Read Online Devine Intervention by Martha Brockenbrough - Free Book Online

Hell. Once I knew what she’d seen, I figured out what had happened. It felt like there’d been an avalanche in my skull.
    â€œIs that —” she said. “Is that … me?”
    She pointed at the ambulance guys, who’d made their way out of the pond and stood by the edge of it. Water streamed off their wet suits into the snow. Heidi’s body hung between them. Her head tipped back and strips of hair dragged on the ground, and if my heart were still beating, it would’ve cracked open my chest and launched itself into the snow like a bleeding Molotov cocktail.
    It took me a while to get the words out. “Yeah. That’s — that’s you.”
    My throat filled with concrete. I hadn’t saved her. Not even close. I’d pulled her soul right out of her body and any second now she was going to whoosh away from me. She’d go to Heaven, I’d go to Hell, and that would be that. Sixteen years of her being with me, and it was over. Forever. For both of us.
    I couldn’t feel my hands or feet, and I couldn’t find any of the words that I wanted to say to her, and when I could focus again, the ambulance was driving away, and Heidi was running after it, with Jiminy at her heels.
    â€œWait!” she yelled. “WAIT!”
    They didn’t.
    I braced myself, and for the first time in I don’t know how long, I prayed to the Creator. Not that I’d ever seen him or was even sure he really existed. But I prayed, and I meant it.

Chapter 1, Subsection ii:
    The Ten Commandments for the Dead
    I. THOU SHALT NOT COMPLAIN ABOUT BEING DEAD.
    II. THOU SHALT NOT ENGAGE IN DISCOURSE WITH THE LIVING.
    III. THOU SHALT GIVE UP EARTHLY ATTACHMENTS.

H EIDI STOPPED RUNNING once she realized she could never catch the speeding ambulance. She bent over and put her hands on her knees, expecting her lungs to be on fire. But they weren’t. Strangely, she didn’t even feel tired, just exposed and rootless, like a tooth that had been yanked from its socket.
    Run home. She’d felt an overwhelming urge to go there, as if what had happened, what she’d seen, wouldn’t be real if she were able to return to her family, to her cave, like a wounded animal. She started running again, and once again her lungs refused to burn. Her heart refused to hammer in her chest. She felt nothing at all as she glided along the sidewalk, no branches tugging at her hair, no snow crunching beneath her feet, no pounding of cement against her soles. It was like being in a dream, and except for the presence of Jiminy at her ankles, she would’ve thought she was having one.
    She slowed to a jog just before she reached her house, staring at the figure on her porch. Jerome. Somehow, he’d known she’d come home. How he’d managed to beat her there was a mystery.
    Leaning against a post with his arms crossed, Jerome looked like his voice sounded, but if she’d seen him at school or the mall or some other landmark of her life, she would’ve avoided him. He was big. Taller than she, but skinny, like his body had forgotten to expand outward as it shot upward. His hair was shaggy and black, and he’d tucked his faded jeans into a pair of combat boots held on with laces that were more knot than anything else. His green canvas jacket, which looked like he’d bought it at a military surplus shop, was maybe a size too big.
    She stopped short, and Jiminy panted on the sidewalk behind her. In the distance, the neighborhood church bell tower started to ring.
    â€œYou’re here already. How —” The sound of the church bells passed through her, each one feeling as round and solid as a bowling ball.
    â€œI shooped,” he said. He walked toward her, holding out his hands as if he were going to take hold of hers. “Thought you’d do the same. All souls can do it, at least all the ones I know. There’s something I gotta explain —”
    She stepped