Mark interpreted her silence as a willingness to compromise. "I want to go demonstrate with them tomorrow."
"Mark, you're thirteen."
"It's summer, I can walk to the Metro station, I can make my own sign, I just need a ride to Office Depot tonight so I can buy the tag-board and stuff."
"I'm not letting you go into the District by yourself tomorrow, and that's final."
"Come with me, then," said Mark.
"No," she said.
"You know you agree with these people. That's why you were so nasty with Colonel Coleman—"
"General Coleman, now that he's working to spread the plague into the north of Nigeria," said Cecily.
"You know he's not working to spread the plague, he's stopping the government from killing their own citizens."
"You aren't supposed to eavesdrop on other people's conversations."
"I was in my room with my door closed. Talk softer next time. Meanwhile you're just mad because you can't do anything about the sneezing flu. But you can."
"Those people on TV are not helping, they're just bringing ridicule down on Christians."
"They can't help what the TV people say about them. You know what those scriptures say? The ones on the signs? One of them is where Jesus says, I was hungry, and you fed me, I was sick and you cared for me. And the other is where it says that Jesus went around preaching and teaching and healing the sick."
"Well, wouldn't it be nice if he were here to do that, but you and I don't have the power to heal the sick."
"Yes we do," said Mark.
"Oh, really. Enlighten me, Saint Mark."
"Nick and Lettie only call me Saint Mark when they want me to be ashamed of trying to be good."
"You and I don't have the power to heal the sick."
"You said it yourself, talking to Cole."
"I can call him that, buster, but he's General Coleman to you."
"You keep correcting me so you can avoid hearing what I'm saying."
She knew it was true, so again she sat back into the couch and looked out the window. "I'm listening."
"You said that the early Christians, when the plagues came to the Roman Empire, they nursed the sick, they fed them, they kept them warm, and that saved half or two-thirds of the ones who would have died."
"Yes, that's true. I guess that means you read the book."
"I did," said Mark. "It's like it was talking to me. Saying, This is what Christians do, and you're not doing it."
"It's not what thirteen-year-old Christians in America do when the sick people are all in Africa."
"It'll get here soon enough," said Mark. "But if I already went to Africa, and nursed the sick, and caught the virus myself, but had a ninety-percent chance of living through it because the people I helped now help me in return, then I'd come back here completely immune, so I could help take care of the family when the nictovirus finally does get here."
"I see you have it all planned out," said Cecily.
"Except the part about whether I live or die, but I figure that's in the hands of God."
"Yes, isn't it, though. Except it's also in my hands, because you're not going."