The Sparrow Found A House (Sparrow Stories #1)

by Jason McIntire

  Chapter 20

  Finding Izzie

  Izzie Hubbert was in hiding. This realization had gradually dawned on Jessie Rivera, her neighbor and once-best friend, over the past few weeks since Jessie pulled out of school. Whenever Jessie came to the mall – which happened more rarely these days – the most she saw of Izzie was her blond ponytail, trying to outrun the escalator in her eagerness to get away. If Izzie ever ventured outside her house, she vanished quickly whenever Jessie or any of the Riveras appeared. She never answered her phone anymore, and Jessie’s many voicemails went un-returned.

  The way Izzie was acting reminded Jessie weirdly of the Amish “shunning,” which she’d seen depicted in a movie recently. Was Izzie trying to get her to “repent” of homeschooling? How could that be such a crime, anyway? Jessie was determined to find out, even if she had to hide behind a trash can and ambush her friend on the way home. Which is exactly what she proceeded to do one Monday afternoon – but three-thirty, then four-o’clock, came and went with no sign of Izzie.

  Finally Jessie got suspicious. She walked up to the Hubberts’ door and knocked. “Is Izzie home?” she inquired innocently when Mrs. Hubbert answered the door.

  “Izzie!” called Mrs. Hubbert back into the house. “Jessie’s here to see you!”

  “I’m not feeling well,” a faint voice returned from deep in her lair. “Tell Jessie to go away.”

  “She’s not feeling well,” echoed Mrs. Hubbert without conviction.

  “I see,” Jessie said with determination. She wondered how long Izzie had been in the habit of sneaking into her own house the back way. A less stubborn friend might have gotten mad and left at this point – especially since she would soon be leaving the neighborhood for good – but “less stubborn” had never described Jessie. “Please tell Izzie,” she said sweetly but with iron determination in her heart, “that I will stand on the sidewalk in front of her window until she feels better. Singing hymns,” she added in a voice loud enough for Izzie to hear. A faint smile played across Mrs. Hubbert’s face as she closed the door.

  True to her word, Jessie stood on the sidewalk directly across from her friend’s window and began to sing all the verses of Amazing Grace as loudly as she could. About the time Jessie reached ten thousand years, the bedroom window slid open. “Oh good grief,” moaned an invisible Izzie in great annoyance, “if you must come in, just come in already and quit singing.”

  Izzie’s room was almost completely dark, but Jessie boldly turned on the light as she walked in. There, sitting in her beanbag chair and looking suspiciously healthy, was Izzie Hubbert.

  “Izzie,” Jessie began directly, “why have you been running from me? Do I have leprosy or something?”

  “Haven’t been running from you,” sniffed her friend as she flipped open a magazine.

  “Oh yes you have,” Jessie contradicted factually, “and I want to know why.”

  “You’ve just been different,” Izzie muttered.

  “How would you know that?” demanded Jessie, exasperated. “We’ve barely talked.” Suddenly her eye was drawn to the heading of a computer printout, half-concealed on her friend’s desk. She jerked it out with an “Ah-ha!” Izzie grabbed for it but missed.

  In an astonished voice, Jessie read the heading. “How to tell if your friend is in a cult. Izzie, I’m surprised at you! We’ve known each other since first grade. How could you think I’m in a cult?”

  “It can happen to anybody,” Izzie opined uncomfortably, inching back in her beanbag chair as if to get further from a source of deadly radiation.

  Jessie turned back to the paper. “Let’s see: ‘Your friend dresses in a peculiar way, wearing strange clothes that someone else picked out.’ Okay, I’ll admit that Mom helped pick some of my clothes. She also paid for them. Are you saying your mom never buys anything for you?”

  “She never buys me skirts,” Izzie sighed. “And Mom and I would never wear matching outfits like you and your mother do. That is just so wrong. Haven’t you ever heard of the ‘generation gap’? You even get your hair done the same way she does, and hardly ever wear normal-looking makeup anymore, or paint your nails, or do anything normal teenagers do!”

  “I see hairstyles are covered on this list too,” Jessie observed. “And homeschooling gets a specific mention as well. Well, that’s got to be the biggest ‘cult’ in America, what with over a million people doing it.”

  “One clue is like a grain of sand,” Izzie pronounced knowingly. “When you get enough grains of sand, it starts to look like a beach.”

  “Oh, don’t quote Lieutenant Braddock to me, Izzie Hubbert – I’ve watched every season of that show as many times as you have.”

  “But you never do anymore,” Izzie accused. “Why just the other day, I heard from a friend, who heard from a friend, that you didn’t even know what this other friend was talking about when she said ‘Gliebermania!’ That’s when I knew, Jessie. I totally knew.”

  “Oh my, let me add that to the list.” Jessie scratched away with an imaginary pen, “Your friend cannot define Gliebermania. Let’s see, what’s next? Ah, here’s a good one: ‘Your friend exhibits a sudden and disproportionate interest in (gasp) religion.’”

  “You’ve started going to church,” Izzie pointed out. “Even at night, and attending devotions, and even praying without anyone saying you have to. That is not normal. Not for you.”

  “Izzie,” Jessie almost exploded, “can’t you see what this list is? This was written specifically to describe a Christian family, and then they make that the definition of a ‘cult’!”

  “I downloaded it from the Internet.” Izzie made the claim as if it served to reinforce, rather than diminish, the credibility of her information.

  Jessie turned back to the list again. “Oh, I like this last item,” she snickered. “This sounds like someone I know. ‘Your friend avoids you, exhibits an unreasonable fear of being alone with you, begins to distrust you, and discourages you from visiting him or her.’”

  Izzie shifted uncomfortably.

  “So.” Jessie tapped her foot and stared. “Out with it now – what cult have you joined, Izzie Hubbert?”

  After staring each other down till they both finally blinked, the two girls began to giggle, then finally collapsed in a heap of hilarity that ended with both of them in a tangle on the floor.

  “I’m sorry,” Izzie apologized when they finally got their breath. “I never should have listened to Monica and the girls. You’re totally the same as you were before, underneath.”

  Jessie sat up. “Well, I hope not,” she said seriously. “Izzie, I wanted to see you so I could straighten a few things out. My attitude about the Sergeant when he first came wasn’t okay. That day I blasted him to you girls, I was just mouthing off because I was mad at him and Mom. I gave you a pretty bad picture, but it wasn’t a true one. I want you to know that I have changed, and I don’t feel resentful toward him anymore.”

  Izzie chewed on a painted fingernail. “I guess that’s good,” she decided. “You need to get along with your stepfather. After all, you have to live with him.”

  “It’s more than that,” Jessie told her. “The Sergeant has helped us all see that our lives weren’t complete before, not because we didn’t have a dad, but because we didn’t have Jesus.”

  “Jesus.” Izzie repeated the name slowly, as if her friend had just mentioned an alternative universe. “There’s a program that comes on just after Desperation, with this preacher guy who always wears a big blue flower....”

  “You know,” Jessie interrupted, “something else I’ve learned is that TV is not the place where we should be getting ideas about life. Even people who like it admit that it’s pretty much a wasteland of anything meaningful.”

  “It’s entertainment,” Izzie shrugged. “Gotta pass the time.”

  “Maybe we can find something better to pass the time,” Jessie suggested, “at least a day or two. Once we get moved into our new house in the country,
Dad said it would be okay if I invite you to come out and spend a couple of days with us.”

  “I don’t know,” Izzie hedged. “Cows and coyotes and that set aren’t exactly my thing, you know.”

  “Hey,” Jessie reminded her with a chuckle, “I’m going to live there. As my best friend, the least you can do is go through a couple days of it with me. Besides, you might enjoy it. And, I promise we won’t make you get up early or work or anything like that.”

  “I don’t know,” Izzie repeated, still looking uncertain.

  Jessie reached over for the printout again and flipped to the second page. “Look, Iz, it says right here in your cult article: ‘If your friend is in a cult, the best thing you can do is keep up your friendship. Call regularly and visit often.’ So?”

  “All right,” Izzie finally relented with an embarrassed grin. “I’ll just pretend it’s a two-day filming session of Grits.”

  “Whatever motivates you.”

  “Say, do you guys have cable out at the farm?”