Mourning Becomes Cassandra Read Online Free Page A

nutrition Nazi. One of my food rules was that we weren’t going to give her any sugary sweets for the first year, to see if it could prevent her from developing a sweet tooth. In my zeal, I considered a sweet tooth the gateway condition to childhood obesity and early-onset diabetes. But my experiment didn’t work. After that first puzzled taste, Min licked every speck of frosting off her cupcake and begged for more. Like mythologists of old, I learned that once desire was out of the box, there was no stuffing it back in. Min spent the remaining months of her short life being an absolute sugar fanatic, willing to do anything for M&Ms or a cookie, and I worriedly imagined her first high school boyfriend getting whatever he wanted from her for a couple Oreos.
    Once Min tasted sugar, there was no pretending she was going to be content thereafter with only sour, salty, bitter, and umami. Could I? If I lay low, God—keep my head down and behave myself—will you let me be? I leave you alone—ask for nothing—and you leave me alone?
    I wouldn’t say the heavens opened and angels ascended and descended, but the speaker sat down at last, and a teenage girl stood up to speak, recapturing my attention.
    She was average height and maybe sixteen, with lank brown hair and conservative clothing that she looked rather uncomfortable in. She cleared her throat a couple times and glanced nervously to someone seated off to the side.
    “Hi, I’m Ellie,” she read from her cards. “I came to Camden School last spring after being kicked out of my old high school for doing drugs. Camden School is an alternative school for students like me who haven’t been succeeding in the regular public school system. I’d been doing drugs since middle school and gotten in lots of trouble and didn’t know how to change my life. At Camden School I meet with a substance abuse counselor and get lots of one-on-one attention from my teachers. They really care about me here, and I have been sober for four months. I really missed school this summer and seeing my friends and teachers, and I can’t wait to start again next week. I am also excited about getting a mentor this year. A mentor is an adult who can hang out with me regularly and do occasional activities with other students and mentors. This church is one of the big financial supporters of our school, and I want to say thank you for helping people like me. We also depend on many volunteers at our school to help with fundraising and special events and tutoring and mentoring. If you would like to help in any of these areas, please see the information in the bulletin. Thank you.”
    Ellie delivered this entire speech on three breaths, tops, and when she sat down there was a wave of encouraging applause. Feeling a burning sensation in my chest, I scrabbled with the bulletin to look at the blurb on Camden School. As if they were a message for me, the letters seemed to jump from the page, like the red-letter sayings of Jesus in my mother-in-law’s King James.
    But how could it be? My life was in shambles, and I didn’t know the first thing about teenagers or drug addiction. On the other hand, surely I could hang out with a teenager and encourage her to stay on the wagon and in school? But what would any teenager want with some pathetic woman who had lost everything and had no idea how to start from scratch? Didn’t they want hope, instead of, “Work hard and play it straight, and one day your life, too, might go up in flames”?
    Discouraged, I wadded up the bulletin and threw it on the floor, only to glimpse the raised eyebrow of the woman next to me. Clearly she wasn’t excited about me littering in the Sanctuary. Too long used to behaving myself, I picked the bulletin back up and stuffed it in my purse. Fine, God, I’ll keep it. But if you really have the crazy idea I should mentor someone, you’re going to have to make it a little clearer.
    When the service let out, I darted out the front doors.