The Inner City by Karen Heuler

there was a loud crack—this was it!—and the heavens opened and a rain came down like a booby trap. They stood up slowly and went inside.
    The next morning Jonah’s parents were very quiet. They never listened to the radio or the TV for news in the morning, just said their prayers and ate their breakfast. That morning was dreary.
    “Maybe we got the calculations wrong,” his father said. “They were very delicate.” He looked better than his wife, who seemed to be huddling even as she prepared breakfast. The rapt look she’d had was gone, replaced by uncertainty.
    “The numbers were checked,” she said softly. “Over and over. We’ve been waiting for years.”
    Jonah’s parents, of course, disliked Joey but he hadn’t actually been forbidden to see him. Instead, a sentence would pop up in their talk every so often. “I hear that Joey is failing in math. Does he need a tutor?” or “See if Joey can make it to Bible study this week. If he’s a friend, save his soul.”
    Joey’s soul seemed pretty sturdy, and he went to Bible study only once, where he smiled gamely and asked confusing questions. He said, for instance, that the bible wasn’t meant to be literal. He said he’d been told that by an ex-nun and a Reformed rabbi. The rabbi had impressed him. “He’s
reformed
,” he repeated. “Gone straight.”
    “I’m not sure your friend is the right friend to have,” Jonah’s father said.
    “And he may be bad for you; he may accept sinful situations and make them seem harmless to you,” his mother added. “Out of ignorance. Because he doesn’t know any better.”
    “He doesn’t have God,” his father confirmed. “And when you don’t have God you’re condemned to Hell. You know that.”
    The fact that Joey was going to Hell made it harder than ever for Jonah to give him up. The rules his parents laid out were clear: he should be polite to Joey, but he should ignore him whenever possible. But Joey was always interesting; Jonah felt his own life was boring, and predetermined. He was at that age when he wanted to be surprised, to be alerted, and maybe even to stun someone in return. He was thinking about the last conversation they’d had, when the Rapture was imminent and Joey was going over all the things he might pick up cheap.
    “Now look at that,” he’d said, nudging with his chin as he looked out the school bus. “That would be good to have, a dog like that. If you guys take off, let me know where the dogs are so I can pick one out.”
    Jonah looked and saw a big dog sitting in front of its dog house.
    “I’m thinkin’ about a career with dogs,” Joey continued. “Maybe search-and-rescue, or trainin’ them. I like it when they do what they’re told, you know? Even when they’re not exactly
told
—when you click or make a noise or raise your arm and they jump.”
    “Like an airplane,” Jonah said. “Remote control.”
    Joey nodded, once. “And what about you? You still goin’ into space?”
    It sounded sarcastic, at first, since they were going to ascend soon, but Jonah had once said he wanted to be an astronaut. That was before the date had been announced. He always loved to look at the sky. It was mixed up with God, of course; he wanted to see with God’s eye: the earth compact below, the stars around him like hair. He didn’t know if Joey experienced this same surge of goodness, of wanting to bless and be blessed coming from all his skin, all the cavities of his body. Joey talked about sex all the time, of course, as if that was similar for him. Jonah had been excused from Sex-Ed classes on religious grounds and he got all his information from Joey now. Most often it was crude and boasting, but Joey included masturbation in his talk, and it was the only time Jonah heard about it or sex without the smack of shame.
    “That girl,” Joey breathed, as one of the other buses drew beside them, and a fully-formed girl in a pullover raised her eyebrows and stared. “That