"What—"Then I stopped myself and reworded. "Did I do something?" I asked.

She gathered her tray and stood up before answering. "Of course not, sweetie."

Her "sweetie" felt condescending, not romantic, like a boy enduring his first biblical rainstorm couldn't possibly understand her problems — whatever they were. It took a sincere effort not to roll my eyes at her, though she wouldn't have even noticed as she walked out of the cafeteria with her hair dripping over her face.

"I feel better,"the Colonel told me on the ninth day of the rainstorm as he sat down next to me in religion class. "I had an epiphany. Do you remember that night when she came to the room and was a complete and total bitch?"

"Yeah. The opera. The flamingo tie."

"Right."

"What about it?" I asked.

The Colonel pulled out a spiral notebook, the top half of which was soaking wet, and slowly pulled the pages apart until he found his place. "That was the epiphany. She's a complete and total bitch."

Hyde hobbled in, leaning heavily on a black cane. As he made his way toward his chair, he drily noted, "My trick knee is warning me that we might have some rain. So prepare yourselves." He stood in front of his chair, leaned back cautiously, grabbed it with both hands, and collapsed into the chair with a series of quick, shallow breaths — like a woman in labor.

"Although it isn't due for more than two months, you'll be receiving your paper topic for this semester today.

Now, I'm quite sure that you've all read the syllabus for this class with such frequency and seriousness that by now you've committed it to memory." He smirked. "But a reminder: This paper is fifty percent of your grade. I encourage you to take it seriously. Now, about this Jesus fellow."

Hyde talked about the Gospel of Mark, which I hadn't read until the day before, although I was a Christian. I guess. I'd been to church, uh, like four times. Which is more frequently than I'd been to a mosque or a synagogue.

He told us that in the first century, around the time of Jesus, some of the Roman coins had a picture of the Emperor Augustus on them, and that beneath his picture were inscribed the words Filius Dei.The Son of God.

"We are speaking," he said, "of a time in which gods had sons. It was not so unusual to be a son of God. The miracle, at least in that time and in that place, was that Jesus — apeasant, a Jew, a nobody in an empire ruled exclusively by somebodies — was the son of thatGod, the all-powerful God of Abraham and Moses. That God's son was not an emperor. Not even a trained rabbi. A peasant and a Jew. A nobody like you. While the Buddha was special because he abandoned his wealth and noble birth to seek enlightenment, Jesus was special because he lacked wealth and noble birth, but inherited the ultimate nobility: King of Kings. Class over. You can pick up a copy of your final exam on the way out. Stay dry." It wasn't until I stood up to leave that I noticed Alaska had skipped class — how could she skip the only class worth attending? I grabbed a copy of the final for her.

The final exam: What is the most important question human beings must answer? Choose your question wisely, and then examine how Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity attempt to answer it"I hope that poor bastard lives the rest of the school year," the Colonel said as we jogged home through the rain, "because I'm sure starting to enjoy that class. What's your most important question?"

After thirty seconds of running, I was already winded. "What happens…to us…when we die?"

"Christ, Pudge, if you don't stop running, you're going to find out." He slowed to a walk. "My question is: Why do good people get rotten lots in life? Holy shit, is that Alaska?"

She was running at us at full speed, and she was screaming, but I couldn't hear her over the pounding rain until she was so close to us that I could see her spit flying.

"The fuckers flooded my room. They ruined like a hundred of my books! Goddamned pissant Weekday Warrior shit. Colonel, they poked a hole in the gutter and connected a plastic tube from the gutter down through my back window into my room! The whole place is soaking wet. My copy of The General in His Labyrinthis absolutely ruined."

"That's pretty good," the Colonel said, like an artist admiring another's work.

"Hey!" she shouted.

"Sorry. Don't worry, dude," he said. "God will punish the wicked. And before He does, we will."

So this I show no ah felt.You wake up one morning and God has forgiven you and you walk around squinting all day because you've forgotten how sunlight feels warm and rough against your skin like a kiss on the cheek from your dad, and the whole world is brighter and cleaner than ever before, like central Alabama has been put in the washing machine for two weeks and cleaned with extra-superstrength detergent with color brightener, and now the grass is greener and the bufriedos are crunchier.

I stayed by the classrooms that afternoon, lying on my stomach in the newly dry grass and reading for American history — the Civil War, or as it was known around these parts, the War Between the States. To me, it was the war that spawned a thousand good last words. Like General Albert Sidney Johnston, who, when asked if he was injured, answered, "Yes, and I fear seriously." Or Robert E. Lee, who, many years after the war, in a dying delirium, announced, "Strike the tent!"

I was mulling over why the Confederate generals had better last words than the Union ones (Ulysses S. Grant's last word, "Water," was pretty lame) when I noticed a shadow blocking me from the sun. It had been some time since I'd seen a shadow, and it startled me a bit. I looked up.