Read Online Heaven Is Paved with Oreos by Catherine Gilbert Murdock - Free Book Online

Peter’s. You can’t see the angels (they are extremely small in proportion to the whole dome, even if their toenails are the size of eggs), but you can see the gold mosaic and the light shining through the windows and the overall enormous fanciness.
    This is what the postcard said:
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Dear D.J.:
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This is St. Peter’s, which is huge and beautiful. I am not sure it is my favorite place in Rome, because we have only been here one day. I will have to visit more places. I hope your basketball is going well.
Your passenger,

Sarah
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    I wrote to D.J. because I have been thinking about her a lot. D.J. would never be happy just being the girlfriend of someone who made angel-toenail mosaics; she would want to make angel-toenail mosaics herself. She is the kind of girl I want to be.
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Friday, July 12—LATER
    We are in bed now. We kept walking after supper—although slowly!—and talking about how much we would like to live in a pink building, but only in Rome. Z asked how I was doing with Curtis.
    â€œOkay,” I said, although I am not okay. “I think about him all the time. I wish I knew what happened.” I didn’t mention how afraid I am of seeing him in high school and not knowing what to do or say. Afraid of seeing him with Emily.
    Z shook her finger at me. “You can’t let a boy define your life. This whole world is yours, and you are so smart . . . Think about him, yes. But not all the time! Any guy who doesn’t want you isn’t good enough for you.”
    The more I think about what Z said, however, the worse I feel. I know she was only trying to cheer me up, but my mood ≠ cheery. My brain ≠ cheery either. My brain is doing its super-rational thing where it points out cold, hard truths.
    For example: there are obviously a large number of guys in the world who do not want me one little bit, who are not even one-mosaic-chip interested in me. Most guys, actually. Probably >99% of them. Maybe the fact that I don’t want to be an angel-toenail-inspirer doesn’t mean anything—not if <1% of guys would want my inspiration anyway. Maybe I just have to get used to the fact that I will be spending my life all by my lonesome.
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Saturday, July 13
    TODAY WE ARE GOING TO BE SUPERPILGRIMS! We are going to visit FOUR churches in one day!
    I am having coffee juice to get ready. Z is having two cappuccinos. I am feeling much less uncheery—the sky is too sunny for me to be sad, even about my uninspirational future.
    The first church we are visiting is the one I’m most excited about. Mary is the mother of Jesus and one of the most important women in the history of the world. This church is called Santa Maria Maggiore (
maggiore
=
major)
because it’s the majorest church for her. You know who is buried there? Bernini, the man who carved the happy elephant! And the ceiling is made out of the first gold the Spaniards brought back from America. You always read that Columbus discovered America, but you never know what he did with it—now I do!
    Perhaps instead of becoming a scientist I should be a tour guide.
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Saturday, July 13—LATER
    Did you know that the Maggiore church is in a foreign country—a foreign country that is not Italy? Seriously. There is a fence around it with Roman police on one side and different-colored police on the other. It is part of the Vatican—like St. Peter’s, which we saw yesterday, only I was so busy writing about other things that I forgot to mention it. The Vatican is a tiny country for the pope so he doesn’t have to use the Italian post office. Italy has a terrible post office. That explains the post office on St. Peter’s roof!
    When Z and I first got to the Maggiore church, there was a tour group outside with a tour guide who was Irish. I’ve never heard an Irish accent in real life before. It is so pretty—it sounds like old-fashioned