Exodus Read Free Page A

their friends, before Jenny’s mom had yelled at Aria’s mom after church. Aria couldn’t remember what she had said, exactly, but she remembered her mom’s answer.
    “It’s everyone’s business how these revival meetings are managed,” her mom had replied, loudly enough for Aria’s friends to stop their game of tag around the refreshments table and stare.
    The women saw their husbands watching them. They lowered their voices and turned to hiss at each other.
    “You don’t manage God, Lily,” Jenny’s mom said.
    “You do steward the blessings God gives you, though, and this revival thing is getting out of control!” Aria’s mom replied.
    “Revival is a blessing from God!” Mrs. Stauffin raised her voice.
    “Real revival, yes,” Aria’s mom shot back.
    “Are you saying this church’s revival is fake?” Mrs. Stauffin gasped.
    “You think it’s a sign of genuine renewal in the church when people roll around on the floor but then get up to live their lives without any change? God comes to bless his people, to change their hearts! To heal them! Not just to show them a good time and let them go on being their miserable old selves.”
    Mrs. Stauffin had stood with her mouth hanging open while Aria’s mom quickly composed herself and left to greet other congregants with a tight smile.
    And then there’s the money, Aria thought. What will happen if the people still attending the church can’t pay for the building? This revival was supposed to bring in more people.
    Then a terrible thought struck her. What if that was all the revival was for? She had been through an extraordinary experience at the revival—one she hadn’t fully sorted out yet—but what if the original plan had just been to beef up attendance?
    “Aria! Hit the ball when it comes over the net! Don’t just stand there dreaming,” Tara called to her. Aria turned to see the boys snickering through the net.
    “Our serve!” the blond twins Jesse and Josiah said. They shifted positions for the next play. Aria blushed and hunched down to be ready to return the next ball.

 
     
    4
     
    A GIFT TO SEE THINGS
     
     
    “I still can’t believe it,” Aria’s dad said.
    Aria strained to hear her parents’ low voices from where she sat in the back of her dad’s gray Porsche, snug in her leather bucket seat on the way home from church.
    “He was doing it the whole time under our noses!” her dad whispered fiercely. He thumped his hand on the steering wheel.
    “I know. I don’t know what to do,” Aria’s mom replied. She tugged at her short dark hair.
    Aria turned quickly to look out the window.
    “We all see the budget,” her dad grumbled. “Just because I’m the treasurer doesn’t mean I see any numbers the rest of the church doesn’t see. He did this to all of us! And now that I’ve proved that I didn’t make any accounting errors like he claimed, he’s protesting that he must have made a mistake in ignorance. The gall of that man!”
    I knew it, Aria thought. There’s something going on at the church. But it’s not the building. It’s the money again!
    The elders were holding extra meetings during the week. Aria’s dad had come home from the last meeting with his shoulders slumping and had gone to bed early. But simply running out of money wasn’t any one person’s fault, was it? She wasn’t sure what, or whom, they were talking about, either.
    Aria peered out the window at the houses they were passing. The world smelled like clothes drying in the dryer. Power lines sagged between each house and the utility poles by the road, where the garbage cans were pushed up against clumps of yellow daffodils.
    Aria snuggled down into her sweater and enjoyed the comforting rumble of the car’s engine against her back. The weather had turned colder again, but it was still dry. She couldn’t remember a spring that had ever been as dry as this one. The church lawn should have smelled like freshly cut grass by now, but it smelled