Chop, Chop

  She stuck her bottom lip out.

  “Can you get a shovel?” I asked Greg.

  He went to the garage and got one.

  “She always gets her way,” he complained as I whacked off the sides of the giant snowball.

  “Just help me push,” I grunted, tipping it over and heading toward where she’d been pointing.

  “Is this where you want it?” Greg asked her. She nodded.

  “Are you sure?” we both asked her and she nodded again.

  “It’s all lopsided now,” Greg said.

  “Well, you and Charlotte start packing snow on it to round it out and I’ll start on the middle part, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  I packed together a large snowball and started rolling it to the other side of the yard. I was just about to head back with it when I got hit in the face with a snowball.

  “Oh, man!” I said, wiping snow out of my eyes. I got hit again and again and again – hard, and I knew that Greg couldn’t be throwing that many at me all at once. I ran to the side of the house and peeked out. Laci and Mike and Tanner were all hiding behind the spruce tree, waiting to attack.

  “This isn’t fair!” I yelled. “It’s three against one!”

  “You’ve got Greg and Charlotte,” Mike hollered back.

  I looked over toward Greg. He and Charlotte were hiding behind the snowman’s bottom.

  “This isn’t fair!” I yelled again.

  “Okay, okay,” Tanner called. “Truce . . . for now.”

  They dropped their snowballs and walked over to Greg and Charlotte while I pushed the middle of the snowman toward them. It was a good thing they’d arrived because Greg and I never would have been able to lift it up all by ourselves.

  Mike rolled up a small one for the head and then Laci took Charlotte inside to look for a hat, scarf and face parts.

  “Okay,” I said. “Two on two now. Who do you want on your side, Greg?”

  “Tanner.” That was probably a good choice.

  “Fine,” I said. “Come on, Mike.”

  We ran over to the spruce tree and started stockpiling snowballs as fast as we could. Laci and Charlotte came out onto the front porch and sat on the steps, watching us fight. When we finally finished we helped Charlotte and Laci put the rest of the snowman together and then Greg’s mom came out and took our picture with it.

  “Come on in now and get warmed up,” she said. “I made you some lunch.”

  I was still pretty full from the big breakfast I’d had, but I managed to eat a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of clam chowder soup. I was tipping my cup up when I noticed Laci looking at me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “It’s Monday,” she replied.

  “So?”

  “So . . . it’s lunch on Monday.”

  “Oh!” I said, wiping my mouth. “You really want to work on it now?”

  “No,” she answered, laughing. “I was just kidding.”

  “We can if you want to. I don’t mind.”

  “Gee, I’d love to,” she said, “but I didn’t bring my textbook.”

  “It’s online.”

  “Oh.”

  Soon we were sitting in the White’s office looking at her Algebra One textbook online. I printed out a page of problems and set them in front of her.

  “Here,” I said, tapping at the paper. “Try number thirteen.”

  “I don’t even have a clue where to start,” she said.

  “Get y by itself.”

  “Why do you do that?”

  “So that you can get it in slope-intercept form,” I said.

  “How do you know what slope-intercept form is?” she asked.

  “You just have to memorize that,” I said. “But for right now, just get y by itself. Do you know how to do that?”

  “I think so,” she said. She leaned over her paper and worked for a little while, but I couldn’t see what she was doing because her hair was really long (stage three) and it was covering up all of her work.

  “Nobody’s going to cheat off you in class, are they?” I asked.

  “Am I doing that bad?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. “I can’t see anything you’re doing.”

  “Oh!” she said, sitting up. She pulled a rubber band out of a cup on Mr. White’s desk and pulled her hair back into it.

  “Isn’t it getting about time for another donation?” I asked her.

  “Pretty quick,” she said, nodding. “But I like it to be long enough so that I don’t have to get it cut too short. I wouldn’t want to look like a boy, you know.”

  She looked me square in the eye and raised her eyebrow when she said the word ‘boy’.

  “Laci, that was like, FOUR years ago!! I told you I was sorry for being mean to you when we were little.”

  “No, you didn’t,” she argued.

  “Yes I did,” I said.

  “When?”

  “When we were dancing . . .”

  “No, you didn’t,” she said again.

  I tried to think back to our conversation. I was pretty sure that I’d told her I was sorry . . .

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” she nodded. “I’m sure.”

  I finally decided that if she wanted an apology that badly she probably would have noticed if she’d gotten one.

  “Well then,” I said. “I’m very sorry, and I wish you could just forget about it.”

  “If you help me get an A in algebra I’ll never think about it again,” she promised.

  Mr. White walked into the office and took a book off the shelf.

  “What are you two working on?” he asked, looking at Laci’s paper. “Oooh! Slope-intercept! That’s always fun!”

  “Oh, yeah,” Laci rolled her eyes. “So much fun.”

  “Oh, stop it,” I said, picking up her paper. I looked it over, relieved that she at least knew how to solve for y. Mr. White patted her on the back.

  “Okay,” I said. “Good. Now all you’ve got to do is graph it.”

  “Fun, fun, fun,” she sighed.

  Laci knew a whole lot more than she thought she did and we got through the entire section in less than an hour. I was showing her how to take practice quizzes online when Mike, Tanner, Greg and Charlotte came in.

  “Tanner and I are gonna get going, Laci,” Mike said. “I promised my mom I’d shovel the driveway and the sidewalks before it gets dark. Do you want us to walk you home?”

  “Please don’t leave yet, Laci,” Charlotte begged, grabbing her arm. “You haven’t played with me all afternoon.”

  “I guess I can stay a little while longer,” she told Charlotte, and Charlotte hugged her.

  We finished the practice quiz and I showed her a couple other things she could do at home. Then we put our snow gear back on and went outside.

  Charlotte and Greg were working on a snow fort. We built two of them and then had a snowball fight . . . me and Charlotte against Greg and Laci. They lobbed them gently at Charlotte, but whenever they got a clear shot of me they really let loose. Finally I got smart and loaded Charlotte up with a snowball in each hand. I held her up in front of my face and raced toward Greg and Laci. They threw snowballs at my legs and when we were right in front of them I yelled, “Now, Charlotte! NOW!” She hit them both and I retreated, running backwards, still holding Charlotte in front of my face.

  After the snowball fight Laci helped Charlotte make snow angels.

  “That was really low,” Greg said as we sat on the porch and watched them. “Using a small, innocent child as a shield.”

  Greg’s mother poked her head out the door.

  “Laci?” she called. “Do you want to stay for lasagna? I already called your mother and she said it was alright with her if you wanted to.”

  “Thank you!” Laci said, nodding.

  I looked up at Mrs. White and stuck my bottom lip out at her just like Charlotte had done to us that morning.

  “Get that look off your
face,” she smiled at me. “Your mother said ‘yes’, too.”

  “I heard you went to Collens College,” Laci said to Greg’s grandmother over dinner. “That’s where I’m thinking about going.”

  “It’s a wonderful school!” she said. “You should definitely go, you’ll love it.”

  I held off on the “small women” jokes.

  “How’d you wind up in Florida?” Laci asked her.

  “You kids may think it’s fun to build snowmen and throw snowballs now, but just wait ’til you’re my age. You’ll be heading south as soon as the leaves start changing color.”

  “Don’t you miss the snow?” I asked her.

  “Nope,” she said, shaking her head. “The only way I’m coming back here to live is if all the nursing homes in Florida are full when I’m ninety.”

  “We’ve got a really good nursing home here,” I smiled.

  “Yeah,” Greg agreed. “It’s not too far from the animal shelter . . .”

  “DON’T you guys even start!” Laci said, putting her fork down and glaring at us.

  “Are they being mean to you, Laci?” Greg’s grandmother asked. Laci nodded and Greg and I both started laughing.

  “Shame on you both,” his grandmother scolded, shaking a finger at us. “You shouldn’t be mean to her – Laci’s a very sweet girl. One day the two of you will probably be fighting over her.”

  Obviously she hadn’t met Sam.

  “Yours wouldn’t be the first friendship to break up over a pretty girl,” she continued. She wagged her finger at me and then at Greg. “You be nice to Laci.”

  We both nodded at her and smiled and I decided to change the subject.

  “This is the best lasagna you’ve ever made,” I told Greg’s mom. I saw Greg’s dad bite his lip and then shake his head.

  “What?” I asked him.

  He nodded toward Greg’s grandmother who was beaming.

  “It’s very good,” Greg’s mom agreed. “But Greg’s grandmother made it.”

  “Oh!” I said. “Well, really it’s about the same as–”

  “STOP!” Mr. White interrupted me. “You have entered into a land where no man should ever have to set foot. You cannot win. Nothing you say will be right. Nothing.”

  “But–”

  “Uh, uh, uh!” he said, shaking a finger at me. “Stop talking. Stop right now. Just sit quietly and eat your lasagna. Don’t say another word.”

  Laci and Greg were both stifling laughs.

  “I was just going to offer to do the dishes after supper,” I said quietly, looking down at my plate and trying not to smile.

  Greg and I walked Laci home after supper. Laci was in the middle and we were shoulder to shoulder because, even though most of the sidewalks had been shoveled during the day, they were narrower than usual.

  “Hey, Greg,” I said, hooking my arm into Laci’s and pulling her close to me. “Should we just go ahead and start fighting over Laci now?”

  “We can share her if you want,” he suggested, doing the same thing to her other arm. “I’d hate to bust up such a good friendship just over some girl.”

  “That’s a good idea,” I nodded. “What do you think, Laci? Do you want to be our girl?”

  She lifted her chin up high, trying not to smile.

  “You’ll see,” she said, shaking her hair out behind her. “One day the guys will be lining up around the block just waiting to see me.”

  “I’m surprised they aren’t already,” Greg told her and she grinned at him.

  From then on we called her “our girl” and Greg made up a hand signal for it. Whenever the three of us were together he would catch her eye, point at her, and then wave his finger back and forth between himself and me. You’re our girl. She always smiled when he did it. She also started eating lunch with us every day, whether she needed help in algebra or not.

  About a week before the youth rally in Chicago, Laci bounded up to our table.

  “How’s our girl doing?” I asked. She held up an algebra test with a “99” at the top. Greg gave her a high five.

  “What’d ya miss?” I asked, snatching it from her.

  “Number four,” she said. I put down my fork and started working the problem out.

  “That’s right,” I said. “How come he counted it wrong?”

  “He thought I wrote thirteen point four instead of thirteen point nine. I didn’t make my nine clearly.”

  “That’s obviously a nine,” I said. “Anyone can tell that’s a nine. This should be a hundred. You should go back to him and see if you can get him to give you a hundred.”

  “Oh, relax, David,” she said. “This is great! It’s the best grade I’ve ever made in there. One point doesn’t matter.”

  “It does too matter!” I said, picking my fork back up. “I worked hard for that grade.”

  She laughed and shook her head.

  “I think you should go back and try to get him to change it,” I said again.

  “And I think,” she said, “that you should quit being such a grump!”

  ~ ~ ~

  IT WAS A five-hour trip to Chicago and the three of us sat next to each other in the new church van, singing along with the radio the entire way – I knew the songs as well as anybody else.

  The hotel was very nice, (not as nice as the ski lodge had been, but very nice) and I was not unhappy to find a hot tub next to the swimming pool. The first evening we went to the Skillet concert which was as great as I’d expected it to be. The next day we broke into small groups in different conference rooms, depending on which session we had signed up for ahead of time.

  During lunch there was a performance by a group of students with disabilities. I think most of them were mentally challenged, but some of them were blind or deaf. They were all dressed in white robes with red collars and they had white gloves on their hands. In front of each one of them was a bell. Their director pointed at each one of them when she wanted them to ring their bell. If a student was blind, someone standing next to them would tell them when to ring their bell. The music they made was absolutely unbelievable – I hadn’t thought anything could top Skillet.

  In the afternoon we broke up for more sessions in conference rooms. Greg and I had both signed up for one together called “Being a Christian Athlete” which I thought was going to be about being a Christian athlete.

  “You’re a real idiot, you know that?” Greg said when I told him that.

  “What’s it going to be about then?” I asked.

  “You know,” he said. “Running with patience the race that is set before us . . . fighting the good fight . . . faithfully running the course?”

  “Oh.”

  Of course he was right, but it was still really good and mostly guys had signed up for it, so I figured I wasn’t the only one who had misunderstood what it was going to be about.

  I had never really noticed before how many references there were in the Bible that compared staying faithful to Christ with competing in an athletic event. The session leader told us that winners of races back then were awarded a crown of leaves. Even though they were evergreen they would eventually wither and die.

  “But,” he said, “we’re told in Corinthians that the crown we obtain as Christians is incorruptible.”

  At the end of the session we were shown pictures of Derek Redmond, a British runner who had competed in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.

  We saw pictures of him training, competing and winning all of his qualifying heats. Then – with 250 meters out of 400 to go in his semifinal heat – we saw pictures of him falling, then getting up, trying to finish his race.

  He had torn his hamstring, but he continued down the track, hopping on one leg, crying, and trying to finish. His father somehow got past security and ran out onto the track, putting his arm around his son and helping him to make it across the finish line.

  “You’ve got to finish the race,” the session leader told us. “And sometimes you can’t d
o it alone. That’s why it’s vitally important that you make Christian friends . . . that you have others who will help you when you stumble and fall.”

  Greg looked at me and smiled and I smiled back and I really did appreciate that we would be there for each other. But sitting there in that conference room that day in Chicago, I felt so right with God that I honestly could not imagine that there might come a time when I would stumble and fall.

  That night we had free time, so of course I went to the pool. Greg and Laci were sitting in the hot tub talking when I finished doing laps. I sat down on the edge of the hot tub and put my feet in.

  “Wow . . . that’s hot!” I said.

  “Not after you’ve been in for a while,” Laci said.

  “Laci and I were just talking . . .” Greg grinned.

  “Uh-oh,” I said. “This can’t be good.”

  “Oh, stop it!” She splashed a handful of water at me.

  “What were you talking about?”

  “Oh, Laci was just saying that we’re spending A LOT of money here at this hotel and that maybe next year . . .”

  “Oh, come on, Laci!” I said. “I just texted Mike and told him how great this was and how we couldn’t wait for him to come with us next year!”

  “I know,” she said, “I’ve had fun too, but . . .”

  “As I was telling Laci,” Greg interrupted, “sometimes it’s okay for Christians to get together and have fun, even if it costs money.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s called fellowship!”

  “Plus,” Greg continued, “it’s really good for us to come someplace like this and hear these speakers and be together.”

  “It just seems sinful to be spending so much money,” she said quietly.

  “Laci,” I said, lowering myself on to the next step in the hot tub. “You can’t feel guilty every time you spend some money or have some fun.”

  She looked at me uncertainly.

  “Now look,” I said. “I’ll be the first to admit that I could get used to this very easily. But honestly? If God told me to give it all up? I would. He’s just not telling me that. He’s telling me that this is where He wants me right now. It’s bringing everybody closer to each other and closer to Him – that’s important too.

  “Well put,” Greg nodded.