The Miracles of Ordinary Men by Amanda Leduc Page B

a room with Roberta and pretended not to notice the muffled sobs, the shaking that came from the other bed. Usually, Timothy would crawl into bed with her at some point in the night. He burned as he slept — a human furnace that smelled of snow and dirt and air.
    That day, she walked home from school to the rhythm of her times tables. Eight times eight is sixty-four. Eight times nine is seventy-two. She’d always had trouble with these, and she was concentrating so hard that she missed the curb. Her foot buckled
and down went the rest of her. Her face smacked against the stone.
    She lay still for a moment, and then stumbled to her feet, the copper taste of shock warm in her mouth. Raised a hand and felt it, warm beneath her nose.
    â€œSay fuck,”
said a voice. She turned — slowly, still unsure of the world — and saw a boy. He was breathing hard; he’d been running. Later, Lilah would realize that he’d run to her. It had been a spectacular fall.
    â€œAre you all right?” he said. Sixteen? Seventeen? She couldn’t tell.
    â€œI think so.” Her words were slurred.
    â€œSay fuck,”
he said again. “It will make you feel better, I promise.”
    â€œ
Fuck
,”
she whispered into the air. The word took shape and danced. Not good, a word brought to life with dirt and blood. But she didn’t know that then. She wouldn’t know
until years later. Fuck and blood,
linked forever.
    â€”
    She dreams of light that isn’t warm.
    â€œThis doesn’t hurt.” He hits her again.
    She squirms underneath him, and uses her fingernails to scratch a white furrow in his arm. “Fuck you.”
    â€œDelilah,”
he says. He makes her name a benediction, a prayer. “It doesn’t hurt you. It
can’t
hurt you. How can I show you that you are so much more than your body?”
    I don’t want you to show me
. It would be so easy just to say it. But she doesn’t say it, because it isn’t true.
Get off
. She doesn’t say that, either.
    â€œI won’t.” He kisses her, a lovely kiss that makes her think, for a moment, that none of this has happened. “Tell me. This doesn’t hurt, no?”
    She weeps. “Please, Israel.” Or has she said anything at all? Maybe all of this is a dream, one small dream of a man with hands that could crush her. If he wanted, he could snap her arm, her neck. She is nothing but an extra layer of silk against the mattress.
    â€œLet me go,” she whispers. “Please.”
    He pulls his hands away from her wrists and sits back, then watches her in the dark. “You can go,” he says. “Emmanuel will drive you home.”
    Her breath comes in short bursts — even her lungs hurt. Israel shifts so that he sits completely apart from her, dark at the end of the bed. Lilah doesn’t move.
    â€œWell?” Even as he says it Lilah knows what her answer will be. She raises her arms above her head and rests them against the headboard. She looks at him, and says nothing.
    â€œI thought so,” he says. She can hear the smile in his voice. He moves toward her, bringing darkness over her head like an angel, come to end the world.
    And then she balls her fist and hits him, so fast it surprises them both. Her hand meets the hard curve of his cheek and keeps going, so that as Israel falls back her fist thuds into the bed. Her knuckles hit the mattress, crack. She breathes in and hunches, still. She can’t see. The room is so dark she can’t see.
    Silence. Now —
now —
Lilah’s hands start to shake. Blue-white energy shoots through her arms, through her fingers. She throws her head back and sucks in air, opens her eyes and there he is, against the bed. She imagines that she can see the imprint of her hand on his cheek, the energy from her palm glowing soft against his skin. Were she to walk outside, right now, that same hand would write her name across the sky.