Wunder lay in bed that night, and everything was confusing in his heart, loud in his heart. He didn’t know what to think. He didn’t know how he felt.
And then he did. He knew exactly how he felt. He felt the way he had when Milagros had died. He felt like she had died all over again.
And he knew why.
He had let himself think there were miracles. He had let himself think that, somehow, his sister could come back. That she had come back. That he wasn’t alone. That this horrible, terrible, overwhelmingly awful thing hadn’t happened to him, hadn’t happened to his family. But it had.
Milagros was dead. His sister was dead. She wasn’t going to come back. There was no way for her to come back. Nothing he had ever believed in was true, and his family was shattered into pieces, and the world was dark, dark, dark, and there was no brightness to be found anywhere.
Miracles did not exist.
He didn’t have any dreams that night. Not even one.
Wunder didn’t go to school the next day. He slept in, and no one came to wake him up. He spent the day lying in bed, his face turned toward the wall. The Miraculous was in his backpack, and he didn’t get it out.
He heard the phone ringing that afternoon and into the evening. His father was at work and his mother was almost certainly in her room, so no one answered it.
He didn’t go to school on Tuesday either. He didn’t stay in his room though. He spent the day biking around town. He knew someone would probably see him—after years of miracology and weeks of letter-delivering, almost everyone in town knew him by now—but he didn’t care. He biked past St. Gerard’s. He biked past the town hall. He biked past Safe and Sound Insurance and past the Lazar house.
He didn’t go past the cemetery though. He didn’t go anywhere near the woods.
He came home that afternoon, before school let out, before kids filled the streets, heading to their houses. He got enough snacks to last him the evening and then headed to his room.
But he stopped on the way there.
The door to his parents’ room was open. And no one was inside.
He heard the front door close about an hour later. Then the door to his parents’ room closed.
It was the first time Wunder’s mother had left the house in over a month. He wondered where she had been, but he was too tired to wonder for long.
Then his father came to see him after work that evening, another first. He hadn’t been in Wunder’s room since Milagros was born.
“How was school today?” he asked.
Wunder shrugged. He was back in bed. He was staring at the ceiling. He was trying his best to think about nothing.
“Fine,” he said.
Wunder’s father stood there in the doorway with his chin in his hand. He was frowning, and Wunder was sure he was going to tell him that he knew he had skipped school. He was sure that he was angry.
But then his father looked into the corner of the room. He looked at the crib there with its white flowered sheet, still made up, still ready and waiting and waiting and waiting.
Wunder’s father sighed. “Tomorrow, you have to go to school, Wunder,” he said gently. “And then you have to come right home. You’re grounded. For a long time.”
And the next morning, he was back.
“Time to get up.” He watched as Wunder sat up and swung his legs around. “I know you haven’t wanted to go to church, but I was thinking we could go together on Thursday, for All Saints’ Day.” He paused. “Or Friday. Friday is All Souls’ Day.”
“I don’t want to go,” Wunder replied.
“Okay,” his father said. “Okay. Fine. Maybe we can do something else. Together, I mean. The two of us.” He glanced at the corner of the room. “There are a lot of things we need to do.”
Wunder didn’t answer.
At school that day, he didn’t want to talk to anyone, but he especially didn’t want to talk to Faye or Davy. They both kept trying to catch his eye, but he wouldn’t look at them. He went to each class late and left each one early. He ate lunch in the stairwell.
Finally, in science class, Faye got up in the middle of the lesson and walked right over to him. “Wundie, we need to talk,” she said.
“Faye,” Ms. Shunem said. “You know I usually don’t mind social interaction during this class, but not while I’m teaching. Please sit down.”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Shunem,” Faye said without moving. “I’m just trying to make sure that Wundie heard me.”
“I heard you, Faye,” Wunder said. But five minutes before the bell rang, even though Ms. Shunem was still talking, he grabbed his backpack and left the class.
He hurried down the halls, toward the front door. He didn’t stop at his locker. He wanted to leave as fast as he could. He wanted to run out the school door and back to the safety of his room, where no one would talk to him about anything. He thought about locking the door too. Maybe his father wouldn’t bother him if the door was locked. He didn’t seem to bother Wunder’s mother.
“Hey, Wunder, wait up!” It was Tomás’s voice.
Wunder stopped and turned before he really thought about it. Tomás was jogging toward him. He must have left science class early too.
“My dad told me about—about what happened,” Tomás said. “He wanted to know if I had anything to do with it.”
“Did you tell him that we’re not even friends anymore?”
Tomás looked hurt. “We’re friends,” he said. “We are. But with everything that happened—and you haven’t been, I don’t know, yourself—and I’ve been busy with soccer and everything.” He paused and flipped his hair, a gesture that suddenly looked self-conscious. “I mean, what were you doing with that tree anyway?”
Wunder searched for an answer, but his insides were a checkerboard again, and all his words had been blacked out, especially those words, words about this most recent, most raw loss.
He realized that he had been silent for a long time. Tomás was staring at him, craning his neck forward, brow furrowed, like he was trying to see if Wunder had gone comatose.
“It was for Milagros,” was what he finally said.
“Milagros?”
“My sister,” Wunder said. “It was for my sister. It was a mistake though.”
The bell rang. Wunder left the school and headed back home to his room.