Revival Season - Monica West (recommended ebook reader TXT) 📗

church prayer list for her many surgeries to repair a congenital heart defect, and an air of mystery surrounded Dawn and her dad. From the few facts I could piece together, I knew that her mom had died from a heart condition a few years ago, that her dad worked two jobs and still couldn’t quite keep up with Dawn’s mounting medical bills, and that Dawn was a senior at East Mansfield High.

Soon, Papa raised his wobbly arms and the hundred people here flooded into the aisles as he took his time walking down to the ground. I waited for Dawn and her father to creep into my peripheral vision, but I didn’t see them. When Papa emptied holy oil into his hand and placed it on Mr. Tucker’s forehead, I peeked around. I wondered why they weren’t coming up to the front like they always did. Next to me, Micah’s leg twitched like she wanted to go up too but knew that she couldn’t. I placed my hand on her knee, and she covered it with her hand, tucking the medical alert bracelet back in when it slipped from beneath her sleeve.

If Papa noticed Dawn’s absence in the line, he didn’t let on. He seemed more confident in his movements while he made his way through the sixty or so people who were left in the aisle. Soon, all the people he had healed were lying on the ground, some of them just starting to get to their feet when he returned to the pulpit to announce the offering.

“Give as the Lord has given unto you.” It was Papa’s standard offering line, but asking people to give after they had just been healed seemed like they were paying God—or Papa—for something that God would do for free. When the buckets had all been collected, and the benediction was delivered, Papa dispatched me, Micah, and our mothers to the multipurpose room with a sleight of hand. He’d told us that we’d be responsible for preparing dinner after the first healing service, and on Papa’s command, we rose in an orderly line and followed Ma outside.

“Miriam, can you grab the cups from the car?” Ma dangled her key ring from her curled index finger. I swiped it and walked out of the double doors leading to the parking lot. The car alarm to the minivan chirped as I popped the trunk and rifled through cardboard boxes in search of plastic tumblers.

“Can I talk to you?” a breathy voice asked as I stood under the trunk’s open canopy. I turned around slowly, catching a glimpse of Dawn’s face, which was cloaked by darkness.

“To me?” I was the only one out there, but she’d never spoken to me before.

“Yeah.”

“Sure.” She was half a head taller than me as she folded her long, willowy limbs in front of her chest. A few tightly coiled strands came loose from the bun at the top of her head and flopped in her face. She raised her eyes to look at the hair but left it there as though it took too much energy to push it away.

“Can you do me a favor?” Her words were labored and slow as she took deep breaths every other word or so.

“Sure.” I leaned closer.

“I need you to fix me.”

I grabbed her arm and pulled her toward me, instinctively looking around to make sure no one was nearby to overhear. Goose bumps sprouted on my exposed flesh even though the October air was warm.

“What did you say?”

“I heard about Micah. I need you to fix me too.” Her voice was partially eaten by a passing wind.

“Where did you hear that?”

“I just heard it around.”

In those early days, Micah was swarmed by people who were waiting to hear about how she had been healed. She soaked in the attention from people who’d never talked to her before—it had been agony to walk by and hear sections of her embellished story that took a new shape each Sunday as the crowds got larger. Maybe one of Dawn’s friends who went to the church had been nearby one of those days, and maybe that was the day that Micah had accidentally said my name instead of Papa’s.

“I never healed Micah.” What I couldn’t say was what I wanted to say. Micah isn’t healed anymore.

Dawn looked up to the sky, where a band of dark clouds trailed across the moon like a bride dragging her veil. She didn’t speak for a while, as if the answer were somewhere up there.

“Please.” Her voice was faint.

“I can’t do what I did with Micah,” I whispered. “I don’t even know what happened.”

“You can try.” In the moonlight, the whites of her eyes glowed. “What harm could it do?”

“I don’t think I can. I gotta go. They’re waiting for me.” I grabbed the sleeve of cups and slammed the trunk, turning to walk toward the rectangles of light that the multipurpose room windows spilled on the pavement. Dawn grabbed for my wrist, but I wrenched out of her grip and ran toward the building—one parking space became three, then five, as my breath raced out of my lungs. I didn’t turn around to see if she was walking in after me.

“Look,” she said.

My hand was on the door and her voice was barely audible—one turn of the knob would mean safety in the multipurpose room. But the same curiosity that made me sneak behind the tent in Bethel swept over me like a storm surge. Caleb always said that it would get the best of me. Go inside, I told myself.

I shifted my head to the left, where she was now standing under the low-hanging branches of a weeping willow. She took slow steps toward me and removed her jacket before unbuttoning her shirt; she pulled the fabric apart with her hands until the top of her sternum was exposed.

“Look,” she said again.

The gape in her shirt collar revealed a red, raised vertical scar that burrowed into her