As the day wore on, the train filled and emptied, filled and emptied. Faye spent the time reading a large leather-bound volume entitled The Book of the Divine Prescriptions. She said it was a very secret, very ancient text that almost no one else had read, but it had a library sticker on it, so Wunder was pretty sure that wasn’t true. Davy had brought some comic books. And Wunder had The Miraculous—dirt-flecked, leather worn, thin and gutted.
“I haven’t seen that in a while,” Davy said when he noticed what Wunder was reading.
“I put it in my closet,” Wunder confessed. “I even tried to leave it in the graveyard. But it kept coming back to me.”
“Read me one,” Davy said.
Faye closed her book. “It’s impossible to concentrate on the paranormal with this incessant chatter,” she said. “So let’s hear one of your sunshine-and-sparkles miracles, Wundie.”
Over the past few weeks, Wunder had shared more from The Miraculous than he ever had before. And every time he shared a miracle, he felt how powerful they were. He saw how they comforted, how they connected. He knew the perfect one to share with his friends.
“Okay,” he said. “Here’s one. Here’s one for Davy.”
Miraculous Entry #893
I realized today that I’ve never done an entry about Davy. Davy has been my best friend since we met in day care. As babies! How miraculous is that?
It’s true that I met my other best friend, Tomás, in more “miraculous” circumstances (see Entry #97). But there are all kinds of miracles. There are everyday miracles. And I guess I just realized that meeting your best friend before you can even walk is one of those.
“The one about my mom getting better is my favorite,” Davy said. “But that’s my second favorite.” He wasn’t biting his lip. He was smiling.
Wunder smiled back at him. “It’s one of my favorites too.” Then his smile faltered as he remembered again how just two days ago, he hadn’t been friends with Davy. “I really am sorry about how I was. Before.”
Davy shrugged. “It’s okay, Wunder. You were sad. I’m still your friend. I’ll always be your friend.”
“Wundie. David.” Faye’s voice was slow but very, very loud. “We get it.”
Wunder turned to Faye. “You’re my friend too, Faye,” he said. She flipped her hood up over her head. “I hope you know that. Without you, I would never have figured out about the memorial stone and I would never have gone to see the witch and I would never—”
“Wundie! Enough!” Faye yelled, her voice shrill and deafening even through the hood. “I’m your friend too. Now read us another miracle. Something about people coming back from the dead. I think we need some more information on how that traditionally works.”
So Wunder read about Lazarus. Then he read about Bodhidharma and about the daughter of the centurion and about a woman from Mississippi who was dead for three days and then sat up in her coffin at her own funeral and asked for some sweet tea. He read about holy men who were taken up into the sky and saints who climbed out of their graves and how all of nature was reborn each spring. Every time he thought there were no more dead-coming-back-to-life entries, he would turn the page and find another. As it turned out, The Miraculous was full of resurrections.
Faye and Davy were a good audience. They asked questions and gasped at the right parts and said, “Next!” after each one. And as Wunder read, he felt more and more like he used to, like the miracles he was telling them were true, like the miracles he was telling them were proof that the world was full of love and full of mystery, a mystery that he was a part of, a mystery that never ended.
Almost like he used to, but not quite. He knew now that wasn’t the whole story. He knew there was more: darker things, painful things. But for that time, on the train, on the way to get the branch from the DoorWay Tree, all he was thinking about was the miraculous.