Believe Read online

  Most people needed less than twenty seconds to figure it out. But once, someone thought I was the daughter of the plumber. Today the doctor snapped his fingers after less than six seconds. “Oh yeah. Wasn’t I just reading about you somewhere?”

  Mr. Demetrius reached into his bag for the retrospective and waved it in his face. “She is the Soul Survivor.” When they all started nodding—oh yeah, of course, I remember you—the kid in the temple, right?—he told the group, “At the scene, she held him. She prayed for him. Right here—right before he woke up—she read him Scripture. Every word she said, I could feel him getting stronger. If you ask me, that girl healed him right in front of our eyes.”

  “For a long time,” Mrs. D. said, “people have wondered about why Janine lived, when everyone else in that synagogue died. Now we know. She has a gift. A quantum force.”

  Quantum force? I almost laughed out loud. Religious people came up with the craziest things.

  The doctors must have agreed, because they talked about things like friendship and family and the healing power of touch, which were the only logical ways to deal with the questions with no answers. As they rationalized, I looked at the floor, the door, anywhere but at their faces—I was sure they were laughing at me. I worried they were thinking fame whore

  Freak.

  Or maybe they were hoping to give a press conference.

  After they left, Miriam excused herself. “I need to go call my mom.” She shrugged. “She’s left about ten messages.”

  “I should call Lo, too,” I said, following her out the door into the hall. The power must have still been out, because all I got was an off-key tone and message. Luckily, Miriam got through, but when she was done talking, she looked really upset.

  “What’s wrong now?”

  She said, “We need to get going.”

  The doctor thought this was a timely idea. “I think we’ve had enough excitement for one day. We don’t want Abe to overdo it.”

  Outside, Miriam walked fast. The air still had that cool, saturated feeling it had after a big storm. The rain had passed, but Miriam still looked miserable.

  “So are you going to tell me?”

  She kicked some gravel. “The tree was hit by lightning.”

  I didn’t have to ask what tree. There was only one tree that would make Miriam’s face turn white.

  This time, Miriam couldn’t drive fast—there were too many branches in the road. Too many detours. Orange cones blocked streets. Many houses were dark.

  She took a sharp right past the school. “It was hit by lightning. My mom says it looks bad.”

  “Wow. That’s terrible.” There was no point saying sorry. Miriam loved that tree. She loved that farm. It wasn’t the right time to tell her to put it in perspective.

  Sometimes the best thing a friend could do was say nothing. Even I knew that.

  The road was closed. Bright lights illuminated the damage. Trucks blocked the road. They beeped loud warnings. When we didn’t pull a U-turn, a man in a hard hat jogged toward us, waving us away. He looked annoyed.

  “We’re closing down the block,” he said. “You need to go another way. We’re fixing these lines.”

  One huge bough lay strewn across the road. Its branches looked like broken fingers, splintered and disjointed at unnatural angles. At the break, the trunk’s white middle was exposed.

  Miriam asked, “Is it dead?”

  “I don’t think so,” the man said. “At least not yet. We’ll just have to wait and see.” Miriam nodded her head and stared at the broken tree. He said, “That old tree has survived a lot of storms. It was due for something like this.”

  The tree looked lopsided, deformed, like it could topple over at any moment. He should have been able to tell us definitively. Was the thing dead? Or was everything going to be okay?

  Without this tree, the land was not special. It could be any piece of land on any street in any town. If the tree died, there’d be no reason not to sell the land and there’d be nothing anyone could do to stop that. For the second time, I felt bad for the tree. It didn’t ask for this. It was just trying to be a tree.

  I started to say something to Miriam, but she didn’t have time for an existential discussion about trees and life and responsibility. She started calling the other people who cared about the farm. I redialed Lo, and this time she picked up. The first thing she said was, “Thank God you’re okay.” She sounded like she’d just run ten miles. The second thing: “When I got your message, I thought I was losing my mind.”

  I gave her the extended version—what happened, and where I was now. “It looks like he’s going to completely recover.”

  She started to lecture me, but then stopped, like she didn’t know whether to be mad or sad or furious or relieved. I said, “Can you come and get me? I’m confused. Something big happened. I need to figure out what to do next.”

  TWELVE

  On the way home, Lo picked up a big bag of individually wrapped chocolates, Diet Cokes, and baskets of strawberries and blueberries, even though all they had were the fancy organic kind. And they were out of season. White in the middle. Taste-free.

  She chopped the strawberries with more force than necessary, then doused them with sugar. “You are not a faith healer, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Not really, but hearing her say it made me momentarily less sure.

  I went straight for the chocolates. I unwrapped two, crinkled up the foil, and stuffed them in my dry mouth. Sharon picked out the blueberries, one by one, feeling them first to make sure they were firm. For some reason, when she was stressed out, she preferred fruit.

  While we ate, I told them every single thing that happened, every detail, every sound, every second. I told them I heard my mother and that Abe woke up after I touched him. And even then, they didn’t waffle, not one iota.

  I was not a faith healer.

  I had nothing to do with Abe getting better.

  I should have come home.

  “The accident was all over the news. Your message was too vague.”

  When only shriveled blueberries were left, Sharon started on the strawberries. “Tell us what you heard your mother say.” She reached out to hold my hand. There was red juice under her nails.

  I took a long breath. This was a little bit sad, a little bit embarrassing. “The same words she said when we were buried alive. You might think I’m crazy, but it wasn’t that bad. Hearing her voice made me feel like Abe was going to be okay, even though he looked almost dead.”

  Lo walked into the corner and poured herself one drink and then another. She blamed herself. She never should have let me out of her sight on such an emotionally packed day. “Do you want to talk to someone?” She meant a shrink. “It helped before.”

  “Not really.” I hated sitting on the couch with my “paid best friend.” I was pretty sure it wouldn’t help me now.

  She didn’t fight me. “You could come by the studio and take a few classes. Maybe a thirty-day challenge.” Lo believed that Bikram yoga was the answer to 99 percent of the world’s questions. When I shook my head no—to me, thirty days in her hot room was the equivalent of a torture chamber—she frowned. “Maybe you should do some research. You know—in the name of understanding the other side.” Lo’s favorite yogi worked at the used bookstore—right near the white church. Many times, she’d asked me to check out the section on medical and spiritual health. “You know, the Demetriuses are right about one thing: the body heals itself in all kinds of mysterious ways. You can call it God. Or just nature. Reading about alternative medicine might be helpful.”

  “Alternative medicine?” I almost laughed. I’d rather blame my PTSD.

  Sharon had other concerns. “What does Abe think? Who else knows?” She turned to Lo. “Now will you talk to Robert? With Armstrong in the area, things could get messy fast.”

  I sighed. Yoga wasn’t the answer. Neither was the law. “My friends will not sell me out. They won’t go to the press. They d
efinitely won’t talk to Armstrong.” I held up my hands to stop them from interrupting me. “When I told Miriam about my mom, she said the same thing you did. That I was stressed out. It was just bad timing. I heard her because I was scared. And because of the timing.” I stood up and headed for the stairs. I had nothing more to say.

  Up in the loft, remnants of the brown dress lay scattered on the floor. The retrospective sat on my bed. I opened it. Then I closed it. I thought about tearing it into pieces or throwing it across the room with the rest of the mess. But after everything that had happened, I had to admit—I was curious. I didn’t know what they could have said. It had been years since I had given an interview.

  First I flipped through the magazine. It was printed on high-quality glossy. There were at least thirty pages of ads. It felt heavy.

  Then I scanned the sections about Israel, the Middle East, and war, skipping past the list of victims and the section about Dave Armstrong, until I got to the part about me. It wasn’t long, mostly a photo diary, a collage of old headlines. But it was me. My life: ten years on four pages. The center montage featured close-ups of my hands before and after surgery. Some of them were pretty gruesome.

  The caption read, “Janine endured multiple surgeries and years of painful rehab.” At the time, the doctors in New York said that it was the most difficult hand surgery they’d performed to date.

  I turned on the light to the brightest level, so I could compare the newest pictures to my palms, the scars that remained.

  What it didn’t say: My hands didn’t just look different. They were different. My fingerprints changed. My nails didn’t grow right. It took years of hard work to learn how to do even the simplest things. Even now, I had a hard time typing for a long time. Writing wasn’t simple. And forget about playing an instrument. They considered their surgeries a huge success, but I still couldn’t text anything longer than a couple of keys. I needed a stylus to get it right.

  I turned back to the story.

  The coverage surrounding Janine Collins’ rescue rivals the biggest stories in history, including the death of Princess Di and even 9/11. For years, sympathetic strangers showered her with gifts of money, even though it was common knowledge that she would benefit from her parents’ insurance and trust.

  Blah, blah, blah. It was mostly recycled crap. The same questions. The same non-answers.

  Who was Janine Collins today?

  I looked at Dress-Form Annie. “What do you think?” I wasn’t sure. I wondered what they thought.

  At sixteen, Janine’s an average American girl, and except for the scars on her hands, you’d never know she was the Soul Survivor.

  True, but not earth-shattering. It’s what came next that bothered me. Somehow, this writer found out I liked fashion and wanted to be a designer. That I did okay in school, but that I hadn’t bothered to get my driver’s license, which for some reason, the writer found weird. Also, I had a pretty ironic sense of humor. But that I held a grudge. She wrote, “Janine would do anything for her small circle of friends.” There was a picture of me at last year’s prom, right after I ripped the bottom off my dress so we could run through the cornfields. Another in my kitchen, after a night of cooking vegetarian crepes for a French assignment. And one at a football game, waving my hands in the air. That night was so funny. Miriam begged me to go to the game. She had a crush on the quarterback. We waited at the locker room for two hours, just so she could say hello.

  Those pictures were private. They were taken by friends—friends who knew I never wanted them displayed in this magazine—friends who were loyal to me.

  Friends like Miriam. And Abe. And Dan.

  The article ended with a personal note by the writer, a woman who was in high school when the bombing took place.

  I remember following Janine Collins’ rescue, the joy I felt when someone walked out of that terrible bombing alive. I remember thinking that in some ways, she was lucky, but in other ways, her life was ruined, and that nothing for her would ever be the same. I was not alone in my fascination.

  What is perhaps most interesting are the expectations and rumors surrounding this girl. There are a lot of people who believe this girl is a symbol for faith and healing. They admire her. But because of that, there are a lot more people who are angry with Janine Collins. I met many people who think she is wasting her second chance at a meaningful life. They think she was saved for a reason and should do something important. They don’t understand why she isn’t living her life more fully. Of course, there are also people who are angry because they are bored with her story—they will probably complain about this entire issue. They call her shallow. Famous for nothing. They would rather hear about brave people who have sacrificed their lives.

  I had plenty of mail just like this. Plenty of advice. Things like “You should be more politically active.” And “You have let people down.” Lo told me to throw it all away—the people usually just needed an outlet. “Forget about them,” she said. “They don’t know you. They have no right telling you how to live your life. Their problems aren’t your concern. They forget that you were just a little girl at the wrong place and time.”

  Already, this issue was on the grocery store shelves. Tomorrow, the phone would probably ring all day. Every year, people wanted to know what I was doing or thinking. If I were honest, I’d agree with everything she wrote.

  I didn’t have a cause I cared about. I stood for nothing. This woman wrote about her memories because there was nothing else to say about me.

  Maybe I was wasting my life.

  I turned off the lights, lay down in bed, and called Dan. “What do you think my parents would say about me?”

  He didn’t have much to say. “God, Janine. What’s up with you? How am I supposed to know?” When I had no clue, he sounded impatient. “What do you want me to say?” All he wanted to talk about was the Phillies. And this show he watched late last night. He didn’t even seem excited about my portfolio. Of course, at the moment, neither did I.

  My parents were heroes, risk-takers. They had big ideas. I didn’t. They wanted to change the world. Not me. They took me to Israel to tell the world a story.

  I picked up the retrospective and hurled it across the room.

  Look what that got them.

  THIRTEEN

  No surprise, I dreamed about my mother.

  But it wasn’t my usual dream. I was not under the rubble. I was not fighting for my life. She didn’t save me. I didn’t hear her telling me anything that anyone could reinterpret later.

  Tonight Mom was working. She sat at her desk with her feet up, just like she did in the picture. Today she was wearing all white. There was an arrangement of white flowers on her desk—the epitome of elegance and reverence and good taste. She also chewed the end of a pencil.

  “Mom.” I felt a sharp, searing cramp in both wrists—but I didn’t worry. She was here. In my room. The flowers smelled great. I didn’t care that it was a dream.

  I also didn’t complain when she wagged her finger the way Lo did when she was annoyed. “One of your friends has loose lips. All that insider information? Those pictures? They were not public property.”

  “I don’t want to talk about that.” I wanted to talk to her. My mother. Here in my room. She looked so alive, so real, it was easy to forget that she was dead. “What are you doing here? Is there something you need to tell me about today?”

  I waited for her to get up and kiss me or give me some maternal lesson, but she stayed at her desk and motioned to someone behind me. I could hardly stand it—I was sure it was my dad.

  It wasn’t.

  Instead, out stepped the old lady reporter. In my dream she wore a red skirt. A red shirt. A red jacket. Even her eyes were red. “I guess you are supposed to be the devil,” I said. My mother rolled her eyes.

  Journalist as devil; mother as angel. I wasn’t really all that creative.

  Still, I tried to focus. “Why did you bring her?”

 
; The old lady said, “Think of this as one of those old fairy tales you used to like so much. It shouldn’t be too hard. You are the orphan princess.” Now she smiled at my mother.

  My mom begged me to forgive her. Then she said to the devil, “Just get it over with.”

  The devil sat on the edge of my bed. “In that last interview you did a few years back, you said you wanted pretty hands—that you hated your scars. That your hands were what made you miserable. That if it weren’t for your hands, you could live a normal life.”

  All these things were true. These scars, those operations—they made people crazy. They meant things to people that they didn’t mean to me.

  She said, “So I have a special surprise for you. Look at them.” She held out her hands for a big hug. “Don’t hold back. Whenever you’re ready, you can thank me.”

  For a second, I thought I had it all wrong. She wasn’t the devil; she was my fairy godmother. I examined my hands, and I couldn’t believe it—they were better than perfect. My skin looked pure white. The scars vanished. I started to say something to my mother, but when I looked up, she was gone.

  Something was not right.

  I asked, “What is happening?” I didn’t want to complain, but my hands felt funny—sort of numb. And hard. My fingers were stiff—even worse than usual. When I got up to look for my mom, my beautiful hands would not move. They didn’t bend. They couldn’t do anything.

  I asked, “What did you do to me? Where is my mom?”

  The old lady acted like everything that was happening was no big deal. “Don’t make a big stink. You hated your old hands, so the devil gave you a new pair.”

  That’s when the dream turned manic.

  My hands were made of wood. I tasted dust and rock. It was hard to breathe. I looked for my mom or Lo, but I was alone. My ears rang. I needed to get out. Emir appeared, strapped to a thousand tons of dynamite. I told him, “She cut off my hands.”