“I guess I’d better let you go.” Todd’s mouth turned up in one of his wonderful, confident grins. “I wrote down my address in Florida. It’s on a card inside the flowers. I’m not promising I’ll write a lot, but if you want to write me, I promise I’ll write back.”
“Okay,” she agreed. Forcing back the tears, she whispered, “Bye, Todd.”
He leaned down, right in the middle of the street, in front of the whole world, and gently pressed his lips against hers. A brief, tender kiss. The kind that only comes from innocent love and whose memory lasts a lifetime.
“I’m going to miss you,” he whispered.
“I’m going to miss you too!”
Todd glanced up and changed his tone. “Light’s green again. You’d better go.”
“Bye!” she called, dashing to the car. “I’ll write you, I promise!”
Uncle Bob sped through the intersection, leaving Gus the Bus behind at the red light.
It was blissfully quiet for a few minutes as Christy pressed her lips against the bouquet of carnations, reliving the memory of her first kiss.
“Well,” Aunt Marti clucked. “Just for the record, I had nothing to do with that rendezvous.”
“You didn’t? Really?” Christy’s voice floated light and dreamy. “How did he know carnations were my favorite? And white carnations, too?”
“Kismet,” Uncle Bob stated.
“What’s that?”
“Some things you just can’t explain. You have to figure a higher source is orchestrating the whole program.”
“There is!” Christy agreed. “And I know Him personally.”
“Well, that’s nice, Christy dear. That’s a very sweet way to think of God.” Aunt Marti pulled down the visor to check her lipstick in the mirror.
“It’s more than that. I made a promise this summer. To the Lord. I promised to give Him my whole heart. Now I’m trusting Him to work out whatever He thinks is best for my life.”
“That’s fine, dear.” Aunt Marti pursed her lips together. “But my advice would be, don’t overdo this religious approach to life. You control your own destiny, really, and there’s no use waiting on God when you’re perfectly capable of taking care of things yourself.”
“Your aunt’s right,” Uncle Bob concurred. “As I told you weeks ago, ‘To thine own self be true.’ ”
Christy laughed quietly and brushed the carnations against her cheek. “Nobody can control their own destiny, and I tried being true to myself, but I started going under. I’d rather be true to the Lord. It’s way more fun! Besides, I know for sure that I’m going to make it to Hawaii now.”
Marti cast a sideways glance at Bob and whispered, “What do you suppose she means by that?”
Bob gave her a look that said, “Who knows?”
Christy smiled, brushing the carnations back and forth underneath her nose, breathing in the spicy-sweet fragrance. Inside she glowed with an unspeakable joy as her summer in California rolled out like the tide, leaving treasures on the shore of her heart, changing her life forever.
To the youth group at Fremont Community Church:
May each of you continue to listen for His still,
small whisper as you grow in Him.
To Janet Kobobel, my editor, my friend:
Thanks for patiently teaching me what happens
after a wish comes true.
To my First Love, my Best Friend, the Author and
Finisher of my faith:
Thank You for keeping all Your promises.
Tall, slim Christy Miller eagerly tapped on the front door of her best friend’s house. “Come on, Paula, answer the door!” she mumbled, clenching the crumpled Disneyland shopping bag in her hand. Her denim shorts and bright yellow T-shirt, bought while in California, made her feel as though she were still on the beach, not back home in Wisconsin.
The door opened, and Christy shouted, “Surprise!”
But it was Paula’s mom who stood behind the screen door. “Christy?” she said with some hesitation.
“Hi! Is Paula home?”
“Well, come in! I almost didn’t recognize you with your hair cut short. When did you get back?”
“Last night.”
“I thought you were staying with your aunt and uncle until the end of the summer.”
“I was, but my parents had me come home early so I could help with the move and everything.”
Paula’s mom shook her head. “We still can’t believe your folks decided to sell the farm. Not that we blame them. It’s been tough financially for all of us.”
“Did they tell you we’re moving to California?” Christy asked excitedly.
“Yes. Paula’s already asked if she can stay with you next summer.”
“Can she?”
“She’s in her room. Why don’t you go ask her?”
Christy slipped down the hallway, her heart pounding. She had been gone for almost two months and had changed so much. Had Paula changed? Should she knock or walk in?
Christy chose the sneak approach. She slowly inched the door open. Paula sat on her bed with her back to the door and the radio on loud enough to cover Christy’s footsteps as she tiptoed in. Sneaking up to the edge of the bed, Christy leaned over so her face was right against the back of Paula’s head. “Boo!” she shouted.
Paula shrieked, fell off the bed, and knocked the phone off the nightstand.
“Christy!” she screamed. Then she jumped up, snatched a pillow off her bed, and heaved it at Christy. “Give me a heart attack, why don’t you!”
Paula’s long, straight, blond hair fell in front of her face as she grabbed another pillow. An all-out pillow fight ensued until Paula shouted over Christy’s laughter, “Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” She picked up her phone.
“Hello? Hello? Oh, well,” Paula said with a laugh, “I guess she’ll call back.”
The two friends flopped onto the bed, caught their breath, and looked each other over. Paula still had a baby-doll face and round, flushed cheeks. But something in her eyes made her seem older than when Christy had seen her last.
“Christy!” Paula squealed. “Look at you! You’re so tan, and your hair—I can’t believe it! You said it was short, but it’s so light. Did the sun do that?”
“I guess so. Or maybe it was the salt water. I don’t know. So? Did you miss me?”
“Did I miss you? Are you kidding? I can’t believe how different you look.” Suddenly Paula’s expression got serious. “Is it true your parents sold the farm and you’re moving to California?”
“Yes!” Christy bubbled. “Isn’t that too good to be true? When my parents called and said I had to come home early, I thought something terrible must have happened. I never dreamed they would tell me we were all moving to California!”
Paula tugged on the frayed edges of her cutoff shorts.
“Start saving your money for next summer, Paula, because when you come stay with me we’re going to have such a great time! I’ll get my aunt to take us shopping, and we’ll have barbecues on the beach with all my new friends, and, Paula, you are going to love Todd. He’s the most fantastic guy in the world!”
Paula smiled a still, polite smile.
Christy stopped. “What? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Go on. You were saying how you’re in love with Todd.”
Christy giggled. “He gave me flowers, Paula! When I left yesterday he surprised me with a big bouquet of white carnations, and then …” Christy paused. “Paula, what’s wrong? Tell me.”
“Well, it’s just that you’re leaving,” Paula said with a sniffle, “and it doesn’t seem to bother you a bit.”
“What do you mean?” Christy slipped off her sandals and listened closely to her friend.
“All your letters from California this summer sounded so wonderful, bragging about all those exciting places you went to and all the stuff your aunt bought you—like all your dreams were coming true. And here I sat, day after day, bored out of my brai
n.”
“But, Paula, it wasn’t perfect like you think. Some really hard things happened this summer too. It wasn’t all fancy restaurants and adventures.” Christy paused and remembered Shawn’s death, all the times she felt she didn’t belong, and the insecurities she experienced with Todd. “I had to grow up a lot.”
“Still, Christy, you had a dream summer. Admit it! And now you’re moving back there, and you don’t even act sad about it.”
“Well, I’m sad about leaving you, but you’re going to come stay with me next summer. Can’t you see why I’d be excited to move back there?”
“I guess, but still—”
The phone rang and Paula answered with a sulky “Hello.”
“Oh, hi! It’s you,” she said brightly. “Yes, I’m sorry. My phone got knocked over. What? Really? Tonight? Yeah, I’m sure I can. Who? You’re kidding! He’s such a TWH! I’m definitely coming. I’d better go. There’s somebody here. Okay. Bye.”
Christy smiled but felt tense inside. Who’s on the phone who can make Paula change from glum to sunshine so instantly?
“Who was that?” Christy asked.
“Melissa. You don’t know her. She works at Dairy Queen. Her brother is a TWH, if you know what I mean.” Paula’s blue eyes looked like the big, round eyes of a baby doll.
“No, I don’t know what you mean.” Christy tried to hide her hurt feelings.
“Oh,” Paula said flippantly, “it’s this little code Melissa and I made up. It stands for Total Whompin’ Hottie. He’s going to be at Melissa’s party tonight. Look, I’ve got a picture of him. Is he a TWH, or what?” She held out a photo of a tall guy dressed in a black leather jacket, standing next to a motorcycle with his arms folded in front of him.
“How old is he?” Christy asked, sounding motherly.
“He’s only eighteen,” Paula said, flipping her hair back.
“Paula!”
“What?”
“You’re only fourteen.”
“I’ll be fifteen in seven weeks and two days,” Paula said, snatching the picture.
“Well, still, Paula!”
“What?” She looked at Christy with her lips pressed together.
“I think there might be some other guy out there who you could go after.”
“Like who?”
“Like, well … I don’t know! But you and an eighteen-year-old doesn’t sound real good.”
“It doesn’t, huh? What about Todd? Did I start questioning you when you wrote and said you were going out with a sixteen-year-old California surfer whose best friend died from a drug overdose?”
“It wasn’t a drug overdose, Paula. Shawn crashed into the jetty while he was body surfing.”
“Right. Body surfing at night, and so stoned he didn’t know what he was doing. Tell me how great that sounds, Christy.”
“Paula! That was Shawn. Todd isn’t like that. He’s a Christian. And I’m a Christian now too.” She spit the words out, angry and hurt yet feeling foolish for arguing this way with her lifelong friend.
“What’s that supposed to mean? ‘I’m a Christian now too,’ ” Paula mimicked.
Christy pulled back, fumbling for some kind of answer while her heart pounded accusations through her veins. Some Christian you are! Yelling at your best friend. Real Christians don’t yell at their best friends.
“Paula,” Christy began slowly, “I’m sorry. Let me try to start again. When I say I’m a Christian now, what I mean is that I gave my heart and my life to Jesus Christ.”
Christy and Paula had always been able to talk about anything, but now she felt frustrated and unsure of how to explain something she barely understood herself. “My whole life I’ve felt as though God was all around me, you know what I mean?”
Paula nodded slightly.
“My beach friends explained that that’s not enough. I needed to surrender my life to the Lord—to open the door and let Him in. So I asked God to forgive me for all the wrong stuff I’ve done, and I invited Jesus to come into my life. Then I promised Him my whole heart. Forever.”
Paula squinted her big, blue eyes. “So what does that mean? Are you going to become a nun or something?”
“No!” Christy playfully tossed a pillow at Paula. “I don’t really know how to explain it. It’s as if God isn’t just all around me anymore; now He’s inside me.”
“Well, good,” Paula said, suddenly sounding sweet but distant. “I’m happy for you, Chris, really. Sounds like everything in your life is going the way you want it to.”
“I guess it kind of is,” Christy said. “I still have so much to learn. All my beach friends are really super close to the Lord, and they talk to Him like He’s their best friend. I don’t feel that close yet. But then,” Christy said with a smile, “I only started this relationship with Him a couple of days ago.”
Paula’s phone rang, and she grabbed it on the first ring. “Hello? Hi, Melissa. What? Oh, please. Not that song again!” Paula handed the phone to Christy. “Here, listen.” Christy could hear the beat of an unfamiliar song as it pounded through the receiver.
Paula pulled the phone back and sang along in a whining voice, making fun of the song. Then she said, “I’m sick of that old song, Melissa. Aren’t you? What? No, she’s still here. Okay. I’ll call you when she leaves. When? I don’t know. Pretty soon. Okay. Bye.”
The remarks stabbed Christy’s heart. She realized Paula had made friends this summer too. They had both changed. Things weren’t the same between them anymore.
Paula eyed the Disneyland bag Christy had dropped on the floor when she came in. “So, are you going to show me all your souvenirs from Disneyland?” Paula asked.
“Oh, yeah. Here,” Christy said. “This is for you.”
“Really?” Paula jumped from the bed and scooped up the bag. “I can’t believe that on your big date to Disneyland with Todd you actually thought of me!”
“Of course I thought of you. I thought of you all summer, Paula. You’re my best friend.”
Paula looked directly at Christy before opening the bag and said softly, “I honestly thought you had totally forgotten about me.”
“How can you say that?” Christy wanted to add, “Did you think at all about me, Paula? Or were you too busy with Melissa at the Dairy Queen?”
“I love it!” Paula squealed, pulling the Minnie Mouse sweatshirt from the bag and holding it up. “How adorable! This is just what I asked you to get. Thanks, Chris!” Paula quickly slipped it on over her clothes. The oversized sweatshirt completely covered her shorts.
“What do you think?” Paula asked, modeling in front of her full-length mirror. “I’m going to wear it tonight to the party. Melissa is going to love it! If I would have thought of it, I would have asked you to get a matching one for her.”
A matching one for her! The thought jabbed Christy and kept jabbing her as she shuffled home in the mucky heat of the late July afternoon. The smell of cows permeated the air, and a swarm of annoying little gnats buzzed around her head. Christy kicked at the pebbles in the dirt and muttered, “You should have gotten a matching one for Melissa.”
Great, Paula. Just great. Go to your stupid party. Let Melissa be your best friend instead of me. Doesn’t bother me a bit. I’m moving to California.
Then it hit her. Like a cruel slap in the face, Christy realized why her parents had been so tense last night when they picked her up from the airport and told her they had sold the farm. They really were leaving everything. Their lives would never be the same. She would no longer live close to Paula, and they’d never again go to the same school. She was leaving for good. Everything was about to change.
Then the final blow, the stunning realization, hit her full on: Even if we weren’t moving to California, even if everything were the same and we were still living here, I still just lost my best friend.
Miserable. It’s the only word that described how Christy felt when they pulled into her Aunt Marti and Uncle Bob’s driveway in Newport Beach,
California. Here she was, in her wonderful, California dream locale, and she hated everything and everybody. The whole family seemed to feel the same way.
They had been traveling cross-country for seven horrible, miserable days. And now, stumbling into Bob and Marti’s luxurious beachfront home, they continued to gripe and complain, as if being there were some kind of disease inflicted on them.
“Anyone hungry? Sleepy? Ready for a shower?” Uncle Bob, a handsome, easygoing man in his early fifties, offered his usual hospitality and received only grunts in return.
Christy’s dad, a large man with bushy eyebrows and thick, reddish brown hair, carried in the last of the luggage. Her eight-year-old brother, David, planted himself cross-legged in front of the TV. He was a smaller version of their dad and was, in Christy’s opinion, annoying in every way.
Christy went to the open sliding glass door that looked out onto the wide, sandy beach and, beyond that, the Pacific Ocean. The sun had set, but the sky retained a streak of gold clouds, with enough light to see the silhouettes of a few surfers catching a final wave.
Down the beach to the left, Christy spotted a campfire starting up and the outline of a small group standing around the fire ring, probably roasting hotdogs.
She drew in the damp, salty evening air, and for the first time in days something besides anger and frustration stirred inside her. Little bits of memories ignited, like kindling in the campfire.
Her heart warmed, her spirits rose, and she felt drawn to the small group down at the beach. It might be her friends from this summer. They would be so surprised to see her! Todd! Todd might be there, Christy thought. Oh, I can’t wait to see him again. Maybe he brought his guitar, and I can hear him sing.
“Dad?” Christy called out, gliding into the kitchen with renewed hope. “Mom? Could I go out on the beach for a little while?”
Her parents slumped at the kitchen table, looking drained and aggravated. Marti, a petite woman with short, dark hair and a striking, polished appearance, stood in front of the open refrigerator. Bob was pushing the buttons on the microwave, warming up some food for them. It was obvious by the expressions on their faces that no invigorating sea breeze had stirred their souls the way it had revived Christy’s. Still, she had to ask.