Free A Friend at Midnight by Caroline B. Cooney

over with and you wouldn’t know what it meant. Half the time you wouldn’t know what it meant when you
did
pay attention. Reb used to say the real miracle was that anybody figured out how to be a Christian to start with.
    â€œâ€˜Your friend inside his house might answer you by saying, Trouble me not! My door is shut—my children are in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything.’”
    Lily usually thought of church as entire, separate. A place she liked, but did not carry around with her in the same way, for example, she carried basic math into a restaurant, to figure the tip. Jesus was a remote dusty person in sandals, saying things that ended up on Sunday school walls, along with pictures of happy peasants in Sudan or India, whose lives were improved by a water buffalo donated by Sunday school children.
    But this was different. This applied.
    For Michael had called upon Dad for bread—meaning love; meaning home. And just like the verse, Dad had answered, “Trouble me not, Michael. I cannot get up and give you anything. My door is shut.” Lily shivered with the accuracy of it.
    â€œâ€˜I, Jesus, say to you,’” read Dr. Bordon, “‘though your friend will not get up and give you what you need—
because
he is your friend, he
will
get up, and give you everything you need. And I say to you, Ask and it shall be given. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks—receives. Everyone who seeks—finds. To everyone who knocks—that door will open.’”
    Wait a second here, thought Lily. Michael was seeking—and got slapped. Michael knocked—and had the door slammed in his face. And Michael wasn’t just
asking.
He was
begging.
    Dr. Bordon continued to read. “‘If a son asks his father for bread, will the father give his son a stone?’”
    Yes, thought Lily. He will.
    â€œâ€˜If the son asks for dinner, will the father put a snake in front of him? If the son asks for eggs, will the father offer a scorpion?’”
    Yes. Dennis Rosetti: Scorpion Man.
    â€œâ€˜If you, being a bad person, know that you must give good gifts to your children, think how much more your Heavenly Father will give to those who ask Him for gifts.’”
    Lily could have torn a hymnbook in half. What are you up to here, Jesus? My father
did
give his son a stone. He’d do it again. He
likes
stones. Gives nothing but stones.
    Turning the Sunday bulletin to the back page, she busied herself reading announcements, hoping to block out Dr. Bordon and his nonsense. The last Sunday in September, nobody had signed up to do coffee hour. Every week in October the nursery school needed volunteers. The choir was looking for tenors.
    Yesterday, Lily informed God, there was fear in my brother’s voice. He was not afraid of the airport. He was afraid of his father. This father you’re so sure wouldn’t give him a stone.
    Yesterday, even an eight-year-old didn’t have a friend at midnight. Listen to me, God. Asking doesn’t get you what you want. Knocking on doors doesn’t open them. And fathers do so give their son a stone when they ask for bread.
    You’re no more a father than my real father. I’m done with you, too.

    Amanda did not let Lily down. She listened to the whole story, punctuating Lily’s recital with cries of agony and little shouts of “Kill him!”
    They were lying on towels at the edge of Amanda’s pool. They had swum back and forth for fifteen minutes, which was nothing for Amanda but more than Lily usually did in a month. Lily had that nice trim feeling that comes from lots of exercise, and as usual she was convinced that from now on she would swim, swim, swim—and as usual she knew perfectly well this was not going to happen.
    Amanda shivered. “I don’t want to believe that your dad really did that. I bet he really came back to the