Devine Intervention by Martha Brockenbrough Read Free Book Online Page A

you’re gonna send Jerome down.”
    I wanted to go angry rock star and trash him like he was a hotel room. I had this vision of myself, all slo-mo, where I brought my foot back and swung it under his chair and connected on the metal with this sweet, sweet thwack , and then I watched him pinwheel backward into space. The other guys all leaned forward in their chairs. I don’t breathe anymore, but it felt like all the air left the room, and the hairs on my arms and head and stuff stood up like they were trying to follow. I curled my fingers into my palms and dug in my nails. The pain was good, so I held on to it and decided that, for now, it was enough.
    â€œShe has a name,” I said. “Heidi.”
    I thought Xavier might fling me to Hell right then and there, but he surprised me, which is sometimes the thing with him. He put his palms together and tilted his head. “Heidi suffered an embarrassment, to be sure. But embarrassment is not the end of the world. And in fact, it can build character. Her spirit will rebound, stronger than ever.”
    Howard smiled and said, “Of course, Xavier. You’re right, as always,” but I could feel the anger rising off his skin, and I realized that if he wanted Heidi so bad, he probably had some sick reason for why.
    Xavier moved on to some of the other guys, asking them about their spiritual journeys, and he wrote their feelings down in his notebook, and then pretty soon group was over. I did this thing we call the shoop, where your molecules slide through the molecules of the universe in a high-speed burst of color and sound. It’s a little like sticking your head out of the car on the freeway, only you’re going faster than a rocket, so it’s a good thing you’re already dead.
    I was back with Heidi in study hall. I wanted to say something to her to make her feel better, but I couldn’t really think of the right thing, so I just hummed a little “Freebird” and hoped she knew she wasn’t alone.
    The study hall is the worst room at Heidi’s school, and that includes the JV boys’ locker room. They’ve set it up in the dungeon of the library, where it’s always cold and smells like mushrooms, and the dividers between the desks are covered in so much handwriting, they look hairy. It’s not too crowded on Friday afternoons, and she was at the desk in the corner behind the pole, the one people sit at only if they are doing something they don’t want anyone to see.
    Usually, two people at a time use that desk, if you catch my drift, but Heidi was there alone. She had one of her drawings and was bent over it with her pen, which couldmake lines practically as thin as a spiderweb. She bought it herself with money she earned taking care of the neighbor’s dog, which, if you ask me, was a rip-off because that dog is a lethal weapon in at least seven countries. Dogs can see the dead, and whenever he sees me, he barks so much it feels like my soul is going to vibrate into a heap of shavings.
    When she first started making her pictures a few years ago, I used to try to give her ideas for what to draw, mostly of awesome animals, but she was all, “I draw cityscapes. Now shush so I can concentrate.”
    â€œWhat about Godzilla? He busted up cities.”
    â€œNo living things,” she said. “They’re too hard.” But she was smiling.
    â€œMechagodzilla? He was mostly robot.”
    â€œJerome!”
    Later, when she’d gotten really good at it, I used to wish for more.
    There was this one time she was drawing a broken-down street in the bad section of her town, all full of storefronts with handwritten signs advertising cheap stuff no one wants. The one nice building on the block is a church, or used to be. A fat, rusting chain sealed off its door and a FOR SALE sign was stuck by the parking strip out front. I watched her work on that drawing, seeing everything so terrible in front