“Then tell us.” The lawyer turned and waved at the congregation. “Tell these good people about your involvement in this cell. Tell them the truth, and tell them that my client had nothing to do with your actions, that these cells were operating without his knowledge, that all this was done by unruly and sociopathic boys hiding behind his cloak for safety.”
“But that’s not right,” Cole said. “He did do this, I swear.”
Cole finally relented to the pull of his curious gaze and turned to meet the glare of Father Picoult, sitting at the table with the party of suits. Cole pointed. “I’m telling you, he was the one who started it all.”
•• Six Months Earlier ••
“So, are you feeling at home yet?”
Cole looked up from the book winged out across his lap. He was sitting in the church hallway, his legs crossed, his back against the ornately tiled walls of the refectory. Before him loomed the shadow of Father Picoult, the heavy folds of his plain black smock still stirring from his silent stroll down the hallway.
“It’s Cole, right?”
Cole nodded. “Yes, Father. And yes, I feel very much at home here. Even more than I had at the orphanage.” He smiled up at the priest. “Not that I don’t appreciate everything the Sisters did for me, of course.”
Father Picoult smiled down at him. “That’s good to hear. I’ll pass along your gratitude, and I’m glad you’re making yourself comfortable.” The Father nodded toward Cole’s lap. “What are you studying?”
Cole looked down at the book in his lap. “Astronomy, Father. With Sister Maria.”
“Is that a subject that interests you?”
Cole’s head bobbed. “Very much so.”
“That’s God’s great mechanism, you know.” One of Father Picoult’s hands materialized out of the folds of pitch black and hovered over the book, palm down. “Everything we do is determined by what you study there.”
Cole didn’t know what to say to that. Nothing he could utter would match the profoundness of what the Father was saying. He nodded mutely. Several older boys strolled past, whispering amongst themselves. One of them peeled away from the others and took a spot beside the Father, and the way the boy stood there, completely at ease in the man’s presence, standing almost as if an equal, filled Cole with an almighty envy.
“Father, if you have a moment—”
“Ah, Marco, I’m glad you’re here. Have you two met?”
Cole gazed up at the older boy, probably at least fifteen.
The boy looked down at Cole and shrugged. “This the new kid?”
Father Picoult clicked his tongue. His hand disappeared back into the heavy folds of his cloak. “This is young Cole, and he will be a Brother to you soon. Sister Dara says he is one of the brightest young lads to pass through the orphanage. Isn’t that right, Cole?”
Cole lifted his shoulders. His cheeks and neck were burning under their gazes and from the air of the Father’s compliments.
Marco sniffed and stirred beneath his cloak, clearly not impressed.
“In fact,” the Father said, “I think I’d like to assign him to your care. I believe you two will have much to offer one another.”
“You want him to become a Miracle Maker?” Marco turned to face his elder, his cloaks doing the same with a swishing delay. “How old is he, like eight?”
“I’m eleven,” Cole whispered, his words absorbed by their thick cloaks.
Father Picoult laughed. His voice was soft and powerful at once, and full of warm mirth. “My eyes blinked and you went from his age to a group leader,” he said. “The same fate awaits our young Initiate, here.” Father Picoult rested a hand on Marco’s shoulder. “Tell you what, why don’t you spend the rest of the day with him. Show him around. Ask him about his studies. I assure you, there is much to teach and learn between the two of you. I think you’ll be surprised.”
“But I was going to ask you about—”
“In time,” Father Picoult said. He patted Marco on the shoulder, withdrew his hand, and his great cloak swallowed it once more. With a last smile and nod to Cole, the head of the Church turned and resumed his quiet stroll down the gilded halls, the heavy folds and deep shadows hurrying along after him.
“Alright,” Marco said. He let out an impatient sigh. “Come with me, I guess.”
Cole hurried along after Marco, jealous of the older boy’s flowing cloak and long, confident strides. The blue shorts and clean white shirt he’d so recently felt pride over now seemed insufficient. He wanted more.
“I take it you’ve already been shown around.” Marco held open one of the double doors at the end of the hall. It led out to the walled garden on the side of the church, with the crowded and crumbling cemetery beyond.
Cole hurried through the door, clutching the large astronomy book to his chest. “Sister Anna gave me a brief tour the other day,” he answered.
“Well then, instead of showing you around, let me just tell you how things operate around here, especially since it sounds like I’m gonna be stuck with you.” Marco let the door slide shut and rested a hand on Cole’s shoulder. With the other hand, he pulled the book out of Cole’s arms.
“First off, you can drop the studious act. That got you out of the orphanage, but it won’t go far here.”
Cole fought the urge to twist away from the hand on his shoulder. He watched Marco tuck the astronomy book under his arm, losing Cole’s place in the process.
“I take it you were a slum rat before the Sisters adopted you?”
Cole didn’t say anything. He continued to stare at the book.
“Hey kid, how old when the nuns took you in?”
“Nine.” Cole looked up at Marco. The boy’s countenance had changed. Gone was the pious and reverent choir boy, and Cole realized this kid was no different than any of those he’d known on the streets, just better fed and better clothed.
“So how long did you live on your own?” Marco slapped Cole’s back and pointed out into the gardens. He walked down the steps in that direction, forcing Cole to follow.
“I was never on my own,” Cole said, catching up. “I had friends.”
“So you were part of a crew, huh? Petty theft, pickpocket, or did you guys run any complicated scams?”
“I don’t know what that means,” Cole lied. “We begged and scrounged for scraps.”
“I’ll bet.” Marco stopped in front of a bush drooping with roses. He peeled a single petal off one of the red ones and held it up to his nose. “Listen, kid—”
“It’s Cole.”
Marco turned and smiled. He flicked the petal away, leaving it to flutter in the air. “Okay, Cole, I think you need to understand something. You’re not that special here, okay?” Marco nodded toward the far side of the garden where a small group of kids, all different ages, were sitting in the grass with one of the Sisters. “Do you think any of us here came from good homes? Or from any kind of home? ‘Cause we didn’t.”
Marco spun around and strolled toward the cemetery. Cole glanced back at the kids in the far grass, then hurried after Marco.
“There’s not a kid in here who didn’t come from the streets and move through the orphanage. Since we all lived on the streets, we all know each other’s secrets, do you get what I’m saying?”
“I wasn’t a criminal,” Cole said.
Marco stopped in front of the wrought iron gate leading into the cemetery. He pulled Cole’s book from under his arm, flipped it open, and riffed through the pages.
“I hope you really mean that,” Marco said. “It’s a lie, of course, but I hope you really believe it.” The older kid looked up at the packed rows of aged and stained headstones.
“There’re two kinds of slumrats that tunnel their way into the Church,” Marco said. “There are the ones who don’t feel anything, who can do whatever they want without remorse. Those are the scary ones. Then there’s the slumrat like I imagine you see yourself, the one who can rationalize a crime as necessary.” Marco snapped the book shut. “Maybe even rationalize a crime as just.”
He handed the book back to Cole. “Is that how you see yourself, slumrat?”
Cole took the book and began automatically thumbing for his place. “I usually just did what I was told,” he said quietly. He was pretty sure that was the right answer, in more ways than one.
Marco turned and beamed down at him, then laughed. “The nuns must’ve eaten that shit up,” he said. He slapped Cole on the shoulder and pointed at the astronomy book, which Cole had re-opened. “The one part of your act that I actually believe is that bit. You really like reading that stuff?”
Cole nodded.
“So you’re really some kinda bookworm?”
He shrugged. “Reading lets me escape the barrio, I guess.”
“In your mind, maybe.” Marco tapped his temple, his hand in the shape of a gun. “But don’t get any delusions, slumrat. There’s no getting out of the barrio for you and me. Just ask my friends here.” Marco swept his hand over the gate and toward the listing and tilting pale faces of marble beyond. He laughed some more, then noticed Cole had turned his attention back to his place in the book.
“Hey, I’m teaching you a valuable lesson here, kid. Reading up on those stars and dreaming about being someplace else ain’t gonna get you far. In fact . . .” Marco snatched the book away and flipped roughly toward the back. “I’ve read this book, and the only thing worth studying in it is black holes.” He found what he was looking for and shoved the book into Cole’s outstretched hands. “That’s your barrio, slumrat.” He tapped the image on the page. “That’s your point of no escape, right there. You read up on black holes for me and come tell me what you learned. Consider it your first assignment as part of my crew.”
And with that, Marco spun away from the black gate and swished through the gardens, leaving Cole alone with all the quiet tombs.
But Cole didn’t mind.
He sat down on the cobblestones and started to read. Black holes sounded more interesting than stars, anyway.
8 · The Church
The next morning, at the first breaking of bread, Cole was sitting with his fellow initiates when Marco arrived with a tray of food. One look, and the bench of boys opposite Cole parted like the Red Sea. Marco’s tray landed with a clatter. He sat down, picked up his roll, and dunked it in Cole’s soup.
“You learn anything about the barrio yesterday?” Marco chewed while soup trickled down his chin. The other young boys, all in identical white and blue uniforms, sat motionless in some form of awe mixed with fear.
“I read all about black holes,” Cole said. He pulled his soup closer and stirred it protectively with his spoon.
“And what did you learn about escaping them?” Marco’s voice was muffled, his mouth full of a second large bite of roll.
“That it’s possible,” Cole said nonchalantly. He sipped soup from his spoon but kept his eyes on the older boy.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s called quantum tunneling. It can happen when a single atom is near the event horizon and has something real random happen to it—”
Marco reached over and dipped his half-eaten roll back in Cole’s bowl. When he pulled it back to his plate, he left a trail of soup between their two trays, a constellation of sticky dollops. Cole watched it happen and fell silent.
“What else did you learn?” Marco smiled and took another bite.
Cole grabbed his own roll and kept it in both hands while he thought about what to say.
“Is there any chance of a black hole coming to the barrio and whisking you away?” Marco stuffed the remainder of his roll in his mouth and chewed around a smile. The other boys still hadn’t moved. Some stared into empty spoons and some clutched their trays in both hands.
“Maybe,” Cole said, still trying to act calm. “There wasn’t much in that book on black holes to be honest, but I found a ton on the web.” He took a bite of his roll and smiled at Marco. “Did you know a black hole might’ve passed through the Earth hundreds of years ago? One could zip through us right now, maybe suck us and our breakfast right up, and then zoom off straight through the roof.”
Cole lifted his roll over his head, and the other boys around him looked up after it.
“We’d be dead, of course, but it would happen so fast, we’d never know it. And we’d all be the same,” he added. “Us, our trays, our spoons, all pressed together into a tiny space the size of an atom. We’d travel like that forever, zipping through space and sucking down more and more and more, leaving craters and burning rings of fire behind.”
Cole smiled and took a large bite out of his roll.
Marco laughed. “What kooky site did you read that load of crap on?”
Cole shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
“You’re making that up,” one of the other kids whispered, his tone one of more wistful hope than accusation.
“It was called the Tunguska Event.” Cole turned his attention to the other boys his age. “It was the largest explosion of its kind. It took place in Old Russia, back at the turn of the twentieth. For a long time, scientists thought it was a meteor impact, even though there was no crater. The blast rocked people and houses for miles and miles, and all the trees were pushed over, just snapped off and leaning away from the center of this massive fireball.”