by Nancy N. Rue
Sophie did a few more rolls in the sand with him before he suddenly bolted up and took off with Rory. Lacie stood over her, her dark-like-Daddy’s hair pulled up into a fashionably messy bun. She looked like while she was away she’d stretched upward and inward, and in some places outward. She reached down a hand to pull Sophie up.
“I won’t hug you ’cause I’m all yucky now,” Sophie said.
“Are you kidding me? I haven’t seen you in three weeks!”
Lacie pulled Sophie into a hug and then held her out by the shoulders to look at her. Her deep blue eyes sparkled. “You haven’t grown any. I guess you’re always going to be a peanut. So, how ARE you?”
Sophie could only stare at her. Where was the real Lacie?
Darbie, Maggie, and Fiona were also gazing at Lacie as if she were an extraterrestrial. They had talked Sophie down from a furious-with-Lacie fit more than once.
“I’m good,” Sophie said. “Where’s Mama and Daddy?”
Lacie pointed toward the beach house, and slapping at the sand on her arms as she ran, Sophie headed that way. She could hear the other three Corn Flakes behind her, squawking as if it were their parents who had just arrived. Everybody loved Mama. And everybody understood Daddy, which was basically enough.
Daddy met her on the wooden walkway and picked her up for a hug. He held on to her longer than usual. It made Sophie glance toward the porch, where Mama — who everyone said was a grown-up version of Sophie — was listening to Dr. Bunting. Sophie’s stomach tied in a knot. Mama’s eyes were puffy, like she’d been crying. Hard.
“Dream Girl!” Mama said. She flung out her arms to Sophie and the other Corn Flakes, although when Maggie stepped up for her turn, she refused the hug and just said, “Something’s wrong.”
“Sit, ladies,” Dr. Bunting said. “Let’s talk.”
Maggie didn’t sit.
Sophie squeezed into the chair with her mother. Fiona hiked herself up onto the low railing. Only Darbie selected her own chair, where she curled up into a ball.
I don’t think we want to hear this, Sophie thought.
“Okay, girls, here’s the deal,” Dr. Bunting said. She ran her fingers through her short-cut hair and pushed up the sleeves of her shirt. “And I want you to hear me out before you start asking questions.” She looked right at Fiona. “Or jump to any conclusions.”
“About what?” Fiona said.
“Exactly my point. The doctors have done tests, and Kitty has been diagnosed with what’s known as ALL — acute lym-phoblastic leukemia — ”
“Kitty does NOT have leukemia,” Fiona said.
Dr. Bunting put up her hand without looking at Fiona. “It’s a very serious form of cancer that happens in children sometimes, BUT — ” She waited while Fiona closed her mouth. Darbie sat up straight in her chair, and Maggie doubled her fists like she was going to take Dr. Bunting down.
“BUT — two-thirds of the children diagnosed with leukemia go into remission.”
“What does that mean?” Maggie said.
“Remission means they don’t show any signs of having leukemia anymore.”
“Then that’s what’s going to happen for Kitty,” Fiona said.
“That may very well be true with the kind of treatment Kitty is going to get at Portsmouth. It’s one of the finest military hospitals in the country.”
“What happens if she doesn’t get that remission thing?” Maggie said.
Dr. Bunting folded her arms. “Then they’ll keep treating her.”
Maggie looked like she was digesting something she hadn’t bothered to chew. Mama hugged Sophie close to her. “The best thing we can do for Kitty is pray for her and let her know that we love her.”
“She can still play with us though, right?” Fiona said. “They’ll start medicating her, and she’ll be able to have the rest of summer vacation, right?”
Sophie looked up at Fiona. There was a look Fiona sometimes got when she sounded like she knew what she was talking about, but she really didn’t. She had that look now.
“Eventually she will,” Dr. Bunting said. She tilted her head toward Daddy, who was standing off to the side, rubbing the back of his neck. “How much detail do you want me to go into?”
“I know everything I want to know,” Darbie said. She was gnawing hard on her lower lip.
“Then I think that’s plenty,” Mama said. “I promised your aunt Emily we would pay attention to that.”
“But there IS more you have to tell us,” Fiona said. “Just not now. Which means it isn’t bad, because if it was bad, you’d give it all to us right now. I know how you are.”
Fiona’s mother looked at Mama. “You want her? You can have her.”
“Oh, no, not a chance,” Daddy said. “She’s more trouble than my three put together.” He grinned at Fiona. But Sophie didn’t see a grin in his eyes. There was no room in there with the sadness.
Mama volunteered to pack Sophie’s stuff up for her.
Maggie, Darbie, and Fiona trailed after her to get their own things together, Fiona explaining in eleventh-grade vocabulary words what “two-thirds” meant for Kitty.
But Sophie didn’t follow. She wandered back down the wooden walkway that led from the house to the beach, draping her towel around her shoulders like a shawl.
Sofia hung her head as she dragged her bare feet along the edge of the Mediterranean Sea, the heat of the sand biting at her soles. What difference did it make? Her friend Danielle was sick.She asked, “Why did God let this happen?” Something tugged at Sofia’s shawl. When she looked up, she saw —
Genevieve fell into step beside Sophie. “That’s always the question when something bad happens,” she said. “You want to talk about it?”
Sophie dragged her toes as she walked, digging into the darker sand that hid beneath the soft golden part. She never talked about God except to Dr. Peter, not about the hard things, anyway. She could count on him not to tell her she was the worst person on the planet for not being sure God knew what he was doing.
She looked sideways at Genevieve. She didn’t look like she was about to whip out a rule book or anything.
If she did, Sophie thought, I’d just go right down, right here, just like Kitty did.
She squeezed her thoughts together so the memory wouldn’t get through, but there was her friend in her mind — all pale and limp and hurting because she had a terrible disease.
“Why don’t we just walk?” Genevieve said. “Walking is also good.”
“What about the brats? I mean — Rory and Izzy.” Sophie hunched up her shoulders. “Sorry. Fiona always calls them that so I hear it all the time.”
“I think of them as puppies, myself,” Genevieve said. “As soon as I get them housebroken and through obedience school, they’ll be very nice pets.”
“Are you serious?” Sophie said.
Genevieve’s green eyes were shiny. “No, but it sounded good, didn’t it?”
Sophie had to smile at her. She was kind of like Dr. Peter, only taller, and prettier, of course. Maybe she COULD tell her —
“You can have them back now!”
It was Lacie, dragging herself out of the ocean with Izzy and Zeke clinging to her like koala bears and Rory hanging off her back, all making little-kid beach sounds.
“Slacker,” Genevieve said to Lacie with a grin. “It’s time for me to take them back up to the house anyway.”
“Not yet!” Zeke said.
Rory turned to him, his small face serious. “We don’t say no to Genevieve, dude.”
Genevieve ushered them up the dune. Lacie pulled a towel out of her bag, which she’d parked on the beach, and wrapped it around her chest.
“You okay, Soph?” she said.
“No,” Sophie said. “Kitty has leukemia.”
“I know. Dad told me.”
“She’s really sick.”
“Well, yeah, she is.” Lacie shook her head like a wet dog.
“But you have to have faith. God wil
l take care of her.”
Sophie studied her sister while Lacie sat down and knocked water out of her ear. There really was something different about her now, Sophie thought as she joined her on the sand. Before they’d both left on their trips, they were getting along a LITTLE better than they used to, but Lacie had still been saying things like, “You better start acting normal before you go to middle school, Sophie.”
But Sophie hadn’t wanted to scream once since Lacie had arrived that day. Sure, they had said only about three sentences to each other, but that was still a record.
Sophie watched the sand slide back and forth across her toenails. There was only one way to find out if Lacie had really changed, and besides, if she didn’t ask somebody, she might scream anyway.
“Why do you think God let this happen to Kitty?” Sophie said.
Lacie set about untangling her bun. “I kind of asked the same question when I was in Mexico. Why is he letting all those little kids be poor and hungry and sick?”
“Was it awful?” Sophie said.
“You don’t even want to know. Seriously, Soph — our garbage cans at home have better food in them than what those poor people are eating.”
“But why? Doesn’t God care about them?”
Lacie loosened her hair with her fingers and dug in her bag until she pulled out a comb. “Of course he cares about them. Somehow it’s part of his plan. That’s what I learned down there.”
Sophie felt her eyes bulging. “God PLANNED for Kitty to get sick?”
“See, that’s the thing. We can’t go there. We have to pray for God to show us what to do about it. It’s like, don’t ask ‘Why,’ ask ‘What next?’ That’s what the people in our village did.”
“Even if Kitty’s parents won’t even let her go to church?”
Lacie pulled a clump of wet hair out of the comb. “You definitely need to make sure Kitty accepts Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior and gives her heart to him.”
It sounded to Sophie like Lacie was reciting the alphabet.
She wasn’t even sure she knew what Lacie was talking about.
Lacie put the comb down. “We should probably pray for Kitty’s soul right now.”
“Her soul?” Sophie said. She pulled a narrow panel of her hair under her nose like a mustache. “Why don’t we pray for God to make her better?”
“It’s more important for her to be saved.”
“Yeah — like go into that remission thing.”
Lacie sighed and put her hands on Sophie’s shoulders. “I’ve seen it up close and personal now, Soph. It doesn’t matter how awful your life is. If you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and you believe he is the Son of God, you can handle anything. But if you don’t — ”
“What?” Sophie said. “Then God doesn’t care about you?”
“I didn’t say that — ”
“I don’t believe it!” Sophie scrambled up, scattering sand as she stomped her foot. “I don’t believe God won’t take care of Kitty!”
“Chill, Soph, okay? Maybe you aren’t ready for this conversation — ”
“I HATE this conversation!”
Lacie shook her head. “Nope. Definitely not ready.”
Sophie wadded up her fists. “I thought you changed — but you didn’t. You’re still — ”
“What?” Lacie said, squinting up at her. “Trying to help you?”
“You’re not helping!” Sophie cried. “So just don’t try!”
She ran for the dunes, kicking sand out behind her.
But she wasn’t quite sure what she was running from.
Four
Everything seemed different to Sophie when she got back to Poquoson. The grass was so un-beach-like, and after living in a beach house that her whole HOUSE would have fit inside one and a half times, her room felt like it had shrunk. Mama still made brownies and called her Dream Girl and tucked everybody in at night. But somehow it seemed to Sophie as if everything had gone on without her while she was away, and she couldn’t quite join in again.
It was good to be back with Mama and Daddy, when Daddy wasn’t saying things like, “Pinch-hit for Lacie on the dishes tonight, would you, Soph? She has volleyball practice.” Or youth group. Or babysitting. Or worse, afterward, when he’d say, “Way to take a hit for the team.”
It was even pretty good to be with Zeke, except when she found out he had not only emptied her purple marker, but the light blue and the lime green too. Her three favorites.
Lacie was another thing all together. Sophie stayed away from her as much as she could so Lacie wouldn’t try to tell her that Kitty wasn’t going to get any help from God if she didn’t do whatever it was Lacie had said she better do. It wasn’t hard to avoid her sister, because she was always off doing all the things that kept her from doing her chores. Sophie was taking a lot of hits for the team.
Mostly, it was hard to get used to not having her Corn Flakes with her every second. One night Sophie even woke up and whispered, “Fiona? Are you hungry?” before she realized she was in her own bed.
It helped to think back and giggle over the outrageous things they’d done at the beach. But whenever Kitty danced across her mind-screen, Sophie stopped giggling and started thinking about leukemia and how heinous it sounded, even though she didn’t know exactly what it was. And about Kitty looking so tiny and too-white lying on the sand.
Sofia drew her shawl over the lower half of her face, darting in and out of alleys with the Nazis close behind. She couldn’t let them catch her, not before she found Papa and got him to safety.The things they might do to him —
The problem was, Sophie didn’t have a clue what the Nazis were going to do to her if they caught her or what the south of France looked like or even if there were any alleys there. Fiona always got that kind of information for the Corn Flakes.
Sophie knew what she really needed to do, of course, and late one night after three days of milling around the house and sighing and having Mama make suggestions that didn’t sound fun, one night she decided to do what Dr. Peter had taught her. It was time to imagine Jesus and tell him what was going on with her.
It was hot upstairs in their old house, even with the air conditioner humming its heart out, and Sophie kicked off the covers and stared at the paste-on stars that glowed on her ceiling. They all were in the proper constellations. Fiona had seen to that.
“Okay, God,” Sophie whispered before she closed her eyes, “I’m scared to talk to you because what if I wait for an answer like I always do, and then tomorrow or the next day or the next day after that you find a way to tell me Lacie was right — that if Kitty doesn’t do all that stuff Lacie said then something bad is gonna happen to her that Lacie never did tell me because she said I wasn’t ready.”
Sophie took a breath and whispered lower, until she almost wasn’t speaking at all. “I don’t even know if I’m doing all that stuff Lacie said — like accepting Jesus as my Lord and Savior — it was like it was all one word and I didn’t understand it. I just thought I had to talk to you and try to act like you, because you’re the only God and you love me and I love you.”
It was getting harder to talk. Sophie closed her eyes and gathered up the picture of her Jesus with the kind eyes and the face that never twisted all up because she was dreamy and silly and weird and a lot of times wrong.
He was there. He was always there. She could always talk to him. Dr. Peter had taught her not to imagine him talking back, the way she had her imaginary film characters do. He said Jesus would do his own talking in his own way, if Sophie would only wait.
It had always happened before —
“Is it wrong that I have questions about what you’re doing?” she asked out loud. “I only have two: Why did you let leukemia happen to Kitty? And is it true that you won’t take care of her if she doesn’t get ‘saved’? And Jesus, I’m not exactly sure I know what that means, so would you explain that? I guess that’s three questions.
“And I don’t
care what Lacie says, even though she went on that mission trip, I’m going to ask you: Would you please make Kitty well? Would you make sure she has one of those things that two-thirds of all leukemia kids get? That’s five questions. Is that too many? I love you. Thank you. Amen.”
Sophie knew there wouldn’t be answers right away, especially since she had given Jesus an entire list. She did expect the light feeling she usually got when she went to him, like he was now carrying all the stuff she’d been lugging around.
But the feeling wasn’t there. She was cold now and she pulled her pink bedspread up to her chin and shivered.
I wish Fiona was here, she thought. We’d sneak into the kitchen for cold pizza.
Sofia could hear her stomach growling. She had been running from the Nazis for so long, she hadn’t eaten in days. What COULD she eat? Creeping like a shadow down the steps toward the subway, in case the Nazis were following, Sofia stole up to a trash can. ‘The food in the trash cans is better than what the poor people are eating,’ her sister had told her. Lifting the lid without making a sound, Sofia peered inside. The smell of garbage assaulted her nose and she had to force herself not to slam the lid back down.Even as she replaced it, she saw an empty Corn Flakes box. But behind her, something moved in the darkness. There was no time to go back for the box in hopes of a few crumbs. She scurried back up the steps, pulling her shawl tightly around her —
She woke up later with Mama pulling the bedspread off her.
“Aren’t you hot?” she said.
“Can we have Corn Flakes tomorrow?” Sophie said.
She heard Mama chuckle in the dark. “You can call them in the morning, Dream Girl,” she said.
Having her friends over the next day was, as Darbie put it, “Class!” That was the highest form of “great” in her vocabulary. Willoughby was still away, and, of course, they didn’t have Kitty — but with what Fiona knew about the Nazis and Marseille, the city in the south of France on the Mediterranean Sea, they could still plan their film, which they did over the next three days.
