Grace

16. Storm

Jordan was in a dessert, a vast world of sand and sun stretching  far as the eye could see. He squinted, peering through the sun's glare, and saw a figure in the distance: A young man in army clothes, with a pronounced limp in his left leg.

"Caleb!" Jordan said, but his brother didn't seem to hear him. He was walking away, slowly, towards his death. Jordan knew the landmine was right in front of his brother, and Caleb surely knew it, too, but he kept walking, walking. Jordan tried to run, to shout, to warn him, but his legs were as heavy as lead, and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Somehow, he knew that if Caleb took one more step, he would trigger the explosion...

Then, to his relief, Caleb stopped. He turned around and looked straight at Jordan over the burning sea of sand. His face was full of love.

"Don't run from him, little brother," he said. Before Jordan could ask what the heck he meant, Caleb slowly and deliberately stepped onto the landmine. The explosion rocked the world, and Caleb was engulfed by a flaming ball of gas.

"NO!"

Jordan forced himself to move, but the very air was thick, dragging at his limbs. It was like trying to run through molasses. The flame that had eaten his brother died out, leaving only a pile of ash. And suddenly Jordan was running away from something. He could hear footfalls behind him, but he could not turn. The feet pursued him relentlessly, growing louder, shaking the ground. Jordan couldn't breathe. His feet stuck in the sand. The pursuing giant was right behind him. He tripped, and fell onto a landmine of his own-

Thunder boomed, and Jordan woke with a start on the floor of his room. Rain beat at the windowpanes. His face was covered in cold sweat. His heart beat so fast he was sure it would pound a hole in his chest. His sheets were twisted around his feet, pulled almost completely off his mattress, and his comforter had been kicked into a heap at the foot of his bed. The digital display of his alarm clock glowed 2:03 a.m.

"Just a dream," he muttered to himself.

Lightning flashed, illuminating the cluttered room, the bed, the desk, the dresser, the boy on the floor. Jordan was safe. His life would go on as normal. His injuries would heal, he would play soccer, he would scrape by at school, and he would count the days until Caleb came back.

Except Jordan could wait until he was an old, old man, but his brother would stay where he was: buried under the sand somewhere across the sea. He would never smile again, never wrestle with Jordan in the backyard, never manipulate him into doing stupid things, never smile in his patronizing, big-brotherly way, never slap him on the back and convince him that life wasn't so bad after all. Caleb would never do any of these things.

Caleb was dead.

Jordan thought he knew pain. He had a smashed nose, a broken finger, and purple bruises on every part of his body. He had been punched, kicked, shoved, and knocked unconscious.

None of that could compare to the agony that ripped his heart that night, at 2 a.m. huddled on the floor. It takes a lot to break a guy, but Jordan broke then. He put his battered head in his hands and wept.

As he cried, he realized one thing: if Caleb was gone, then he, Jordan, could not live. He couldn't stand life knowing his brother would never come home. An image flashed into his mind: his pocketknife. It was on his dresser. All he needed was a quick slice across the wrist, and he would bleed into oblivion. No more pain. No more loss. It would be all over.

Wiping his eyes with he back of his hand, Jordan got shakily to his knees and groped around the surface of his dresser. His elbow bumped against his soccer trophies and they toppled over one another like dominoes, crashing to the floor. Jordan ignored them, feeling frantically around for his knife.

There- his fingertips brushed against something metal. But it wasn't the knife. It felt like a chain, thin and delicate. What was it? Then it hit him.

Grace's necklace.

He clutched it in his fist, ran his thumb along the sides of the cross pendant. He felt the bumpy shape on top of the cross- the tiny man. His arms outstretched, his head bowed. Dead.

A reminder of what?

That He knows what it's like to suffer.

Don't be stupid. The knife. Find the knife. You have nothing anymore.

But Jordan remained still, kneeling, holding the cross. Unbidden, something rose in his chest, a cry, a prayer. Where are you, God? If He was everything Grace said He was, then why did he, Jordan, have to suffer so? Why did Caleb? If this God was real, then Jordan hated him, hated him with everything...

The bumpy outline of the man on the cross. Grace's eyes when she talked about Heaven. She knew suffering, and so did her God. But she believed in something greater, a place beyond this earth where no heart was ever broken. What if she was right? Would Jordan find his brother there someday?

He remained there in the darkness for what felt like hours, wrestling with grief and hope and despair, until his soul was so battered and wrung out that he couldn't think anymore. There was just the darkness, and the pain throbbing in his chest. Again the knife flashed into his mind, but still he made no move to find it.

"If there's a God," he said hesitantly, "Show me that you're real." His voice sounded small and broken in the storm. His knees dug holes in the carpet.

The thunder boomed and shook his bones.