This Side of Salvation

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  But I do. God, I do.

  CHAPTER 28

  FORTY-ONE DAYS BEFORE THE RUSH

  Monday morning I arrived at Mr. Ralph’s house half an hour before class, intending to be the first one there so I wouldn’t have to quit Math Cave in front of everyone. Especially Bailey. I wanted to explain things to her alone. If I could ever explain.

  When I knocked on Mr. Ralph’s front door, Jinx the cat started meowing in answer. Her claws scraped the other side of the door in a slow descent. But there were no human footsteps, no, “Hang on, I’m coming!”

  I left my backpack on the porch and went to peer through the dusty garage-door windows.

  No car. Being early wouldn’t help me.

  Francis showed up a few minutes later. I offered him a “Hey” as he sprinted from his mom’s car across the lawn to join me on the porch. “Mr. Ralph’s not here yet.”

  “Good. Can’t talk.” He dropped his bag at his feet and ripped it open. “Still have three problems to do.”

  “I can give you the answers if you want. You might as well use them, since I’m not.” I shifted my feet. “I’m quitting math.”

  He stared up at me. “You don’t just quit math, David. You quit optional things in life, like food or sleep.”

  “I’ve got some stuff going on. It’s personal.”

  “Does this mean Bailey’s available?”

  “No!”

  “Okay, calm down.” He opened his math book. “Fine with me. Bailey’s high maintenance.”

  As if Francis had ever maintained anything more complicated than a goldfish bowl. “She’s not high maintenance.”

  “Have you told her you’re quitting yet?”

  “No.”

  “Because you know she’ll freak. Because she’s high maintenance.”

  “Do you want my answers or not?”

  “Nah, I got this.” He flipped the pages of his notebook. “Hey, did you hear the new Five Iron Frenzy song?”

  “I’m not really into ska music. Too bouncy. I liked their side project better.”

  “Ah, the über-earnest Brave Saint Saturn.” He turned his pencil around and erased frantically. “I can see you lying on your bed, staring at your ceiling, playing Anti-Meridian on infinite repeat.”

  A horn beeped as Mr. Ralph pulled into the driveway. He rolled down his window on his way to the garage. “Sorry, folks. Meet you in a minute!”

  The front door opened, in exactly a minute. “Go on downstairs,” Mr. Ralph said. “I have some groceries to put away.”

  “I’ll help you.” I followed him back through the house into the garage. We brought in half a dozen canvas bags from the co-op where Bailey’s parents liked to shop. Then I handed Mr. Ralph frozen stuff while he rearranged the food inside the freezer to make room.

  Finally I got up the nerve to say, “I have to quit Math Cave.”

  He pushed aside the freezer door to gape at me. “Why? You’re doing so well.”

  “It’s not that. I—I’m being Rushed.”

  We stood there for a long, uncomfortable moment, then I held out a box of frozen soft pretzels. “These are getting warm.”

  Mr. Ralph didn’t take the pretzels. “I can’t believe this. You too?”

  Whoa. “What? Who else?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t say. They’re not from your section, anyway.”

  The thought of other people my age going through this insanity gave me a spark of hope. “When you say ‘they,’ do you mean ‘they’ like more than one person, or ‘they’ like you don’t want to say ‘he’ or ‘she’?”

  “I can’t tell you that, either.” He grabbed the pretzel box. “Anyway, what’s it matter?” he asked bitterly. “You’ll get to hang out with them in heaven soon enough.”

  My stomach went cold, and not just because I was holding a half gallon of ice cream next to it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was rude of me. I’m just frustrated that someone as bright as you would give up your future over this charade.”

  “There is no future, Mr. Ralph. This charade is the only thing that matters.” I couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth. But if I showed any hesitation, Mr. Ralph would only fight harder to convince me to stay. I had to keep my eyes on the ultimate prize: saving my father.

  My teacher took the tub of ice cream. “You can’t stay until the end of the semester?”

  “I told you, the semester ends after the Rush. There’s no point.”

  “You could still learn a lot in the next month. Are you quitting all your studies?” I nodded, and he asked, “What will you do with all that time on your hands?”

  “Help my parents get ready.” I handed him a box of frozen whole-wheat burritos. “Strengthen my faith.”

  “Running away from life sounds like a good way to weaken one’s faith.”

  “The idea is to not be ‘of the world.’ So we have to give up earthly things. That includes Math Cave.”

  “What about baseball?”

  His words seemed to reach into my chest and twist my left lung. “I quit, on Saturday.”

  “Oh, David.” This seemed to break Mr. Ralph’s heart even more than me quitting math. Maybe, just maybe, he’d call my parents to protest, and then they’d understand how much I was giving up, and then they’d relent.

  Yeah, right. And dinosaurs will roam the earth again as the Cubs win the World Series.

  “What about your friends?” Mr. Ralph asked. “And what about Bailey? What are you going to tell her?”

  A voice came from the kitchen doorway behind us. “Tell me what?”

  • • •

  Mr. Ralph let me and Bailey go out back to have privacy. Jinx followed us, hopping up onto the deck railing, then into a tree like a squirrel.

  Bailey and I sat on the steps of the deck with our backs to the sliding glass door. She rubbed the finch tattoo on the back of her calf, a nervous gesture I’d grown painfully fond of.

  “You’re here early today,” I observed.

  “I promised Mr. Ralph I’d tell him when I heard from Harvard, since it’s his alma mater.”

  My pulse stuttered. “And?”

  She lowered her chin and shook her head. “I didn’t want to say it in front of everyone, in case I start crying.”

  “Bailey, I’m sorry.” I put my arm around her, mentally kicking myself for being so obsessed with my own problems, I’d forgotten about her college anxieties. “I know it was your first choice.”

  “Technically, Stanford is my first choice, because they’re top ranked in genetics, but that’s pie-in-the-sky since I don’t have a recommendation from any alumni.” She sniffled. “At least I got into UPenn. They’re still Ivy League.”

  And a short drive away in Philadelphia. I wanted Bailey to be happy, but I also wanted her to be close. “I know you’ll get into Stanford. Not to mention Princeton and Johns Hopkins and MIT and Berkeley.” I was personally rooting for Princeton, since it was the closest of these, not to mention totally reachable from here by train. “One day Harvard will hate itself for turning you down. Besides, they don’t have any good sports teams, so what’s the point?”

  “Seriously.” She chuckled, though her eyes were still moist. “So what’s going on with you?”

  “Ah.” I ran my finger over a nail in the deck. “I have to quit Math Cave. I have to quit everything for forty days, starting tomorrow. Because of the Rush.”

  Bailey pulled away and stared at me. “What? I can’t believe your parents would—wait.” She broke into a wide smile. “Holy shit, you almost had me. No fair playing an April Fools’ joke a day early. Wow, you even got Mr. Ralph in on it.” She slapped her fist against her knee. “I’ll get you both back tomorrow.”

  “Bailey, it’s not a joke.” I took her hand, intertwining our fingers instead of gripping her fist like a fastball. “I made a deal. I’d do what my parents want, and in return, when the Rush doesn’t happen, Dad’ll finally get some help.”

  Ba
iley’s gaze fell, then she took her hand out of mine and faced the yard, where Jinx was now stalking some creature beneath a forsythia bush.

  “Say what you’re thinking,” I said. “I can take it.”

  “I think your dad’s not the only one who needs help.”

  “I’m not crazy! I have a plan.”

  She raised her eyebrows way up, as if to say, Crazy people make crazy plans. “Why do you feel like you have to save them? For get-into-heaven points? Because I don’t think you need extra salvation credits. You’re a good person. You go to church, you do tons of volunteer work, you’re incredibly kind to everyone.”

  “Not my parents.”

  “No one’s kind to their parents. Someday you’ll have kids and they’ll treat you like crap, and your parents will be like, ha-ha, it’s your turn. That’s how my grandparents are.”

  “The Bible says to honor your mother and father.”

  “The Bible was written when people our age already were mothers and fathers.”

  I’d never thought about that before, that there was no such thing as adolescence back then. One day you were a kid, then you hit puberty and bam!—you learned a trade (if you were a guy) or you got married (if you were a girl).

  I’d miss the way Bailey made me think.

  “It’s not enough just to be a good person,” I told her. “You have to sacrifice.”

  “What else are you sacrificing, David?” She stared straight out into the yard, as if afraid to look at me. I was definitely afraid to look at her.

  “Whatever it takes.”

  “You’re quitting your other classes?” Bailey asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Baseball?”

  “Yeah,” I whispered.

  “Are we still going to prom?”

  Jinx darted under the bush, where a starling fluttered out, then flew away. I thought of the bird’s nest I accidentally hit out of a tree with a baseball when I was seven. Dad helped me put the babies in a shoebox and take them to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic in Philadelphia. He even took me back to visit the baby starlings once a week until they were old enough to be released.

  “I’m sorry,” I told Bailey. “I’ll pay you back for your dress.”

  “I haven’t bought a prom dress yet.” She shifted her sandals on the wooden deck. “Part of me knew this would happen. I couldn’t believe your parents would actually let you go to a dance on the last night of your lives.” The last few words came out with a rasp.

  “I know. When Kane and I went tux shopping last week, it felt like a dream, or like I was an actor picking out a costume.”

  “Are you—” Bailey’s voice trembled. “Are you quitting me, too?”

  Like I ever could. She had no idea how tightly she held on to my . . . everything. I could barely last a day without a call or text from Bailey, or an hour without thinking about her. How would I survive forty days? Would she wait that long? Was I worth it?

  I leaned over and kissed her softly. “Not if you still want me.”

  “Of course I do. Don’t ever doubt that.” She held my face between her palms. “One day we’ll get that cross-country trip.”

  “And see the second biggest ball of twine?”

  She gave me a sad smile. “I found out the guy who made the second biggest used to have the first biggest.”

  “What happened?”

  “He died and was surpassed. So it turns out, no one did it for the love of twine.”

  I pressed my forehead to hers, feeling more despair than ever. “Then we’ll just have to find the third biggest.”

  Her smile widened. “Can you come over later?”

  The sliding door opened behind us, and Mr. Ralph stuck his head out. “Bailey, class is starting in a couple minutes. David, you’re welcome back anytime. I mean that. Even if you pop in the last week of class, we’ll make sure you get caught up.”

  “Thanks.” He was a good guy. “Five o’clock?” I asked Bailey.

  She nodded, looking simultaneously relieved and nervous. “I hope you don’t give up on the world, David, or yourself.” She hugged her math book to her chest with both arms. “But even if you do, I promise I’ll never give up on you.”

  • • •

  My mother’d already said I could spend one last evening with my girlfriend. She hadn’t even asked if her parents would be home. After our brief condom discussion last Saturday, she must have known the score.

  Bailey hugged me hard as I came into her house from the rain. “Ooh, you’re wet.” She helped me take off my jacket, then hung it on a peg on the wall. “Come to the kitchen. I have a surprise for you.”

  “Whatever it is, it smells amazing.” My stomach growled and my mouth watered.

  Arcade Fire was playing on the stereo, which meant her parents definitely weren’t home. The only band from this century they could stand was Green Day. “No one rocks out anymore,” they’d say, as if that mattered.

  “Ta-daaaa!” Bailey’s hair swept in an arc around her as she spun to the other side of the breakfast bar. On the counter, a lumpy loaf of bread sat on a large green ceramic plate. “I did some research into biblical foods. Besides slaughtered lambs, I mean. Then I went to the natural foods store and got emmer flour. It’s like spelt but more authentic.” She held up an open bag of flour. “It’s from Ezekiel.”

  “You baked me bread,” I said in awe. The half-empty jar next to the plate was something called blue agave nectar, though the stuff inside looked brown, not blue. “Do we eat this on it?”

  “Yep, it’s like honey for vegans, because it comes from plants instead of exploited bees. Don’t laugh.”

  “I’m not laughing.”

  “Oh! The olives.” Bailey skated over to the fridge in her socks.

  “What’s the occasion? You never bake.”

  “I wanted to show you—wait, is this the right one?” As she bent over to peer into the fridge, a scrap of red lace underwear peeked out above the waist of her jeans. “Yes! Kalamata olives.” Bailey rattled the container. “They come from the Middle East. Just like Jesus!” She beamed at me, then moved to the cupboard.

  Her high energy was making me nervous, and more than a little horny. As she reached up to the middle shelf for a pair of plates, I had the worst desire to pin her against the counter from behind, bury my face in her hair, and just . . . I don’t know. Hold her still.

  Instead I focused on slicing the loaf of bread, but it was like shredding a block of wood. “Do you have an electric knife? Like for carving turkey?”

  “On Thanksgiving we either make a Tofurkey or we go out to eat.” She banged the loaf of bread on the counter, as if it were a hard-to-open jar. It sounded like a rock hitting another rock.

  “Put a wet paper towel over it, then microwave it for a minute on medium power.”

  “Ooh, smart.” She scooted off to do as I suggested.

  “I have experience with stale bread. Mom’s big on discounted day-old baked goods.” I slid the nectar jar back and forth on the counter between my hands, hoping I didn’t look nervous. “So you never finished saying why you did this. You wanted to show me something?”

  Bailey gave a sheepish frown as she programmed the microwave. “I wanted to show you that I respect your faith, even though I think your parents are using it to jerk you around.” She turned to face me but stared at her feet, pointing her toes together, the big ones rubbing against each other. “And I don’t want to lose you.”

  I laughed, which probably came off the wrong way. “That’s ridiculous. It’s more likely I’ll lose you, two minutes after you finally figure out I’m not worth your time.”

  She didn’t laugh. “David, do you still love me?”

  I took a step toward her. “I do.”

  “Do you still want to kiss me?”

  Another step, close enough to touch. “I do.”

  “Do you still want to—”

  “I do.” I cut her off with a kiss. Anything. Everything.

 
; After a few moments, Bailey pulled her head back and said, “I got into Stanford.”

  My heart stopped. “Stanford University? In California?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I stared down at Bailey, holding her so tight yet feeling her drift away. How could I sacrifice forty days with her, when in a few months she might be gone forever?

  The microwave beeped close to my ear, startling me. “Sorry.” I smoothed down my hair, out of breath. “I thought it was, um, the security system beeping, that your parents were home.”

  “We don’t have a security system. We live on the edge.” She carried the steaming loaf back to the breakfast bar.

  “So congratulations on—wow, Stanford. That’s amazing.” Amazingly far away.

  “I know, I’m so excited!” She bounced on her toes. “Now, I haven’t decided for sure if I’m going there. I want to wait until I hear from all the schools and see what financial aid they offer.”

  “Stanford’s mascot is a tree, you know. It’s the goofiest thing ever.”

  She shook the bread knife at me. “Promise you won’t make fun of it if I go there.”

  “I can’t promise that. Can we eat?”

  Other than the concrete crust, the emmer bread was delicious, sort of nutty, perfect with the olives and fake honey.

  I turned the agave-nectar jar to read the label. “Good stuff.”

  “It’s even better straight.” Bailey took the spoon out of the jar, laid it on her plate, then dipped her finger inside. “Wanna try?”

  It could’ve been year-old ketchup, and I would’ve said yes.

  Bailey slid her elbow forward on the counter, extending her nectar-drenched finger. I slipped it into my mouth and watched her close her eyes. She tasted sweet and sort of tart, depending which part of my tongue touched which part of her finger.

  “Your turn.” I dipped my own finger in the nectar and offered it to her. She sucked it off, swirling her tongue around the tip like . . . oh, God.

  “My parents won’t be home until eight.”

  I wanted to look at the clock but couldn’t take my eyes off her, could barely breathe from the sudden tightness in my jeans. I traced my finger over her bottom lip. “You missed some.”