Leaving Fishers

  Chapter

  Five

  ANGELA’S CHATTER ENDED IN THE CAR. She drove for dozens of blocks in silence. Dorry thought ruefully about her fantasy of Brad or one of the other guys taking her home. Right car, wrong driver.

  “Everybody likes you. You know that, don’t you?” Angela said suddenly. She stopped at a traffic light and flashed a dazzling smile at Dorry.

  “Well, sure. I guess so,” Dorry said. She turned toward the window to hide an embarrassed grin.

  “We feel so lucky to have gotten to know you,” Angela said. “If I hadn’t seen you sitting by yourself on Monday . . . think what we would have missed.”

  “Uh-huh,” Dorry said. She wasn’t sure what to say. Kids didn’t talk like that back in Bryden. But Angela was still talking.

  “I wasn’t sure . . . Sometimes people don’t tell others what they mean to them. That’s something I’ve learned in Fishers. You’ve got to let people know how important they are. And you are important.”

  Dorry felt even more flattered, and more uncomfortable. Should she tell Angela she liked her, too?

  “There’s something else . . . This is a little embarrassing, but I don’t want you to be confused by anything.” Angela paused. The light changed. She turned onto a cloverleaf entrance ramp for 465. Dorry waited, suddenly unsure where the conversation was headed.

  “Kim said at the end of the party, when you were waiting for the bathroom, you might have overheard Lara and me talking,” Angela said, finally, glancing away from the curving road to watch Dorry.

  Dorry gulped. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—I just—”

  Angela waved away Dorry’s apologies. “Oh, nobody’s blaming you. It’s not your fault.” Angela made it sound like someone else deserved blame, and plenty of it, but she was too kind to say so. Dorry was just relieved Angela wasn’t mad at her.

  Angela accelerated, pulling out onto the freeway. “The only reason I bring it up is that . . . I was thinking about what we said,” she continued. “And depending on what you heard, you could misunderstand. . . . What exactly did you hear?”

  “You . . . called Lara a thief,” Dorry said, hesitantly. She was glad it was darker inside the car now and Angela couldn’t see her face. “Did she take something of yours? Then I heard her say something like, ‘It wasn’t like that. She needed it as soon as possible.’”

  Angela didn’t even try to look at Dorry now. She peered intently at the traffic around her, changing lanes with a practiced air. “And that’s all you heard?”

  “Yes,” Dorry said. “It’s none of my business. I’ll forget I heard anything.” Of course, she couldn’t forget. Already, she was thinking of Lara differently. And Angela, too. Maybe these Fishers people weren’t so perfect after all. She looked out the window, just wishing she were home and didn’t have to discuss this with Angela. It was the first time she’d ever longed to be at Northview.

  “No,” Angela said. “You deserve an explanation. Lara has a problem. Kleptomania, I guess it’s called. You’ve heard about people who can’t stop taking things, whether they really want them or not? We thought Lara had overcome it since she joined Fishers. I don’t think she’d stolen anything in months. But then at the party, I saw her take my necklace out of my purse. She did it right in front of me, like she wanted me to see. It was a cry for help.”

  Dorry frowned doubtfully, though she couldn’t think of any reason that Angela would lie. When had Lara had time to take Angela’s necklace? Angela had been with Dorry practically the whole time. But Angela had left to go to the bathroom. Maybe it had happened then.

  “I don’t understand. Why was your necklace in your purse?” Dorry asked, then worried that Angela would take the question the wrong way. Dorry didn’t want Angela to think she didn’t believe her.

  “The clasp broke,” Angela said. She evidently didn’t mind questions. “I didn’t want to lose it. Look, I wouldn’t have told you about Lara, except I thought it would be worse not to. I hope this doesn’t make you think badly of her. She really needs our friendship. We—the Fishers—have been trying to help her.”

  Angela said “our friendship,” casually, and that made the phrase sound even more wonderful to Dorry. She liked it that Angela was treating her as a partner, someone who would help take care of Lara. She liked the thought that Lara needed help from her, Dorry.

  Angela glanced at Dorry again. “This is all a little . . . embarrassing for Lara. You won’t tell anyone else, will you?”

  “Of course not,” Dorry said.

  “I knew we could count on you,” Angela said.

  Angela pulled off 465 and Dorry began directing her to Northview. Dorry was glad it was dark and Angela couldn’t see much of the complex. They pulled up in front of Dorry’s apartment.

  “Thanks so much for coming,” Angela said, as if she herself had invited Dorry to the party. “About Sunday morning—I’ll pick you up for the service at eight-thirty. You’ll love it. I promise.”

  “Okay,” Dorry said. “Thanks. Bye.”

  Dorry got out of the car and waved as Angela pulled out. Angela gestured that she would wait for Dorry to go inside. Dorry turned around. She was surprised by how much light leaked out from around the edges of the curtains on the apartment windows—surely she’d only left one lamp on. She unlocked the door and pushed it open.

  “Dorry! Where have you been?” Her mother grabbed Dorry and hugged her tight. “We thought something awful had happened—” Her mother pushed Dorry back and looked into her face. “How could you do this to us?”

  As if too weak with relief to keep standing, Dorry’s mother collapsed onto the couch, pulling Dorry down with her. Dorry’s father was there, too. His eyes were cold and hard in his deeply lined face. Dorry knew that look of barely restrained fury—it had accompanied every single one of her childhood spankings.

  “I—I was just at a party with my friends,” Dorry said, stumbling over the words, even though she knew that made her sound guilty. “I thought you both had to work until midnight.”

  “So you thought it was okay to run around wild?” Dorry’s dad asked.

  Dorry was still caught in her mother’s embrace. She pulled away and sat on the edge of the coffee table. “No, no, it wasn’t like that. This was a church group I was with.” The word “church” had a magical effect, softening both of their faces. But they still looked mad. Dorry rushed to explain. “I would have left a note, but I thought I’d be home before either of you—”

  “You should have called me at work and told me where you were going. Asked permission,” Dorry’s mom said.

  “I never did that back home in Bryden,” Dorry said.

  “This isn’t Bryden,” Dorry’s dad said.

  A week earlier, that would have been a cue for Dorry to plead, “Then send me back there.” But now she only sat still, in stony silence. Just when she’d had a good time at the party, when Angela had told her everybody liked her and even asked for her help with Lara—why did her parents have to ruin everything?

  Dorry’s mother patted Dorry’s knee. “I guess everything’s all right now. You didn’t do anything wrong. We’re just bound to worry, here in the city, since you hear about all the crime around here. But if you were with some church group . . .”

  Dorry looked at her father. “Dad?”

  “I reckon your mother’s right. But you call her the next time, you hear?” he said, grudgingly.

  “Okay,” Dorry said.

  Her father got up and walked to the window. He moved aside the curtain and looked out at the bleak parking lot. “I didn’t want to move here either,” he said. “But we did and that’s that. It’s only for three years.”

  Dorry started to answer, to say she hadn’t complained. Not this time. Then she decided he was saying that for her mother’s benefit.

  Her father dropped the curtain. “I’d better call work.” He brushed past Dorry to the phone in the kitchen.

  Dorry looked inquisitively at her mo
ther. “Why are you both home?”

  “I wasn’t feeling too good so they sent me home early. When I got here and you weren’t home I called your dad. We were going to call the police if you weren’t back by ten-thirty.”

  “The police!” Dorry was horrified.

  “Yeah. I would have called them right away, but I figured they’d just think we were a couple of hysterical hicks. Don’t worry us like this again, okay?”

  “Okay.” Dorry sat down next to her mother on the couch. “Do you still feel sick?”

  “I was so upset about you, I kind of forgot about it. But yeah, basically, I feel like I’ve been run over by a Mack truck. Don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  Dorry’s dad hung up the phone. “Well, I’ve still got a job, but they want me in for the 6 a.m. shift to make up for this. I’m going to bed.”

  “You should go, too, Mom,” Dorry said. “Get some rest. You’ll feel better tomorrow.”

  “Hope so,” her mother said, heaving herself up from the couch.

  When both of Dorry’s parents had disappeared into their bedroom and shut the door, she relaxed and leaned her head back against the couch. She felt like she’d stepped off a roller coaster. Her parents’ anger had been like an unexpected plunge at the end, when she’d thought the ride was over.

  Dorry replayed everything in her mind, starting with the trip to Burger King with Lara. That seemed so long ago now. Dorry slid lower on the couch. She remembered laughing and talking with Brad and Angela, meeting Pastor Jim, hearing Angela say, “Everybody likes you. You know that, don’t you?” She frowned, thinking of the fight she’d heard between Angela and Lara. Except it wasn’t really a fight if it was for Lara’s own good. So Lara was a kleptomaniac. What had she meant by “. . . she needs it”? Who would need a broken necklace? Angela hadn’t explained that part. Maybe she couldn’t. If Lara was a kleptomaniac, her reasoning wouldn’t make sense.

  Dorry slid down sideways, stretching her legs out on the couch. She could be a little crazy, herself. Before Angela had explained about Lara’s problem, Dorry had almost suspected they were fighting about her.

  Chapter

  Six

  DORRY GOT UP EARLY SUNDAY MORNING and pulled on her nicest outfit, a flowered jumper and matching shirt that looked like silk if you didn’t get too close. She tried to forget that the material of the dress pulled too tightly across her midsection. She put on lip gloss without glancing in the mirror. She knew it would only deliver bad news. Her skin had been breaking out something awful since they’d moved, and her hair had never been anything but uncontrollable. Back home, Marissa had gone through a phase where she’d wanted to become a beautician, and she’d taken on Dorry’s hair as her personal mission.

  “It’s not a bad color—really brown’s okay, and it is thick. Maybe one of those new shags would help,” Marissa had said.

  So Dorry had been crazy enough to follow her advice, and the haircut had looked awful from the beginning. Now she ran a comb through her hair as usual, without much hope that it would help.

  By eight fifteen, Dorry was sitting by the window pulling on her shoes. Both of her parents were sleeping late, and she wanted to make sure Angela didn’t wake them knocking at the door or ringing the bell. She looked out at the Northview parking lot and wondered what the Fishers service would be like. Probably boring like Bryden Methodist, she decided. She’d have to figure out how to get everyone to stay friends with her without having to go to church.

  A rusty yellow car pulled in and parked at the far end. Dorry knew that wasn’t Angela. Then she remembered she didn’t know what Angela’s car looked like. Surely she wouldn’t have Brad’s again. Dorry’s stomach began doing flip-flops. She chewed a ragged hangnail on her right thumb. Since Friday she’d been trying to focus just on the good things about her new friends. But if Angela was driving a bright blue sports car, that would mean she’d been at Northview on Monday, and had avoided Dorry. Then Dorry would have to ask her about it, or always wonder. And how could they be friends then?

  Angela showed up at eight twenty-six, in a dark blue Mercedes.

  Relief washed over Dorry, then awe—I have a friend who drives a Mercedes? She grabbed her purse and rushed out the door.

  Angela was getting out of the car, stepping gingerly in her high heels on the cracked, weedy blacktop of the parking lot.

  “I’m sorry,” Dorry said. “My family’s not really this poor. It’s just that my parents still have to pay taxes and stuff on our house back home, and—”

  Angela held up her hand like a stop sign. “Don’t worry about it. I don’t choose my friends based on money. Think about it—Jesus Himself never even owned a house. Like all Fishers, I live by His example.” She circled the Mercedes and held open the passenger door. Dorry got in. Angela stood close, holding the door.

  “So it’s not an issue, all right?” she said.

  “All right,” Dorry replied.

  “Good.” Angela shut the door.

  The Mercedes rode smoothly and quietly. Dorry never felt the Northview speed bumps. She never heard the traffic or the hum of the electric station next door.

  “The service actually isn’t until nine thirty, but the music starts at nine and it’s so inspiring, no one wants to miss that,” Angela was saying.

  “Where is the church, anyway?” Dorry asked.

  Angela shook her head. “We are the church. There’s no building. We follow Christ’s example in that—He never built a church. The last couple months we’ve just rented the Durstin Auditorium downtown.”

  Even Dorry had heard of that. It was big. They had rock concerts there. “How many people are in Fishers?”

  “Several hundred,” Angela said. “Maybe a thousand. I don’t know. Numbers aren’t important. It’s what’s in people’s hearts. It’s the spirit we generate together . . . You’ll see.”

  When they got to the auditorium, Dorry could hear the music from the sidewalk. They pushed through giant doors to a huge room where row upon row of people—old, young, white, black, some in dresses or suits, others in jeans and T-shirts—were standing or swaying by their seats.

  And everybody, everybody was singing.

  “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice,” some girls trilled, and then male voices picked up the refrain while the girls sang, “Rejoice, rejoice, again I say rejoice.” It was a round. Dorry remembered singing rounds in school. But she’d never been overwhelmed by the sound and the echo, as she was now. Caught in the swirl of music, one “rejoice” chasing the other, Dorry couldn’t help feeling joyous. The voices swelled. The room held hundreds of people, and all of them seemed to be singing with all their hearts.

  Then a tall, thin man standing at the front lifted his arm and brought his fingers and thumb together, and that cut off the first strand of the round. One by one, groups dropped out until at last just one girl sang alone, somewhere at the front with a microphone. Her voice was high and sweet and pure, and she lingered on the last line: “—again, I, say, re-joice.” Somehow she still sounded joyous, but sad, too, to have to stop singing.

  “Thank you, Kate,” the man at the front said with a nod. “That was truly a gift of God.” His gaze seemed to take in everyone in the room. “Rejoice!” he proclaimed.

  “We rejoice indeed!” the crowd agreed enthusiastically. Angela shouted with them.

  The man nodded again, accepting the enthusiasm.

  “I see seats down front,” Angela whispered to Dorry. Dorry followed Angela down the stairs and across a row. People smiled and whispered “Welcome” as they went by. Then the crowd launched into a second song about joy but faster and more raucous. Someone toward the back started clapping, and soon everyone was. Dorry wasn’t much into clapping, but she didn’t want to be the only one in the whole place with idle hands, so she joined in. She didn’t know the song either, but soon she was singing along with the chorus, “I take joy in the Lord, joy, joy, joy.”

  There were five or six
songs after that, each more rapturous than the last. Beside Dorry, Angela looked absolutely transported. The music buoyed Dorry’s spirits, too. She forgot Northview Apartments. She forgot her hair. She forgot Lara and Angela’s fight. She forgot the blue sports car. She forgot loneliness. She forgot Bryden. She forgot everything except joy.

  Then the man at the front stopped them without leading into a new song. “My time is up,” he said. There was an audible groan from the crowd. He smiled. “But it’s only seven hours until music vigil tonight. I’d love to see you all there. And Pastor Jim has more wonderful things in store for you now.”

  The crowd cheered.

  He started walking away from the podium, then leaned back. “I almost forgot. For those of you just joining us,” he said, “I’m Brother Paul. I’m in charge of the music around here, so if you have any suggestions, any favorite songs the Spirit is calling you to sing tonight or next week, or any time, please let me know.”

  “He’s great,” Angela whispered to Dorry. “So talented, but so humble.”

  As Brother Paul went to his seat, someone else stood up two rows in front of Dorry. “The Lord is good to us!” he shouted without leaving his row.

  “We rejoice in the Lord!” the crowd answered.

  Across the room, another voice rang out. “All our blessings come from God!”

  “We rejoice in the Lord!” the crowd repeated.

  And then another voice: “Our Father gives us all we need.”

  And again, the crowd responded, “We rejoice in the Lord.”

  Dorry remembered something like this from church back in Bryden—what had Reverend Patton called it? Responsive reading? But that had been people mumbling, their tongues tripping over unfamiliar words written in the bulletin. This seemed utterly spontaneous and entirely sincere. There was no script. Everyone around Dorry was shouting and grinning. They seemed truly joyful.

  Then Pastor Jim strode to a podium at the front of the room. The crowd was instantly silent, expectant. “‘And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good,’” he proclaimed. “Genesis 1:31.” He paused, giving the Biblical words time to resonate. “Brothers and sisters, isn’t this a morning made for rejoicing?”