The Inner City by Karen Heuler Page B

him.
    “What?” he said, jumping back slightly. “Joey?”
    She nodded, and wiped her eyes. “The whole bus,” she said. “Every single one of them. All gone.”
    Jonah walked away from her. His head had gotten a little dull; he kept thinking that sometimes Joey hitched a ride home and he didn’t usually do after-school stuff. Sure, once he showed up at band practice as a goof, but all he’d done was cause trouble. And he’d only gone to one or two games before. Why would he go when he knew the Rapture was coming?
    Maybe Corinne had it wrong. She was a smart kid, but she only knew what she’d heard.
    He lifted up his head, then, and scanned the crowds. It was the same kids in the same groups everywhere. They held to their regular spots.
    Tommy came up to him and said, “Bummer, no? Joey?” And he shook his head and put his hands in his pockets and went off.
    The teachers were gesturing for everyone to come in; a few of them were even going around to the groups, putting their hands on arbitrary shoulders, leading them. Jonah got caught in front of a group and had to go forward, into school. They were led into the assembly.
    The buzz of words got quieter. Kids filed in and sat down, their eyes scanning the room.
    The principal started telling them how sorry he was, and that there were grief counsellors to help all of them deal with this tragedy. And he listed the names of all the dead, no—the “known dead.” There were two bodies not yet identified, and of course, there were two students unaccounted for. Results were awaited.
    He included Joey when he read off the names of the dead. But Joey was capable of bad jokes, of bad taste, of not knowing when to respect other people’s feelings. Joey was capable of fudging this somehow.
    However: “accounted for and identified.” Could Joey really pull that off?
    He stood in line for the grief counsellors. “I don’t think Joey’s really dead,” he said.
    The counsellor smiled sadly, then consulted a list. “He really is,” she said. “What you’re feeling is very natural, it’s called denial. The first thing you do is insist that the facts are wrong. Because you can’t, at first, accept it. It’s a terrible thing, it really is, but it happened.”
    Jonah sat there, miserable and polite. Joey was dead.
    There was a half-day at school. He went home and sat in the kitchen. So, apparently his parents hadn’t heard or they would be there, waiting for him. Wouldn’t they?
    He sat at the kitchen table, his head feeling very heavy, and he thought about it. He could find no way to put all this together. He wondered, shamefully, if Joey had left him anything. He was always going on about how Jonah should turn his stuff over because of the Rapture.
    I bet he didn’t see this coming, Jonah thought. I bet he was really surprised. It was supposed to be me.
    When his mother got home, Jonah said, “Joey ascended.”
    “No,” she said. “I understand what you’re feeling. It’s a shock. We were all prepared for ourselves, and it’s a disappointment, but one thing has nothing to do with the other thing.”
    “It happened at sunset.”
    “Coincidence.”
    “You always say there is no coincidence with the Lord.”
    “I think you should pray harder. As soon as your father comes home, we’ll pray. You’ll feel better. We’ll pray for Joey’s soul.” She looked away a little at that.
    “You think he’s burning in Hell!” Jonah said, suddenly understanding that look.
    His mother sighed. “Of course he is,” she said gently. “You know that too.”
    His father was depressed. “The numbers all added up to this,” he said. “And we invited the Lord into our hearts and lived for Him. Does it make sense to you that He would abandon us like that?”
    His father had been born with the name Robert, but he took the name Paul when he converted, because he was struck suddenly, mid-life, mid-path, by the Lord. He’d been on a walk in the park and stumbled on a