Christy’s mom walked in at that moment and looked at Teri. “Are you all right, dear?”
Teri nodded.
Turning to Christy, Mom said, “Christy, I must say, I didn’t even know you were my own daughter out there. You did an excellent job!”
“Thanks, Mom.” Christy smiled weakly. This is what she had wanted all along: the recognition, the praise, and the affirmation from her friends and family. But hearing it in front of Teri turned the victory into a hollow pleasure. How could she enjoy her dream when the one who helped make it come true had just lost hers?
“Do you want to go home with me now, or spend some time with all your friends back in the gym?”
“I’d rather go now. Bye, Teri.” Christy gave her a gentle hug. “I’ll see you Monday. Take care of your foot, okay?”
Teri forced a smile. “I will. Thanks.”
Christy and her mom stepped out of the office and nearly ran into a giddy, flying Renee. Even the sight of Christy didn’t diminish her enthusiasm.
“Oh, hi!” she squeaked. “I guess you’re officially one of us now, huh? Well, congratulations, and I’m sure you’ll be a great addition to our team.”
Is it because my mom’s right here that she’s being this sweet? Is it because of what Mrs. James has been saying all week about being a team? Or is it because the pressure is off and she knows she made the squad so there’s no doubt that she’ll be head cheerleader?
“Thanks,” Christy returned cordially but not as sweetly. “And congratulations to you too, Renee.”
Her face looked bright and zingy as she cheerfully retorted, “Was there any doubt that I’d make it?”
Christy excused herself so she could change out of the uniform and leave with her mom before Renee decided to continue gushing all over them.
“Let’s stop and get some ice cream to celebrate,” Mom suggested on the way home. “Your dad will be so proud of you. I wish he could have seen you. Why, Christy, I never would have guessed that you had this side of you! You were very, very good out there.”
Christy should have been excited and ready to celebrate, but inside she felt dismal and small. You’d be surprised, Mom, how much you don’t know about the real me. Nobody does. Except maybe God. But what kind of a God would let Teri hurt her foot knowing how much I need her to be on the squad with me?
Heavy questions weighed Christy down all weekend. On the outside, she responded the way everyone wanted her to: happy and excited and proud that she had made the squad. Aunt Marti and Uncle Bob even called Friday night and promised to come see her at as many games as they could. Marti insisted on paying for Christy’s entire outfit, no matter how much it cost. That relief of the financial pressure alone should have sent Christy’s emotions soaring. However, on the inside she had never felt so lonely.
Saturday night, prom night, Christy talked her mom into renting a movie, and the two of them sat on the couch watching The Man from Snowy River. Mom cried during some parts; Christy cried all the way through. The piano music that Jessica, the girl in the movie, played when she brooded over her boyfriend haunted Christy.
She couldn’t fall asleep that night. I wonder if Katie is having the time of her life? I wonder if the dress she borrowed worked out okay? Who did Rick go with? Did he think of me at all? Why didn’t he call me after he sent that note to me at tryouts? Was he even there? I never saw him. I wish I knew what he was thinking.
Then because she couldn’t help her thoughts from taking her to the next turn in the winding path of her remorse, Christy wondered about Todd. He’s probably not thinking of me at all now that he has Jasmine. I wonder if he’s going to kiss her tonight. Has he kissed her before? The kisses he’s given me can’t be all that special if he’s also kissing other girls.
Then a sharp, painful realization hit Christy deep in her heart. I’ve kissed another guy. I’ve kissed Rick. Todd doesn’t know. If he did, would he think the times I kissed him were less special? I wish I’d never kissed Rick, or more accurately, I wish I’d never let Rick kiss me. And I wish I’d never kissed Todd. I wish I’d never kissed either of them!
Christy felt tears coming to her eyes in the darkness of her bedroom and in the darkness of her heart. No, I don’t mean that. I don’t wish I’d never kissed Todd. I only wish it didn’t hurt so much now. I wish I didn’t care about him so much. I have to stop these feelings from growing. Bury them even deeper. It won’t hurt so much if I don’t care so much. Come on. I managed to hide my frustration with Renee. I can hide these feelings too.
Christy was exhausted by Sunday morning, having wrestled all night with herself. She turned especially moody when she arrived at the toddler class and found out Katie wasn’t there.
Christy couldn’t believe how heavily this sadness hung on her shoulders. It didn’t matter one bit that she had made the cheerleading squad. She still felt empty and all alone. And that bothered her. Christy assumed that once she became a cheerleader, all those stressful feelings would go away and she would feel good and satisfied and energetic all the time.
Not so.
And she couldn’t bury all her feelings about Todd. Nor could she hide the depression she felt over the fact that Katie went to the prom without her. She felt melancholy as she passed out Play-Doh to the toddlers.
“Here you go.” She handed Ashley a lump of the dough.
“Make something fo’ me, Cwissy,” Ashley said, her blue button eyes looking up expectantly.
“Okay.” Christy pulled up a low chair next to Ashley. “What do you want me to make?”
“I dunno.”
“Here,” Christy quickly rolled out a long line, then held it up for Ashley. “It’s a snake!”
“Eeeee!” Ashley squealed. “I don’t want a snake.”
“Look, Teacher,” one boy said. “I made a snake too.” He dangled it in front of Ashley, and she appropriately squealed again.
“Okay, okay.” Christy squashed the green gushy stuff in the palm of her hand so that it squeezed out through her fingers. “We can make anything you want, Ashley. Here, you squash some too.”
A waterfall of thoughts cascaded through Christy’s mind as she pressed the warmed clay into her hand. She had told Rick once that he made her feel like Play-Doh. Was he, like Katie said, still interested in trying to make her into what he wanted her to be, like a pliable plaything?
And then another Todd thought crashed over the rocky places of her mind: “Soft hearts are the only kind of hearts that God can hold in His hand and mold.”
“Story time!” the teacher called, and some of the children scrambled over to the rug while a few slowpokes tried to finish up their projects. Christy helped scoot them along and then got the snack ready, half listening to the story.
The teacher had begun to tell about Jonathan and David when a little girl interrupted her. “My friend has twin brothers, and their names are Jonathan and David.”
“This is a different Jonathan and David,” the teacher explained with a smile. “These boys lived a long, long time ago, in Bible times. They were very good friends, and they both loved God. Jonathan’s father was the king.”
“My friend has a dog named King,” a little boy said.
“Let’s listen to the story now,” the teacher continued patiently.
I could never teach a bunch of interrupters like these kids, Christy thought. I’d never have the patience.
“Now, Jonathan deserved to be the next king because he was the king’s son. But do you know what? God wanted David to be king, and Jonathan knew it. Did Jonathan fight with David and say, ‘I deserve to be king. Get out of my way!’?”
All the toddlers shook their heads and said, “Noooo.”
“That’s right. Jonathan loved David and he helped him become the next king because Jonathan knew that God wanted David to be king and not him. Do you know what the Bible says love is?”
Christy stood perfectly still, waiting for what the teacher would say, not for the toddlers’ benefit
but for hers.
From memory the teacher quoted part of the love chapter. “Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous …”
Christy shut it all out. Not those verses again! She didn’t need another reminder of Todd. Not now. Quietly humming the piano music from the movie the night before, she ignored the rest of the story.
Christy walked alone into the church service. None of her friends had showed up; they were probably all too tired from the prom. The loneliness she had felt for several days now throbbed within her. She found her parents and sat with them, which felt safe and comforting.
She tried to put a lot into the service, singing and following along with her Bible during the sermon. She even underlined a verse or two.
Oddly, the thought that kept pounding to the front of her mind was a line from the teacher’s story to the toddlers. “God wanted David to be king, and Jonathan knew it.” She didn’t know what to make of this thought that refused to go away.
That afternoon, while everyone at her house took a nap, Christy reread a letter that came the day before from her friend Paula. Paula and Christy had been best friends since they were toddlers, but Paula still lived in their hometown in Wisconsin.
Paula’s correspondence tended to be short and written with large curvy letters with tiny hearts instead of dots over the i’s. She wrote about guys. Several guys. Guys Christy had never met. It all seemed so far away. Like another lifetime.
Paula wrote at least once a month, and in every letter she talked about how she was saving money to come see Christy that summer. At first she wanted nothing more than to have Paula come and be part of her new life in California. Yet as the year wore on, Paula seemed more and more like a stranger.
Christy knew she should write Paula back and tell her about the cheerleading victory and all. But after ten minutes of doodling on a piece of notebook paper, Christy gave up and called Katie instead.
She was actually a little mad at Katie for not calling her first and giving her all the details about prom. Christy punched in Katie’s phone number and tried to coach herself to sound positive when Katie answered the phone.
“Well? Tell me everything. Did you have fun?”
Katie paused before saying, “I guess. It was all right.”
“All right! That’s all you can say? It was all right?”
“Yeah, it was all right. I don’t think you missed much.”
“Katie, what happened?”
“Nothing. That’s just it. Here I had this big dream about what the prom would be like, but it wasn’t like I thought it would be at all.”
“You mean you didn’t have fun being with Lance? He’s usually the life of the party.”
“Exactly! And that’s why it turned out the way it did. Mr. Life of the Party took off and ignored me the whole time. We danced only once, for half a dance, and that was because I made him. The rest of the time I just sat there, watching everybody else.”
Christy didn’t know what to say. She searched for some possible positive points. “Well, did he give you flowers?”
“Yeah.” Katie laughed, but it wasn’t a happy remembrance kind of laugh. “He gave me a corsage. A huge corsage that didn’t match my dress at all. I told him my dress was blue. He said he forgot. The flowers were green. Green, Christy! You know how they spray-paint white carnations? Well, these were painted green and looked like some leftover bargain from St. Patrick’s Day.”
Christy laughed and sympathized at the same time. “How awful!”
“Oh, that’s not the worst of it,” Katie said, warming up. “You know my dress? The one I borrowed from Janelle? Well, you never saw it, but there’s no place to pin a corsage. Especially when my corsage was a head of lettuce.”
They both laughed.
“I carried it around all night. In the box. I felt like I was carrying around a cafeteria tray! Oh, and the food—oh man, we’re talking major mystery meat. They poured some creamy mushroom sauce over it, but nobody ate it. I ate some of my salad, and that’s all. I hadn’t eaten anything all day, and I was starving!”
“Sounds like you could have nibbled on your corsage if you got real hungry,” Christy teased.
“I thought about it, believe me!”
“So what else happened? Did you go with Rick and his date?”
“No. Rick didn’t go. I didn’t see him there at all. Nobody said anything. I don’t know what’s going on with him.”
“That’s strange. I wonder why he didn’t go,” Christy said.
“Who knows. Oh, you want to hear more? After my mom got all excited about my going, she decided I had to be home by midnight. Can you believe it? We had this big fight about my curfew right before Lance came. Then he got there, and my mom took all these stupid pictures. I didn’t smile in any of them.”
“Katie!”
“I was so mad. It didn’t help when Lance came in wearing, get this, a white tux with tails, a black top hat and—are you ready?—orange high tops!”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“What a nerd!”
“Not Lance. He turned out to be the life of the party, like I said. He must have danced with half the girls there, and he had his picture taken with at least a dozen of them. They all wanted the nice formal picture with their dates, then a wild and crazy one with Lance.”
“That’s incredible. I can’t believe this happened to you!” Christy tried to sound sympathetic, yet she couldn’t help feeling relieved that she hadn’t gone through the same embarrassing experience.
“I haven’t even told you the worst part. When I told Lance I had to be home at midnight, I was totally humiliated. Then, when it was eleven-thirty, I had to interrupt him while he was dancing with Renee.”
“Oh, of all people! She’ll never let you forget it either.”
“So, get this. Lance walks me to the limo and tells the driver to take me home and then come back for him.”
“No!” Christy tried to muffle her scream so she wouldn’t wake her napping family. “That’s awful!”
“Tell me about it!”
“What did you do?”
“I ate half the food in the refrigerator and watched TV.”
“You mean when you got home?”
“No, in the limo. They had a refrigerator and TV in the limo.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Nope. It was the only highlight of my pathetic evening, believe me.”
“What a riot!” Christy said.
“I’m glad you think so. That was one evening I hope I never have to repeat. And since I asked him to the prom, I was the one who paid for the tickets! What a joke, huh? I don’t want to go to school tomorrow. I don’t think I can show my face around that crowd ever again.”
“Oh Katie, it won’t be that bad. Renee has been torturing me for a couple of weeks now, and I’ve survived. You’ll bounce back. You always do.”
“I don’t know. I just wish you could have gone. You and I would have had fun together, even if both our dates turned out to be jerks.”
Christy wondered if Rick would have turned out to be such a jerk, spending the whole time flirting with all the other girls. She told Katie about the note she got at tryouts.
“If you want my opinion, I think Rick has it set in his mind that one day he’s going to marry you.”
“Oh, come on, Katie! Why would you even say that?”
“His parents are pretty strict. Did you know that? I think he likes you because you’re so young, sweet, innocent, and all that. He flirts with all the wild girls at church and school, but he probably figures that you’re the kind of girl his parents would approve of.”
As usual, Katie’s comments gave Christy something to think about. After hanging up, she went outside and sat on the front step. It was a cool afternoon with thin clouds veiling the blue sky. The fragrance of the jasmine was faint under the trellis. The neighborhood was quiet except for the sound of a lawn mower in the distance.
For a while Ch
risty hummed the piano music from the movie and thought about Katie, Lance, Rick, and Todd. For some strange reason, the time she spent sympathizing with Katie on the phone had helped to soften the hurts she’d been feeling. At least she had some good things to look forward to when she went back to school tomorrow. She would be identified as a cheerleader even though the announcement wasn’t yet official. Still, everyone would know. And they would look at her differently.
Then all of a sudden the line from Sunday school pushed all the other thoughts aside and marched boldly before her: “God wanted David to be king, and Jonathan knew it.” It was beginning to bug her. That one line was like a line from a commercial that kept coming back even when she tried hard to forget it.
“Was does that mean? Why do I keep thinking of that one line?” As she spoke the words, she realized she was talking to God the way she used to—openly and easily.
Christy knew the time had come to stop ignoring God and to get everything out in the open. She didn’t like being cut off and isolated from Him the way she’d been. It was like a bumper sticker she once saw that said, “If you feel far from God, guess who moved?”
It wasn’t hard to admit that she’d been the one who’d moved away from God. She was the one ignoring Him, and it had only made her feel lonely and miserable.
I’m sorry, Lord. I’ve been doing everything without You. I can tell, because even though I got what I wanted, the cheerleading and all, well, I feel so lonely. I know it’s because I haven’t spent any time with You. I’m sorry.
She felt relieved. Not as though all her burdens had been lifted or anything like that. All her problems were still there. But now she didn’t feel that she was all alone in trying to figure things out.
What am I supposed to do with my relationship with Todd? There was no answer—only the calm afternoon breeze dancing through the jasmine, sending the flowers’ perfume into the air.
Love is patient, Christy found herself thinking. She took it into her heart and held it a moment before telling herself, “You need to be more patient. The relationship isn’t over yet. You’re the one who tried to bury it, not Todd. You need to wait and see what happens, Christy.”