I nodded, my lips pressed together, knowing that I would have been one of those people she was talking about. In fact, I already was. Jamie and Eddie, the dynamic duo, we called them after Miss Garber had announced that they'd be the ones doing the roles. The very fact that it was I who had started it up made me feel terrible, almost sick to my stomach.

She straightened up a little in her seat and looked at me sadly, as if she already knew I was going to say no. I guess she didn't know how I was feeling. She went on.

"I know that challenges are always part of the Lord's plan, but I don't want to believe that the Lord is cruel, especially to someone like my father. He devotes his life to God, he gives to the community. And he's already lost his wife and has had to raise me on his own. And I love him so much for it. . . ."

Jamie turned away, but I could see the tears in her eyes. It was the first time I'd ever seen her cry. I think part of me wanted to cry, too.

"I'm not asking you to do it for me," she said softly, "I'm really not, and if you say no, I'll still pray for you. I promise. But if you'd like to do something kind for a wonderful man who means so much to me . . . Will you just think about it?"

Her eyes looked like those of a cocker spaniel that had just messed on the rug. I looked down at my feet.

"I don't have to think about it," I finally said. "I'll do it."

I really didn't have a choice, did I?

Chapter 5

The next day I talked to Miss Garber, went through the audition, and got the part. Eddie, by the way, wasn't upset at all. In fact, I could tell he was actually relieved about the whole thing. When Miss Garber asked him if he'd be willing to let me play the role of Tom Thornton, his face sort of relaxed right there and one of his eyes popped back open. "Y-y-yes, a-a-absolutely," he said, stuttering. "I-I-I un-un-understand." It took him practically ten seconds to get the words out.

For his generosity, however, Miss Garber gave him the role of the bum, and we knew he'd do fairly well in that role. The bum, you see, was completely mute, but the angel always knew what he was thinking. At one point in the play she has to tell the mute bum that God will always watch out for him because God especially cares for the poor and downtrodden. That was one of the tip-offs to the audience that she'd been sent from heaven. Like I said earlier, Hegbert wanted it to be real clear who offered redemption and salvation, and it certainly wasn't going to be a few rickety ghosts who just popped up out of nowhere.

Rehearsals started the next week, and we rehearsed in the classroom, because the Playhouse wouldn't open their doors for us until we'd got all the "little bugs" out of our performance. By little bugs, I mean our tendency to accidentally knock over the props. The props had been made about fifteen years ago, when the play was in its first year, by Toby Bush, a sort of roving handyman who had done a few projects for the Playhouse in the past. He was a roving handyman because he drank beer all day long while he worked, and by about two o'clock or so he'd really be flying. I guess he couldn't see straight, because he'd accidentally whack his fingers with the hammer at least once a day. Whenever that happened, he'd throw down the hammer and jump up and down, holding his fingers, cursing everyone from his mother to the devil. When he finally calmed down, he'd have another beer to soothe the pain before going back to work. His knuckles were the size of walnuts, permanently swollen from years of whacking, and no one was willing to hire him on a permanent basis. The only reason Hegbert had hired him at all was because he was far and away the lowest bidder in town.

But Hegbert wouldn't allow drinking or cursing, and Toby really didn't know how to work within such a strict environment. As a result, the work was kind of sloppy, though it wasn't obvious right off the bat. After a few years the props began to fall apart, and Hegbert took it upon himself to keep the things together. But while Hegbert was good at thumping the Bible, he wasn't too good at thumping nails, and the props had bent, rusty nails sticking out all over, poking through the plywood in so many places that we had to be careful to walk exactly where we were supposed to. If we bumped them the wrong way, we'd either cut ourselves or the props would topple over, making little nail holes all over the stage floor. After a couple of years the Playhouse stage had to be resurfaced, and though they couldn't exactly close their doors to Hegbert, they made a deal with him to be more careful in the future. That meant we had to practice in the classroom until we'd worked out the "little bugs."

Fortunately Hegbert wasn't involved with the actual production of the play, because of all his ministering duties. That role fell to Miss Garber, and the first thing she told us to do was to memorize our lines as quickly as possible. We didn't have as much time as was usually allotted for rehearsals because Thanksgiving came on the last possible day in November, and Hegbert didn't want the play to be performed too close to Christmas, so as not to interfere with "its true meaning." That left us only three weeks to get the play just right, which was about a week shorter than usual.

The rehearsals began at three o'clock, and Jamie knew all her lines the first day there, which wasn't really surprising. What was surprising was that she knew all my lines, too, as well as everyone else's. We'd be going over a scene, she'd be doing it without the script, and I'd be looking down at a stack of pages, trying to figure out what my next line should be, and whenever I looked up she had this real shiny look about her, as if waiting for a burning bush or something. The only lines I knew were the mute bum's, at least on that first day, and all of a sudden I was actually envious of Eddie, at least in that regard. This was going to be a lot of work, not exactly what I'd expected when I'd signed up for the class.

My noble feelings about doing the play had worn off by the second day of rehearsals. Even though I knew I was doing the "right thing," my friends didn't understand it at all, and they'd been riding me since they'd found out. "You're doing what?" Eric asked when he learned about it. "You're doing the play with Jamie Sullivan? Are you insane or just plain stupid?" I sort of mumbled that I had a good reason, but he wouldn't let it drop, and he told everyone around us that I had a crush on her. I denied it, of course, which just made them assume it was true, and they'd laugh all the louder and tell the next person they saw. The stories kept getting wilder, too—by lunchtime I'd heard from Sally that I was thinking of getting engaged. I actually think Sally was jealous about it. She'd had a crush on me for years, and the feeling might have been mutual except for the fact that she had a glass eye, and that was something I just couldn't ignore. Her bad eye reminded me of something you'd see stuffed into the head of a mounted owl in a tacky antique shop, and to be honest, it sort of gave me the willies.

I guess that was when I started to resent Jamie again. I know it wasn't her fault, but I was the one who was taking the arrows for Hegbert, who hadn't exactly gone out of his way the night of homecoming to make me feel welcome. I began to stumble through my lines in class for the next few days, not really even attempting to learn them, and occasionally I'd crack a joke or two, which everyone laughed at, except for Jamie and Miss Garber. After rehearsal was over I'd head home to put the play out of my mind, and I wouldn't even bother to pick up the script. Instead I'd joke with my friends about the weird things Jamie did and tell fibs about how it was Miss Garber who had forced me into the whole thing.