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rivers and shade. Good Lord, the desert is harsh. I asked the taxi driver to stop for a second beside a vacant lot between the airport and the Strip. There were some rental units on the other side of a cinder-block fence, some litter and a shedded snakeskin. I got out and it felt as if I were floating over the sharp rocks and angry little plants. Instead of feeling brand new, Las Vegas felt thousands of years old. Jason got outand we both knelt and prayed. Time passed; I felt dizzy and the cabbie honked the horn. We drove to Caesars Palace.
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    I knew we were goners when Dee knocked over an apple juice can. Clank . The three boys had been across the room shouting pointless fragments of pointless manifestos or whatever moronic ideas they had, but then, yes, the clank . It was so primal to watch their heads swivel toward us, and their eyes focusing-zeroing in like crocodiles in TV documentaries. Dee squeaked.
    I heard Duncan Boyle say, “Oh, if it isn’t the Out to Lunch Bunch slumming with us, the damned, here in purgatory, School District 44.” Listening to the inflections of his voice, for just a second I thought to myself that he could sing if he wanted to. I could always tell that about people-if they could sing or not.
    Just then, for whatever reason, the overhead sprinklers spritzed on. The boys were distracted and looked up at the ceiling. The water rained down onto the tables, onto the milk cartons and half-empty paper bags; it sounded like rain on a roof. Then it began trickling off the laminated tabletops and dripping onto my jeans and forearms. It was cold and I shivered and Lauren was shivering, too. I put my arm around her and held her to me, her teeth chattering like maracas. Then there were more shots-at us, I assumed, but Mitchell Van Waters blew out some of the sprinkler nozzles, shattering a large pipe, and the water came down on us in buckets.
    There was a noise from outside the building and Martin Boyle shouted, “Windows!” He and Mitchell blasted out four large panes opposite us. Then Duncan asked, “Was that a cop I saw out there?”
    â€œWhat do you think?” Mitchell was mad as hornets. “Rearm!”
    The guns made more metallic noises and Mitchell blew out the remaining windows. The school was now like a jewel case encrusted with snipers and cops. Their time with their victims was drawing to an end.
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    Lord,
    I know that faith is not the natural condition of the human heart, but why do You make it so hard to have faith? Were we so far gone here in boring North Van that we needed a shock treatment? There are thousands of suburbs as average as us. Why us then? And why now? You raise the cost of faith and You dilute its plausibility. Is that smart?
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    Dear God,
    I keep on imagining what those kids under the tables must have been feeling and it only makes me angrier and crazier at You. It just does.
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    Dear God,
    I’m prayed out, and yet here I am, still knocking on Your door, but I think this could be the last time.
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    Dear Lord,
    This is the first time I’ve ever prayed because I didn’t grow up with this stuff, but here I am, praying away, so maybe there’s something to it. Maybe I’m wasting my time. You tell me. Send me a sign. You must get a lot of that. Proof proof proof. Because to my mind, theschool massacre could mean that You don’t exist just as much-if not more than-it could mean that You do. If I was trying to recruit followers, a school massacre isn’t the way I’d go about doing it. But then it got me here right now, praying, didn’t it?
    Just so you know, I’m having my first drink here as I pray my first prayer-apricot liqueur, I skimmed off the top inch of my dad’s bottle. It tastes like penicillin and I like it.
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    I’ve never told anyone about the moment of my conversion in eleventh grade. I was by myself, out in the backyard in fall, sitting between two huckleberry