by Erynn Mangum
But then again, my PMS headaches always turn into brain tumors on WebMD’s symptom checker.
I leave the note and the key in the bathroom where she definitely will not miss it. Then I grab my purse, slip out the door, and lock it as quietly as I can behind me.
I am even leaving a little early, which warrants a stop by Starbucks, I think. I pull out of the drive-thru a few minutes later with a macchiato and then head toward the church.
This will play into my decision about the job, I think. There’s a Starbucks directly on my way to church.
I could live with that.
I wonder if I could factor in some coffee money into my salary from the church.
Rick is standing in front of the sound-booth thing in the youth room when I walk in. Our youth room looks like a huge garage, basically. There’s concrete floors, open ductwork, and the whole place echoed when they first built it, so Rick finally had them add some of those sound-absorbing boards on the walls, which made conversations and Sunday mornings way more bearable.
A few kids are milling around in the room, talking small talk or staring blankly at the band setup, obviously up a little too early.
“Good morning, Paige,” Rick says when I walk over, but he doesn’t look away from the computer where he is typing out the lyrics to what looks like “Our Great God.”
Great song.
“Morning. So. This job thing,” I say.
He perks up immediately and looks right at me. “Yes?”
“I might need a coffee allowance.”
“Done.”
“Because I — ” I stop. “Wait, what?”
He shrugs. “It was already part of the job description.”
I just gape at him. “You are kidding.”
“Nope. You’re supposed to be meeting with students. So we are prepared to give you a hundred-dollar prepaid Visa card every month to take you and the girls out with.” He waves a hand and goes back to typing. “As long as you make it last through the month and meet with a bunch of students, I don’t care where you use it or what you use it on. Go to Starbucks. Go to Putt-Putt. Go waterskiing. I don’t care.”
I swear I have not heard this bit about the job before. I knew the meeting with students part, but he did not mention the Visa card.
Suddenly, the job is looking a little better. Using my major and doing it at Starbucks?
“Okay.” Rick pushes the Save button on the computer. “Words are all set. Remember how to do them?”
The last time I did words, I spent the whole time panicking that I was going to mess up and cause everyone’s worship experience to come to a screeching halt. I back away with my hands up. “Oh no. I’m not doing that again.”
“It wasn’t really a question.” Rick smirks at me. “You’ll do fine. Cut yourself some slack. Speaking of slack, did you get the e-mail I sent you yesterday?”
I hadn’t been around my computer all day yesterday, but I did check it on my phone this morning. One of the only ways I can honestly say that I actually utilize the smartness of my smartphone.
“I didn’t see anything from you.”
“Shoot. Must have gotten lost in hyperspace.”
“I think you mean cyberspace.”
He shrugs. “Whatever.”
“I thought hyperspace was when you were going someplace really fast.”
“Oh my gosh,” one of the sophomore guys comes over, making the universal signs for choking. “You guys are killing me. How does neither one of you know the proper terminology for hyperspace, much less cyberspace?”
Rick and I just look at him and then he proceeds to spend the next twenty minutes talking about interstellar trade, safe routes, and something about droids being required to navigate. He loses me about ten seconds into his speech, and I just stand there, thinking about how nice it would be to have a conversation with a fifteen-year-old boy that didn’t involve a reference to Star Wars, girls, or sports.
But really. What else do fifteen-year-old boys care about?
Rick glances at the big clock on the wall and butts into the monologue. “That’s all well and good, Logan, but we need to get things rolling here.” The band has already picked up their instruments and the room is filling up.
Logan shakes his head and leaves, mumbling under his breath about intergalactic transportation and how he shouldn’t have wasted his breath on morons who don’t care about anything important.
I think the biggest issue was our definitions of important.
Rick starts the hour with prayer and then the band takes over. I manage to make it through being in charge of projecting the words without completely ruining people’s worship experience, or so I hope anyway.
Computers are just really not my thing.
Maybe I need a droid. Or whatever Logan was talking about.
Then Rick gets up and talks for about thirty minutes about grace. “We as American Christians have become desensitized to this word. We sing it, half of the girls I know are named it, and we even use it to describe dancers. And the only reason I know that is because Natalie likes to watch that ballet reality show, whatever it’s called.”
A few of the kids snicker.
“My point, friends, is that we need to get in the habit of reminding ourselves, day after day, night after night, about how great a price God paid to make us His own. We do not deserve it, and yet so great is His love for us that He still did it.” Rick weaves his fingers together and cups the back of his head, elbows sticking out. Rick is nothing if not animated as a preacher. “But what do we do? We just go on living like nothing happened. Sure, we come here. Sure, we sing our little songs. Sure, we might even pick up our Bible a couple times a week. But are we really living in grace? Or are we doing what it says in Romans 6 and just going on with our sinful lives, counting on God’s grace to save us?”
I quietly flip over to Romans and verse 20 of chapter 5 catches my eye.
“Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more …”
For whatever reason, Preslee and Luke come to my mind.
I shove them back into the corner of my brain where they belong, and I try to focus on the rest of Rick’s sermon instead.
“Paige! Wait up!”
I turn in the crowded church hallway and see Tyler pushing his way through the masses. For whatever reason, whoever designed our church decided to make the coffee bar area right in the most crowded hallway of the entire church. I’m sure when our founding fathers of this church built it, they saw it as a great place to serve drinks, catch people coming in and out of classrooms and the sanctuary, and create a homey environment, but it just makes everything clogged and chaotic.
He finally catches up to me, trying not to let the crowd smash us into bits. “Hi,” he says, eyes twinkling, tiny little smile lines around his eyes and mouth. He’s got on straight-cut dark jeans, a gray T-shirt under a button-down shirt that makes his blue eyes look even bluer, and his blond hair would have made Shirley Temple proud.
He looks adorable.
And sweet.
Here’s my immediate thought: Luke is completely wrong.
I suddenly don’t care that we are standing dead in the middle of a huge throng of people smashing around us, crowding us together, everyone jostling Bibles and coffee and children. I look up into Tyler’s blue eyes and my whole chest feels warm, like that time I told my mother I thought I had the bubonic plague and therefore did not need to go to school, and she told me we should smoke it out by feeding me the hottest chili I’ve ever eaten in my life.
I went to school that day, just in case you were wondering.
I reach up on my tiptoes and lightly kiss Tyler on the cheek. He’s got a five o’clock shadow thing that sandpapers my lips, and he blinks at me in surprise as I flatten my feet back down to the floor.
In his defense, it is a weird place to kiss someone’s cheek for the first time.
Unless you are one of those dear, old women at church who just kiss everyone’s cheeks all
the time, particularly if you are under thirty and male and somewhat cute.
Tyler gets smacked a lot by them.
Somehow he finds my hand with everyone shoving around us and squeezes my fingers. “Are we still on for lunch?”
I nod. “Definitely.”
“What?”
I motion to him to follow me and then squeeze and press and jostle through the people until the crowd spits me into the hallway leading to about half of the adult Sunday school classes. Tyler is close behind.
He takes a deep breath and then smiles at me. “I feel like we are outgrowing this building.”
“Not again. We just added that new wing three years ago.” He’s right, though. I guess it’s a good thing to constantly be busting out of your church.
“So, yes to lunch?” He reaches for my hand again. He weaves his fingers through mine and my stomach reacts like he gave it a carbonation injection.
“Yes, but we have a potential catch. So, you know how Preslee spent the night with me last night?”
He nods. “I was praying for you. How did it go? And I never actually heard why she wanted to spend the night in the first place.”
“She was in town shopping for the wedding and it went late, and she didn’t want to drive all the way back to Waco. We talked last night. A real talk. For the first time since …” I shrug, but only because I start feeling my throat close up.
Apparently I can hold the tears in when it’s Preslee, but when it’s sweet Tyler, who I would prefer not to see me cry, I can’t plug them up. My eyes are burning as huge tears fight to see which one is going to fall down my face first.
Here’s the thing. I am not a pretty crier. When I cry, I look like I am contracting some terrible plague that could potentially wipe out humankind, or at least the remaining survivors on whatever ship I’m on. There are no gentle tears, there is only snot, redness, swelling, and huge bulbous, bloodshot eyes.
One of the many reasons I try not to cry in front of people. And everything stays that way for about three hours afterward.
I have spent my life training myself for this moment.
I shove Tyler and his comforting you-can-go-ahead-and-cry-here-because-I-obviously-have-no-idea-what-you-look-like-sobbing arms as far away from me as I can get him and suck in my breath through my nose, carefully, slowly letting it out through my mouth like the lady told all of us to do during that one Pilates class I took in college.
I quickly discovered that I am not into Pilates.
I would much rather just run on a treadmill.
I mash my thumb and my middle finger of my left hand into my temples and keep breathing, eyes closed to prevent the swelling.
“Paige? Paige? Paige?” Tyler is turning into an echo of himself.
In through the nose. Out through the mouth.
Rinse and repeat.
I manage to shove the emotions down deep into my ankles, and while I may walk a little funny for the next few minutes, at least I won’t scare Tyler that my happily ever after is like Fiona’s on Shrek.
I open my eyes and Tyler is just staring at me from about five feet away where I had pushed him to. “Are you okay?” he finally asks me.
“Yes. Now. Thank you.” Short and concise. That’s the new way to go in sentences.
“I’ve never seen you do that before.”
“Cry?”
“No, shove someone like that. You’ve got some biceps, girl.” He rubs his chest. “I want you on my Ultimate Frisbee team when youth group starts up again in the fall.”
Motivation is the key difference here. I care to protect my vanity. I do not care to sacrifice my face for a plastic disc.
Probably because of the vanity thing.
“Anyway,” I say. “I left Preslee a note and asked her if she wanted to come to church today, so I don’t know if she’s coming or not. For all I know, she could still be sleeping. She was pretty out this morning.”
He nods. “Well, if she comes, then she’ll have to come to lunch with us. I would really like to meet her. I’ve never met any of your family before.”
One of the weirdest parts of being an adult that lives away from your parents is that people don’t know you in association with your parents.
I just find that odd.
We join the crowd going into the sanctuary, and I save a seat on the other side of me for Preslee. I check my phone, but there aren’t any missed calls or texts.
“Paige!”
Layla is waving obnoxiously two rows ahead and about eight feet to the right of where I am sitting. “Paige! Paige, over here!”
I wave at her. “Hi, Layla.”
“I saved seats!”
“So did I.” I point to the seat for Preslee and the two on the other side of it.
Layla bites her lips and crosses her arms over her chest. She’s wearing a rose-colored skirt and a cream-colored lightweight sweater over a gauzy, loose-fitting top. She has her shoulder-length hair down and curly with a rose-colored headband with one of those fabric rosette things right above her left ear.
And she’s wearing glasses.
I’ve never seen Layla in glasses before, and we’ve been friends forever.
They are big, black plastic frames like I see on everyone in Starbucks now. She looks cute.
I point to my eyes. “New?”
“Mascara?” she shouts. “I can’t tell if it’s making a difference, but you do have pretty short lashes,” she yells over at me.
I sigh. Another secret blown for Tyler. He is just raking in the information about me today.
“The glasses.” I point at her face instead.
“Oh! Yeah.” She grins and pushes them up a little on her tiny nose. “They are totally fake. What do you think?”
The people sitting around us are starting to get annoyed.
Layla waves. “Wait, I’ll just move. Peter isn’t here yet anyway.” She grabs her Bible and purse and slides down our row, picks my Bible up off the seat next to me, and sits down. “So,” she says.
“Wait, before you start, that’s Preslee’s seat.”
She just gapes at me, mouth open. “You speak to her now?”
“Kind of.”
“What is this? It’s like I haven’t seen you in, like, years!” She shakes her head. “This just isn’t good, Paige. We are growing apart!”
I haven’t gotten to see her very much lately, but I don’t think we are growing apart. “Movie night at my house. Tomorrow.”
“I’ll get the Panda Express.” She nods, fiddling with her glasses and then sliding down a seat.
Peter shows up and stands on the end and talks to Tyler for a few minutes. Considering how little I’ve ever heard Peter talk, I’m about to bestow Tyler with the title of Miracle Worker.
The band is gathering on the stage, I’m checking my phone for news from Preslee for the ninth time in thirty seconds, and that’s when I feel a little tap on my left shoulder. I look up and it’s Preslee, wearing what looks like my blue dress and my yellow heels.
“Hi, Paige,” she says, looking awkward but at the same time very cute.
“You came!” I jump out of my seat and this huge surge of joy at getting to introduce my baby sister to my friends comes out of nowhere. “You’re wearing my clothes!”
She tucks her long, dark hair behind her ear and blushes. “I didn’t know how dressy your church was and I felt weird wearing my dirty clothes here. I hope you don’t mind.”
I didn’t at all. She was raised by my mother who taught us that an item of clothing is dirty the second you remove it from the hanger.
“Layla. Tyler,” I say, interrupting his conversation with Peter but wanting to introduce Preslee before the music starts. “This is Preslee. Preslee, you know Layla, and this is her fiancé, Peter. And this is, uh — ” Oh gosh. We haven’t settled on anything official, so I can’t call him my boyfriend. I wince and just nod. “Tyler,” I say weakly.
Tyler doesn’t seem to notice. He smiles his customary
big grin and shakes Preslee’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh, I am so glad to see you again!” Layla gushes, pulling Preslee into a hug. “Come! Sit! Music is about to start!” She pretty much manhandles Preslee into the seat between us, chatting a hundred miles a minute. “Welcome to our church! Oh, I’m so glad you are here! I hope you like it! The music is so wonderful and you’ll just love our pastor. He’s — ”
Right then our music pastor starts to play the guitar and invites everyone to stand up. “Let’s come together in worship,” he says into the microphone. Then he starts singing.
I try to follow along as best as I can, but it is just so weird to be standing next to Preslee, in church, singing worship songs again. It has been at least ten years since this has happened. Ditching church was one of the first things Preslee started doing way back when.
Now she’s marrying a pastor’s kid.
It’s true what they say about things coming full circle.
Our pastor gets up a few minutes later and tells everyone to turn to Luke chapter 7. He starts reading. “A moneylender had two debtors: one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they were unable to repay, he graciously forgave them both. So which of them will love him more?”
Pastor Louis looks up at all of us, his eyes scanning the room. Pastor Louis is probably the most pastoral-looking man I’ve ever met in my life. I sort of doubt this man had a childhood because it’s hard to imagine him going through middle school.
“Jesus starts here by asking a question. Who loves the moneylender more? It’s almost one of those rhetorical questions.”
If Rick were teaching this message, I’m pretty sure the word duh would have been used. Probably more than once.
Probably why he’s the youth pastor and Pastor Louis is the lead pastor.
Pastor Louis preaches for another thirty minutes on the verses in Luke. “As Christians, particularly Christians who have been in the church for many years, we have a tendency to look down on those who haven’t known the Lord as long or who have sinned in greater ways than us. I pray that we remember what it says here. That those who have had much forgiven often love the Lord more than those who have had little forgiven.” He quirks one side of his mouth up. “Room for thought, eh? Let’s pray.”
