Here Be Hope for weeks before the mistake about Addy’s whereabouts was discovered. But Cole thought if Addy had been trying to reach him she’d have done so by now, and he was not surprised when one day, not long after he’d moved to Salvation City, PW gave him the news that she had passed. PW didn’t say anything about Addy’s being Jewish, or about her being unsaved and therefore condemned to hell. He only repeated what he’d told Cole before: the best way to remember people after they’ve passed is to remember the good about them. And then they had prayed together.
That loss did not touch his core. He’d never been close to Addy, or even had a chance to get to know her. He’d never been quite sure what to make of her, especially after hearing his mother say Addy was the kind of woman for whom having kids would’ve ruined her life. It wasn’t that he took it personally (Addy had always been perfectly nice to him), but it had made him a little wary.
His father used to say that part of his mother’s dissatisfaction in life had to do with the fact that growing up a twin, she’d never felt she was unique or special enough. Which perplexed Cole, not just because he would have given anything to have had a twin brother but because he thought being a twin meant that you were special.
Once he’d absorbed the fact that Addy, too, had vanished from the earth, his strongest feeling was not loss but gratitude that his mother had been spared this. Because even though they had lived far apart, and even if his mother had not been happy about being a twin, he knew that she had loved Addy. He remembered that Addy was the first person she had turned to after his father died.
Remember not the former things (Isaiah). Forget and press on.
But in the days leading up to the broadcast, Cole found himself living more and more in the past. As if his memory were like an empty stomach now, needing to fill itself up.
Lying in his parents’ bed, in his father’s flu germs—this he remembered so well it could have happened that morning. Cole had never spoken out loud his wish to die. (The secrets piling up, one after the other; he carried them with him, stones in a sack.) That feeling had passed; he’d stopped wanting to die.
He did not have the strength for such a powerful wish.
The pills he was given in the hospital, the ones he was promised would make him feel better, he’d cheeked them and later flushed them away. Feel better for what?
And when he was well enough to be moved to the orphanage (actually a converted warehouse for an electronics supply company that had gone out of business), it had helped not to care. It made the transition easier, as things are easier when you don’t care what happens to you.
He did not feel better, he did not feel worse. He was a stranger inside his own skin. He did not eat much, some days not at all. Either he had trouble falling asleep or he slept around the clock.
He did not make friends. He avoided people—and not just the ones you had to avoid if you didn’t want trouble. He avoided everyone, other kids and grown-ups alike. But in fact, unless you were a gangbanger or a rapture child or injured or very sick, you were not likely to attract much grown-up attention.
“Sounds to me like it wasn’t much better than a kennel. Is that right, my dear? You got food, water, and shelter, but not much else?”
“Yes,” Cole said—truthfully, yet his face reddened as if he’d lied. He knew he was expected to say more, and he could have said more. About the way kids fought over food. About how some kids would take food away from other kids, partly out of hunger, but mostly to be mean. They’d throw the food around (Here Be Hope food fights were epic), or do something to it so that even the hungriest kid wouldn’t eat it. (Though there was the time a boy had a coughing fit, and when a chunk of meat flew out of his mouth another boy caught it midair and stuffed it into his own mouth.) It had happened a few times to Cole, having his food snatched (usually by Da Phist), but since he was never very hungry it hadn’t affected