Christy cautiously proceeded. “So you don’t just feel the hurt from one disappointment but also the hurt of half a dozen guys at the same time.”
The room fell silent as Christy wondered why she was saying all this to her best friend.
A few minutes passed before Katie straightened herself and said with an edge to her voice, “So what do you recommend I do about it?”
Christy wanted to tell Katie that she hadn’t planned to present this problem and so she certainly hadn’t planned a solution, either. Instead, Christy said the only thing that came to mind. “You don’t need to change anything on the outside. You need to change the inside. I think you have to forgive, Katie. You have to choose to forgive and start all over.”
For a moment Katie looked as if she might throw something or yell. Instead, she muttered, “I hate it when you’re right.”
7 Katie adjusted her position on the bed and said with a challenge in her voice, “Just what makes you so sure I haven’t forgiven the guys who have hurt me?”
“Well—” Christy began.
“I’ll tell you something. It would be nice if just one of those jerks would acknowledge he was rude, insensitive, or mean, or all of the above.” Katie rose and kicked at her wadded-up khaki skirt. “I know that’s a lot to ask, but it sure would make forgiving easier.”
“But what if none of them ever apologizes?” Christy asked. “Are you going to go through your life carrying all these phone books of pain with you?”
“No.” Katie paced the floor. “I’ll get over the hurt once I meet Prince Charming.”
“Katie!”
“What?”
Christy hesitated to say what she was thinking, but she knew she couldn’t hold it in. “What will happen the first time Prince Charming lets you down? I mean, even if you marry Prince Charming, he’s not going to be perfect. Somewhere along the way he’ll be insensitive, mean, or rude, and then what? Instead of just carrying the hurt from that isolated incident, will you pick up all those phone books and carry them again?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about this, Christy. I need to get some air.”
Christy glanced at the clock. It was almost four o’clock. “Do you want to play softball?”
Katie looked at Christy. “Why? Do you?”
“No. I was wondering if you would take my place on Wes’s team. They’re playing against Sierra’s team at four o’clock.”
Rummaging in a drawer, Katie pulled out a baseball cap and found her mitt in the closet. She laced up her tennis shoes and left with only a quick, “I’m outta here.”
Christy sat in the empty room. Why did I say all those things to Katie? She didn’t need to hear all that today. And she certainly didn’t need to hear it from me.
Deciding she would skip dinner, Christy took a long shower, washed her hair, shaved her legs, and then called Todd. No one answered in his room, so Christy left a voice message suggesting they meet for breakfast in The Golden Calf at seven-thirty the next morning.
She took her laundry to the end of the hall, and while waiting for an open machine, she joined some other girls from her floor who had gathered in the den to watch The Princess Bride. The last time Christy had watched that movie was before she went to Switzerland. Katie had rented it and brought it over for their final girls’ night. After watching it, Katie had declared she would never trust a guy who said “As you wish” to her every whim. She wanted a guy with gusto who would say, “Get it yourself,” otherwise she knew she would sit around and get fat while he catered to her.
Christy knew when Katie had made those comments a year ago that she was just being her comical self. Now Christy wished Katie was watching the movie with her, making wisecracks, being the kind of roommate Christy had looked forward to. The other girls watching the movie were all nice, but something inside Christy made her feel as if she wasn’t ready to make new friends. She was much more interested in maintaining her current friendships.
After the movie two of the girls said they were going down the hill for ice cream. They invited Christy to go with them, but she declined, saying she needed to get back to her room because she and her roommate needed to talk.
Christy returned to her room with a folded stack of clean clothes and found a note from Katie. She had written it on a 3×5 card and taped it to the corner of Christy’s desk.
I’m staying with Sierra tonight. K.
Christy read the note twice, not believing it the first time. She imagined the worst.
Katie is so upset by what I said that she can’t stand to be in the same room with me.
The note didn’t say, “Come join us” or “Meet me for breakfast” or give any hint that Katie wasn’t mad at Christy.
Katie is giving herself a makeover with her new hair and clothes. Is she trying to tell me she’s doing a makeover with her best friends, too?
Tears came, and with them an aching loneliness she hadn’t expected to feel at Rancho. She had felt alone many times in Switzerland since she was so far from home and close friends. But she never expected to be assaulted by these feelings when she was “home” with her closest friends.
Christy debated for a long time if she should call Sierra’s room or go there to try to settle things with Katie. The decision-making process, on top of her already thin emotions, exhausted her so much that Christy finally concluded she shouldn’t try anything heroic tonight. She would sleep on her dilemma, pray about it, and see if she and Katie could talk in the morning.
* * *
The next morning Christy was glad to see Todd waiting for her in front of the cafeteria at seven-thirty. He greeted her with a kiss on the temple and said, “I tried to call you back last night, but no one answered.”
“I didn’t check my voice mail,” Christy said. “You probably called while I was doing my laundry and watching a movie.”
They moved through the line, and Christy forced herself to put some food on her tray, even though she wasn’t hungry. She knew, after skipping dinner last night, that she needed some protein.
Todd led Christy to a window table with two chairs. He turned the chairs so they could look out the window and keep their backs to the rest of the students.
“We got Gus running,” Todd said after they had prayed.
“That’s good.”
“Yeah, thanks to Matt. He has a real talent for fixing cars. And he agreed to help me put together the mission trip to Mexico.”
“What mission trip to Mexico?”
“I didn’t tell you yet, did I? When I had lunch with some of the church leaders yesterday, I mentioned I’d like to take the group to Mexico, and they were all for it. I’m thinking we’ll go over Thanksgiving. Do you want to come?” Todd sunk his teeth into a blueberry bagel.
“Sure.”
Todd stopped chewing. With a swallow he looked at Christy and said, “That was a quick decision.”
“It was, wasn’t it?” Christy knew her decisiveness was prompted by her feelings of loneliness. Any invitation to go anywhere or do anything with her friends appealed to her this morning.
“I think I alienated Katie yesterday,” she muttered before taking a bite of her scrambled eggs.
“What happened?”
With a dozen concise sentences, Christy explained to Todd that she had given Katie unwanted advice, and as a result, Katie had stayed in Sierra’s room last night.
“We only lasted a week together in the same room. I wish I had kept my mouth shut.”
Todd’s expression suggested he wasn’t taking her doom and gloom assessment too seriously. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. It sounds as if you were speaking the truth in love. It might take a while for all that truth to sink in, but I think what you said was honest and helpful. It’ll work out. You’ll see.”
Christy shook her head. “I don’t know. At least I didn’t try to set up a double date for Katie with Matt like I was thinking of doing yesterday. Katie wouldn’t have appreciated that at all. I sent he
r to the softball game in my place so she could be around Matt, but now I don’t know what happened.”
“Matt didn’t go to the game,” Todd said. “He was with me, working on Gus.”
“That’s not good. That means Matt and Katie haven’t connected yet. I was hoping they would make a fresh start yesterday.”
Todd’s grin was too obvious to ignore.
“What?” Christy asked. “What’s so funny?”
“You. You’re in one of your save-the-world moods.”
Christy put down her fork. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Todd covered her hand with his. “Don’t get upset.” He was still grinning. “You’re cute when you get like this.”
“Cute!” Christy felt the blood rushing to her face.
Todd’s expression remained jovial. “Yeah, cute. It’s like you don’t have enough challenges of your own to figure out so you take on the world’s burdens. I always know when you’re feeling responsible for the deterioration of the ozone layer. You get this squiggly wrinkle across your forehead right here.” He traced his finger across her forehead and laughed.
To her surprise, Christy broke into a smile. “Am I really that bad?”
“You are really that caring,” Todd said. “That’s not bad, as long as you don’t take it to an extreme, of course. It’s one of the many qualities I admire in you.”
Todd’s calm words and loving attention soothed Christy. She felt her appetite returning and ate three sausages off Todd’s plate before he complained.
“You can go back for seconds, you know,” he said.
“No thanks,” she said with an impish grin. “I’m full now.”
Todd and Christy left the cafeteria holding hands. After he walked her to her first class, they stopped by the door. As the other students rushed past them, Todd ran his hand over her long tresses and said in a low voice, “Na ka Makua-O-Kalani, e malama mai ia makou.”
Christy looked at him, waiting for an explanation. His words sounded Hawaiian, but she had never heard Todd say them before.
He seemed just as surprised at his words as Christy because all he added was, “I can’t believe I remembered that.”
“What did you say?”
“It’s a prayer that Lani used to say every morning before I left for school.” Todd seemed lost in a memory.
“I’ll be at the bookstore until three,” Christy said. She was uncomfortably aware that all the seats were filling fast in the classroom. “Meet me there if you can.” She wanted to hear who Lani was and what the prayer meant when they had more time.
Only a few seats near the center of the large auditorium were still open when Christy entered her Old Testament introduction class. Old Testament and New Testament introduction were required for all graduates of Rancho Corona, so Christy suspected lots of freshmen were in this class.
She took a seat and noticed Sierra along with several of her friends sitting near the front. Next to Vicki was an empty seat. The instructor had already begun, so Christy didn’t feel comfortable moving to join Sierra’s group. Even though Todd’s encouragement over breakfast had helped Christy believe everything was going to turn out okay with Katie, she didn’t want to face Sierra yet—just in case Katie had spent the night telling Sierra and her friends what an insensitive roommate Christy was.
When class was over, Christy slipped out and hurried to the administration building to make an appointment with her counselor. The first opening he had was the next morning at ten. She took the appointment, determined to decide on her major and settle her class schedule before the end of the week.
Christy arrived at the bookstore just as her new boss, Donna, was about to enter the store with a box in her arms. Christy reached to open the door for her.
“Good, you’re a little early, Christy. Did I show you how to log in on the computer when you start work?” Donna asked.
“No.”
“I didn’t think I did. Come with me, and I’ll help you set up.”
Christy followed Donna to the back of the bookstore, where she showed Christy how to access her time card on the computer and how it automatically logged her in when she typed in her code. Beside the computer, stacks of boxes stood open with a label gun resting on the top box. It brought back memories of her first job at the pet store in Escondido. Only, there she spent hours labeling fish food and rubber cat toys that smelled like old tires. She liked the ink and paper smell of these boxes of books much more.
“The same textbooks are in these first three boxes,” Donna said. “I need you to label them on the back like this and then change the label gun and mark the books in these other four boxes at $15.95. Have you used one of these before?”
Christy nodded and told her about the pet store.
“Okay. Well, let me know when you’ve finished, and I’ll start you on the register.”
Christy was glad for the chance to begin with something simple. She liked feeling productive and able to measure her accomplishments.
“You can’t be done already,” Donna said when Christy joined her at the register a short time later. A long line of students was waiting to pay for textbooks.
“I think I finished all the boxes you pointed out.”
“Lovely,” Donna said. “You are the answer to my prayers, believe me. Why don’t you watch me go through a few transactions, and then you can jump in.”
The computer and credit card system were similar to what Christy had worked with at the pet store. She stepped in to try the machine after watching Donna on three transactions and went through the motions as if she had been doing it for years.
“You’ve got it,” Donna said. “I’m going to shelve some of those books, and then I’ll open this other register. Let me know if you get stuck on anything.”
Christy didn’t know why, but the act of serving like this, of using her hands to accomplish things, gave her a sense of well-being. The world was somehow a brighter place when she could get things done. She knew she was going to like working in the bookstore.
I wonder if having a degree in literature would be useful if I ended up working full time in a bookstore?
In the back of her mind she began to imagine in the most romantic way possible how dreamy her life would be if she and Todd married and lived in a cozy little house somewhere. They would have a vegetable garden in the backyard and a woodburning fireplace. She would bake cookies for the teens in the youth group, who would hang out at their house every Friday night. Every morning Christy would hop on a bike, like the one she had borrowed all the time in Switzerland, and she would pedal off to a charming little bookstore where, at ten o’clock, she would host a story time for toddlers. Customers would come from all over to browse in Christy’s bookstore. She would serve them cookies and tea—Katie’s Indian summer herbal tea, once Katie perfected the recipe.
But by two o’clock, Christy’s imagination was having a difficult time glamorizing a bookstore owner’s life. She hadn’t eaten lunch, and her stomach was complaining loudly. The line of students hadn’t diminished. The computer went down for almost half an hour, and all the credit card charges had to be done manually. As more students flocked into the store with lists of required textbooks, Christy wished she had a stool to sit on or at least a thicker rug beneath her feet.
She realized she had been daydreaming about being married to Todd. It had been a natural assumption, a logical, comfortable foundation in her daydream. Christy felt a wonderful thrill of hope.
I must love Todd enough to commit myself to him for the rest of my life if I include him in my daydreams so easily. I have to tell Katie about this.
As soon as she thought of Katie, her spirits swooped down a couple of notches.
That is, if Katie is still speaking to me.
Christy finished a transaction for a girl who wore a hearing aid. She seemed to be immensely relieved when Christy presented her with the total for all her books and it was less than she had expected. That’s when Christy reali
zed that the majority of the textbooks she was selling were the ones off the used bookshelves in the back. Christy wished she had been more organized and had shopped for her textbooks sooner, before all the used ones were gone. That was one check she wasn’t looking forward to writing because she knew it would drain her savings.
At three o’clock, Christy signed off the computer, and another student took her place. Christy went to the back of the store and scanned the used textbook shelves. She found three of the books she knew she needed. The others would have to wait until she received an updated list after she made a final decision on her major and her classes.
Christy left the bookstore with her heavy textbooks and went to the guys’ dorm to see if Todd was there. She entered West Hall and asked one of the guys on the couch how to call the rooms. He pointed to the phones on the wall, and she tried to call Todd. No answer.
That was one of the things that bugged her about being at a conservative Christian college. In Switzerland she had been in a co-ed dorm, and the guys and girls were both free to come and go as they wished. That meant she didn’t always have her room to herself, if one of her two roommates was already there with a boyfriend. But that had only happened once. Christy was the one who stayed in the dorm room the most; so her roommates were the ones who went to visit the guys’ rooms.
And there I was again last night, alone, while my roommate went off to be with someone else.
Christy left a simple voice message for Todd, saying that she would be in her room until five, when she planned to eat an early dinner. Then she had a class from seven o’clock until nine.
Trudging across campus, she silently moaned about how far the guys’ dorms were from the girls’ dorms. The books she had bought felt heavier with each step. It was much easier in Basel with all the housing in one area. It’s so ridiculous for them to separate us across campus like this and put all these restrictions on us.
Christy was hoofing it past The Java Jungle when someone came running up behind her and said, “Hey, cutie, where have you been?”