The Miraculous Read online

  “‘We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed’!”

  The minister bellowed these words. The sun was behind him, lighting up his halo of gray hair and his white robe.

  Wunder felt the stone of his heart—cold, dark, and heavy—grow suddenly, slightly warmer.

  Then the sun disappeared behind a cloud. The world became dark again.

  Wunder glanced over at his father and found that he was crying. Silent crying, tears drip, drip, dripping. Wunder watched as one teardrop slipped off the end of his nose, past the papers he clutched, which read RITE OF FINAL COMMENDATION FOR AN INFANT. Down fell the teardrop, down toward the ground, down where Wunder had been trying not to look.

  There was the grave.

  And there was the casket—bright white, shiny, so small. He hadn’t known they made caskets that small. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected exactly—a normal-size one maybe, like there were at funerals in movies.

  But, of course, that wouldn’t make sense. She wouldn’t need all that space.

  As long as there were caskets so small, there were no miracles.

  The stone of his heart went cold, cold, colder than cold again.

  “Consolation, you know, and comfort and peace and good things!” the Minister of Consolation cried.

  “Amen,” Wunder’s father said.

  Wunder was silent.

  “I have found that it can be consoling,” the minister said, “for the bereaved to put some dirt on the casket. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, as they say. So you can do that now, if you want.”

  Wunder did not want to do that. He did not feel like it would be consoling, not at all. But his father’s hand was still on his shoulder, and there were still tears drip, drip, dripping from his eyes. So Wunder went with him.

  There was a pile of earth on the other side of the grave. Wunder and his father each took a handful and placed it on top of the casket.

  Like they were planting something.

  Like something alive was going to rise out of the ground.

  But it wasn’t.

  She wasn’t.

  His sister was dead.

  Chapter 4

  The sun was behind them as they left the grave site. Wunder could feel it on his back. Ahead of him, there were long dark shadows.

  He fell behind as his father and the minister crossed the grass to the path that ran through the cemetery.

  “But where is the mother?” the minister was yelling, even though Wunder’s father had already explained that she had chosen not to come. “She should be here, you know!”

  The other family was leaving too. The taller girl and the woman were ahead of his father and the minister. Their arms were linked, and they walked briskly, leaning into the wind.

  The smaller girl was far behind them, still near the grave site her family had been gathered around. She was moving so slowly that at first Wunder didn’t realize she was moving at all. With every step, she dragged her black-sneakered toes along the grass. But when she saw Wunder coming down the path, she sped up—just slightly.

  Soon they were walking side by side.

  “I know you,” the girl said, and her voice was slow and dreamy, like someone sleep-talking. “You’re Wunder. We go to school together.”

  Up close, Wunder definitely recognized her. She was very recognizable. She had black hair cut into a bob, and her overgrown bangs hung into her eyes, which were ringed in smudgy black, raccoon-like. She wore lacy black gloves with the fingers cut off.

  And perhaps her most defining feature: She wore a long black cloak. Not just in cemeteries either. All the time. Wunder had heard Vice Principal Jefferson hollering through the halls about that cloak. It was against the dress code.

  “We do,” Wunder said. “Faye.”

  “That’s right,” Faye said. “Faye Ji-Min Lee. I came to the first meeting of your Unexplainable and Inexplicable Phenomenon Society.”

  “I remember,” Wunder said.

  What he remembered was that at the first meeting of the UIPS, Faye had been the only attendee, other than Wunder’s two best friends, Davy and Tomás. She had arrived late and had promptly climbed on top of one of the desks. After settling her cloak around her, she had sat, cross-legged, silent, and expressionless, for the entire meeting. At the end, she had climbed down, leaned closer to Wunder than he felt comfortable with, and said, “I don’t know how I feel about your excessive smiling. And I was hoping to hear more about the darker side of supernatural activity. But I’m glad you started this club. I’ll attend the next meeting.”

  Wunder hadn’t been sure how he felt about her then, but he knew one thing for sure—he did not want to talk to her now.

  He sped up.

  But so did Faye.

  “We’re here because it’s my grandfather’s birthday,” she said. “Well, it would have been. He’s been dead for a hundred and seven days.”

  “Oh,” Wunder said. “I’m sorry.”

  Faye waved one black-gloved hand slowly, languidly. “You didn’t kill him, did you, Wundie?”

  Then she stared at him until he felt like he had to say something. “No,” he said. “No, I didn’t. And it’s Wunder, not Wundie. No one calls me that.”

  Faye didn’t seem to have heard him. “Is this the funeral? Ms. Shunem told everyone about your sister in science class. Did you know we’re in the same science class? Why isn’t anyone else here? Is that a priest?” She waved her black-gloved hand ahead of her now. “There’s no priest at our church, just a pastor. Well, it’s really my mother’s church. I go sometimes, and my grandfather did too, but he was very open to other ideas, and so am I. I happen to be interested in the paranormal—ghosts, vampires, banshees, et cetera.”

  This string of questions and information was delivered in a dreamy monotone, and at the end of it, Wunder found himself openmouthed but at a loss for words.

  So he decided not to say anything. He closed his mouth and shrugged.

  Faye shrugged back at him. “Well, your priest is extremely strange,” she said.

  “He’s not a priest,” Wunder said. “He’s a Minister of Consolation.”

  “Consolation? Really?” Faye’s raccoon eyes considered the minister, who was shuffling along beside Wunder’s father and yelling, “What about the other mourners, you know? Quite unusual. Why even have a funeral?”

  “I wonder,” she said, “if the person who hired him knows what that word means.”

  Wunder almost smiled at this, but then he didn’t. He didn’t want to smile in the cemetery, on the day of his sister’s funeral, and he didn’t want to encourage Faye to keep talking.

  “We could hear him from my grandfather’s grave,” she said. “He’s very loud. But I did like that one verse, ‘Behold! I tell you a miracle’!”

  This last part, Faye screamed.

  Wunder’s father and the minister jerked to a stop. They turned and stared at Faye. Wunder stared at her too.

  Faye stared back, seemingly unfazed.

  She waited until Wunder’s father and the minister finally started walking again, then continued, “It was very dramatic, like an incantation or a spell. Almost supernatural. I’m extremely sensitive to the supernatural. I’m sure you are too.”

  Wunder didn’t reply.

  “With a name like yours, Wundie,” Faye said, “you have no choice but to believe in signs and wonders.”

  “Well, I don’t,” Wunder said. “I mean, I used to. But I don’t anymore. And it’s Wunder, not Wundie.”

  Faye stopped her sneaker-dragging walk and stood stock-still. Wunder stopped too, before he really thought about it, and watched as Faye pulled a bobby pin from her cloak and pinned her bangs back. She studied him, eyes now unobstructed.

  “You’re different now, aren’t you?” she said. “At the meeting you were so”—her face morphed into a crazy, huge grin and she pumped one fist in the air—“zippy.” The grin disappeared. Her fist sank slowly back to her side. “You’re not very zippy anymore.�
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  Wunder didn’t answer. He turned back to the shadowy path. He knew it was true. He used to be able to talk to anyone, especially about the miraculous. But now it was as if parts of him had been erased, blacked out, like he was a checkerboard inside. He couldn’t seem to find words. He didn’t even want to find them.

  “Come along, young man!” The Minister of Consolation was shouting at him now. His white robe looked gray.

  Wunder hurried forward, relieved to leave Faye behind.

  He stayed close to his father as they headed into the woods. He could hear Faye behind him, her cloak snapping in the wind, her feet scuff, scuff, scuffing along, but he didn’t turn around. When they passed the dirt trail, he kept his head lowered so he wouldn’t look down it, down to the DoorWay House. He didn’t want to see it.

  Then, very close to him, there came a sound: Caw!

  Wunder ducked and threw his arms up. Behind him, Faye let out a high, sharp laugh. Something brushed past his head, something soft, light, feathery.

  When he straightened up, he saw the bird flying down the trail that led to the DoorWay House. Its black shape disappeared behind the house’s tallest tower.

  And for a moment—a split second—he thought he saw the spirals shifting.

  Then they were still.

  But someone was there.

  Not in the tower though. On the porch.

  In a rocking chair made of the same black spiraling wood as the house, there was an old woman. She was dressed in white, in a sort of robe with shawls and belts, and she had long black hair that was blowing wildly around her. A newspaper was spread out on her lap. Its pages flapped like wings.

  As Wunder gaped at her, the old woman looked up from her paper. Her head turned slowly until her eyes found him.

  She smiled. Then she lifted one hand. And she waved.

  Wunder jerked his gaze away. He turned to his father and the minister. But neither of them was looking at the DoorWay House.

  Farther ahead, Mrs. Lee and her older daughter walked on, their heads bent together. They weren’t looking at the DoorWay House either.

  But, behind him, Faye had stopped in the middle of the path. She had pulled the hood of her cloak up, and she was staring out from under its peak. Staring past the live oak, down the dirt trail, through the leaves and branches and vines at the DoorWay House.

  The old woman was still there. Her hand was still raised. Her hair had whipped across her face, covering her eyes.

  But Wunder knew she was still watching him.

  Chapter 5

  That night Wunder’s father heated up one of the many casseroles that had been pouring into the house since Wunder’s sister was born, this one from someone named Mariah Lazar. Wunder set two places at the kitchen table, one for him and one for his father. His mother was still in her room.

  Wunder didn’t like peas. He didn’t like cauliflower either. Those and some chunks of unidentifiable meat seemed to be the only ingredients in the casserole.

  But he didn’t feel like eating anyway. There were too many feelings filling him up, too many thoughts distracting him.

  “Did you hear what the Minister of Consolation said?” he asked his father after pushing green blobs of food around his plate for a few minutes.

  Wunder’s father sniffed his forkful of casserole. “I did. I think everyone in Branch Hill did.”

  “But did you hear the part—the part about the miracle? I’ve never heard that verse.”

  Wunder’s father took a tentative bite, then set his fork right back down. “That minister said a lot of words—screamed a lot of words, actually—but I don’t know if he meant any of them.” He picked up his fork again. “Father Robles must have forgotten that the funeral was today. I know he wanted to be there. I would have liked for him to have been there. And our friends and family too.”

  Wunder didn’t want to tell his father that he didn’t feel the same way, that he understood now why his mother hadn’t wanted to have the funeral. So he let silence fill the room again before saying, “Remember when I thought I saw someone in the DoorWay House when I was little? It was strange to see someone there today, wasn’t it?”

  Wunder’s father set his empty fork down again. “Someone was there?”

  “The old woman,” Wunder said. “On the porch.”

  “I didn’t see her,” Wunder’s father said. “That house should have been torn down years ago.”

  He stood up, collected his paper plate and Wunder’s, then dumped both in the trash. “What do you say we try a different casserole?”

  After dinner, Wunder’s father went to the living room and spread out his papers. Wunder sat with him, trying and failing to do his homework again, until the telephone rang.

  Wunder’s father came from a big family that was spread out all over the country, and they had been calling every day since Wunder’s sister was born. His mother’s parents and her sister, Aunt Anita, lived across the state, and they had been calling every day since Wunder’s mother had asked them to leave. All of them, Wunder was sure, would want to know about the funeral.

  He didn’t want to be the one to tell them about it.

  He headed to his room, but thoughts of the funeral followed him anyway. He kept picturing the old woman on the porch and remembering the shadow in the window. He kept feeling the feathers of the bird and hearing the minister’s thundering words.

  Behold! I tell you a miracle.

  Last night, he had been so angry, angry enough to stop believing in miracles, angry enough to put away The Miraculous.

  But so much had happened today that he wasn’t only angry anymore. More than anything, he was confused.

  Then he opened his door, and there was the crib.

  He felt only angry again.

  This time, at himself. Because it was the day of his sister’s funeral and he was already thinking about miracles again.

  He went to his closet and unrolled the rug enough to yank out the black-and-white leather-covered book. Then he shoved it into his backpack, which sat by his newly cleared-off desk.

  Tomorrow, he was going to get rid of The Miraculous. For good.

  * * *

  That night, Wunder fell asleep staring at the shadows of the crib bars on the floor.

  And he had a dream.

  In his dream, the crib-bar shadows stretched out, longer and longer. They split and came together, crossing, weaving, interlacing—tree branches.

  A darker shadow appeared, perched in the branch shadows. The shape of a bird.

  Caw! the shadow bird cawed. Caw! Caw!

  Wunder woke up. He didn’t recognize his room. The walls were blank. His angel statues weren’t watching over him.

  And the crib-bar shadows had reached his bed. They stretched out over his whole blanket-covered body.

  He closed his eyes and tried not to think.

  But he didn’t fall back to sleep for a long, long time.

  Part Two

  THE STONE

  Chapter 6

  Wunder had been out of school since the day of his sister’s birth.

  If she had been born healthy, he probably would have been back in class the next day. But on the day she was born, the doctors had told his parents that she wasn’t going to live for long. His mother hadn’t believed them, but she had wanted Wunder to be there anyway, in the hospital room, getting to know his sister.

  But now his sister was gone and the funeral was over, and it was time for Wunder to go back to school.

  He didn’t want to go back. He didn’t want to listen to everyone say how sorry they were. He didn’t want to pretend that he was fine, just fine.

  But he didn’t want to stay home.

  His father left for work very early. The sound of the front door closing woke Wunder out of an unsettled half sleep.

  His mother did not have to be back to work for four more weeks. She had been on maternity leave.

  Now she was on bereavement leave.

  Wunder knew th
at she wouldn’t leave her room, but it didn’t matter. She didn’t have to be in the same room for him to feel her sadness. It seeped under closed doors, spread across floors, filled up every vacant space. Her sadness was a thing Wunder felt he could drown in.

  It seemed impossible that a few weeks ago, she had been so happy, happier than he had ever seen her. A few weeks ago, she had looked, all the time, the way she did when she told the story of Wunder’s birth.

  Wunder had heard that story more times than he could count. It was in The Miraculous, of course. It was in there several times, with more details as he grew older. His mother had written a version over the summer, while she was pregnant. It went like this:

  Miraculous Entry #1279

  You know, Wunder, this is my favorite story. The story of you.

  It starts with me and your father. We were high school sweethearts, and we got married right after graduation. This, as you know, is not something I recommend, Wunder, although it’s not something that I regret.

  After a few years, we wanted to have a baby, even though we were babies ourselves. Again, not something I recommend, but we felt—your dad and I—that we had so much love, too much love for just the two of us.

  But year after year after year, there was no baby. We tried everything we could afford. We went to so many doctors. Your father prayed and lit a million candles at St. Gerard’s. I drank special teas and went on fertility retreats and tried my best not to worry so much. But nothing worked.

  Until, after ten years—unexplainably, inexplicably—we found out that you were on the way.

  I won’t lie to you, Wunder; it was a hard pregnancy. I was sick the whole time, and there were a lot of concerns about your health.

  But then you were born—a fuzzy-headed, blue-eyed, seven-pound pooping machine, as Dad always says—and you were perfect. You were absolutely perfect, and we were so in love with you.

  And you know your father has always had so much faith, always believed so easily and so strongly. And you know that before you were born, I never really believed in much of anything.