Read Margaret's Ark for Free Online

“about Daddy,” Margaret almost broke down crying again. Instead she said yes, and that was the end of it.
    She knew whom she should talk to. Nick Mayhew was a young pup, but he was her priest. He'd have an opinion. The absolute last thing she wanted was to let her class find out she was one of the “nutcases” they begun gossiping about all day at school. The names they used for these people varied, but the tone was similar. It was best to keep God out of the schools for now - the first time she'd ever thought that was a good idea.
    Which made her confession to her senior science class all the more surprising. The conversation began quietly between two girls, until Carl Jorgenson overheard and he began his usual posturing.
    “Hey, ladies,” he called from his own table. “You're more than welcome over at my boat any day.” One of the girls blushed; the other glared at him and said, “You would build one of those, you creep. Just to lure young -”
    “You’re still mad at me for breaking up with your sister?” He interrupted, putting on his best, hurt face then added, “She dumped me , you know.”
    “Enough,” Margaret said reflexively without looking up from the pop quiz she’d been grading. Grateful for the distraction and not the least bit interested in the experiment Margaret had assigned, Carl said, “Mrs. Carboneau, what do you think?”
    She looked up. “About what?”
    He shrugged. “Well, if God is going to flood us out, how's he going to do it?”
    She should shrug off the question, but the boy seemed genuinely curious in his own, cute way. She put down the pencil and sighed. “Well, I assume rain is the method of choice.”
    And that was it. Everyone stopped working and offered their own views. God’s wrath versus God’s mercy. Did Margaret actually believe them, they asked? She struggled to remain vague in her answers, but her voice had an underlying tone of fear she hoped was masked. She steered the discussion to the possible physics of a modern Great Flood – this was a science class, after all. The ensuing debate was lively.
    “We're pretty much spread all over the place,” Carl said at one point. “How's God going to make that much rain? Flood the oceans?”
    “God’s not doing it,” one girl countered, then shrank away from the discussion behind the veil of her long black hair.
    “Melt the ice caps!” another suggested.
    “Pretty boring waiting a million years for that,” Margaret suggested.
    The girl with the hair blushed and said, “I read a story once where the Earth stopped turning and everything flew out into space. Maybe something like that?”
    “More than likely,” Margaret said. “Without he centrifugal force of the planet's rotation, we'll be slowly crushed to death by gravity.”
    “Well, that's no good,” Carl said. “Can’t have both.”
    “Nothing's impossible with God.” Margaret tried to smile when she said this, make the comment sound lighter than she intended.
    “We have flooding with rain all the time,” argued another. “A hurricane, like they had in Louisiana and Mississippi. Or another tsunami. A really big one.”
    “It's not going to happen!” This spoken by the girl who’d been sparring earlier with Carl. The discussion moved on, as these usually did, to people. Those claiming to have been visited by God, by angels or demons, all predicting the same doom.
    “They’re just a doomsday cult.”
    “All across the country?”
    “They're planted to cause chaos. They’re no better than terrorists.”
    “Mass insanity.”
    “Maybe they're telling the truth.” This one was ruled out too quickly. By that point, Margaret was out of her seat and leaning against the front of her desk. Suggestions were offered to round up the “prophets” and send them to an island or even jail. More than a few agreed. Like a concert fan stuck in the midst of a crowd pressing closer to the stadium doors, Margaret watched the atmosphere change. Those