shouldn’t be so selfish.”
I let out a breath, still gazing at Mom. “Sorry,” I murmured, getting to my feet. As Aunt Jo turned the volume up, I kissed Mom’s cheek. Then I went upstairs to my bedroom, holding my elbows tightly as I picked my way around the piles of clutter that seemed to breed on the stairs and landing.
Closing the door behind me, I stared unseeingly at my room — my bed with the swaths of lavender chiffon draped across the bedposts, the purple and silver walls that I’d painted myself. Beth’s angel was real, all right. She must have gone straight to it after she left; she must have told it everything — and then it had come here, looking for me. My thoughts spun like tires on ice. God, who could I tell this to? Who could I go to for help? Nina would just laugh at me. Aunt Jo? Ha.
OK, calm down. Think this through.
I took a deep breath and sat on the bed, forcing myself to go over the mixed-up images that I’d seen in Beth’s second future, trying to remember every last detail. In one of the snippets that had flashed past, this
thing
had been at the Church of Angels, and then later there’d been others like it.
Were they really angels?
My scalp prickled. I rose quickly and went over to my desk to switch on my computer. It’s an old one that I bought with some of my reading money, and it takes forever to warm up. When it had finally finished humming and whirring to itself, I logged on to the Internet. “Church of Angels” brought up millions of hits. I clicked the first link, ChurchofAngels.com, and a state-of-the-art website loaded onto my screen. There was the familiar pearl-white church from the commercials, awash in sunshine.
Church of Angels. Hope for the millions . . . including you,
said the text underneath it. I grimaced. I know that plenty of people get a lot from religion and that’s great for them, but anything promising “hope for the millions” gives me a pretty bad feeling — and now, after Beth’s reading, it gave me an even worse one.
I clicked a button at the top that said, FIND OUT MORE. A video panel appeared, loading a Church of Angels commercial. I pushed PLAY, and a gray, rain-beaten field came into view, grass moving slowly with the wind.
Do you feel despairing?
intoned a voice-over. The camera went into a long shot. A white church appeared in the field, and the camera panned back to reveal hundreds of people weaving up a hill toward it — and now the church looked huge, larger than the mightiest cathedral. The sun came out, dancing brightly on the white stone. The people stopped and gazed upward, smiling, basking in the rays.
Do you feel that God has forsaken you? Well, have faith . . . for even if there is no God, there ARE angels.
“The angels saved my life,” a middle-aged woman told the camera, her brown eyes shining with rapture. “They are pure love, and what they’ve done for me, they can do for you, too.” I felt a twinge of unease. She looked and sounded exactly like Beth.
Steepling my hands in front of my face, I stared at the monitor. The commercial played so often on TV that I should have been able to recite every word of it. Usually I just tuned it out, but now I listened carefully. When it finished, I hit PLAY and ran it again. It all seemed so slick. So polished.
Remembering that I’d heard there was a Church of Angels in Schenectady, about seventy miles away, I brought up its information . . . and found myself gaping at the screen in disbelief. This wasn’t just a
church
— it was practically a whole town, with apartment buildings next to the cathedral and even a small shopping center. The website said that it was over five thousand residential members strong and growing. Five
thousand.
That was almost a third the size of Pawtucket. If you joined the Church of Angels, then you’d never have to set foot out in the real world again.
Maybe that was the appeal.
I rubbed my temples.
I’ll talk to Beth again at
I let out a breath, still gazing at Mom. “Sorry,” I murmured, getting to my feet. As Aunt Jo turned the volume up, I kissed Mom’s cheek. Then I went upstairs to my bedroom, holding my elbows tightly as I picked my way around the piles of clutter that seemed to breed on the stairs and landing.
Closing the door behind me, I stared unseeingly at my room — my bed with the swaths of lavender chiffon draped across the bedposts, the purple and silver walls that I’d painted myself. Beth’s angel was real, all right. She must have gone straight to it after she left; she must have told it everything — and then it had come here, looking for me. My thoughts spun like tires on ice. God, who could I tell this to? Who could I go to for help? Nina would just laugh at me. Aunt Jo? Ha.
OK, calm down. Think this through.
I took a deep breath and sat on the bed, forcing myself to go over the mixed-up images that I’d seen in Beth’s second future, trying to remember every last detail. In one of the snippets that had flashed past, this
thing
had been at the Church of Angels, and then later there’d been others like it.
Were they really angels?
My scalp prickled. I rose quickly and went over to my desk to switch on my computer. It’s an old one that I bought with some of my reading money, and it takes forever to warm up. When it had finally finished humming and whirring to itself, I logged on to the Internet. “Church of Angels” brought up millions of hits. I clicked the first link, ChurchofAngels.com, and a state-of-the-art website loaded onto my screen. There was the familiar pearl-white church from the commercials, awash in sunshine.
Church of Angels. Hope for the millions . . . including you,
said the text underneath it. I grimaced. I know that plenty of people get a lot from religion and that’s great for them, but anything promising “hope for the millions” gives me a pretty bad feeling — and now, after Beth’s reading, it gave me an even worse one.
I clicked a button at the top that said, FIND OUT MORE. A video panel appeared, loading a Church of Angels commercial. I pushed PLAY, and a gray, rain-beaten field came into view, grass moving slowly with the wind.
Do you feel despairing?
intoned a voice-over. The camera went into a long shot. A white church appeared in the field, and the camera panned back to reveal hundreds of people weaving up a hill toward it — and now the church looked huge, larger than the mightiest cathedral. The sun came out, dancing brightly on the white stone. The people stopped and gazed upward, smiling, basking in the rays.
Do you feel that God has forsaken you? Well, have faith . . . for even if there is no God, there ARE angels.
“The angels saved my life,” a middle-aged woman told the camera, her brown eyes shining with rapture. “They are pure love, and what they’ve done for me, they can do for you, too.” I felt a twinge of unease. She looked and sounded exactly like Beth.
Steepling my hands in front of my face, I stared at the monitor. The commercial played so often on TV that I should have been able to recite every word of it. Usually I just tuned it out, but now I listened carefully. When it finished, I hit PLAY and ran it again. It all seemed so slick. So polished.
Remembering that I’d heard there was a Church of Angels in Schenectady, about seventy miles away, I brought up its information . . . and found myself gaping at the screen in disbelief. This wasn’t just a
church
— it was practically a whole town, with apartment buildings next to the cathedral and even a small shopping center. The website said that it was over five thousand residential members strong and growing. Five
thousand.
That was almost a third the size of Pawtucket. If you joined the Church of Angels, then you’d never have to set foot out in the real world again.
Maybe that was the appeal.
I rubbed my temples.
I’ll talk to Beth again at
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