In that moment the inexplicable grace of God shook my world. My right leg was growing, with twelve witnesses gathered around me. The leg stretched outward, longer than the left, as if to make a point, so that there would be no doubt as to what we’d seen. Then it moved back, perfectly even with the left.
Tag : Christian Fiction
Chapter 16
When I was small, if I fell asleep on a family trip I would always wake up alone in the car in some parking lot; cleverly setting the stage for my abduction, sort of like leaving your keys in car on purpose. Unfortunately for both of us, the whole abduction plan never worked out. Tenacity was at the heart of everything my father did and just because I wasn’t snatched from the backseat in some parking lot he wasn’t about to give up. One of their most creative schemes was the free puppy give-away approach. The note on my playpen, written in my father’s impeccable handwriting, read, “Free baby”; my mother had left enough diapers, formula and toys inside the playpen to help a family get started. I can only imagine the look on their faces two days later when they drove by the intersection and discovered I was still there. Life is full of bitter disappointments.
Chapter 17
There weren’t a lot of photos of me in our house, I guess because I looked a lot like Edward Scissor Hands from the waist down, without the cute pouty expression, at least until I was three. After that I think my parents didn’t want to document my development. Denial would be everything if I was ever arrested.
Chapter 18
Kids from screwed up families become all kinds of things. We hide ourselves behind silence, heavy make-up, sexual promiscuity, rebellion, performance. Our school, like all schools, was full of girls like this; we are a sorority with different chapters. The Mean Girls chapter was the one no one wanted to mess with; their raccoon eyes, thick with black eye liner, relayed stories of abuse and rage. No one was listening.
Chapter 19
Knees knocking, I bent down to retrieve my belongings. I saw the girl with the knife as she hit the pavement, her head snapped against the concrete. She didn’t get up. The Dragon girl kicked the switch blade over to me with her boot, “Pick it up,” she said. The metal handle was still hot from the Mean girl’s grip only seconds before. It felt good in my hands. A sudden rush of confidence swept through me.
Chapter 25
In the slammer, graffitied walls held pearls of wisdom: Don’t trust nobody, Life sucks, basic information I had learned by nursery school.
Decoding decades of teen hieroglyphics carved into the wooden table in the middle of the large holding cell brought with it a disturbing reality. It wasn’t the quality of art that bothered me or the string of obscenities; it was the idea that clearly knifes weren’t so hard to come by in juve. I hadn’t even brought a marker, clearly I was uninitiated.
I heard the large metal door to the cell clang open, and in stepped Godzilla with his handler. The enormous, hairy youth was handcuffed to a police officer whose face I didn’t recognize. He half-pulled, half-pushed his teenage hostage into the cell. Godzilla turned for the officer to uncuff him. Obviously he knew the drill. Neither said a word. I tried to look tough in my hip-hugging bell bottoms and Elton John platform shoes. I shook my long blonde shag hairdo while they weren’t paying attention, hoping for a less manicured, more street-wise persona. I hoisted myself onto the top of the table and sat down, planting my feet squarely on the bench below. Godzilla glared at me from under his shaggy hair; our eyes met. I didn’t flinch, but my heart pounded out a John Bonham drum solo in my chest.
Chapter 26
I began plotting new strategies to eliminate the monster in our midst. The more authority he exerted, the more rebellious I became. Without much effort, our battle of wits turned into a full-contact sport, and some days I was winning. Point and counterpoint, check and checkmate. When he went to the country club for his five-martini lunches, I skipped school and charged lunch to his bill at the club, making sure to waltz past the bar in my bathing suit smiling sweetly into his drunken face. When he threatened me with another lock-up, I threatened him with what I knew about his drinking before going into the courtroom to try a case. I knew where every liquor bottle was hidden in his office. I was completely capable of exposing him, of ruining him; he could feel my palpable hatred and I his.