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“When is it?” Stalling.

“This Sunday,” Nance told her. “Aren’t you about ready for a change of scenery? I can help you get in and out.” She gave Suzi a wink. “Bet there’ll be some cute guys there.”

What would an old lady know about cute guys? But Suzi was bored out of her mind and her friends were already making excuses about why they couldn’t stop by, and Davis was losing interest in her because she couldn’t roller-skate—hell, couldn’t even walk—so it was probably no time at all until he moved on to a girl who could put one foot in front of the other and who actually liked him back. There was plenty of time to lie here and think about how miserable she was.

* * *

“I don’t know.” Her mother was slumped over the sink, washing dishes. “Isn’t that a church of wackos? Like a cult?”

Suzi had to admit that she knew nothing about the church. She’d had to hobble into the kitchen on her crutches to talk to her mother, since her mother rarely came to her.

“Do you really want to go?”

Suzi shrugged. “It’s for Grandparents’ Day.”

“What?” Her mother turned away from the sink. “Is she calling you her granddaughter?”

“No,” Suzi said, wondering why her mother would care. “I’m just a stand-in.”

“She said that? Stand-in? You’re sure? She didn’t say that you were her granddaughter? She never said that? Or hinted at that?”

Suzi was confused. What exactly, had Nance said? Why did it matter? “Uh. No, she didn’t. She’s not deluded or anything. I don’t think.”

“Oh my God.” Her mother turned back to washing the dishes, scrubbing at a muffin tin like she was performing the most important job on earth.

“Why not put that in the dishwasher?” Suzi suggested.

Her mother only scrubbed harder, working on every muffin indentation. “The dishwasher doesn’t get this clean,” she said, and then sighed loudly. “We need to go back to church.”

That would never happen. They went to church only a couple of times a year, because her mother said she didn’t want to have to get up early on the weekend and hurry around making everyone get dressed and have to look presentable herself and then—horrors!—be forced to chitchat with well-meaning strangers!

“Dad would really like it if we went to church,” her mother went on. “Maybe Granddad could go with you and Nance.”

Suzi didn’t want her granddad dragging along after them. “I don’t think he’d like that kind of church,” she told her mother, even though she really had no idea what kind of church it was.

“Probably not.” Her mother turned off the water in the kitchen sink and snatched up the dish towel. She frowned at Suzi. “I just don’t know.”

“It’s a church, not a satanic temple.”

What was Mom worrying so much about this for?

* * *

Mom needn’t have worried, because by the time she sat down in the church, Suzi was too tired to even consider joining a cult. Most of her energy and focus was used up getting into the backseat of Nance’s car and then out again in front of the church, which was in a strip mall; then across the sidewalk and through the front door; through the lobby, which was like one you’d fine in a fancy hotel with marble floors and a guest services desk and couches and armchairs and even shops selling coffee and T-shirts and CDs; and then into the sanctuary, which was like an auditorium with padded seats and thick carpeting. She and Nance sat at the back, at the end of an aisle.

The room was huge. Red and purple spotlights shone on the stage, where, in front of a metallic backdrop a rock band played. In front of the rock band, six singers, three white and three black, exhorted the congregation to stand and feel the spirit. Suzi, thank God, couldn’t stand, and neither did Nance; but they watched the semicool-looking singers on the screen lead the congregation in a bouncy song about Jesus that went on and on. Big cameras were stationed on platforms here and there, and images of the band and musicians were projected onto two big screens on either side of the stage, along with the