Kindred Read Free Page B

Joan was the only one—most of them were also a bunch of raving, uneducated, borderline insane, sad, pathetic losers. And now I have joined their ranks. Except I have none of Joan’s courage, her great wit, or her convictions, and I have already failed at the one task set before me.
    Joan was left to suffer a brutal execution after fulfilling all her duties. God only knows what’s going to happen to me.
    After spring break ends and students fill the classrooms, dorms and cafeteria, nothing is the same. Tabitha’s photo is on the front page of the school paper, with the screaming headline FREAK ACCIDENT KILLS TWO, DISFIGURES HONORS STUDENT . I haven’t been there since before the accident, but I should have realized the paper would cover the story and tried to blunt its insensitivity toward Tabitha. I grab all the copies I can find and dump them in the recycling bin, but I know I can’t recycle every one on campus. For once, I’m not proud to be part of the paper. The article isn’t well written or kind; it’s simply juicy. National media have picked up the story, too, and for a couple of days, large vans with boil-like transmitters growing from their roofs dot the campus. Several students and administrators are blasted with bright lights as they try to sound intelligent in front of the cameras, answering a barrage of mostly trivial questions. The university president assures the public that there will be an investigation as to why the dormitory didn’t have a lightning rod as per state safety regulations and why the chemistry department was storing large containers of acetone, hydrogen peroxide and sulfuric acid in the attic. Everyone agrees that it would have been an unimaginable tragedy if the freak storm had occurred a mere week earlier or later. Hundreds of students would have been killed.
    I overhear someone say, “Thank God it happened when it did.”
    Students flip through the paper in the cafeteria, out on the quad and in halls between classes. Tabitha’s pain and suffering are put on public display. Every grimace, every sigh of pity, is like a stabbing finger pointing out my shame, her pain, everywhere I turn.
    Damn paparazzi, I think. Then I clap my hands over mymouth, because isn’t damning someone the same as taking the Lord’s name in vain?
    I drift through classes, hardly hearing my professors, hardly caring about the lectures, not bothering to take notes or read the assigned chapters. I expect another visit at any minute. I look for signs from God in every wind gust, every bird that flutters up from the ground, startled by my passing. I develop odd cramps and unexplained bouts of diarrhea that come and go and have me running to the bathroom at the most inconvenient moments.
    Two weeks after spring break, I start skipping classes altogether, spending my time deep in the bowels of the library, reading everything I can on angels, on celestial contact with humans, on miracles. There isn’t much. What there is, as with the example of Joan of Arc, isn’t very promising. Web sites are even worse. Frightening, delusional blogs; inaccurate retellings of historical incidents; cheesy graphics that mock my terror.
    I have failed Tabitha. I have let down God Himself in high heaven. I don’t know where to take my shame, whom to turn to for comfort.
    I’m not sure how long I would have continued to float in this purgatory, waiting for a word, looking for a sign. Fortunately, Mo comes in for his long-delayed visit.
    “Sis,” he says after our usual big bear hug, “you look awful. What the hell have you been doing?”
    Mo, my twin, is three inches taller than me. He is thin and wiry, with dark curly hair that tends to bush out if he waits too long between haircuts. We look startlingly alike, asnear to identical as brother and sister can be. Looking at his face, I see what I would look like as a man.
    “I’ve had this nasty bug. I’ve lost a bit of weight,” I say.
    He immediately takes a few steps back