Belief in Miracles (completed)

Chapter 28: Sebastian

28Sebastian

Summer wouldn't let me in the room while she read my paper, nor would she talk to me about it afterward. There had been tears coursing down her cheeks when she'd finally emerged from the office an hour after she'd kicked me out. It was a side-effect I'd dreaded, but I wholly believed that if she knew the depth of my pain, and saw that I could forgive anyway, then maybe she would find it in her heart to do the same. But she wouldn't tell me, and the entire day passed without a word about it. Not for my lack of prying.

She drove us to Wayside that evening, and followed me down the stairs into the basement. Group was held in the room adjacent to the support group room, just off the kitchen. When I'd first been made the youth leader, the room had been little more than storage space, but between Tom and I, and the help of a few youth, we'd taken down some walls and opened the place up before redesigning it into something the kids could truly appreciate.

It was now roughly the size of a high school library, and was painted with bright walls in stripes of almost every color. Wooden floors were covered by black shag rugs. At one end was a basketball hoop, at the other, two plasma screens before a long leather couch. A Wii and an Xbox were on the coffee table.

On the right wall, a white board had been nailed up before an array of chairs, a stack of hand-me-down bibles on the podium at the head. The center of the room was occupied by four rectangular tables pushed up against each other, four chairs on each end, with built in desk lamps, and a few computers where the kids could do homework. On the far left, was a small café, where a popcorn machine dominated the side of a little bar, and a set of shelves displayed racks of chips, candy, and pop that the kids could buy for fifty cent donations to our Missions fund.

I was surprised to see the room already clean and ready to go, with soft worship music playing in the background when we entered. Looking to the right of the door, we saw Tom. Our Pastor, in all his holy glory, was seated on the couch with an Xbox controller in hand, playing some sort of a basketball game. Summer and I exchanged a glance before coming up behind him.

"Having fun, Tom?" I asked, and he startled, dropping the controller to clatter onto the floor.

"Dang it, Sebastian, I almost had that shot!" He stood up and shut off the TV and console, then turned to me. "You're early."

"Uh, no, no I'm not." Pulling my phone from my pocket, I held the time out to him. "It's ten till six. Kids will start showing up any minute."

Tom's eyes widened as he rounded the couch. "Jeez, where did the day go?"

"Have you been here all day?"

He shook his head. "I was working on my sermon for Sunday, then I remembered what day it was and set up the room for you. That was... a few hours ago."

"And you've been playing NBA since then?"

He shrugged. "I'm a terrible person."

"The worst kind." I agreed, and he grinned.

"How you feeling, Bassy?"

Shrugging, I moved across the room to turn on the popcorn machine. "I'm alive, if that counts."

"I would hope so. Why? Have you done something to jeopardize it?"

"Well, I choked on a pancake this morning and scared Summer half to death." I said as I bent down to plug the machine in when it didn't work.

"I bout had a heart attack." Summer added, and I winked at her from over the top of the machine.

"You need to be careful, Bas." Tom said, and I rolled my eyes.