Page 9 - Mateo and the Gift of Presence audio flip book Ch 1-2

The Crack

It was an ordinary-looking crack that might have gone
unnoticed by another boy. But children like Mateo spend many
hours staring at their bedroom ceilings because they’re so often
sent to their rooms as punishment. Thus, they’re intimately
familiar with their ceilings and notice when something is amiss.
The crack was new, of that he was sure, and though he

wasn’t normally a curious boy (his vivid imagination kept him
plenty busy), he found himself strangely drawn to it.
“If I stand on my bed and stretch all the way up,” he
thought, “I might be able to reach it.”
And when he attempted this, like a moth drawn to a
flame, the tips of his fingers tingled and turned a magnificent
shade of light purple that closely resembled the color of the
“Lush Lavender” crayon in his 64-color Kidz-Art Craft Set.
His fingers hadn’t quite reached the crack. He was too short

for that. But his fingers changed color nonetheless, and it was
obvious that the crack was responsible. What else could have
caused it?
Many ten-year-olds faced with such an alarming situ-
ation might have screamed and raced off to tell their parents.
But we must remember that Mateo had Presence. So instead, he
just stared at his fingers, with great interest, and kept staring at

them, waiting to see if they would turn back to their normal,
buttery light brown.
Meanwhile, he noticed (and not for the first time) the
funny shape that all hands have, and how you can’t stack the left
hand on top of the right hand and make them fit. This made for
fun shadow play. Mateo made the “shadow thumb” of one hand

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