God Went to Beauty School, Page 2

  He was tired of hearing about it—

  He decided just to

  go do it.

  And He did.

  It was terrible.

  It was awful.

  He’d never been so cold.

  He’d never been so tired.

  He hated snow.

  And it was like that

  all the way to

  the top.

  Then at the top

  He turned around

  and His heart just broke.

  Suddenly the whole world

  was plain as day,

  and still.

  It was so still.

  “Should’ve put everybody

  on top of Mount Everest,”

  God thought.

  Nobody’d want to hit

  the guy next to him

  on top of Mount Everest.

  “Next time,” thought God.

  Next time.

  GOD IS A GIRL

  Though nobody wants

  to talk about it.

  Nobody wants to think

  about it.

  Not even God.

  He knows He’s a guy, too.

  He knows He’s lots of things.

  He’s an eagle.

  He’s a tree.

  On less than wonderful days

  He’s even a pig.

  God’s a lot of things.

  But He likes His guyness best.

  People who know Him

  know this,

  so they always refer to Him as “He.”

  Sometimes they call him “Bob.”

  He isn’t sure why.

  But God does guy stuff.

  He wears guy cologne.

  He listens to guy music.

  He eats guy food.

  God can’t help it.

  He wants to be a guy.

  Which is why,

  whenever He gets the urge

  to watch reruns of Sisters,

  He’s embarrassed.

  He lights a big cigar

  and spits.

  GOD HAS A COUSIN

  Lucy, or Lucifer,

  if you want to be formal.

  Everybody called him

  Lucy growing up,

  which accounts a lot

  for how he turned out.

  God’s not as mad at him

  as some people think.

  You don’t become God

  by holding grudges.

  And besides,

  Lucy taught Him

  how to swing a bat,

  though nobody wants

  to hear about that.

  Living in the same neighborhood,

  hanging at the same places,

  you get to feeling close,

  you know?

  Lucy’s one of the few people

  left who remember

  what it was like

  In The Beginning.

  Sure, God and he went

  their separate ways,

  but truth be known,

  they’re always asking,

  “How’s he doing?” and “How’s He doing?”

  That’s the way it is

  with family.

  God’s still looking

  for Lucy to move back.

  GOD GOT A DESK JOB

  Just to see what it

  would be like.

  Made his back hurt.

  God’s always had a

  bad back anyway—

  the weight of the world

  and all that.

  He thought His job was tough,

  ’til He sat at a desk all day.

  It was torture.

  He could feel the Light

  inside Him grow

  dimmer and dimmer

  and He thought that

  if He had to pick

  up that phone

  one more time,

  He’d just start the

  whole Armageddon thing

  people keep talking about.

  (Not His idea, not His plan,

  but in a pinch, He’s

  sure He can come up

  with something.)

  The only thing that got

  Him through to the

  end of the day was

  Snickers bars.

  He ate thirty-seven.

  Plus thinking about the Eagle Nebula

  in the constellation Serpens.

  That helped.

  GOD FOUND SOME FUDGE

  In the mail.

  It was from an

  archangel who’d been

  through the Denver airport

  and had it shipped

  out from there.

  The candy store thought

  they’d sent it to

  Grants Pass, Oregon.

  Well, more goes on

  in Grants Pass

  than you might think.

  Like God UPS.

  But anyway—

  He got the fudge

  and He liked it.

  So He thought He’d

  make some of His own.

  But everything God

  does tends to turn out big.

  Really big.

  God’s fudge wouldn’t harden

  so He kept stirring it

  and stirring it,

  and when He dropped it

  in some water

  to see if it formed

  a ball,

  it made

  Neptune.

  Or that’s what it’s called now.

  God called it fudge.

  GOD WROTE A FAN LETTER

  To this country music

  singer He liked.

  God rarely writes fan letters,

  so He figured the singer

  would make a

  big deal out of this.

  He figured He’d get

  an autographed photo

  or something.

  But she never wrote back.

  Nothing.

  So He wrote her again.

  And He signed it

  “God. Really.”

  Nothing.

  Finally He wrote

  one last time.

  He told her how much

  He liked her singing

  and how He had her

  concert video, which

  He played over and over,

  and how, if she wanted,

  He could answer her prayers.

  Well—one at least.

  And finally, finally

  she wrote back.

  And she said,

  “Dear God, I pray

  you will get a life.”

  Well, thought God.

  Just what did she mean by that?

  GOD WENT TO INDIA

  To see the elephants.

  God adores elephants.

  He thinks they are

  the best thing

  He ever made.

  They do everything

  He hoped for:

  They love their children,

  they don’t kill,

  they mourn their dead.

  This last thing is

  especially important

  to God.

  Elephants visit the graves

  of those they loved.

  They spend hours there.

  They fondle the dry bones.

  They mourn.

  God understands mourning

  better than any other emotion,

  better even than love.

  Because He has lost

  everything He has

  ever made.

  You make life,

  you make death.

  The things God makes

  always turn into something else and

  He does find this good.

  But He can’t help missing all the originals.

  GOD DIED

  Sort of.

  It’s a long story.

  But if you have time…

  Okay—

  God has been God

&
nbsp; for so long

  even He doesn’t have

  a clue where He

  came from.

  For a while He

  wasn’t even sure

  He was God, until

  everything He said

  or thought or

  wanted to happen

  happened.

  That was a big tip-off.

  So He didn’t remember

  where He came from

  or why.

  He just knew

  what He could do.

  Oh, He wanted to be

  very careful with this.

  This could be Good.

  This could be the

  biggest thing in the

  universe.

  He just had to be

  a really tip-top God.

  Somebody who made

  no mistakes.

  Who didn’t show up

  late for work.

  Who competed

  only against Himself.

  He could do this.

  He was GOD.

  So He thought about

  everything

  for a really really

  really really really

  long time.

  Then He opened His mouth

  and said,

  “Let There Be Light.

  ” And it was so.

  Good, said God.

  And after that

  no one could stop Him.

  He said “Let There Be”

  a billion trillion zillion

  times and when He

  was finished,

  there were so many

  new things, even He

  didn’t know

  what some of them were.

  (Like grapefruit spoons.)

  But it was all Good.

  Really good, said God.

  Then who knows what

  went wrong, but

  one morning God woke up

  and His right-hand angel

  at the time (Sheila)

  said, “You know those

  two brothers? One

  just killed the other.”

  God could not

  believe this.

  He could not

  believe this.

  (It should be mentioned

  that this was

  way before Lucy

  relocated to more

  southern regions.)

  God, in fact,

  did not even know

  exactly what

  “killed” meant,

  until Sheila explained it

  very carefully to Him.

  Even then, He had

  to see for Himself.

  And there He saw

  that boy—Abel

  was his name—

  covered with blood

  and not a hint of

  life in him.

  Not a whiff.

  God wanted to start

  all over again,

  make everything

  all over again,

  from scratch.

  Make it so nothing

  in this world

  could be “killed.”

  But Sheila said,

  “You can’t start over.

  You’d have to

  kill everything

  to start over.”

  God hadn’t considered this.

  God lived purely in the moment

  so He wasn’t the greatest

  long-range planner.

  But He stopped and

  thought about what

  Sheila said, and

  though there were

  some things He could

  probably kill

  and feel pretty

  okay about it

  (He wasn’t all that attached to

  the chicken pox virus,

  for example),

  there were other things

  He could not ever

  let go.

  Sea turtles, for one.

  Spiders, for another.

  Too beautiful, too beautiful,

  He said.

  What to do?

  God was like anybody else.

  Everything was the

  first time for Him, too.

  He didn’t mean to make

  what happened between

  Abel and his brother

  happen.

  He thought they’d be

  good buddies.

  Like ducks.

  Hadn’t they learned

  anything from ducks?

  Apparently not.

  God was stricken.

  He did not know

  what to do.

  If He left things as

  they were, there was bound to be

  more killing.

  Could He bear this?

  God’s blood was love.

  His bones were love.

  His eyes, his heart,

  his kidneys were love.

  He didn’t know

  what He’d done wrong

  that caused a thing—the other brother—

  to be born

  without love.

  A thing

  that came from Him.

  He asked Sheila

  what she thought

  He should do,

  now that killing

  was a part of things.

  And Sheila said, “Die.”

  Just like that.

  Sheila had always been

  a very smart girl.

  So the story goes

  that God took on

  the blood, the bones,

  the eyes, the heart, the

  kidneys of a man.

  And He made real friends.

  And He loved a real family.

  And He prayed real prayers.

  He didn’t go unnoticed.

  Ever after, religions were made

  that insisted that God

  had been this guy or that guy

  or the other.

  But one thing happened

  for sure.

  God died.

  No one knows precisely how.

  But sure enough,

  He did it.

  Because it was the

  only way He could

  find out what it is

  to love

  a drink of water,

  sleep,

  a warm coat,

  a mother,

  a father,

  morning,

  evening,

  a really good joke.

  And pain.

  God saw so much pain

  and He was sorry for it.

  He didn’t know it would

  happen quite that way,

  but He finally saw

  how pain caused

  one of two things:

  A reverence for life.

  Or killing.

  Both grew from the same seed.

  The one He had planted.

  So God went back

  to being God,

  finally comfortable

  with being called

  All-Knowing

  because now

  He actually was.

  And after that,

  He made sure

  He ate popcorn and

  watched a movie

  every Friday night.

  Petted the cats.

  Fed the birds.

  And played the jukebox

  at Kenny’s Tavern.

  God needed

  to remember

  what a cool thing

  it was to be a guy.

  Or a girl.

  An eagle.

  A pig.

  To be life.

  God went to beauty school.

  He went there to learn how

  to give a good perm.

  But what He was really there for

  was the hands.

  About the Author

  CYNTHIA RYLANT was awarded a Newbery Medal for MISSING MAY and received a Newbery Honor f
or A FINE WHITE DUST. She is also the author of several popular series for the beginning reader, including the beloved Henry and Mudge books. Cynthia Rylant lives with her family in Oregon.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Other books by

  CYNTHIA RYLANT

  THE RELATIVES CAME

  EVERY LIVING THING

  A FINE WHITE DUST

  MISSING MAY

  THE ISLANDER

  Credits

  Cover art © 2003 by James Robinson

  Cover design by Alison Donalty

  Copyright

  GOD WENT TO BEAUTY SCHOOL. Copyright © 2003 by Cynthia Rylant. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Adobe Digital Edition March 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-188432-0

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