"Tim LaHaye - Left Behind Kids 03 - Through the Flames" - читать интересную книгу автора (LaHaye Tim)

and stacked, though, so they could wonder if he was eventually going to leave, based on what decision
he came to. But his decision, at least about staying at Judd's, was already made.

It made Ryan feel a little better to know that the others seemed to want him to stay regardless. He knew
they wanted him to become a Christian, but that didn't seem to have anything to do with whether he
stayed around. Was it because they really cared for him? Were they actually worried about him and
looking out for him? He couldn't figure that one out. He had never cared about any-body else that much,
except maybe Raymie.

Ryan wanted to work on his courage. Could he ride into his own neighborhood and past his own house?
And if he could, could he also see what was happening at the Steeles'? He sure didn't want to ask them
about Mrs. Steele or Raymie, because he knew both Mr. Steele and Raymie's big sister Chloe had to
feel terrible about their vanish-ing. Maybe they'd be like his aunt was a few years ago, who seemed to
want to do noth-ing more than talk about Ryan's uncle at his uncle's funeral. That seemed so strange.
You'd think she would have been so upset she wouldn't want his name even men-tioned. But she had
talked about him non-stop. She even asked people to tell her their favorite stories about him.

"Sit here with me for a minute," she had said, taking Ryan's hand. "Tell me about that time your uncle
Walter was trying to teach you to fish and he fell into the lake."

"Oh, Aunt Evelyn," Ryan had said, feeling sheepish and awkward. "You know Uncle Wally did that on
purpose. I mean, I was only eight, but I knew that even then."
Aunt Evelyn had leaned back in her chair and laughed her hearty laugh, right there in the funeral home
with people filing past the body of her husband. Many turned to stare at the insensitive person who would
be guffaw-ing at a time like that and were at first shocked, then pleased to find it was Aunt Evelyn
herself.

"I saw the whole thing from the porch of the cottage," she had said, wiping away her tears of laughter.
Ryan thought it funny that she usually cried when she laughed, but of course maybe this time she was
covering her real tears of sadness. "I just knew what he was going to do because he had done it to me
when we were first dating. He stepped on one side of the boat and then the other, and he kept saying,
'No problem. No problem. Shouldn't stand up in the boat, but don't you worry, I've got it all under
control.' Right? Right? Didn't he say that in that big phony deep voice of his?"

"Yes, he did," Ryan had admitted.

"And then, pretending to adjust the fishing line or something, he just stepped back and flipped over the
side in his shirt and pants and hat and everything. Didn't he?"

"Yeah, but he had put his glasses in the picnic basket first, and he even took out his hearing aid."

That just made Aunt Evelyn laugh all the more, and soon everyone in the room was waiting his turn to tell
a favorite Uncle Wal-ter story. Just thinking about that crazy funeral made Ryan pedal harder as he sped
toward his own block. Aunt Evelyn herself had died not two years later. How he missed them both!

Why, he wondered, was he thinking about them now? Maybe because it reminded him that Raymie
Steele had not been the first per-son to ever tell him about God. Ryan had been to Vacation Bible
School a couple of times, but it was at Uncle Walter's funeral, when Ryan had worked up the courage to
ask Aunt Evelyn why she wasn't more sad, that she had said that confusing thing to him.