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“Hey, there. How was your day?” Kennedy asked as Woong flung his backpack onto the seat next to her. Kennedy wasn’t sure which surprised her more, how quickly he had learned English or how fast he’d put on weight. Last summer when the Lindgrens brought all forty-two pounds of him home from South Korea, the pediatrician had said she’d guess he was only five or six, except the orphanage workers had pieced together enough of his personal history to know he had to be at least ten, probably even a little older.
Woong sulked, and Kennedy had to remind him three times to buckle his seatbelt before they could start driving. She had no idea what an ordeal it was to pick up a child from Medford Academy. The line of cars stretched two blocks down the road. If Kennedy had been even a minute later, she would have had to wait all the way across the street or else the tail of the Honda would stick out into the intersection.
“How did school go?” Kennedy asked when she finally found an opening where she could pull out into the congested traffic.
“Ok.”
“Anything interesting happen?” she pressed, remembering how much she hated these interrogation sessions with her own mother when she was Woong’s age.
“We got a sub.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Uh-huh.” He opened the glove compartment and pulled out one of the granola bars his mom kept perpetually stashed there. Kennedy thought about having him use some Germ-X first, but he was halfway through with his first bite, and she had to pay attention to the road. Who would have thought carpool moms could be so aggressive?
“Where was your teacher?” she asked after turning onto a side street and finally escaping the minivan gridlock.
“Went home sick.”
“Oh.” Kennedy glanced at Woong, who was busy peeling his second granola bar. “Hey, why don’t you grab the little bottle of lotion from my backpack, ok? It’s in the front zipper. Right there. Just squirt a little on your hands and rub together. It helps.”
“Helps what?”
“Helps you not get sick.”
“Why?”
“It kills all the germs.”
“Yeah? How’s it do that?”
“It breaks down the fat layer surrounding the cell walls.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. Just clean your hands before you eat any more.”
After a few minutes of silence while he finished chewing, Woong asked, “Are my parents gone already?” He reached into a compartment beneath the car stereo and pulled out a baggie of goldfish crackers.
“Yeah, they left a little bit after lunch time.”
“When are they getting back?”
“Tomorrow night, but you’ll probably be asleep by the time they come home.”
“Does that mean I get to stay up late?”
“No, you still have school the next morning.”
He sighed dramatically. “I don’t like school.”
“Really? Why not?”
He shrugged. “Not enough snacks.” He shoved some crackers into his mouth and asked, “Hey, aren’t you supposed to be in school, too? Don’t you go to Hogwarts or something like that?”
She smiled. “No, not Hogwarts. It’s called Harvard.”
“Oh. Then what’s Hogwarts?”
“Something else.”
“Ok. So why aren’t you there now?”
“It’s my spring break. We get a whole week off.”
Woong kicked the heel of his sneaker against the metal bar by his feet. “Medford Academy doesn’t get spring break until next week. My dad’s gonna take me to a Red Sox game next Monday. That’s a week from today, right?”
“Right. You know how many days that is?”
She could smell the cheddar cheese flavoring on his breath when he opened up his stuffed mouth. “Eight.”
“Close. It’s seven.”
“No, eight.”
“Seven,” she repeated and rattled off the days of the week. “See? That’s seven.”
He shook his head. “No, ’cause today’s Monday, and the game is Monday.” He held up his hands to count on his fingers. “It goes Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, then another Monday. That’s eight.” He shoved another handful of goldfish crackers into his mouth, and Kennedy wondered if Sandy had to vacuum out the car every single day to keep it free of crumbs.
“I guess you’re right.” Kennedy turned on Sandy’s praise and worship CD before the discussion could digress any further. What had she gotten herself into? When Sandy first asked her to stay with Woong for the night, Kennedy hadn’t thought that much about it. She didn’t have any major plans for spring break. Her roommate Willow would be out with her theater friends running around New York City. If Kennedy weren’t at the Lindgrens’, she’d probably just be relaxing in the Harvard library. It’d been such a busy semester, she hadn’t picked up a book for pleasure since Martin Luther King Day. Her entire reading list that semester was for the film as literature class she was taking. When she signed up for the course, she was expecting some Toni Morrison books, maybe a few foreign pieces, the sorts of flicks her dad didn’t like (“too artsy-fartsy”) and her mom didn’t care for (“too many subtitles”). She didn’t realize her professor was something of a Michael Crichton fanboy who apparently considered the time period between the release of Top Gun and the advent of The Matrix to be the golden age of cinematography. Oh, well. It was an easy A and a chance to get back into reading some thrillers, a genre she’d avoided when her PTSD was at its worst. The reading list, albeit unoriginal, was so extensive she found herself wishing she had time for the classics she’d grown to love. Now that the next day and a half stretched out before her, she thought of how relaxing it would be to spend the whole day reading and wondered if she was really the type who was cut out to babysit. At least Woong would be at school tomorrow. But what would they do with the rest of the day?
One hour at a time, she reminded herself.
Or maybe more like one minute.
Kennedy liked the melody of Sandy’s worship song, the haunting tune, but she wasn’t so sure about the lyrics. Healed by the grace of my precious Savior. What did that healing mean, exactly? She was still trying to figure it out. Dominic, chaplain for the Boston Police Department, said God could deliver her from her PTSD, that through the power of the Holy Spirit she could be completely free. It sounded nice. No, it sounded glorious. To be released from those talons of fear that would grip her heart at any hour of the day or night. To walk around campus without being afraid, to no longer find herself enslaved to panic, paralyzed and shaking from fear. Most of the time, she couldn’t even recall what spooked her out in the first place.
As encouraging as her boyfriend tried to be, she couldn’t shake the feeling this was all her fault. That if she were more spiritual, she could overcome these demons, whether they were real or figurative. Dominic had never said so, but his steadfast, unwavering faith made her feel ashamed that she still hadn’t found her perfect healing. Then there were people like Sandy, people who assured her that God could heal her completely if he wanted to, but if he chose to let her PTSD remain, it was so that through her weakness, the cross of Christ would be lifted up for all to see. Kennedy was all for God getting the glory, but wouldn’t he receive that much more glory and praise if he just snapped his fingers and took her trauma away?
Healed by the blood of the Lamb of God.
Woong reached out his small finger, grubby even after his liberal application of sanitizer, and punched off the music. “What’re we gonna do today?”
Kennedy took a deep breath. Back on campus, she was used to waking up at six in the morning to get an early start on her fetal pig dissection before meeting her organic chemistry study group in the student union for breakfast. She could sit in a lecture hall for four hours and take practice test after practice test to prepare for the MCATs and still keep up with her Bible study and almost daily quiet time. She’d survived a kidnapping, a car chase, a skyjacking. She could handle two days with Carl and Sandy’s son, couldn’t she?
“Well, what do you usually do when you get home from school?”
Sandy had taken two and half hours that morning going over Woong’s schedule, but Kennedy had her suspicions that he might try to cheat the system. What kid his age wouldn’t? She expected he might try to convince her his mom let him play Wii until dinner or something like that, but he shrugged and grabbed another handful of goldfish. “We go home and have a snack.”
“Really?”
Sandy had warned her about Woong’s appetite. Now Kennedy wondered if she’d been too flippant when she told her dad there was a whole month’s worth of food stashed in the Lindgrens’ home. The way Woong ate, they’d be lucky to make it last until tomorrow night.
She replayed her conversation with her overly harried father. She hated the way he always tried to make her even more afraid. As if her PTSD didn’t give her enough anxiety already. Kennedy wasn’t worried about this Nipah virus strain. Sure, some people were dying, but that was mostly in Bangladesh where the epidemic originated and other regions in Asia. It was different here in the States, with the decent sanitation systems and top-of-the-line healthcare system. Her dad was simply caught up in the media frenzy. This would be exactly like other epidemics in the past. People got sick, and then the researchers found a vaccine. That was their job.
All that made the Nipah virus so scary was there was no known cure. Not yet. But everyone was working. A few more weeks of doctors and nurses taking extra precautions, then they’d find some way to control it, and life would go on.
Just like it always did.
“Tell me about your sub today.” The praise and worship song was still stuck in Kennedy’s head even though the CD was off.
Healed by the grace of my precious Savior.
“Oh, she was weird. Made us all line up at the sink and wash our hands to the happy birthday song. Twice. And she had a funny mast.”
“A mast? What’s that?”
“You know. Like what the man in black wears in Princess Bride.” He cupped his hand over his mouth and nose. “Except he wore it so people would think he was one of the bad guys, but at school she did it so she wouldn’t sneeze on folks.”
“I think you mean a mask.”
“That’s what I said. It was a funny mast too. Made her look like an alligator.”
Kennedy tried to guess what Woong was talking about. “An alligator? What do you mean?” The only green masks she could think of were all the way back from the World War II era. Surely a substitute wouldn’t wear a gas mask in a class full of third-graders. Anyone that paranoid about catching a virus would just stay home.
Woong rolled his eyes and sighed dramatically. He clapped his hands together like Kennedy had as a little kid in Sandy’s Sunday school class doing the hand motions to Deep and Wide. “You know. Alligator. Big teeth. Chomp chomp. I think they’re in Egypt.”
“That’s a crocodile.”
“No, crocodiles are the ones you make those funny sandal things out of. I’m talking about the big ones that eat you up in swamps.”
“And your teacher’s mask looked like one of those?”
“She wasn’t my teacher. She was the sub.”
“Right. Sorry. That’s the kind of mask she had?” Kennedy wracked her brain, trying to figure out what on earth Woong was talking about.
“No, it was just colored to look like an alligator.”
“Colored? Like it was green or something?”
Alligator-green sanitation masks. Maybe the Nipah outbreak would start a whole new fashion trend. She should let her roommate Willow know.
“No, it was drawled on.”
“The right word is drawed. I mean, actually it’s drawn. It had something colored on it? Like with crayons or something?”
Woong’s sigh was forceful enough to fill the entire front seats with the aroma of goldfish cracker crumbs. “No. She used a marker.”
“I get it now.” A substitute teacher who drew an animal face on a sanitation mask made a lot more sense than one who showed up in hazmat gear.
“She said she was wearing it because people are getting sick. They aren’t being careful enough when they sneeze. Are you careful when you sneeze?”
Kennedy tried to maintain a serious expression. “Usually.”
“Good. Because people are dying, you know.”
She shot him a quick glance. “Oh, yeah? Where did you hear that?”
“Chuckie Mansfield told me at recess. His dad’s a doctor, and Chuckie said they’re working extra hard at his hospital getting rooms ready for all the sick people who are coming.”
“Hospitals take care of sick people all the time. That’s what they do.” Kennedy tried to fight the nervous fluttering in her gut. Blame it on a conversation with her dad to make her anxious for the rest of the day.
“Yeah, but this sickness is really bad. Chuckie’s dad says so.”
Kennedy cleared her throat. “Well, then, let’s pray we all stay healthy and safe.”
“Ok. That’s a good idea. ’Cause you’re good at that kind of stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“You know, the praying sort of stuff. Hey, speaking of prayer, my leg’s been hurting. My mom says it’s growing pains, but what I’m wondering is if I ask God that he could make me grow taller without the hurting part. And maybe if I believe him hard enough I won’t have no pains no more.”
“Prayer doesn’t work like that exactly.”
“Well, my dad says we should pray for folks who are sick because sometimes God will make them well again. I was sick for a while back in Korea, you know. But then I got better. Think it’s ’cause someone was praying for me then?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Kennedy wasn’t used to Medford driving, or driving at all for that matter. That bank across the street didn’t look familiar. Had she missed her turn?
“Yeah, I think maybe, too,” Woong went on. “’Cause it was this homeless man, we called him Crazy Wu, who come and took care of me at first, and you know what? He believed in God even though he was insane.”
“Oh, really?” Where was Sycamore Street? The Lindgrens lived five minutes away from Woong’s school. How could she have gotten lost?
“Yeah, and he prayed for me when he found me with the sickness, and I’m guessing that’s how come I got better. But that makes me think, what happens to them kids who don’t have folks to pray for them, I wonder? Are they the ones who end up dying?”
“I’m sure God protects them no matter what,” she mumbled. There was Sycamore. She turned abruptly, thankful there were no cops behind her to ticket her for forgetting to use her blinker. She flicked it on for a few seconds post-turn to assuage her guilt.
“Oh, I guess that make sense. I wondered about that. You know what my dad says? He says God answers all our prayers, it’s just sometimes he won’t do it ’til heaven. But that makes me think, what happens if two people’re both praying different things, I wonder? Like what if I prayed for my mom to give me more Wii time, but she’s sure it’s gonna rot my brain or stuff and nonsense like that, so she gets to praying that she don’t? And then even if I get to heaven where my dad says we all get our prayers answered (and he’s a pastor so he knows all that sorta stuff), it makes me think, what happens to my Wii in heaven? Like, will God let me play it except he won’t let my mom know I’m doing it? Because that sounds sorta sneaky-like, know what I mean?”
Kennedy’s brain cells were spinning as fast as the F5 cyclone in Twister. “That’s a good question.” She wondered what Dominic would say. He was always the one with the theological answers. She almost wished he weren’t so strict about seeing her without anyone else around, as if they were two junior highers who needed a constant chaperone. It might be nice to put Woong to bed, throw on a movie, cuddle together on the couch. It would be two long days without anybody besides Woong to talk with. Maybe she’d try calling Willow tonight once he was asleep.
Willow had accepted Christ earlier in the semester, had prayed and asked God to forgive her sins. Kennedy wasn’t so sure how much of a spiritual impact her conversion had made, though. Throughout February, the two girls had studied the Bible together. Sandy had found them a beginner’s course for brand-new believers that Willow was excited to start. But then life got busy, her theater friends wanted to know why they weren’t seeing her around so much, and Willow started missing their Bible study dates. After a few weeks, Kennedy got sick of asking.
And now Willow was off to New York City to binge on Broadway shows with her friends. Sandy told Kennedy to be patient with her roommate, reminded her that people grow in their faith in different ways and at different speeds. Dominic was a little more concerned that Willow’s conversion hadn’t resulted in the sort of fruit he said even a baby believer should exhibit. Yet another reason Kennedy felt like she had let him down.
Well, Kennedy was doing what she could. She still asked Willow every so often to come to the church meetings at Dominic’s cousin’s, still offered to pick up that Bible study they’d started. The irony was that the two girls were more distant from each other after Willow’s prayer of salvation than they’d been when she was a die-hard atheist with a hint of agnostic leanings.
“Hey, I’ve got a question for you.”
“Yeah? What’s that?” Kennedy wasn’t sure how many more questions she could take in a single car ride. She sighed with relief when the Lindgrens’ cul de sac came into view.
“I’ve been wondering, how come God makes some people with them really springy curls in their hair? Like, there’s this one girl in my class named Becky Linklater, and she’s got the springiest curls you ever saw on a girl. Or a boy too, for that matter, but I’m guessing you coulda figured that out already. ’Cause I’d never seen hair like that before I come here, but my mom said that’s just because God doesn’t give girls in Korea hair like that. But what I want to know is, how come he doesn’t? And you’re not Korean, but your hair doesn’t do that springy thing. At least I don’t think it does, but I don’t know for sure ’cause you’ve always got it tied up like that in your horse’s tail. But do you think if you prayed God would give you curls?”
“I don’t know.” Kennedy let out her breath as she pulled the Honda into the Lindgrens’ driveway. “Let’s go in and get a snack.”
Woong sprang out of the car a second before Kennedy shifted into park. “Dibs on the blue Gogurts!” he shouted.
Kennedy waited for a minute, trying to catch her mental second wind, before she yelled out after him as loudly as she could, “Hey! Wash your hands before you touch the food!”