Excerpt from SAINT JOAN OF NEW YORK
Chapter One
I'll start at the beginning, okay? My name is Joan Cooper, and I'm seventeen years old. I'm going to tell you about the first time I saw God.
It happened last October, on a Saturday afternoon. I was in the Bronx, running in the biggest race of the cross-country track season, the city championship for New York's high schools. And I was doing great, even better than I'd hoped. I sprinted down the trail through the woods of Van Cortlandt Park, way ahead of all the other girls on the five-kilometer course. By the time I reached the halfway point, I had a fifty-yard lead on the pack behind me.
Seriously, I was killing it. I felt strong, pumped. But most of all, I felt relieved. The beginning of my senior year had been a nightmare. I hadn't smiled in months. But now I was practically laughing as I charged up and down the wooded hills. I knew I was going to win the race, and winning still felt good.
That's when I saw the Lord Almighty, although I didn't realize at the time that I was looking at the Creator. I thought I saw a fallen runner, a puny African-American boy who'd collapsed on the trail.
He was at the bottom of the course's steepest hill, a hundred feet ahead. The boy lay facedown on the edge of the trail, half-on and half-off the path, his skinny legs splayed across the mud and dead leaves. He wore a team uniform -- bright red shorts and a sleeveless track shirt -- so I assumed he was one of the runners in the Boys Junior Varsity race, which had started twenty minutes before the Girls Varsity. I figured he must've been in last place, lagging behind all the other JV boys, and then he'd slipped on the steep, muddy slope, and nobody had seen him fall. And because I was ahead of everyone else in the next race, I was the first person to run into him.
At first I was just startled. But as I got closer and took a better look at the kid, I noticed he wasn't moving. It was a frigid day for October, barely forty degrees, and yet the boy hadn't curled up into a ball for warmth. His head was bent at a sharp angle, skewed against his left shoulder.
I started to panic. Because I thought of my sister.
I hurtled downhill and stopped next to the kid. My head swam as I looked down at him, and my legs trembled. I tried to calm myself by doing some fast calculations in my head: Newton's Second Law, gravity and acceleration, the maximum force of the impact when the boy hit the ground. I'm a math geek, a nerd to the core, and when I get nervous I can usually calm myself down by crunching numbers, calculating probabilities. But this was bad, really bad. I couldn't stop shaking.
I crouched beside him. "Hey? You okay?"
He didn't answer. The boy lay still, his shorts and shirt splattered with mud, the back of his head covered with the black stubble of a buzz cut. He was tiny, smaller than any JV runner I'd ever seen, more like a middle-school kid than a high-schooler. I was afraid to touch him -- it looked like his neck might be broken -- but I put my hand on his bare shoulder and gave it a light squeeze. "Hey, kid? Can you hear me?"
Still no answer. I heard a clattering behind my back, the pounding footsteps of the pack of runners catching up to me, but when I looked up I saw that no one else was stopping. Seven of the fastest Varsity girls from Brooklyn and Manhattan zipped right past me and dashed up the next hill on the course, their eyes fixed straight ahead. Even Elena, my friend and teammate from Franklin High -- the Rosalind Franklin High School for Math and Science -- refused to break stride.
I couldn't believe it. The race didn't matter anymore! Someone needed to stay with this kid while I ran for help. The closest race officials were at the two-kilometer checkpoint, which was several hundred yards behind us.
I stood up and cupped my hands around my mouth, ready to order the girls to come back. But before I could shout anything, the boy rolled over and smiled.
"Don't bother. I'm all right."
His voice was high-pitched, like a little kid's, but strong and cheerful. He raised his head and propped himself up on his elbows, smiling as if he recognized me.
It took me a couple of seconds to get over my surprise. I gave him a once-over, glancing at his head and legs and arms. No cuts, no bruises. Like everyone else in the race, he had a square piece of paper with his race number -- 137 -- safety-pinned to the front of his track shirt. There was a big splotch of mud on his shirt that made it hard to read the name of his high school, but his face was spotless, as smooth and pretty as a doll's. His lips were shiny and delicately curved, as if they'd been painted on his mouth. His eyelashes were long and fluttery.
I stared at him. He was angelic. There was no other word for it.
I leaned over him, bending low. "Listen, are you hurt? Did you twist your ankle?"
He shook his head. He seemed amused by my concern. "I'm fine. Perfect, in fact." The boy lifted one of his skinny legs and flexed his ankle, raising and lowering the toe of his muddy sneaker. "See? Nothing broken."
But my heart was still pounding. If the kid wasn't hurt, why was he lying on the edge of the trail? And smiling at me like that? Was this some kind of joke?
"Well, if nothing's wrong, can you get on your feet?" I stretched my hand toward him. "Come on, I'll give you a—"
"No, I'm good. I like the view from down here." Still smiling, he pointed straight up. "The trees are beautiful, right? All the leaves falling. So many colors."
I frowned. This kid was messing with me. He'd already ruined my race -- there was no way I could catch up to the pack of girls in the lead -- and now he was playing some stupid game, making me feel like an idiot for stopping to help him. I heard more footsteps behind me, and then the second wave of Varsity runners came running down the hill, a tight pack of nine girls. In a few seconds they rushed past, not even glancing at me, just like the first pack. As if I weren't there.
It was odd. And disturbing.
The boy stopped smiling and looked me in the eye. "Stand up, child. You've passed the test. I am well pleased with you."
His voice was serious now, deep and loud. It sounded like someone else had started speaking through the kid, someone much older and bigger, an invisible giant who was using the boy like a ventriloquist's dummy. His words echoed against the hills. The falling leaves seemed to linger in mid-descent, the curled scraps of yellow and orange drifting ever so slowly to the ground.
The boy cocked his head, gesturing toward the trail and the runners in the distance. "Go on, finish your race. But we'll talk again soon. The end of all things is at hand."
I stood up straight, my legs trembling again. All of a sudden, I was terrified. My throat tightened and my mouth went dry. "Okay…okay…I'm going."
I backed away from him. After a while I started jogging down the trail, slowly picking up speed, but I kept looking over my shoulder, swiveling my head every few seconds. The kid had freaked me out. I didn't want to turn my back on him.
I still didn't realize he was God. To tell you the truth, the idea hadn't even occurred to me yet. I felt no solemn awe in his presence, no sense of "divine majesty" or anything hokey like that. But you know how everyone in church says that true believers are supposed to fear the Lord? That's something I did feel. I was afraid of that boy lying on the ground. And I was even more afraid that I was going crazy.
I kept my eyes on the kid until I reached the top of the next hill and couldn't see him anymore. Then I faced forward and ran as fast as I could.