The Waterproof Bible Read Free

the bracelet, knowing it was the only thing that was different.
    For the next six weeks, while Rebecca’s mother remained in bed, Rebecca carried the plastic bracelet with her at all times. She held it in her hand while she slept. She kept it in the front right pocket of whichever pair of pants she was wearing. She never forgot to bring it withher, not even once. When someone asked her how her she was doing, Rebecca could just say fine and they would believe her. Rebecca Reynolds finally had the power to lie.
    Seven weeks later, Rebecca came home from school and found her mother watching television in the living room. She wore her housecoat, and her skin was still pale, but this was the first time Rebecca had seen her outside of the guest room.
    “Come here, baby,” her mother said.
    Rebecca climbed onto the couch, curling up beside her. Together they watched
The Edge of Night
. Things felt normal and Rebecca knew that this moment would have been impossible if the bracelet hadn’t been in her pocket. Otherwise, she would have been too afraid to let her mother feel how frightened she really was.
    After the success of the bracelet, other experiments quickly followed. When she failed to land an axel in competition, Rebecca kept her skate laces. When her teacher gave her a failing grade, she took his coffee mug. When Jenny Benders didn’t invite her to her birthday party, she stole her hair clip.
    All of her keepsakes were put into a shoebox, which she kept underneath her bed. It wasn’t long before there were two shoeboxes. Then three and four and five.
    When Rebecca turned fourteen, she began collecting mementos from all the good moments in her life. Her emotions had become so powerful and important to her that when one of them left her, she felt incredibly vulnerable. Keeping these feelings of joy to herself kept her from feeling exposed. It gave her some privacy. It soon became a habit that every time Rebecca experienced a moment that produced anysignificant emotion, happy or sad, she stored a souvenir. The number of boxes under her bed grew and grew. By the time she was sixteen, the shoeboxes were stacked three high and took up all the space under her bed. When she went to university, she took the shoeboxes with her and rented apartments based on closet space. When the closets weren’t big enough, she got rid of her roommate and used the second bedroom. Then the living room. Then the kitchen. Finally, Rebecca rented unit #207 from E.Z. Self Storage near the corner of Queen and Broadview in downtown Toronto and moved all of her boxes there, where they were safely secured under lock and key.
    “Where’s Dad?” Rebecca asked.
    “He’s inside. Where’s Lewis?”
    Rebecca’s response was a guilty feeling, mystifying her mother. She felt guilty because it was her fault that Lisa had married Lewis in the first place.
    When Lisa finished high school, she and Lewis had moved to Halifax together to attend the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Lewis still thought of Lisa as nothing more than a friend—the apartment they rented had two bedrooms. Even more than she hated Lewis, Rebecca hated knowing that her sister would never get her heart’s desire.
    Both sisters were home from university for the holiday, and on Christmas Eve Day their mother sent them to buy wrapping paper. It was a task easily accomplished. With time to kill and a desire to avoid a relative-filled house, Rebecca and Lisa drove around and eventually parked in the lot of their old high school.
    “Do you remember those white jeans that Phillip Wilson used to wear?” Rebecca asked.
    “Lewis still thinks of me as a friend. I don’t know what to do.”
    For some moments it was quiet inside the car. For once, it was Rebecca who saw the simple solution. “Where are the bedrooms in your apartment?” she asked.
    “At the front.”
    “Right next to each other?”
    “Yes.”
    “So you share a wall?”
    “Yeah.”
    “How thick is it?”
    “It’s