Paige Torn

  She even told me one time how envious she is that I have a job that lets me work with children.

  If by children she means their legal papers, then yes, I work with children.

  Layla is one of those people who, if I didn’t love her as much as I do, I would have stopped being friends with years ago.

  I walk back inside, give Mark his hamburger, tater tots, and Diet Coke, and settle back at my desk with my chicken sandwich and cherry limeade. Since I’ve spent my allotted thirty minutes driving, waiting in line at Sonic, and driving again, I will now have to work while I eat lunch.

  I work on tax reports in between phone calls from prospective adoptive parents wanting to know everything there is to know about the adoption process. From the very beginning of working here, I’ve always had a special spot in my heart for these people who walk through our door wanting nothing more than to love on a baby. Mostly because they come in looking like little lost puppies and leave months later absolutely and fantastically overjoyed.

  Mark says my compassion comes through in my voice, and that’s why my phone conversations with them last over an hour. I think he’d be frustrated except for the fact that 90 percent of the people who call end up coming in and using our agency.

  “And tomorrow is Friday!” Candace sings as she comes down the hallway at five o’clock, wearing a coat that she doesn’t need. Candace is from Vermont and likes to believe that winters should be cold.

  I rub my head. I just hung up the phone after an hour-long conversation, not with an adoptive mom but with a copier repair technician. Our copier has been on the fritz for almost a week, and the company who sold it to us still hasn’t sent someone out to fix it. I’ve tried fixing it six times, and all I ever get is a headache and ink stains on my favorite shirt.

  “Did you check the power cord?” the repairman asked me. “Are you sure it’s plugged in?”

  I hate when people just assume you’re incapable.

  “Yay for Friday,” I say to Candace, turning off the computer monitor and grabbing my jacket and purse. I follow her out, wave good-bye in the parking lot, and then drive quickly to my apartment to grab my black heels before heading over to Layla’s.

  Layla lives in, seriously, some of the creepier apartments on this side of town. Her apartment is all the way in the back, so you have to park and walk about five minutes on a dark, winding sidewalk before you reach her stairs. It scares me every time. Layla thinks it’s great, though. She says it’s romantic.

  “Then you can wind down as you’re coming home,” she told me one time. “It’s like forced exercise.”

  I still disagree.

  I climb her staircase and knock on her door. Layla opens it a second later. “Let me just grab my jacket.” She runs back into her living room. “You can come in, but it’s a disaster.”

  I peek in and nod. It is. “I thought we were going to look at invitations here?”

  “I’ve been planning all week.” She waves her hand in an excuse for her house as she pulls on her jacket. She grabs her purse off the table and closes the door behind us, locking it. She looks at me. “We have to find a place for the party before we can decide on invitations.”

  Apparently that is on the agenda for tonight.

  I follow her down the steps. “How come Peter isn’t helping with this?”

  She shrugs. “He said they were my parents. He just said to let him know and he’ll show up wherever I want him to.”

  I could have pretty much scripted that answer from Peter.

  “So, I called the city about that park with the gazebo,” she says as we climb into my car. I have an unspoken rule of never letting Layla drive. The two times I’ve ridden in the car with her, we almost died like fourteen times. She is the most distracted driver I’ve ever met. It’s amazing that she’s never been in a wreck. She did hit a squirrel one time though and pretty much went into mourning for a week. I pray every night for her to pay attention while she’s driving and stay alive another day.

  “What did they say?” I can see that being a nice place for an anniversary party. Especially if it’s in February. Nothing outside can ever be done in Dallas past the first week of May. It is too hot.

  “They said that it was on a first-come, first-served basis. I couldn’t reserve it. So basically, if that ends up being where we decide to have the party, we’ll have to camp out at the park the night before just to make sure we’re the first ones there.”

  Suddenly, Layla’s apartment complex doesn’t seem creepy at all when compared to the idea of camping out in an unlit park all night.

  “What about that church Mallory and Thomas got married in?” I suggest. “They used that big auditorium thing for their reception. That could be nice too.” A church is always a safe option.

  “That’s so been done before, Paige. I want to be different.” Layla sighs out the passenger window. “I really want it to be outside. Mom and Dad got married outside, you know. I think it would be really neat if the party is like their wedding. I even found a picture of their wedding cake, and I’m going to take it to someone and see if they can re-create it.”

  It is a sweet thought. I, meanwhile, am trying to figure out what to do with a three-tiered cake that could become a puddling swamp of icing from the potential pouring-down rain.

  Lord, please let there be sunshine on February 22!

  It is Saturday, and instead of my normal Saturday-morning routine of sleeping until nine before I go for my morning run, I am up at seven, back from my run, showered, and ready to go at eight forty-five. The youth group is having a service day at a food bank today, and Rick asked me to chaperone.

  Last night.

  Rick is not the most organized.

  “We really need some female help,” he said on the phone last night. “Kevin Waterson’s mom was going to come, but she had to cancel. Can you do it?”

  The food-bank project is at nine. I planned on spending the day working on a new wreath for my front door, but it can wait, I guess.

  “Sure,” I told him. “How’s Natalie?”

  “Still pregnant.”

  Yikes.

  “I’m scared,” Rick whispered into the phone. “She’s getting mean.”

  I laughed. “Hang in there. She can’t stay dilated forever.” That I know of, anyway. Like I said, my experience with dilation or anything regarding pregnancy is zilch.

  However, over Christmas break at my parents’ house, I saw a few episodes of that show about the women who don’t know they are pregnant until they are delivering a baby.

  I’m pretty sure I’m scarred worse than those women are.

  I drive to the church and park beside the blue youth van the kids lovingly named Alice. Alice has more personality than three of our tenth graders combined.

  Hopefully today is one of her good days.

  Rick and a small swarm of kids are standing on the sidewalk, squinting in the winter sun. “Good morning!” Rick yells.

  “Hey, guys.” I pocket my keys and walk over.

  A few of my ninth-grade girls are here and a couple of senior girls. It never ceases to amaze me how much the senior girls dress up for these events. One girl is even wearing a skirt, for goodness’ sake.

  I went for my typical service-project outfit — ratty jeans, a gray FCA T-shirt from high school, a black zip-up hoodie, and my sneakers.

  Tyler Jennings pulls up in a blue truck a few minutes later. The three ninth-grade guys who came make a beeline straight to him.

  I grin. It looks like he is a hit.

  At nine fifteen, Rick claps his hands together. “Okay, guys, I think we’ve got everyone. Let’s hit the road.”

  “Shotgun!” Justin immediately yells.

  I climb into the back of the van with three other girls, and we all squish around until all of our seat belts click. Tyler and the three guys are right in front of us, two sophomores and two juniors get in the row in front of him, and four seniors take the front row.

  Rick tu
rns the radio to his favorite country station, and six of the kids in the van groan. “Really?” one of the guys says. “Couldn’t we listen to something else?”

  “What do you want to listen to?” Rick asks.

  “I don’t know. Anything other than this.”

  So Rick tunes it to the classical station, and then everyone starts complaining. Me included. People talk about how classical music can raise your intellect, calm you down, help a headache, whatever. It doesn’t work for me. If anything, it makes my headaches worse.

  “Happier with country?” Rick grins.

  “Yes,” almost everyone in the car says.

  Keith Urban starts crooning some song about how the sun turned his girl’s hair to gold.

  Maybe it’s just me, but whoever writes Keith Urban’s songs seems to have a love of clichés.

  Rick starts singing along at the top of his lungs, which just makes it worse. Then Tyler joins in, trying to harmonize with Rick’s very off-key voice.

  “And if you ever get looooonely, you can just call me on the phooooone,” Tyler belts out, eyes closed, head thrown back. The boys beside him snicker.

  “Mental note. Next time, we take my car,” I tell the girls I am sitting next to.

  “Please.” Megan nods and rolls her eyes.

  Tyler slings his arm over the back of the seat and turns to look at me. “I think I’m offended.”

  “You probably should be.” I smile.

  He grins at me. “So what would you rather be listening to?”

  “Elvis.”

  “The King, huh?” Tyler starts nodding. “Very nice taste you have there, Miss Alder. Ever been to Graceland?”

  “No, but it would pretty much be the pinnacle of my life, so I figure I should probably wait and experience that when I’m old and have nothing else to live for.”

  He laughs. “Uh, okay.”

  “My grandmother got to meet Elvis. She waited on his table one time at a barbecue place in Memphis.”

  “So, your grandma was a waitress, huh?”

  I shake my head. “She is just a big fan.”

  Tyler drops his jaw. “Wait, so your grandma faked being a waitress so she could meet Elvis?”

  “Even brought him a glass of sweet tea.”

  “No way. That’s awesome!”

  I agree. I have the autographed napkin in my little fire safe at my parents’ house to prove it. I’m pretty sure I got my love for Elvis from hearing Nana sing “Love Me Tender” to me every night that she watched me while my parents went out on dates.

  Rick pulls into the parking lot at the food bank and turns to face all of us in the back. “Okay, ground rules. We’re here to help, so a help we will be.”

  I sort of want to start singing the “tee-dum, tee-dee” song from the Lost Boys in Peter Pan right there, but I refrain. Barely.

  “We’re going to be sorting a bunch of the canned goods people donated to them over the Christmas break. I want you guys to listen to Mrs. Campbell and pay attention to how she tells you to sort them.”

  Tyler raises his hand.

  “Yes, Tyler?”

  “Mrs. Campbell?” He is incredulous.

  Rick nods. “Word.”

  I roll my eyes. “So ten years ago, Rick.”

  “Right. Stay together, don’t get lost, the van doors will be locked, and if anyone comes up to you and asks you for a key to the van, Greg, just assume they are not with us.”

  Greg sighs. “Seriously, dude? That was like two years ago.”

  “To borrow a phrase from my favorite movie, ‘Legends never die,’” Rick says.

  I’ve only seen The Sandlot once, but I can quote half the scenes just from being around Rick and Natalie so much.

  Greg had apparently been approached by a man two years ago while we were here who told him that he needed to get into the van and asked if Greg had the keys. Apparently, Greg was so focused on stacking the cans of corn and pinto beans that he didn’t even bother to look up and notice the man wasn’t with our group. So Greg just told him he didn’t think the van was even locked.

  Two stolen iPods later and I think Greg learned to look before he speaks. It made a great sermon illustration. Rick uses it often.

  “And thank you, Greg, for running the sound today,” Rick opened his group lesson on Wednesday night. “And speaking of not paying attention, let’s talk about spiritual blindness.”

  Poor Greg.

  We all pile out and walk into the huge warehouse that is one of the food banks in town. It is a neat place. The front is split into two rooms; one side is set up like a mini grocery store, and then you walk through a little door and find a room filled with cots and mats in between cubicle walls that businesses around town have donated.

  The rest of the warehouse is totally for sorting and stocking, which is where we are going to be. Fifteen cardboard boxes probably six feet across, six feet in length, and about three feet in height are staggered around the warehouse, piled high with cans. I see Mrs. Campbell right when we walk in.

  “Hi, guys.” She walks over to us, clipboard in hand. I’ve been to this food bank at least a dozen times by now, and I’ve never seen Mrs. Campbell without a clipboard.

  “Put us to work, ma’am,” Rick says.

  She does a quick count. “Eighteen of you? Okay. Split into teams of two and then follow me.”

  The kids all graft to their best friends, and Justin latches on to Rick. I look around and the only person needing a partner is Tyler.

  At least I’ll get to know this guy a little better. Since I missed the leaders’ meeting when he introduced himself and all.

  “All right, so I want each team to take a box and get the cans sorted into fruits, vegetables, soups, and miscellaneous. There are plastic tubs to sort them into. Please check the expiration dates on the cans as well, and any expired cans we’ll throw away.” She smiles at us. “And thank you, guys.”

  “All right, team, move out!” Rick yells.

  “You’ve always wanted to say that, huh?” I ask him.

  He nods. “Always.”

  I shrug at Tyler, and we walk over to one of the huge boxes. A stack of plastic tubs, each one with a different label on the front, is right outside the box.

  “So, Paige, how long have you been working with the youth?” Tyler asks while we both lean over and start pulling out cans. He pushes the miscellaneous and soup tubs in front of him and hands me the fruit and vegetable tubs.

  “Almost five years.” I drop three cans of pears into the fruit tub.

  “Wow. So, you must have started right when you got out of high school then.”

  I nod. I moved to Dallas to go to college, found Grace Church, and met Natalie that first Sunday. She was a beaming newlywed at the time, and she and Rick pretty much adopted me as their little sister. They invited me over to dinner that week and talked me into teaching the ninth-grade girls by the time I left that night.

  “The first group I ever worked with graduated last year,” I tell Tyler. “That was a little weird.”

  “I bet.”

  “Did you grow up in Dallas?” I ask him.

  He shakes his head. “No, I grew up in San Antonio, but then my dad got transferred to San Diego, and I lived there until I came out here for grad school. I ended up getting a job offer from a company just down the street from where I live, so I just decided to stay.”

  That makes Tyler a few years older than me. “What’s your degree in?”

  “Computer sciences. I do a lot with software development.”

  I hand him four cans of beef broth. He doesn’t look like a nerd. He’s wearing tan work boots, straight-cut jeans with worn patches in the knees, a blue shirt with a brown plaid flannel shirt over it, and a thick, warm-looking vest.

  If anything, he looks more like a lumberjack. Tyler is built like an upside-down triangle. Wide, wide shoulders, thick arms, and a much smaller waist.

  It’s hard to picture him staring at a computer all day.

/>   “Huh,” I say because I don’t want to tell him I think he should maybe look into a career cutting down trees instead of developing software.

  “What’s your degree in?” he asks me.

  “Child learning and development. I work at an adoption agency.”

  “That’s awesome. My mom worked as a paralegal for a family law attorney before I was born and after my sister and I went to school.”

  “Older or younger sister?” I ask him.

  “Younger. By three years. She’s twenty-two.”

  “Same age as me.”

  He grins. “You have any siblings?”

  “A sister.”

  “Younger or older?”

  “Younger.” Preslee is yet another testament to my grandmother’s love of Elvis. She’d been voting for both of us to be boys so one of us could be named after the King. So when my sister was born and my parents told Nana they were done with kids, she convinced them what a wonderful name Preslee was.

  Preslee, though, has not fallen in love with Elvis’s music like I have. In fact, she’s gone the opposite direction. She joined a punk rock band, got a tattoo, which broke my mom’s heart, and moved in with her boyfriend, which broke my dad’s heart. The last time I talked to my sister was several years ago. She didn’t even come home for Christmas the last couple of years.

  She is a sore subject.

  “Does she live in Dallas too?” Tyler asks.

  I purse my lips. “No.” Honestly, I’m not sure where Preslee is living now. Last time she talked to Mom, she was touring with her band somewhere in Ohio. A long, long way from home in Austin.

  Tyler must have picked up on my I-don’t-want-to-talk-about-her vibe, because he stops asking me about Preslee and starts talking about how much he loves Pork and Beans. “I mean, they even stick a cube of bacon in there. If that’s not a quality food, then I don’t know what is.”

  I shake my head. “You are quite the gourmet.”

  “I try. Sometimes, I’ll even add freshly chopped scallions on top.”

  “Earth to Paige! Earth to Paige!”

  I blink and look up. I am sitting in the back row of the singles’ Sunday school class. Tim Miller led the class today and spent the entire time talking about the verse on how man was not supposed to be alone, which led into how much he missed his ex-girlfriend.