The Inner City by Karen Heuler Page A

girl.”
    But Jonah didn’t want to hear. “About the dogs,” he said. “Why don’t you get a dog?”
    “I have a dog already,” Joey said. “But it’s old and small. Doesn’t do anythin’. I can get another dog when I get a job, but if I get a job while I’m in school I won’t have time for a new dog. One of my dad’s tricks.”
    The bus with that girl pulled ahead of them as they neared school and for a while Joey pretended they were in pursuit, chasing her.
    “There are girls in heaven,” Jonah said.
    Joey shrugged. “But no sex. Never heard of any screwin’ up there.” He snorted. “
Heaven
. Right.”
    Jonah’s face lit up. “Souls meet,” he said. “They meet and touch. It’s like telepathy, almost, how you don’t need the body—”
    “The body’s the
point
,” Joey said in disgust.
    “No, no, no,” Jonah reassured him. “There’s love. Love is more than the body, isn’t it? You love your mother, you love your father—”
    “Not that much. Not that way.”
    “All right, you love a girl. You love her a whole lot, but she won’t sleep with you. Do you stop loving her?”
    “Yes,” Joey said strongly. He twitched all over, happy with himself.
    Jonah was trying to think of a way to reach his friend. He knew that everything Joey had just said was a sin, just as everything Joey did was a sin, and everything Joey thought, probably, was a sin. But he believed he could save Joey’s soul, and he thought it was worth saving.
    “How do you think about God so much?” Joey asked. “I mean, where do you go with it? It’s like thinkin’ of the colour red. You get it in your mind and then that’s it.”
    “No. When I go on thinking about it, I see the sky and it expands and the stars blink and I keep watching. I think of God and the whole world expands and I feel ready to burst.”
    Joey laughed meanly. “And you call that God, that burstin’ feeling?”
    Jonah’s face felt hot. “I know what you mean and that’s not it. I know what you’re talking about and it’s completely different.”
    “Oh sure, sure,” Joey said. “I must have a lot of God in me, ’cause I’m burstin’ all the time. With holy love,” he said, pleased with himself. “Burstin’ with holy love.”
    Jonah felt a sharp loneliness at the way Joey was mocking him. He believed there was a strong bond between them, but it was always slipping away, and then coming back, and then slipping away.
    The morning after Rapture, Joey wasn’t on the school bus, which was filled with kids whispering and crying. Jonah found a seat by himself, avoiding everyone. He suspected they all knew the Rapture hadn’t come, that they were whispering about him.
    But the whispering and crying were all over the schoolyard. Finally, he just stood and looked around. No one was pointing at him or laughing at him. It all began to register, finally: something was wrong.
    He passed two sobbing girls, four stiff-shouldered boys. One of the very youngest students stood all by himself, wailing, his arms stiffly at his side.
    He saw Corinne, who sat next to him in homeroom.
    “Didn’t anyone tell you?” she asked, blinking. “That storm last night. There was a tornado. It got the bus over on that hilly road to Bightsville. They were coming back from a game. Didn’t you notice that storm? It was terrible.”
    “It was just some rain,” Jonah said, arguing. “I know because I was outside when it happened.” Then he was struck, both by the look of contempt in Corinne’s eyes and by his own thoughts. He was beginning to worry. “What happened?”
    “A lot of people died—that’s what happened.” It was almost as if she hated him, as if she thought he had something to do with it.
    “Who died?” he whispered.
    She began to name off all the boys and girls. He knew some of them. He was relieved every time he heard a name he didn’t recognize; every time the name wasn’t his friend Joey.
    “Joey,” she finally said. She glared at