How I Came to Sparkle Again Read Online Free

was people who were the heroes, and people who were generous, and people who comforted one another.
    And he believed in nature, in survival instincts, in the way living things will cling to every last shred of life and fight for it. He believed in a cell’s ability to multiply and repair even the most heinous injuries. He believed in life.
    And just as he thought that, the girl in the back of the aid car flatlined despite all their efforts. And while he was glad she wouldn’t be waking up in severe pain in the hospital without her parents and her brother, he was not glad she was dead. He wondered again where God was now, but truly he did not want to hear anyone make up a story to try to explain. He did not want to hear any more explanations, anyone else grasping to make sense of things that didn’t make sense. He wished more people would just admit they didn’t know.
    He was glad that it wouldn’t be up to him to notify the family’s relatives. It had been only four months since Kate died, and he found it extremely difficult to deal with other people’s grief while he dealt with his own. And even though he did not believe in God, he hoped the mourners did. He hoped they had some story they told themselves that would comfort them and would get them through such a huge loss, a story that would help them get out of bed in the morning when the weight of their loss would pin them down.
    John and Ben were quiet in the back. What they all knew well was this: Life was fragile. And sometimes it was unspeakably sad.
    *   *   *
     
    Two blocks down the street from Mike and Cassie’s house, Lisa Carlucci pretended to be asleep as Cody quietly dressed next to the bed. She didn’t take it personally that he was sneaking out. She understood. She’d done it herself. And truthfully, she was relieved. She didn’t want to have to look at him in the light of day and see how much this hadn’t meant to him. It was bad enough to have seen it in the dark. She wasn’t mad at him, though. She had chosen this situation knowing full well what it was and what it wasn’t.
    She felt discomfort in her core, a feeling that was hard to name, but something like anger and something like emptiness. She waited to hear Cody descend the stairs, no doubt bristling with fear that he would wake her every time a stair squeaked. She actually smiled just thinking of his inner terror. She listened to the front door open and then close. Only then did she open her eyes. She was thankful that he shut the door quietly because she didn’t want any of the guys next door to look out and see him leave. For that same reason, she was also thankful he had arrived on foot and left the same way.
    A shaft of light fell through a crack in the curtains and landed on a bronze crucifix near her door. It had been her great-grandfather’s.
    She hadn’t gone to confession in years, but suddenly she believed it might feel good. She thought about what she would say and realized it wasn’t the actual sex she felt was the great sin. It was the fact that she had lost faith. She had lost faith that God had a better plan for her when it came to love, and as a result, she had settled. She needed to repent for treating her body as if it were a cheap motel instead of a temple.
    She crawled out of bed, paused near the door, made the sign of the cross, kissed her hand and gently touched the crucifix, and said a prayer pledging a faith forgotten, pledging change. She walked to the bathroom and paused to look at herself in the full-length mirror. She wrapped her arms around herself and said aloud, “What am I doing? This isn’t a Holiday Inn.” Although she was sleepy and wanted to return to her warm bed, she didn’t like smelling like Cody and sex. So instead of going back to bed, she took a hot shower.
    She emerged from the shower wondering what God’s better plan might look like, because truthfully, she didn’t want to get married. Women who got married got screwed. She saw