Free The Great Perhaps by Joe Meno

in it. Or maybe not.

Four
     
    F OURTEEN YEARS OLD, T HISBE C ASPER HAS BEGUN RIDING her bicycle around Hyde Park looking for God. Before each school day and after, she pedals up and down the street in a gray skirt and blue sweater, ignoring her wheezy asthma, searching for signs of providence in the miraculously trimmed hedges and perfectly kept trees. When she does not find His Holiness in person, she will often seek one of her neighbors’ pets for an impromptu baptism instead. This morning, holding Mrs. Lilly’s small white cat, Snowball, to her chest, Thisbe whispers a prayer of her own invention:
    Please
    Please
    Please let there be a heaven for everything that is too pitiful to believe, and then the animal hisses, scratching Thisbe’s wrist. Thisbe turns the poor cat loose, watching it hurry back to its spot beneath Mrs. Lilly’s shadowy porch. Thisbe grabs her wrist and sees three red marks, already dappled with blood. She retrieves her math notebook from her book bag and makes a small tally mark, next to a dozen others, noting Snowball’s unsuccessful redemption.
     
     
    T HISBE PRAYS FOR a number of things each day, usually in this order: for her neighbors’ pets, for her hair to look okay, for her asthma not to get any worse, for her sister not to make fun of her, for her sister to act like she knows her in school, and for all the homosexuals she sees on television—who she truly believes can be saved with the right kind of prayer. She also prays for her singing voice to become an instrument of God, something miraculous, something to fill the world with wonder. Finally, she prays for all the black people in her neighborhood. Black people terrify her. She does not ever ride her bicycle west of Cottage Grove Avenue or south of Fifty-ninth Street into the tired confines of the adjacent black neighborhood. She does not like the way the black people dress, she does not like their music, she does not care for the way they look at her, like she is an intruder in her own neighborhood. She does not like their worn-out-looking storefront churches. She thinks these churches are an insult to God. She does not like the boys, her age or younger, standing shirtless on the corner, wearing silver chains, drinking from bottles hidden in brown paper bags, calling out to passing cars. She hates that some of them wear crucifixes. She does not believe they want to be saved. She thinks they are where they are in their lives, in this world, because they are all lazy. She does not like to ride past their sad little houses. She does all she can to avoid the few black girls at her high school, all of whom, without trying, can sing better than her. Thisbe pedals past them all, hoping no one makes fun of her skirt, which has just begun to come undone at the hem. There are a few loose threads there that anybody could see.
     
     
    A FTER SCHOOL, Thisbe has chorus practice, which she loves, though she spends most of the day dreading it. Thisbe is an awful singer, worse than awful, very, very bad. Her classmates are forced to stand beside her, listening to her wail without tone or melody. Mr. Grisham, the very weird chorus teacher, a man strangely fond of Cary Grant—a signed photograph of the famous star rests on his desk—a man with a passion for songs by Bette Midler and by Bette Midler only, does not believe in turning students away from the performing arts. His chorus, for the past eight years, has received no major awards and has failed to place in even the lowliest of regional competitions. In his soft tan suit, his bushy brown mustache covering his moist, thin lips, Mr. Grisham always manages to make Thisbe feel unwanted, moving her from first to second to third to fourth soprano. Mr. Grisham was relieved when he discovered Thisbe could play piano. Susannah Gore, a hulking senior with oily dark hair, had been the accompanist, and though her scratchy tenor was nearly unbearable, it was an obvious improvement over Thisbe’s