Jonah sat up on his knees.
“Help!” he screamed as loudly as his lungs could handle. “Help! Someone get me out of here!”
He pushed against the walls as hard as he could. With all his angel strength, he pushed. But the sides wouldn’t budge. He couldn’t move them. He tried, again and again, hitting them with his fists, karate chopping them with his feet. It was like they were made of something quarterling resistant.
Eliza’s text had caused something to break within him. All of his pretending, all the hiding, the running, and the acting as if he were someone that he wasn’t. All of it was stripped bare in the moment he realized his brother was in trouble and his sister needed him and he couldn’t do anything to help. He had neglected them, he had turned his back on them, and he knew it. He had let his anger and despair affect not only him but his family.
Now they were in trouble, and he was on the other side of the world—at least it felt like that—so far away that he couldn’t do anything.
“I can’t do anything for anyone,” he muttered. “I’m stuck here in this bus.”
Another reality hit him just as hard, and just as fast, in the darkness of the prison he was in. Eliza and Jeremiah, and his father, for that matter, weren’t the only ones he had neglected.
He fell again to his knees.
“Elohim,” he whispered. Over and over, the name came from his lips, His name the only sound there in the night.
“I’m done,” Jonah cried out. “I can’t do this anymore. Not on my own. You called to me, and I ran away. I tried to do everything on my own, everything. You chased after me, but I wouldn’t listen. You told me to go to New York, back with Eliza and Jeremiah . . . You told me to treat my dad differently than I have. And I didn’t do any of it. And look where I am. Right here, trapped in this bus at the bottom of a cliff.”
The tears rose in waves, and he let them come. His chest heaved, and an image of his mother’s face sprang across his mind.
“Mom . . . ,” he said, when his breathing finally slowed again. “I’ve been so upset, so mad about it all. You took her away, and I don’t get it. I don’t. But how I’ve been dealing with things, well, it obviously hasn’t helped. I don’t know what to do about all of that, about how much I miss her.” He stopped for a minute to gather his thoughts. “But I know that running from You isn’t the answer. I only ended up running from who I am, not running from You.”
Jonah lay down on the floor. “I’m ready to go, Elohim,” he finally said. “Ready to do whatever it is You want me to do.”
He fell asleep again, his head resting against a cushion, which was covered with his tears.
He awoke to a light shining down from the sky, illuminating the trees outside.
“Is that You?” Jonah asked sleepily, picking himself up from the floor.
He heard voices, faint at first, but growing louder. They were shouting, and soon he could make out the words.
“Hey! Is anyone down there? Anyone alive?”
Jonah moved close to the side where he could see through a small crack the size of a basketball. He could hear a whirring sound and saw a couple of ropes dangling in a clearing beside the wreckage he was in.
Several men were sliding down on ropes, which were attached to a helicopter, floating just above the tree line.
“I’m here! Yes!” he shouted. “I’m in here!”
The rescue didn’t take very long. Within minutes, the search-and-rescue team had cut through the side of the bus with their special tools, cracking it open like a coconut. Then they pulled Jonah back up to the road in a harness.
As Jonah sat with the medics a few minutes later, back at the top of the cliff, he could finally see where he had fallen.
“Son, you are one lucky kid,” said the man placing bandages on a couple of scrapes on his arms and legs. He nodded in the direction of the cliff. “Never seen anyone go over anything like that before. And I’ve definitely never seen anyone come out alive. Somebody’s watching out for you.”
Jonah nodded, and he knew that luck had nothing to do with it. And yes, more than ever, he was convinced that someone was indeed watching out for him.