The Miracle Stealer Read Online Free

white strobing lights flickered through the forest on the far side of Paradise Lake, and behind the distant siren’s cry, I thought I heard something else, slow and deep and rhythmic, like the clanging of some terrible bell.

CHAPTER TWO
    M y mother left us by ourselves on the first floor of St. Jude’s Regional Medical Center. The visitors’ area was a square box of a room with no windows and a TV hanging precariously from the ceiling in one corner, broadcasting static. Despite the NO SMOKING signs, the gray taste of cigarettes hung in the stale air. For ten minutes I stood on one of the mismatched chairs and tried to tune in something other than fuzz, but finally I gave up and settled down next to Daniel. He was flipping through the same coverless comic book he’d been looking at during the afternoon ride up from Paradise. The comic came from a bundle I’d bought him at a flea market over in Hawley, ten for a dollar. On the page spread across his lap, Superman sat alone in his Fortress of Solitude, an icy castle he hid in at the North Pole when the burden of saving the world got to be too much for him.
    â€œI need a Crunch bar,” Daniel announced, looking over at the snack machines. This was his third request.
    â€œYou don’t need it. You want it,” I told him.
    â€œOkay. I want a Crunch bar.”
    â€œYou didn’t have lunch yet,” I said. “Besides, I’m not paying a buck fifty for a candy bar.”
    â€œBut I’m hungry.”
    â€œYou’re only hungry because there’s candy in front of you. Don’t look at it.”
    With an annoyed sigh, he went back to Superman. From the way Daniel was acting, I was pretty sure he didn’t remember the last time we were here, how I found him huddled up in that broom closet after Mrs. Bundower died, squeezing his fat fingers in prayer and sucking back tears. It had been three years ago, after all—half his lifetime.
    While Daniel and I waited, my mother had gone upstairs to check with the Abernathys to see if this was still an okay time to visit with them and the baby, now two days old but still nameless. I felt certain she was up there warning them that I’d come along, which certainly wasn’t part of the agreed-upon plan. Everyone would worry that my heathen presence would somehow infect the innocent child.
    When I was just six, Grandpa Anderson, the man I was named after and the original owner of the Camp Anderson compound, died in this very building. So hospitals have been near the top of my list of things I absolutely hate for a long time. The past year of my life hasn’t done much to change this. But that day I swallowed my fear of white coats and hypodermic needles for Daniel’s sake. I didn’t trust my mother any more than she trusted me.
    â€œHey, Andi,” Daniel said, “if Superman and Jesus had a battle, who’d win?” He didn’t lift his face from the comic.
    â€œSuperman and Jesus are both good guys,” I said. “They wouldn’t fight.”
    Daniel turned a page. “But what if they did? What if Lex Luthor brainwashed Superman and made him evil and he was knocking down a church or something. You think Jesus could stop him?”
    I pictured Jesus holding a green chunk of Kryptonite, standing over a genuflecting but still-undefeated Man of Steel. I knew that Jesus preached peace and love, but He went nuts in the temple that one time, so I figured He had a good fight in Him. Strange, but I always liked Jesus better when He was acting more like a person and less like a god.
    â€œSuperman’s make-believe,” I told Daniel. “You know that.”
    â€œSure, I know. And Jesus is for real. Right?”
    I was quiet. Though he was just six, Daniel had a way of asking things like this all the time, and you never got used to it. It wasn’t just “Do fish get colds?” or “What happens to the sun at night?” He