Maybe a Miracle (Random House Large Print) - Hardcover

Strause, Brian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0739325590 ISBN 13: 9780739325599

Verlag: Random House Large Print, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

In this disarming debut, Brian Strause has written a vastly entertaining novel about an American family transfixed by a series of mysterious events. From a comfortable suburb of Columbus, Ohio, emerges a story of rebellion, faith and hope, bridging the cultural gap between those who believe in miracles and those who wish they could.

Monroe Anderson–as quiet on the outside as he is sardonic and alive on the inside–has spent most of his eighteen years trying to fly beneath the radar. If he can remain invisible, he believes, his sadistic older brother, a rising golf star, might not torment him, his workaholic father, a renowned litigator, might not notice him long enough to be disappointed, and his mother might not have to struggle so hard to find a hopeful word. The only people who glimpse the real Monroe are his girlfriend, Emily, and his eleven-year-old sister, Annika.

On the night of his senior prom, Monroe finds Annika floating facedown in the family pool. He dives in and rescues her, but not quickly enough to prevent her from slipping into a coma. As the family copes with this crisis, Monroe’s mother turns to religion, his father turns to liquor, and Monroe himself must decide what’s worth believing in, what’s worth fighting for, and, finally, who he wants to be.

By turns humorous and heartbreaking, personal and sweeping, familiar and extraordinary, Brian Strause’s mesmerizing novel takes readers on an unforgettable emotional journey into America’s heartland.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Brian Strause was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, and now lives in Silver Lake, California.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Maybe a Miracle

By Brian Strause

Random House Large Print Publishing

Copyright © 2005 Brian Strause
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780739325599

Chapter One

Chapter 1

There’s a bow tied around my neck and I’m dying for a smoke.

Tonight’s the senior prom and there’s no way I’m going to get through this ordeal sober. I wouldn’t be going at all, but I promised my girlfriend, Emily. She said the prom only happens once in your life and I’d regret it if I blew the whole thing off. “Humor me,” she said. On the off chance she’s right, I agreed to take her—a decision I now regret.

I figure if I catch a buzz before I pick her up, maybe the night won’t be a total disaster. Emily always says she can’t stand being around stoners, but then again she can never tell when I’m stoned.

Besides, there’s no use complaining now. I have the whole thing lined up—the black tux, the white limo, the red corsage. I even rented a room at the Hyatt. It’s something you’re supposed to do, I guess. It’s not like I think some cheesy hotel room will make Emily want to sleep with me. I know she won’t. It’s not even worth trying. I probably won’t even tell her I got it. If she ever wants to go all the way, she’ll let me know. Her parents left her home alone for an entire weekend last month and she still wouldn’t put out. A hotel room isn’t going to make any difference.

The most we ever do is kiss, sometimes until our lips are chapped. Every time I try to push it a little farther, she pulls away and I stop. Supposedly, most guys don’t. Like the guys she used to go out with. From what I can figure, they didn’t take no for an answer and I don’t want to be like them, so I always apologize and say, “Whenever you’re ready.” You might think that makes me a good guy, but most people around here would say it just makes me a pussy.

I’ve heard people say that Emily was a slut at her old school, Fairview High. It’s only a couple miles away from Chelsea. News gets around and sometimes I listen. Not that it really matters. People say a lot worse about their so-called best friends.

From the very beginning she told me she wanted to take things slow and that was fine with me. After three years of high school I’d never even been on a date, so going slow sounded a lot better than going nowhere at all.

I’m pretty sure Emily doesn’t care about the prom anyway. She wants to shed her old skin. Going to the prom is really about making a new memory to replace the old ones she wants to forget. Deep down I’ll bet she knows it’s a big joke, but you’d have to ask her. That’s the only way you ever know what’s going on in someone else’s head and even then you can’t be too sure.

Emily doesn’t talk about her past much, just in bits and pieces. She once told me how her dad found her drunk at Larry’s down on High Street, sitting in some guy’s lap. Another time she got so wasted at a Beastie Boys concert she had to have her stomach pumped. She’s been arrested for shoplifting, but she won’t tell me what she stole. Like she says, it doesn’t matter. But if you put all the pieces together it looks like a blur, a girl out of control. She’s not like that anymore; so maybe going to the prom is a small price for me to pay.

My sister, Annika, on the other hand, cares a lot about the prom. Even though she’s only in the fifth grade and I’m about to go to college, in a lot of ways I think of her as my best friend. I can tell her anything and know she’d never rat me out. That’s a lot rarer than it ought to be. In a few years she’ll drift away. When she gets into sixth grade, it’ll all change. That’s when girls start thinking about boys. That’s when they turn mean.

Last week Annika was begging me to help pick out my tux. Not that she had to, I would have taken her anyway. Without her or someone else from the family in the car, I’m not allowed to drive. Dad says driving is not a right but a privilege. He says he’s doing it for my own good. If I had a gallon of gas for every time I heard that, I could have escaped to California by now. Dad figures with Annika in the car I won’t try anything stupid and if I do, he’s under the false impression she’ll report back to him. The truth is, I’m really not such a bad driver; I’ve just had some bad luck.

First of all, I should point out in my defense—and despite objections from the insurance company—that it was completely not my fault when I totaled the driver’s ed car. That distinction belonged to Mr. Bailey, the so-called instructor. The one who was there to teach me how to drive. He was hard to take seriously. After all, no one grows up wanting to be a driver’s ed instructor. In order to get that job, some serious vocational errors must be made along the way. Throw in the facts that he smelled like broccoli, never cleaned his glasses, and spoke often of Freemasonry and it’s not so hard to see how it came to this.

Mr. Bailey didn’t have too many driving tips to share, but he frequently ranted about how all the kids around here have been bred to be cogs in the machine and they don’t even know it.

Maybe I was going a little too fast, but I only wanted to get out of the car. Bailey was babbling on and on about how fluoride is the main ingredient in rat poison. “It lowers your IQ, crumbles your bones, and causes cancer. People think it’s the TV that makes everyone slaves to the system, but it’s the fluoride.”

After a while, he wasn’t so hard to tune out.

Later, Mr. Bailey would tell the cops, “I told him to slow down.” More than once, he said that. That’s the thing about conspiracy theorists—they never take personal responsibility for anything. Whatever happens is the result of some sinister plot.

Even though he wasn’t at the wheel, Mr. Bailey was in control. He had his own set of brakes. He could do what he wanted. Any objective observer could see, it was Mr. Bailey who panicked, not me. Had he not freaked out and slammed on the brakes, we never would have fishtailed into the plaza in front of City Hall, headed straight for a statue of our city’s namesake.

When Christopher Columbus hit the ground, his head fell off and rolled down Front Street. You might have seen a picture of it in the paper. No one got hurt, but everyone acted like it was a sign of the coming apocalypse.

At the time, though, I couldn’t stop laughing, which is probably why the cops thought I was drunk. But what was even funnier was Mr. Bailey. He was having a fit, wheezing about how he wasn’t going to be framed.

I don’t know why he was so upset. He’d only told me a dozen times how Columbus was a slave trader and a rapist and how if the natives didn’t bring him all the gold he wanted, he’d chop off their arms. Mr. Bailey often said, “Everything they teach you in that stuck-up school is a lie, a goddamn lie.”

The destruction of such an esteemed civic icon really would have been a wonderful opportunity for Mr. Bailey to initiate...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House Large Print
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0739325590
• ISBN 13: 9780739325599
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 548
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Purmerul LTD; https://strengholt.nl/en/; ; 22 Liuleburgaz Str., floor 4, app. 9; Plovdiv; Bulgarien