Stronger: A Super Human Clash Read Free Page B

all your friends come along and sit in the front row just so they can make faces at you and try to get you to crack up, and then they rib you about it for ages. “Dude, how come you’re not wearing your
dress
today?”
    The only concession Ma made was to allow me to wear my sweatpants and a T-shirt under my alb: It was bad enough to have to wear that thing without having to have a suit on under it.
    But when I was twelve … It was the last Sunday in September. I was with the rest of the choir, and feeling a little nervous because I had to sing “God’s Glory Be the Highest” and wasn’t completely confident of the middle eight.
    Pastor Cullen was at the pulpit in the middle of his sermon. He was about sixty years old, white haired, red faced, and jowly. He had far too much nose hair and ear hair forone man, and he always smelled of stale sweat and laundry detergent.
    The church was an old building, constructed back in the day when it was fashionable to decorate them with all the oak, marble, and gold paint the builders could get their hands on. I was standing off to the side, right next to the marble pulpit, which was a prized spot among the choir because the pastor didn’t allow us to have chairs—we had to stand for the whole service—and on really sweltering days we could rest against the pulpit and cool ourselves down a little.
    That day Pastor Cullen was on a particularly long and rambling rant. “The spirit of the community is that of its individuals. The Lord tells us, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’ If one person is unhappy, that brings us all down, so we must strive to bolster our community by enhancing the lives of those around us. ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ This is not purely a Christian concept. Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and followers of many other faiths—even some that predate Christianity—subscribe to the idea of karma: You will be repaid in kind for the manner in which you treat others. ‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’ That is as true for matters of the spirit as it is for matters of the community. Good and evil, selfishness and altruism, kindness and greed … These are within all of us. We choose the nature of our character, and that choice affects everything we do and infects those around us. We cannot choose our neighbors, but we
can
choose how we treat them.”
    I knew what was coming next. We all did. Pastor Cullen had been stuck on the same topic for months: “To strengthenour town, we need solidarity. Unity. Faith in our community as a whole and in its individual members. Buy your groceries and gas locally. Instead of going to West Peyton to buy a new car, save money and buy a good-quality used car from a dealer right here in town.”
    I looked out over the sea of mildly irritated faces. No one had the guts to stand up and tell the pastor to give it a rest: His cousin owned the only secondhand-car dealership in town.
    The pastor didn’t seem to be getting anywhere near the main point of the sermon—unless the point was “I want to talk and you’d all better listen”—so I found myself growing more and more agitated.
    I had to sing as soon as he stepped away from the pulpit, and it was always nervewracking. The longer he talked, the more nervous I became, especially because he didn’t always build up to a dramatic ending that we could see coming: Sometimes he just trailed away like he was giving up.
    I realized that I was clenching and unclenching my fists, so I forced myself to stop. A thin trickle of sweat ran down my back, even though it wasn’t a particularly warm day.
    The guy beside me, Chad Farnham, whispered, “You OK?” Chad was in his twenties, but only a couple of inches taller than me. He’d been the number-one soloist until I joined the choir, so he was always looking out for me: If I got sick, he’d have to take my place, and he didn’t want to be there any more than I did.
    “Just wish he’d