Paige Turned

  He sighs. “I should have been looking to hire someone who liked to be more creative.”

  “And sadly you picked me. And I am creative, thank you, but lucky for you, I’m also practical.”

  He can’t argue with me because he knows I’m right.

  Natalie walks in right then, baby Claire in one arm and a towel-covered basket in the other. “Morning guys. I brought us some energy snacks today!”

  Never a good sign when someone puts the word energy before the word snack. The two should never be combined. Snacks are supposed to induce some sort of sugar- or grease-laced coma.

  Rick sighs to his wife. “She doesn’t like the clown idea.”

  “I don’t either so you’re complaining to the wrong person.” She sets Claire on the floor with a chew toy and turns to me. “Want a truffle?”

  I’m immediately wary. “I thought they were energy snacks.”

  “They’re truffle energy snacks. All natural, no grains, and sugar free.” Claire starts crying and Natalie reaches down to comfort her.

  I sneak a peek over at Rick while Natalie is distracted and he’s mouthing run away while shaking his head.

  I grin.

  “So. Truffle?” she asks me again.

  “I’m good for now. I had a big breakfast.” I’m only half lying. I had a granola bar. Which is bigger than not having any breakfast at all.

  “Any for you, honey?”

  “No thanks. I have an early lunch meeting in a minute,” Rick says.

  Natalie tsks and mutters something to herself about stubborn, unhealthy people, picks out a ball-shaped thing from the basket, and sits on the couch. “So I came up with your name. Altitude.”

  Rick just looks at her. “I thought you liked Rick. You told me when we were dating that I was the only guy you’d ever met named Rick and that made me special.”

  She rolls her eyes. “No. The youth-ministry name. Altitude.”

  “Like, hey we’ve reached our cruising altitude so you can now move about the cabin freely?” I ask.

  “Yep.” Natalie is passionate in her speech. “I think it has great symbolism for what we want for these kids. We want them to keep gaining more and more Altitude in their relationship with Jesus.”

  “Why do you keep saying it like that?” I ask.

  “I’m trying to make a point,” she says.

  “So we would be like, hey come to Altitude every Wednesday night?” Rick asks, one eye half closed as he paces the floor and thinks on it.

  I actually like it. It’s far better than the other names Natalie has been texting me over the past two weeks.

  I’VE GOT IT! I AM SO A GENIUS AT THIS STUFF! WE CAN CALL IT NYPD—NOW YOU’RE PRAYING, DUDE.

  Or worse: WORDS ON WINGS. SORT OF LIKE A VEILED REFERENCE TO PSALM 91:4.

  A little too veiled for me because I immediately started thinking about Buffalo Wild Wings stamping all their chickens with titles like “Best Flyer” or “Most Likely to End Up Eaten.”

  Granted, I was a little hungry when she’d texted me that suggestion.

  “Altitude,” Rick mutters again, still pacing. Claire keeps crawling over to his feet so he keeps stepping over her.

  He’s obviously used to it, though, because he never looks down and never trips over her. I’m convinced that when a child is born, the parents suddenly morph into these insane superheroes who can hear sounds that aren’t audible and sense movement that no one else can see.

  Natalie looks over at me and nods and grins because she knows it’s as good as on the postcards since Rick didn’t dismiss it right away.

  “Okay,” Rick says finally. “Altitude. Mark it down, Paige. And let’s go all Photoshop tech on it and get the lettering to look all cool and edgy. I want to put it everywhere. Bookmarks, postcards, those little cardboard drink holder things we put on the coffee cups . . . you name it.”

  I’m busy scribbling down his orders. “What about if we make T-shirts with the word on it and our youth website? We could sell them for ten bucks apiece, and that’s how we could raise more money for our camp scholarships.”

  Every summer, Rick takes a group of high schoolers on a half-camp, half-mission trip at an orphanage just inside the border of Mexico. It’s become the most-looked-forward-to thing we do. Which is amazing because it is long hot days and very hard work, but the kids love it.

  Rick is nodding and pacing now. “Love it. Write it down. We’ll keep thinking on this, but I like where we’re headed.”

  Natalie elbows me in the rib cage. “See. Told you I was a genius.”

  It’s Wednesday afternoon and I’m just leaving the dollar theater with three of the sixth-grade girls after we went to see a replaying of Ratatouille after they got out of school. Cute movie. I’d forgotten a lot of it. Though I still wasn’t fond of the whole rat-being-the-main-character thing.

  My cell phone rings as we are halfway across the parking lot to my car. I answer it while digging my keys out.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, Paige, it’s me.” Tyler.

  I smile and one of the girls looks at me and immediately starts giggling.

  Great. More fodder for the high school girls’ rumor mill. The girls have basically planned our wedding already, I think.

  I complained to Rick one day about how my dating life is in a fishbowl. “Well, that’s the life you chose when you decided to be a youth intern,” he told me. “Plus, I think it’s good. The kids need to see a healthy dating relationship between two young adults.”

  As a general rule, I hate the term young adult.

  “Hi.” I unlock the car and nod to the girls to climb on in.

  “So. Dinner tonight. Are you thinking you might be interested in more than just a cheese stick?”

  “I could probably be talked into more,” I tell him, grinning. My reputation for cheese-stick dinners on Wednesday is becoming the brunt of a lot of leaders’ meeting jokes.

  “Great! Because we should go out tonight after Bible study. I’ve already got a restaurant in mind.”

  “I’ll bet you my cobbler that it’s Cracker Barrel,” I tell him.

  He laughs. “See you in a few hours, beautiful girl.”

  I hang up, climb into the car, and obviously the girls had been talking about me because they are immediately quiet the second my leg grazes my seat. I shove my key in the ignition and turn to look at all of them. They’re all grinning back at me like I have a dollop of spaghetti sauce in the middle of my forehead.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Who was that?” Lacey singsongs suggestively.

  “It was just a phone call,” I say, backing out.

  “Someday when I’m old, I’m going to get married too. And our wedding is going to be amazing because I’m going to find a replica of Princess Kate’s dress,” Maddie says from the backseat.

  “I didn’t like her dress,” Cara says next to Maddie. “I thought it was too much lace.”

  “There is no such thing as too much lace,” Maddie says in a definitive tone.

  I listen to their conversation as I drive them to their individual homes and think about what I was like in the sixth grade. Layla and I were the biggest dorks in the class, and I don’t remember thinking for a millisecond about my future wedding. I was way too focused on when the next book in whatever my latest series obsession was going to release.

  And lace? I’m not sure I even knew what that meant when I was eleven years old.

  Granted, though, I wasn’t the most girly of girls.

  I drop all of the girls off and drive back to church. Our leaders’ meeting begins in thirty minutes, and I’m betting I have a bunch of copies to make.

  “How was the movie?” Rick asks as I walk into the youth office.

  “Cute.” I nod. “Though I’m pretty sure only Pixar could make a movie about a rat actually cute.”

  “Natalie refuses to watch that one specifically because there’s a rodent in it.” Rick hands me a stack of five papers. “Here’
s the leaders’ guides for next week. Mind copying those?”

  “That’s why I’m here early.”

  He grins at me. “You are never allowed to leave this job.”

  We have our youth meeting. Tyler sits across the circle from me and grins at me the whole time so I don’t hear a lot of whatever Rick is talking about, though I do know he mentions the word Altitude about forty-two times.

  We pray, do our big group teaching, then break into our small groups. I talk to the girls for the next forty-five minutes, take prayer requests, pray, and walk out to the pandemonium of nearly a hundred kids gathering in the youth room around Oreos.

  Tyler catches up to me by the snack table. “I’m starving.”

  “There’s Oreos,” I say.

  He looks at the snacks and shakes his head. “I’ll hold out for the cheesy potatoes.” He grins.

  “So it is Cracker Barrel. You’re like twenty-five going on ninety.”

  “Yep. I nearly even bought Velcro shoes the other day.”

  I laugh.

  We leave a little bit later after most of the kids have gone, and Rick waves us out. “Go eat. I’m tired of hearing how hungry Tyler is.” He grins at us.

  “Sure you don’t want help cleaning and locking up?” I ask him.

  “I did it by myself for years. I think I’ll manage. Leave. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  We walk out to the parking lot, and Tyler nods to his truck. “We can come back for your car.” He mashes the button on his keyless entry remote and opens the passenger truck door for me.

  He climbs in the driver’s side a few seconds later and grins over at me. “Recovered?”

  I haven’t been sick so I’m not sure what he’s talking about. “What?”

  “From my mom’s visit?”

  Oh. That. I’ve been trying my best over the last three days to forget all details about Judy’s visit here.

  “I’ve been acting like a duck,” I tell Tyler.

  “Like you’ve gone and quacked?”

  I snort. “No, Layla told me this thing her dad always said to her, and it seemed to really help Layla when she was growing up so I decided to try it.”

  “Now you’re just waddling around the facts.” Tyler grins over at me.

  “I hate talking with you.”

  “I’m not trying to make this a beak deal.” Tyler holds a hand up.

  “Seriously. I hate it.”

  “I mean, I goose I understand if you get frustrated sometimes, but I didn’t think it drakes that much to put up with me.”

  I am trying so hard not to laugh that my left eyeball is shaking in its socket. But I know that the second I start giggling, he won’t stop making duck puns for the rest of the night.

  He looks over at me and grins, and I pinch the bridge of my nose, fighting the laughter.

  “How was the rest of your visit with her?” I ask when I know I can manage a calm voice.

  “It was fine. Sometimes it got a little fowl, but swan-day I hope that’s not the case anymore.”

  “Oh my gosh, stop!” I giggle despite every muscle in my body trying to keep them in.

  He laughs. “You’re a hard egg to crack, Paige.”

  “Please. Please just take me home.”

  “Too late. We’re already at Quacker Barrel.”

  I am crying.

  He pulls into a parking place, hops out, comes around and opens my door, and the second my feet touch the pavement, he swoops me up into this wonderfully warm, long hug.

  “Oh, Paige.” He pushes me back a few inches and grins into my eyes. “I do love hanging out with you.”

  “If only it was mutual.”

  He knuckles my head and weaves his fingers through my hand as he walks toward the restaurant. I look down at our hands as we cross the parking lot.

  It looks natural. It feels effortless.

  I smile.

  We get seated a few minutes later and Tyler doesn’t even bother looking at the menu. “So. Stef called. She is so mad that Mom met you first that she’s making Mason take a vacation day, and they want to come visit in two weeks.”

  I look up from my menu. “That’s Layla’s wedding weekend.”

  He nods. “I know. They’re going to be here Saturday night after the wedding and they’ll leave Sunday. The wedding starts at five, right?”

  I nod. “Layla wants me at her house at seven in the morning, though.”

  She sent me a five-page e-mail of information about the wedding yesterday. I had barely scratched the surface of it, but based on the schedule, Layla was freaking out.

  Layla does not schedule. In our friendship, I am the one who schedules.

  “Good grief,” Tyler says. “What in the world are you supposed to do for ten hours before the wedding? Sew the wedding dress?”

  I shrug. “Apparently there are a lot of details that have to be done that day. Hair. Makeup. Pictures. Her mom is insisting on hiring someone to do everyone’s hair and makeup, so that should be interesting.”

  “Okay. Well. If you aren’t exhausted, you’re welcome to come hang out after the wedding with us. Otherwise, want to plan on coming to lunch with my family and me again after church?”

  I nod. I’ve already talked to Stef on the phone so I’m not super nervous to meet her, but that is going to be a crazy weekend.

  We order our dinner and Tyler grins across the table at me. “See? Isn’t this nicer than a cheese stick for dinner?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’re pretty ducky to be dating such a great guy who takes you to such great restaurants.”

  I just shake my head and cover my eyes.

  * * * * *

  I come in the door to my apartment on Friday at nine o’clock, close the door behind me, and back up against it, yawning.

  Twelve girls this afternoon. Two groups of three and then the rest were individuals.

  I am mentally and emotionally exhausted. I spent the whole last hour trying to comfort one of my girls who just found out that her parents are getting a divorce.

  This is when I feel completely unqualified to be an intern. I have a great family and great parents who have never, to my knowledge anyway, come close to getting a divorce.

  It just makes me realize how much I take for granted.

  I stumble into the kitchen and start scrounging around for something to eat. For all of the coffee I have consumed this afternoon and evening, I haven’t had a lot of real food. I bought a scone with the last girl and we both picked at it, but the conversation wasn’t really one that made us hungry.

  My cell buzzes on the counter and I reach for it. “Hi, Preslee.”

  “Hey. So. My wedding is in four weeks.”

  Preslee’s wedding is the month after Layla’s. I’m the maid of honor in both of them.

  I’ve never even been in a wedding before and now I’m in two in four weeks.

  “I know,” I tell her. “Nervous?”

  “I’m so ready for it to get here, I can’t even tell you,” Preslee says, and I hear the same excitement mixed with desperation and exhaustion that Layla’s tone has had lately.

  “What do you need for me to do over the next few weeks?” If I’ve hardly helped with Layla’s wedding, I’ve done next to nothing for Preslee’s. She’s having it in a friend of Wes’s backyard and with the minimalist décor, and with the distance to Austin, I feel totally useless as the maid of honor.

  “You can hold my hand on our wedding day and remind me that the day is going to be over soon enough so enjoy every minute.” Preslee sounds like she’s reading something.

  “Where is that from?”

  “Ten Things Your Maid of Honor Needs to Know About the Big Day.”

  “Book?”

  “Magazine article.”

  “Want me to go get a copy?”

  “No, because most of these are pointless. I’m not going to do toasts, I’m not doing a money dance, and my dress doesn’t have a train. The most you have to do is hold my flowers.
”

  “I can hold flowers with the best of them,” I promise her.

  “And you can keep tabs on Mom because I think she will probably be more of an emotional mess than I will.”

  “Well. It is her baby getting married,” I tell Preslee. “You can’t fault her the tears.”

  “I’m not faulting anyone. It’s just getting hard to talk to her because every time I call her or she calls me, she has to hang up because she’s crying.”

  “Poor Mom.”

  “Yep. And now with you getting all serious with Tyler, I’m sure she’s suddenly seeing the words empty nester painted on her walls.”

  I shift. “You can tell things are getting serious?”

  “Aren’t they? He came to Austin to meet the family. You talk about him all the time, and it seems like you spend a lot of time together.”

  I pull a block of cream cheese out of the fridge, cut off a corner, put it in a bowl, and cover it with some sweet pepper jelly. I dig a box of crackers out of the pantry and think about Preslee’s question while I sit at my table.

  “Do you love him?” Preslee asks.

  Preslee has never minced words, so I’m not sure why I expect her to start now that she’s back home and on the straight and narrow again.

  I rub my forehead, staring at my sorry excuse for a dinner.

  “I don’t . . . I don’t know . . .” I say again after a long pause. I think about Tyler and everything that has happened in the year since I met him. Us becoming friends. Him challenging my idea that I needed to be insanely busy working for the Lord since I was single. When we started dating. The terrible, awkward summer and the confession about his past.

  The way he holds my hand and how his hair curls all messily and his blue eyes sparkle.

  My chest tightens a little, thinking about the way he grins at me. He doesn’t smile at anyone else like that.

  “He’s special, huh?” Preslee says quietly on the phone.

  I’d nearly forgotten I was talking to her. I jump a little bit, clear my throat, and scrape a cracker through the cream cheese and jelly, trying to be nonchalant about it. “Yeah,” I say.

  Preslee is quiet for a minute, and I can hear the smile in her voice when she talks again. “Well. I’m excited for you, Paige. And I’m excited for me because in exactly twenty-eight days, I will not be sitting in this crappy apartment by myself wishing I was at the house Wes and I bought.”