“Katie told me a while ago that Todd’s been working like a crazy man. She thought he was trying to save enough so you guys could get married.”
Christy’s calm, gentle face took on a determined look. “Todd needs to graduate first. That’s his goal in coming to Rancho this year. He’s decided he wants to be a youth pastor.”
“I can see him doing that. He’s a great teacher and a natural leader. I would have loved for him to be my youth pastor when I was in junior high,” Sierra said. “Sounds like a good choice.”
Christy nodded. “It does. He’ll be a great youth pastor. It just took him a while to come to that conclusion. For so many years he wanted to be a missionary in some tropical jungle, live in a tree house, and eat coconuts.”
Sierra laughed. “You’re kidding.”
“No. That’s exactly what he wanted to do. You can ask him.”
“What changed his mind?”
“God.”
“Oh,” Sierra said.
“And it wasn’t an easy task, from my point of view.” Christy adjusted her pillow behind her and smiled. “Todd wanted to be a Bible translator, but he doesn’t have a natural ear for languages. He tried taking some linguistics classes but had to drop them because he just couldn’t get it. Then he signed up with a missions organization, thinking they would send him to Papua New Guinea, and they sent him to Spain instead.”
“That’s where you saw him when you and I first met on the missions trip at Carnforth Hall.”
“Exactly,” Christy said. “It’s been a long journey for Todd to figure out what God wants him to do, and I think it was easier for Todd to go through that process while I was far away.”
“Now what?” Sierra asked.
Christy shrugged. She didn’t look distressed, just hopeful and dreamy. “We just ‘keep on keeping on,’ as the director of the orphanage in Basel used to say. It was so wonderful being together these last few days when Todd was at my parents’ house and helped me move in here. Now we’re going to see each other every day. I don’t want to start making any predictions, though. We need to take each day as it comes.”
Sierra reached for the white candy box on the desk, and after taking another truffle, she offered the last bite to Christy. Since Christy had been so open about her relationship with Todd, Sierra felt compelled to tell Christy about her wonderful-horrible weekend with Paul.
As soon as the piece of chocolate melted, Sierra drew in a deep breath and said, “I’m really glad everything is working out between Todd and you. I guess I should tell you that all my dreams about Paul crashed and burned yesterday.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?” Christy asked. “I mean, I’d really like to hear, but only if you want to tell me.”
Christy was two years older than Sierra, which made her the same age as Tawni. But Sierra had never thought of Christy in the same way she thought of her sister. Christy was more of an equal, a close friend, yet more experienced and therefore a wise counselor.
“He basically acted as though I was his girlfriend on Saturday and then ignored me on Sunday and said he didn’t want to ever see me again.”
Christy looked surprised. “He told you that?”
“Well …” Sierra tried to make her emotions pull back so she could relay the information accurately. “Not exactly. That’s what it felt like. You see, on Saturday night we walked on the beach, and he held me and quoted a poem he had written just for me. I’m telling you, Christy, I was sure this was ‘it,’ you know? This had to be what it felt like to be in love, and nothing could ever break us up. I was so … so …”
“Vulnerable?” Christy filled in for her.
“Okay. Yes, vulnerable. And happy. I was so sure of my feelings.”
“And you gave him your heart,” Christy suggested.
Sierra nodded.
“And he took your heart in his hand, and with a friendly smile but a critical eye, he scanned it, then set it down and said, ‘It is still unripe, better wait awhile.’ ”
“Where did you get those words?”
“From a Christina Rossetti poem. I have it copied in my diary. I went through the same thing with Todd a long time ago. But I still remember how much it hurt. I’m sorry you’re going through this, Sierra. It doesn’t necessarily mean everything is over between the two of you, though.”
“I don’t know,” Sierra said, kicking off her sandals and sitting on the bed with her legs tucked under her. “Paul said I would never know how glad he was that he didn’t kiss me. That feels pretty terminal to me.”
“Why did he say that?”
“He said things were going too fast, and he didn’t want things between us to get out of control physically because he had been there before.”
“Did he mean he had been in a physical relationship?”
“I guess. But how could things be going too fast and becoming too involved for us? All we did was hold hands. He didn’t even kiss me!” Sierra was picking up steam as she released her emotions. “How can hugging and holding hands be too involved? I think he was saying all that as an excuse to cover up what he really meant. He doesn’t care for me the way I care for him. He doesn’t want to be around me.”
“Sierra, holding hands and hugging are the first steps, you know. It can be hard to pull back once you’re familiar with each other that way. Paul obviously knows where his guidelines and standards are in a relationship. Are you sure that’s not what he was trying to communicate? That he had a line he didn’t want to cross physically in your relationship?”
Sierra refused to accept such a simple explanation. “But why would he say he was so glad he didn’t kiss me?”
“Obviously, kissing is the next step, and he wasn’t ready to go there.”
“I was,” Sierra said. “It was such a romantic evening. It would have been the perfect place and time for my first kiss.”
“But, Sierra, think about it. You guys went from nothing to step one, holding hands, and on to step two, hugging, in just a few hours. It sounds to me as if Paul wanted to pull back and take things more slowly. I think that was really kind of him.”
In Sierra’s mind, she saw Paul sitting like a rock on the second step of a long, winding staircase. His arms were folded across his chest as if to say stubbornly, “This is as far as I’m going, Sierra. Take it or leave it.” Her heart began to melt. Why hadn’t she seen that before? If he didn’t care for her so much, he wouldn’t have stopped on the second step. How could she have misinterpreted everything so badly?
“You know what, Christy? You’re right. I had it all backward.” Sierra remembered how Paul had looked, standing in the church gym, leaning on the broom, his head tilted with that charmingly shy expression on his face. He had looked so innocent. Just like the toddler with the gray eyes that Jalene had held on her hip at Mama Bear’s.
“I admire Paul for treating you that way,” Christy said. “Especially since he’s apparently been further up the steps in other relationships.”
Suddenly, the image of Paul planted like a rock on the second step disappeared, and a new, disturbing image took its place. Paul was on an escalator, running up the steps. Another girl was running up the steps with him. That other girl was Jalene.
thirteen
“OH, CHRISTY, I think I’m going to be sick.” Sierra slid off the bed and curled herself up in a ball on the floor, hugging her legs to her chest.
“What is it? What’s wrong? Was it the chocolate?”
“No, no, no!” Sierra moaned.
Christy sat on the floor beside her and gently touched her arm. “Sierra, what is it?”
Sierra lifted her head and faced Christy, trying to make the escalator image in her imagination go away. “I should have seen this before. Why didn’t I guess? I am so naive!”
Christy reached for a tissue and handed it to Sierra even though she didn’t have any visible tears.
“No wonder Paul said he wasn’t ready to talk. He said he didn’t know what he wanted
to say to me. He knew I didn’t know, and that’s why he said he didn’t want things to get out of control. He said he had been there before. He asked me to trust him when he said he didn’t want that to happen to us.”
“Paul didn’t want what to happen?”
Sierra looked away from her concerned friend and spoke the words she didn’t want to hear herself say. “Paul’s last girlfriend got pregnant. They obviously went to the top of the stairs. I’ve seen her baby—Paul’s baby. He has gray eyes and tilts his head just like …” Sierra couldn’t finish. The tears she had been holding back came gushing out. She buried her face in her raised knees and let the tears flow.
“Oh, Christy,” Sierra said at last, “how could I have been so blind?” She sniffed and choked out the words. “Paul wasn’t walking with the Lord when he dated Jalene. No wonder he left for a year and ran away to Scotland. When he was planning to come to Portland for my graduation, he said he had a few people he needed to set things right with. He must have meant Jalene and their son. He wanted to see their son!”
Another wave of frantic tears washed over Sierra, and she exhausted herself with the emotional outburst. The worst part was that the excessive crying made her left eye ache around the bruise, and she was sure it was beginning to swell again.
Christy sat quietly beside Sierra and let her cry. Several times Christy handed Sierra tissues, and twice she stroked Sierra’s wild, curly mane in a gesture of understanding.
When the last of Sierra’s tears had been released, she looked up and tried to breathe deeply. She had just regained control of her emotions when they heard a key being inserted into the door’s lock. A second later the door flew open, and boisterous, red-haired Katie burst inside.
“Home sweet … Sierra? What’s wrong?” Katie dropped the box in her arms and flew to Sierra’s side. “What happened to your eye? Are you okay? Christy, what’s going on?”
Christy quietly stood and pulled Katie along with her. “Come on. I’ll help you unload your stuff and carry it in.” Then, turning to Sierra, Christy asked, “Do you want me to tell Katie or would you rather tell her later?”
Sierra pointed at Christy. “You tell her. I don’t think I can.”
Katie and Christy left, closing the door behind them.
“Oh, Father God,” Sierra mumbled in the still room, “I never expected anything like this. Why didn’t You warn me? Why didn’t You make me pull back a long time ago? I put so much hope and trust in Paul. I never expected …”
The phone on the desk rang. Sierra jumped. It rang again, and she thought she should answer it. Clearing her throat and reaching for the receiver, Sierra said, “Hello?”
“Hi, I’m not sure I have the right room,” the male voice said on the other end. “Is this Katie?”
“No, but she’ll be right back.” The voice sounded so familiar that Sierra had to venture a guess. “Is this Wes?”
“Sierra?”
“Yeah. What are you doing calling Katie?”
“I was trying to find you, since you didn’t answer the phone in your room. I remembered you knew Katie from when we visited in the spring, and I guessed you might be there.”
“Well, I am here,” Sierra said, reaching for another tissue. She tried to blow her nose quietly.
“Dad left a little while ago,” Wes said. “I wondered if you wanted to meet me at the student coffee shop for some lunch.”
“I’m not very hungry,” Sierra said.
Wes paused and then said, “Are you okay?”
Sierra wasn’t sure if she should be open with her brother or not. She decided she should say something but not too much. “I just figured some things out, and they hit me kind of hard.”
“You mean about being on your own now?”
“No.”
“Is it anything you want to talk about?”
Sierra sighed deeply. “I’ve been talking to Christy. She’s Katie’s roommate. She’s the one I went to Switzerland with.”
“Well, I won’t interrupt then. But if you feel like calling, I’m at extension 3232.”
“That’s an easy number to remember.”
“Call me later if you want. I’m going to get something to eat.”
Sierra hung up and looked around the room. She felt dizzy. Or maybe she was hungry, and lunch with Wes would have done her some good. Before she could reconsider meeting him at the coffee shop, Christy and Katie reappeared, both carrying large boxes, which they promptly lowered to the floor.
“You guys need some help?” Sierra said, scooping up her crumpled tissues and looking for a wastebasket.
“If you want my opinion,” Katie said, her green eyes flashing above her rosy cheeks, “I say, ‘Big whoop.’ ”
“Big whoop?”
“I told her everything,” Christy said.
“Yeah, big whoop. Whatever happened with Paul and his old girlfriend is in the past. He wasn’t a Christian then, was he? Or, if he was, he was totally backsliding from what I remember your saying about him. So whatever happened in the past is the past. God forgave all that stuff when Paul came back to Him. If God isn’t holding it against Paul, then none of us should hold it against him, either.”
“You haven’t even met Paul,” Sierra said.
“But he’s a brother in Christ, right? So the Bible says I’m to forgive others as Christ has forgiven me. You can’t hold this against him, Sierra. That would be so unfair.”
“But Katie, a few other lives are involved in this.”
“Remember what Jesus said when He was hanging on the cross for us? He said, ‘Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.’ Every day people make mistakes. They don’t have any idea what they’re doing. If they ask God to forgive them, then we’re supposed to forgive them as well. Don’t you remember that verse on the wall at Carnforth Hall: ‘Love will cover a multitude of sins’?”
“Actually, it says, ‘Love … bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails,’ ” Christy said.
“Well, both of those love quotes are from the Bible,” Katie said, wiping the perspiration that had beaded up on her forehead. “My point is, Sierra, what does it matter? Does Paul’s past have anything to do with your future?”
“I don’t know.” Sierra felt as if all the wind had been knocked out of her. “I don’t know much of anything at this moment.”
“Maybe we should all eat something,” Christy suggested. “It’s after two o’clock, and I don’t know about you, but breakfast was a long time ago for me.”
“Let’s finish unloading my car,” Katie said. “Then we can all drive into town for some food. I want to stop at a drugstore, too. I don’t have any shampoo.”
The three of them worked quickly, hauling several heavy boxes out of the heat into the air-conditioned comfort of the room. Sierra had never seen Katie’s car before, and she thought the bright yellow vehicle was perfect for Katie. It was a cross between a Jeep and a dune buggy. Katie called it “Baby Hummer.”
Sierra, Christy, and Katie all climbed into Baby Hummer after they had stacked the boxes on Katie’s side of the room and drove down the hill into the town of Temecula. They all agreed on the first fast-food place they came to and ate in the car on the way to the drugstore. Sierra bought some toothpaste, a box of snack bars, and a bottle of apple juice. After Katie collected a small basketful of necessities, she and Sierra went searching for Christy.
They found her in the laundry soap aisle looking dazed. “Look at all these boxes of soap,” Christy muttered. “How do you know what to buy? In Switzerland I had only three brands to choose from. There are so many choices here. Liquid or powder? Do I need fabric softener? What is this color-safe bleach? And do I need a stain remover?”
“She’s losing it,” Katie confided to Sierra. “I knew it would catch up with her real soon. She’s been back only a few days, you know.”
“Jet lag?” Sierra questioned.
Katie shook her h
ead and took Christy by the arm, leading her to the checkout stand. “Cultural reentry,” she said. “It’s really bad on missionaries who have been in remote areas for a long time. They forget what a land of abundance America is.”
“There are just so many choices,” Christy said again.
“We learned about this last semester in my intercultural studies class,” Katie informed Sierra. Turning to Christy, she said, “You’ll freak out if you stay in this store much longer, Christy. Let’s go back to the dorm and unpack my stuff. We can buy you some laundry soap tomorrow.”
Back at the dorm, Christy seemed to have lost all her energy. She blamed that on the jet lag and afternoon heat.
“You guys, I’m going to bed,” Christy said, crawling under her covers with her clothes still on.
“Will it bother you if I unpack?” Katie asked.
Christy didn’t answer. She appeared to already be asleep.
“I’ll stay and help if you want me to,” Sierra said in a low voice.
“That would be great. Are you already moved in?”
“Not really. My side of the room looks just like this, all boxes. Vicki doesn’t arrive until the end of the week. To be honest, I’d rather stay here than go back to my room right now.”
“Then stay all night,” Katie suggested. “In one of these boxes, I have an air mattress. If you don’t mind sleeping on the floor, it’s all yours.”
They set to work, talking about school, parents, their summer jobs, and their expectations for the coming school year. Several times they started to laugh and then remembered Christy was trying to sleep, so they lowered their voices and tried to be quiet. It didn’t seem to matter, though. Christy was in a deep sleep.
Sierra appreciated that Katie didn’t bring up anything about Paul. It gave Sierra a chance to even out her emotions.
Since Katie didn’t have a lot of treasures to hang on the wall, it didn’t take long to set up her side of the room. Sierra was beginning to understand why Wes had said a few boxes of belongings turned into valuable treasures when that’s all a person had of home and the past. It made Sierra eager to unpack her boxes—but not tonight. Tonight she would cheer herself with the warmth of Katie’s energetic personality. Sierra would have tomorrow to make her own little nest cozy.