Brown-ish

Chapter 5: Miracle

"I've never been much of a believer. No offense to anyone, but everything has some kind of logical explanation and reasoning to it. I'm not the type of person to grasp the concept of blindly believing that something like ghosts, magic or all-powerful higher beings exist when all the supposed proof that keeps being presented is to just have faith and believe they are real. Except aliens, you gotta be pretty narcissistic to think that in the ever expanding universe, humans are the only sentient form of life roaming around on one out of so many planets. That still doesn't make me much of a believer though. Even something as simple and rare as a miracle is still hard for me to believe in."

~

On a Sunday morning, the Johnson family all sat in a long row, gathered within a cathedral with many others attending, all families of different kinds attending the early morning sermon.

Andre and Bow looked enthusiastic about the church gathering, Zoey on the other hand looked bored of it and she opted to just hold Zahra's left hand and paint her nails whilst said girl was absentmindedly in her own world and daydreamt about the most random of topics, Junior was discreetly playing a game on his phone and making himself obvious by suspiciously glancing around every so often to check if he had gotten caught then craning his neck back down to the phone, Ruby had a bright smile as she held up a camcorder to record the sermon and Pops was outright asleep.

"Now before we begin, ladies and gentlemen, in preparation for next week's annual Youth Choir Contest our youth have come to bless us this glorious morning with a song of worship." The pastor up front announced, "Please show them the kindness and support they need and I'm sure they'll knock it out of the park today just as they will next week."

The church members clapped to welcome the youth members of the church as they walked up on stage. They formed and got into their set positions for the choir as a nervous and shaky woman stood in front of them and raised her arms.

Bow excitedly waved and blew kisses to Jack and Diane who were also a part of the children's choir. Jack waved back at her with the same excitement and Diane slapped his hand down, urging him to focus as their performance was about to start.

The choir director began directing her choir and they started to sing and while they did have the vocals for the song, the overall direction and alignment of the singing was honestly a blatant train wreck.

People frowned, cringed and some covered their ears at the disastrous singing that was occurring, hell, a few people's babies even started crying because of them.

Andre and Bow frowned with wide and horrified eyes, Zoey colored over one of Zahra's fingers because of the sudden horrible vocals, Zahra had snapped out of her daydreaming and was shaking her head at the denial of the singing, Junior took out his headsets and covered his ears as he continued to game, Ruby closed up the camcorder and slowly put it down and Pops just woke up to put on earmuffs he had brought in preparation as he drifted off to sleep.

Zahra watched as the choir got progressively even worse into their song, noticing how embarrassed and miserable the kids looked as they sang and how the choir director herself was on the verge of a mental breakdown.

"Goddamn..." Zahra could only muster, knowing that it would take some kind of miracle for their church to even participate in next week's contest.

~

Eris sifted through her locker for her books as Zoey slowly approached her. She kept pausing in her movements and deciding to walk in another direction, but forced herself to keep approaching Eris. This went on for a little while until Eris shut her locker and raised an eyebrow upon the appearance of Zoey now suddenly standing in front of her with a smile.