Devine Intervention by Martha Brockenbrough Read Free Book Online

dust, cookie crumbs, and old bruises, and no one cares if you spill because it never shows. They keep it like that to make us want to go to Heaven more.
    We spend part of our time in group at an activity station, like crafts, or board games, or whatever, and part sitting in a semicircle talking about our feelings and what we learned while looking out for our souls. We weren’t required to share, so I never did. But we had to show up, or else.
    Howard stood between me and the table, leaning into my space with his arms crossed, and I could smell pizza rolls on him even stronger than the open pots of craft paste behind him. It looked like they were setting up for our annual Snowman Gratitude art project, which was a fun thing for a kindergartner, but not so much for someone who’d been seventeen for sixteen years in a row, especially since we’d been banned from giving the snowmen boobs on account of they are not mammals.
    â€œJerome,” he said, trying to make his voice go all low and manly. “Nice work this morning.”
    He had the hairiest knuckles I’d seen since I went to the zoo in third grade and lost a staring contest with a gorilla.
    â€œYou weren’t even there,” I told him. “Your guy left the lights on in his car. So shut it.”
    â€œGot an offer for you,” he said. He stepped a little closer and I leaned backward so I wouldn’t have to touch his plaid shirt. “I’m gonna trade you souls. My guy’s easy. You just gotta make sure he doesn’t choke on French fries or skateboard without a helmet.”
    â€œIf he’s so easy, why are you still here?”
    Howard squinted and cracked his knuckles, and for a second I thought I was going to lose a staring contest withhis fist. Even though we can’t touch earthly things on account of we’re on a heavenly plane, guardian angels can bust each other’s faces just like the living do. We can maybe even hurt each other worse because we’re going bare soul to bare soul with nothing in between.
    â€œDon’t you ever get sick of spending all your time with one person?” he said. “Don’t you want to see what might happen if you tried another soul on for size?”
    I didn’t like the look in his eye or the sound of his voice when he said that. “Shove it.”
    â€œSuit yourself,” he said. He flicked the collar of my jacket. Nobody touches my jacket. My dad gave it to me, said he never wanted to wear it again but that he didn’t care if I did.
    Xavier came in and asked for a volunteer with the chairs, and I stepped forward even though I never do that sort of thing. At first, my hands were shaking, which made the chairs plonk against each other, but eventually I relaxed and unfolded the seats like a pro. I passed them to Xavier, who arranged them in a C shape. When we were done, Xavier clapped his hands together real loud. He has his hands hooked up to a celestial amp, so it was like two metal doors banging shut. People headed for their seats.
    During sharing, Howard told Xavier what had happened to Heidi at the talent thing. He even brought a show-and-tell video from the Internet and played it on one of his gadgets. One of Sully’s friends had taken it and put it online after the assembly, and he sent a link to everyone in school, and then it made it around the world before lunch because at the 2:57 mark, you could see a flash ofher behind when her penguin suit split in two. Some guy in Uruguay even put a marriage proposal in the viewer comments, which I found out about later because Heidi’s little brother, Rory, had translated the words on his computer and texted them to her when she was in math, where she cried on her precalculus problem set.
    â€œMaybe Jerome’s human should get a more suitable guardian angel,” Howard said, looking all innocent-like. “I could watch over her. I could even do two souls at once, you know, if