomplished.

  That there would be nothing left at all.

  I dropped to my knees, scooping up bits of paper into my palms. The library was spinning, or moving in slow motion. Or neither. Or both. I didn’t know.

  My hair cascaded around my face like a muddy waterfall.

  It was gone.

  It was really gone.

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  In-school suspensions were bad enough when you didn’t have to sit across the room from Aven Lancaster.

  My former best friend.

  I stared at the clock and watched it tick past the “3” and the “4” and the “5” and the “6” until the clock’s face became blurred in my vision. The numbers morphed into one. I forgot time had even passed.

  Jace’s shoulders were hunched forward, his arms crossed tightly in front of his chest. He tapped his foot against the chair in front of him over in his corner of the room, like he himself was a ticking clock. All of the numbers on his face blurred together.

  I didn’t realize I had been clutching the remainder of my Bible until I looked down into my lap. Deep, jagged rips were torn through its center, gaping holes in a fleshy wound.