Drive-Thru Miracle

Dana Edwards

• Publisher: B&H Kids
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN:
  9781087747071
• Print ISBN:
  9781087747064

Eleven-year-old Mae Moore is having a horrible birthday week. Her sister, Shelby, had another seizure on account of her cerebral palsy. The school bully won’t leave Mae alone. The adults in her life are having money troubles. And then there’s her secret—the terrible wish Mae made two years ago—that she can’t seem to shake.

Mae needs a miracle, or maybe multiple. But why would God bother to listen to her prayers? Especially when it seems He hasn't listened in the past? Still, when Mae discovers that one of her closest friends also needs divine intervention, Mae just might step into that miraculous life she’s been longing for after all.

With plenty of adventure and humor to keep readers turning the page, Drive-Thru Miracle is a contemporary middle grade novel that confronts the honest—and sometimes difficult—truths about life with spunk and sincerity. Not shying away from hard topics like disability, bullying, and poverty, Author Dana Edwards weaves Mae’s story with empathy and hope, showing readers that the God of miracles is still working in this world, even if we can’t see it.

Mae’s bicycle tires kicked up orange dust while red lights flashed in the driveway behind her. Usually kids ran toward ambulance sirens, not away from them. But Mae wasn’t curious. She knew why the ambulance was there.

Never mind it was her birthday.

She’d been in the backyard with her sister, parents, and her best friend, Jimmy Mac, admiring her birthday cake. It sat in the center of the picnic table. She’d taken a breath big enough to blow out all eleven candles when her sister began gasping for air. It was the second time this month. Shelby struggling to breathe.

Mae’s older sister had been in a wheelchair since the time she’d outgrown a stroller. She had never walked or talked on account of when she was in her mama’s stomach. The umbilical cord got tangled around her neck. It stayed tight for too long and cut off the oxygen to her brain. Shelby had something called cerebral palsy—the most severe type.

So instead of “Happy Birthday to You,” it was the blaring noise of James and Ricky’s ambulance. Mae was on a first-name basis with the town’s paramedics partly because Jessup, Georgia, was a small town—population: 2,483, give or take. And partly because the paramedics showed up at her house on a semi-regular basis. Most of the time the scare—episode, seizure, whatever it was—wouldn’t last long. But it didn’t matter. It always caused a jumble of feelings for Mae. Fear. Helplessness. Guilt.

“Mae! Wait!” Jimmy Mac hollered. She turned and saw him standing in the middle of the street. He was wasting his breath. This was one of those times she’d rather be alone.

When Mae reached the four-way stop, she looked to the left. That way led to the river lined with rocks big enough for sitting on. It’s where she usually went when things got scary for Shelby. When Mae wanted to get away and think, or, as her daddy said, escape.

Like the time, almost exactly two years ago—the day after Mae’s ninth birthday—when Shelby had nearly died. And it was all Mae’s fault.

Now here she was again. Instead of celebrating her eleventh birthday, Mae was feeling smaller than a gnat. But there was something different this time. Something pulling her in the opposite direction. A tiny voice whispering, This way, Mae.

She was one for listening to the little voice inside because when she ignored it, things tended to turn messy. Mostly because of her big mouth.

Like when she was in second grade and Dr. Heery had made her wear an eye patch on account of her lazy eye. It’d made no sense to her. “Why are you covering the good one?” she’d asked him. He explained the good eye had to be covered so the muscles in the lazy eye would get exercised.

At school, Bubba Duncan took to calling her “Patch,” and Mae’s inner voice told her to be the bigger second grader and ignore him. But during a game of dodgeball, it was “Patch this” and “Patch that”—and she couldn’t help herself.

“At least my patch is gonna come off in three months. You’ll always be double-wide, Double Wide,” she’d hollered, launching the red ball toward him like a torpedo. Bubba was the size of an eighth grader in second grade.

The teacher on recess duty had only heard the double-wide part and saw the big red welt on Bubba’s cheek. Mae got sentenced to a week of no recess and an apology letter. She got two more days after she wrote:

Dear Bubba,

I am sorry you are as big as a double-wide trailer.

Yours truly,

Mae Moore

Today, as Mae straddled her bike at the stop sign, the voice she heard was soft but sure. So instead of taking off for the river, she turned right.

Mae rode along the two-lane road for a quarter mile until Mrs. Willene Hampton pulled even with her. Her blue Buick was as big as a tank, and she had to holler over its clackety clanking. “Mae Ellen, how’s your sister doing?”

“She’s good—hasn’t had an episode in over a month now.” Mae stared straight ahead. She was a terrible liar, and her huge hazel eyes always gave her away.

“Glad to hear it. She’s in my prayers,” Mrs. Willene added.

“Mm-hmm,” Mae hummed, hoping today’s ambulance visit was a false alarm and Shelby would be just fine when she got back home.

“You be careful riding on the road. They’ll give anybody a driver’s license these days,” Mrs. Willene said, waving as she drove off.

The Buick picked up speed and zigzagged across the centerline until it vanished down the hill.

She thought back to the day Mrs. Willene had gotten her car. Mae had been sitting on the bench outside the Piggly Wiggly where her mama worked as head cashier. She was eating a chocolate-chocolate chip cookie when Mrs. Willene drove down Main Street honking her horn. She pulled into the parking space reserved for the Employee of the Month, landing her front tire on the curb. Customers spilled out of the Piggy Wiggly and Smith’s Hardware next door to see what the commotion was.

“Davis signed with the Braves! He went in the 35th round!” Mrs. Willene had shouted loud enough for the entire town to hear. “He went down to Cecil’s this morning and bought me this here Buick with his signing money!”

But that was at least two years ago. Davis never made it past the single A team. Something about an out-of-control temper, back problems, and drugs. The Braves released him, and Jessup’s high school hero had returned a nobody. And the car he bought from Cecil’s Classic Used Cars turned out to be more lemon than classic.

Mae shook the cobwebs of that April loose. She needed to pick up speed if she was going to top the hill. She stood from her bicycle seat and pedaled hard. She’d gone this way before, but it didn’t seem so steep in a car.

She finally reached the peak and stopped. Mae considered putting both feet on the handlebars and coasting all the way down or riding hands-free, arms straight in the air like she’d seen in the commercials for roller-coaster parks, when she noticed a sign on the side of the road:

HOPEWELL COMMUNITY CHURCH

DRIVE-THRU PRAYER

EVERY TUESDAY AND THURSDAY

3:30-6:00 P.M., ALL SUMMER

ALL WELCOME!

Drive-thru prayer? Mae wondered. Jessup had a drive-in movie theater where movies played after they’d shown in the sit-in theater, two towns over. Mae wondered if drive-thru prayer worked by hooking up the speaker to your car. Maybe folks at Hopewell thought it was a direct line to God.

What if? Mae thought as she lingered a second longer. Nah.

She hushed the tiny voice whispering inside her head. She remembered a few years back when she’d prayed for Shelby every single day. Mae was eight; Shelby eleven. But it hadn’t mattered. Shelby still couldn’t walk or talk or do what other sisters did. Mae decided then that praying didn’t work. There wasn’t any use in hoping things could be different.

She turned her bike around and headed for the river, remembering it was best to get used to things the way they were. Still, whenever Shelby had a seizure or trouble breathing, Mae couldn’t get used to the look of fear on her parents’ faces or the hurt in her own heart.

If only she could find a reason to hope again.

The next day, Mae and Jimmy Mac met on the baseball field behind the school. It was half dirt and half weeds but had a decent backstop.

Mae set her bat on the ground then threw the baseball high in the air, catching it in her glove. “Wanna catch pop flies?”

“No.” Jimmy Mac tapped the basketball in his arms.

“Practice laying down bunts?” Mae punched her glove hard with the baseball.

“Not really.” Jimmy Mac bounced his basketball on the ground. It landed on a rock and skittered away.

Mae stopped it with her foot. “Where’s your glove?” she asked.

“I was thinking we could play something else.”

Mae kicked the basketball to Jimmy Mac. “Something else?”

“Yeah,” Jimmy Mac answered. “Don’t you ever get tired of baseball?”

“No.”

Jimmy Mac sighed. “We could try basketball for a change.”

Mae beat Jimmy Mac in every sport, including darts and horseshoes.

“Have you been practicing or something?” Mae asked.

Jimmy Mac grinned big. “Maybe.”

“One game of PIG,” Mae said. “Then you’re pitching to me.” Jimmy Mac took off, and Mae picked up her bat and raced ahead of him.

Heat seeped through their sneakers on the basketball court’s blacktop. It was the second week of summer, and the sun was already blazing hot in southern Georgia.

Jimmy Mac tossed the basketball to Mae. She dribbled it effortlessly between her legs. She stood behind Jimmy Mac and took a shot. It went in the basket. “Nothing but net,” she said.

“Not bad,” Jimmy Mac said.

Mae retrieved the ball and sent him a hard chest pass. He stood to the side of the goal and tossed the ball. It hit the rim and came back hard, ricocheting off his head.

“I thought you said you’d been practicing?” Mae said, running after the ball.

“You’ve got four inches on me.” Jimmy Mac was on the short side and worried he’d already reached his maximum height at the end of ...

Table of contents

• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Chapter Seven
• Chapter Eight
• Chapter Nine
• Chapter Ten
• Chapter Eleven
• Chapter Twelve
• Chapter Thirteen
• Chapter Fourteen
• Chapter Fifteen
• Chapter Sixteen
• Chapter Seventeen
• Chapter Eighteen
• Chapter Nineteen
• Chapter Twenty
• Chapter Twenty-One
• Chapter Twenty-Two
• Chapter Twenty-Three
• Chapter Twenty-Four
• Miss Fannie’s Chocolate-Chocolate Chip (Triple C) Cookies
• Acknowledgments