The Waterproof Bible Read Online Free PDF Page A

agreement.
    “Just promise me you won’t do anything this stupid again.”
    Rebecca didn’t say a word, but her cheeks grew red and shame radiated from her every pore.
    “Okay,” Lisa said. She held Rebecca’s face for a second longer, then let go and went to bed. She never told.
    Rebecca opened her eyes and looked at the dingy linoleum floor of the church basement.
    “Rebecca? Rebecca?” she heard. She turned her head and was momentarily surprised when she did not see Stewart beside her. Looking down, she saw the cellphone, which explained why his voice seemed so tiny and far away.
    “I’m here.”
    “And?”
    “Yeah, that one’s going to work,” Rebecca said. The Derrick Miller memory made her feel tremendous love and respect for Lisa. It reminded her how much joy she felt simply to have known her, let alone been her older sister.
    “There you go.”
    “Thanks, Stewart.”
    “You’re gonna do great.”
    “Plus, I think I lost my keys.”
    “Don’t worry about that right now. You have a second set.”
    “I even have a third.”
    “You’re going to be fine.”
    “Thanks, Stewart.”
    “Okay, then. Call me after?”
    “I will.”
    “Okay,” Stewart said, but Rebecca hung up her phone before he finished, as she didn’t want him to feel how much she missed him.
    Going upstairs, Rebecca met a bald uncle coming down.
    “Where were you?”
    “I got lost.”
    “We’ve been waiting.”
    “Let’s go,” she said.
    Rebecca walked to the front pew, where she sat between her mother and father. She opened a hymn book. She looked down and noticed an ant crawling along the worn hardwood floor. Watching its progress, Rebecca lost track of time until she felt an elbow push into her ribs. Turning to her right, she saw her mother smiling sadly.
    “It’s you now.”
    “Oh,” Rebecca said. She looked up. From behind the pulpit, Reverend Stevenson stared over his glasses at her, his left eyebrow weirdly magnified by the lens. She stood. The hymn book fell to the floor. The sound echoed through the church. Rebecca bent over and reached for the book, but it slipped from her fingers, falling to the floor a second time.
    “Go, just go,” her mother whispered.
    Leaving the book on the floor, Rebecca pushed past shifted knees into the aisle. She walked to the casket. She looked down. She stayed like this, looking, until the minister cleared his throat. Startled, Rebecca turned and then walked behind the pulpit. She folded her hands behind her back. She let them fall to her sides. She took a verydeep breath, but as she opened her mouth to speak, Rebecca realized that all of her emotions surrounding the Derrick Miller memory had disappeared. The facts remained clear—she could see the teenage girls in tight jeans, Derrick Miller’s long black hair and the vodka bottle on the kitchen floor. But all the emotions had seemingly evaporated. The joy, love and respect she’d felt not twenty minutes earlier were gone.
    The church remained silent. Rebecca looked at her hands. She searched for another memory. She remembered several: when Lisa had refused to move into her new bedroom; when she’d gotten into trouble at summer camp; when she’d driven the car at fourteen. But there were no emotions connected to these memories, either. Their absence caused Rebecca to feel a number of different things: surprise, anxiety and even fear. But what she felt most was shame. Two days after Lisa’s death, her love had already weakened.
    This shame left Rebecca. It went to everyone sitting in the church. Women felt the shame that radiated from Rebecca and wondered what could possibly have caused it. Men looked up from the floor, anger visible in the corners of their eyes. There was no sound. No one moved. Neither her mother nor her father would look up from the floor as Rebecca stepped from the pulpit. Keeping her head down, she walked to the back of the church and through the doorway, the large wooden doors closing behind