The Chapel Wars

by Lindsey Leavitt

  Donna gave my elbow a squeeze. Sixth Cranston comment. One-track mind.

  Donna told Dad about the loan. His bloodshot eyes reddened to demonic. We shouldn’t be having this conversation now, not the day of the funeral, not with Charlie and Emma outside, waiting for the happiest moment of their lives.

  “Sixty thousand? How is my dad in the hole sixty thousand on this place?” Dad asked.

  “Fresh flowers aren’t cheap,” Donna pointed out.

  “So what do we do?” I asked.

  “By my calculations, we need to double our ceremonies. That should get us in the right ballpark.”

  Double? The thing is, if we knew how to make money, we would already be doing it. I didn’t know how much we brought in a month, but I knew doubling the ceremonies would mean doubling time and resources we just didn’t have.

  “And what if we don’t get another loan?” I asked.

  “Then we … then we default.”

  And we lose the chapel. That was the real ghost in the room, the haunting truth that none of us said out loud. If we didn’t come up with a plan, and fast, my grandpa’s legacy, and my entire family’s source of income, would be gone.

  “It’s the slow season,” I said. “We have New Year’s and Valentine’s, a few Christmas breakers. If it were June, I wouldn’t be worried, but now …”

  “We have Angel Gardens,” Dad said. “They give us so much business, maybe we can talk to more reception halls?”

  “Yeah, that’s good. We’ll have to think what else we can do differently, even if it means fake flowers and cutting corners. I’m scheduling a brainstorming meeting with the rest of the staff Monday.”

  “Holly, no.” Dad grabbed a camera lens from his bag. “I had no idea this was going on. This is too big for you. Let Donna and me figure this out.”

  Donna nodded. “I’m so glad you said something.”

  “He can say all the ‘somethings’ he wants, but this is still my responsibility.”

  “And I’m still your father,” Dad said. “There’s your schoolwork to think about, your time with your family.”

  I almost laughed. What time with my family? All those daddy-daughter dates we never went on? “Grandpa explained this in his letter.”

  My upper hand. Neither of them got a letter or special instructions to see that Cranston grandson I was supposed to automatically hate. Grandpa had groomed me for this job, even if the job came sooner than we all thought. I had never let him down when he was alive, and I wasn’t about to do it in his death. I opened the door. “The Deans are waiting. You know what Grandpa would say. Let’s go make some memories.”

  Dad and Donna exchanged a contemplative glance. Finally, Dad shook his head and walked out.

  It was a small moment, but a victorious one.

  Now I just had a war to fight.

  The Deans had no wedding guests. They’d spent all their money to get to Vegas, the city Emma had wanted to get married in since she was eleven and saw the Nicholas Cage movie Honeymoon in Vegas. Charlie laughed at the absurdity of the dream but saved for seven months to make it happen anyway. Emma wore a simple sheath dress, Charlie a gray suit. They shimmered.

  “Hey, you,” Charlie whispered when Emma walked down the aisle.

  “Hey, yourself.”

  “We’re actually getting married, Em.”

  Emma acted confused. “Is that where this dress came from? I wondered why that blimey minister was standing there.”

  And so it went.

  They wrote their own vows, filled with inside jokes and tearful moments. Minister Dan went off script, sharing earnest advice based on his own thirty-five years of marriage. The light from the candelabra danced on their faces.

  “As long as you both shall live?”

  “Absolutely.” Charlie glowed. “Since we’re here anyway.”

  “You’re supposed to say ‘I do,’ you twit.” Emma squeezed his hand.

  “I do.”

  “And do you, Emma, take Charlie to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, for richer and poorer, in sickness and in health, as long as you both shall live?”

  “I do.” Emma giggled. “I do!”

  They kissed before Minister Dan told them to.

  Donna dabbed at her eyes. “What are their chances?”

  “Ninety-two percent.” The ceremony was a drop of rain on a day dry of hope. Charlie and Emma were the reason we were in this business, and the reason we had to stay in business. “Don’t worry about the chapel. It’s going to work out.”

  “Honey, I know you take business classes at school, but—”

  “No. It will. Remember what Bono said.”

  “Great.” Donna groaned. “Tell me what Bono said.”

  “The job of life is to turn your negatives into positives.”

  “I was hoping the Bono quotes would die with your grandpa.”

  “The quotes stay.” I smiled as Emma and Charlie skipped down the aisle. “And so will the chapel.”

  I believed my words right then, I really did. I believed them about 63 percent.

  Chapter 6

  I didn’t go to a normal high school. Normal in the way that high school movies portray schools, at least. As a magnet school, West Career and Technical Academy didn’t have a homecoming game or even organized sports. If we wanted to participate in any of these things, we did it at the school we were zoned for. There were kids who shuttled back and forth between their academic and social zones, but not me. West was a hard school. There wasn’t extra time for extracurriculars. I tried cross-country at another school my first year to get a PE credit, but I didn’t like making something like running competitive. There’s enough competition in life as it is.

  I enrolled at West for a few reasons. Sam was a year older than me, so I’d already heard all about the school. I inherited all his older friends, making my freshman year relatively seamless. Most of the guys were in the Sports Medicine elective, which was filled with sports enthusiasts and premeds. Sam was in the Biotechnology program, which was just as sexy as it sounds, and promised to breed the next generation of biologists and geneticists and other careers ending in “-ist.” The main reason I went to West was because of the Business Management program. It was geeky how much I loved my classes. I guess if a seventeen-year-old had to run a business, I was more prepared than most.

  We shared some core classes with other programs, one of which was advanced calculus. I couldn’t be more excited for our test Monday, an entire period devoted to equations, beautiful and simple, all without any symbol or number representing a chapel or deceased grandparent or divorced parents or D A X.

  Except for, you know, when you’re actually solving for X.

  “You look way too chipper for a Monday morning,” Sam said as we pushed through the front doors.

  “Calculus,” I said.

  “Of course. Who doesn’t love a good test? I’m surprised the whole school isn’t dancing around, what with all the amazing things like tests and pop quizzes raining down on us.”

  “It really is a great school,” I agreed.

  “Sarcasm, Holls. Sarcasm.”

  I headed straight for my locker, the seventh one on the right of the fourth hallway. It was the same thing I had done every weekday morning previously, all those mornings before I’d inherited my grandpa’s drama.

  Sam followed me, even though his locker was two hallways over. “You didn’t text me back yesterday,” he said.

  “I know. I cocooned all day.”

  “What marathon did you do?” he asked.

  “Little House on the Prairie.”

  He cringed. “I’m buying you new DVD boxed sets for Christmas. I promise you’d love Game of Thrones if you’d just get into it.”

  “Don’t bother. Everything you watch is a downer. When I’m cocooning, I want happy and safe.”

  “Isn’t that show about pilgrims? What’s happy about pilgrims? They killed all the Indians.”

  “I wou
ld correct you right now, but there are too many things to correct.”

  The need to cocoon was something I could better explain to a girl friend or even a sister who was not Lenore. Surely most females understood the importance of wrapping oneself in a large duvet for a solid five hours with nachos and a high-quality series about homesteaders. Not pilgrims.

  But it’d been a while since I’d had a close friend who was a girl, which wasn’t even a conscious choice. There hadn’t been some epic junior high fallout with an evil bestie, and I didn’t grow boobs so early that the girls were jealous. No boyfriend had been stolen from me, and I’d never stolen someone else’s.

  I just didn’t fully understand my gender. Socially, I could tell there were things I was supposed to say or feel and I was always a beat off. One-on-one, I was fine, but in groups I struggled to follow the conversation. With my guy friends, emotions weren’t discussed. We stuck to topics. I was a huge fan of conversational topics.

  Sam’s face lit up, and I could already sense the boys lumbering down the hall.

  “Kiss her!” Grant yelled for only the fifty-seventh time this month. Yes. That was an exact count.

  “He’s never going to give up on that,” Sam said.

  “Maybe he’ll give us a break if you marry Camille.”

  Sam actually blushed. “Yeah, and you’ll be the best man. Then Grant will go back to asking me if you’re a lesbian.”

  “I have short hair, understand sports, and hang out with dudes. Grant’s never going to be convinced otherwise.”

  “Maybe you should kiss me and prove me wrong,” Grant said.

  I turned around. I could make a joke about Grant’s hair today—pigtail braids—but he wanted it too much. I wasn’t one of those girls who ran my fingers through his luscious locks, asking to brush and style them, the whole time Grant purring like a cat in heat.

  He was with Porter and Mike, as always, like that dog in Harry Potter with the three different heads. After Sam, they were my best friends, and when it came to everyday things, like wakeboarding at Lake Mead or game night at Buffalo Wild Wings, they were amazing company. Part of the reason I loved my school so much was because of them. But sometimes, like the Monday after my grandpa’s funeral, the combination of them was just too much.

  “Dude, you look like crap,” Porter said in disgust, taking in my faded black yoga pants and UNLV hoodie. “What happened to your face?”

  I glanced at the mirror in my locker, at the dark circles under my green eyes, my freckles stark against my hollow cheeks. I’d put lip gloss on that morning to combat the sorrow, but it looked cartoonish on my pale face. I slammed my locker. “Shut up.”

  Grant tried to shove him. Porter, who was nicknamed Portly until his chub turned to muscle in tenth grade, didn’t even budge. “Her grandpa just died, dickwad. Of course she’s going to look like crap.”

  “Thanks, Grant.”

  Mike slid his arms under my backpack straps and gave me a hug. “You hanging in there?”

  Stupidest thing to ask. “Yeah.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  Porter snorted. “Holly doesn’t talk about things like that. That’s what makes her cool.”

  Things like what? Death? Does anyone talk openly about that? “You guys are really making this a big deal.”

  “Because it is.” Mike hugged me closer. I barely came up to his shoulders. “Whatever you need. I’m here.”

  Mike and I dated for four days my freshman year, a lukewarm relationship at best, and yet he’d spent the two years since believing we had this sacred bond, that he understood me in ways no one else could. Nine times out of ten, his efforts came off as forced, but sometimes there was a flash of authenticity, and I wondered if maybe he did know me better than the others, if I should have hung around.

  This was not one of those times. The hug lingered much longer than a sympathy hug should and ended with an awkward back tickle. I pulled away and cut Sam a look. He swallowed back a smile. He knew all about what I called the “Mike Ickies.”

  “Thanks, Mike. I … appreciate it.”

  Mike gave a modest shrug. Even his shrugs perved me out.

  “Okay, hate to break up this team huddle, but I have a calculus test, so I’ll see you guys after fifth period,” I said. “Are we doing late lunch after school? Where?”

  “Costco for hot dogs,” Grant said.

  “Hawaiian barbecue?” Mike asked.

  “My turn to pick,” Porter said. “I’m broke. So Sam’s house for sandwiches.”

  “You guys ate all the leftover enchiladas last week,” Sam whined.

  We grinned. His mom would make more. She always did. Sam’s 293,023-square-foot house (estimate) had been hangout Mecca since Sam hosted middle school math club there.

  And listen. Number Crunchers was a cool math club. We ate fraction pie, like, every day.

  “Uh, since we have you here, together”—Sam fiddled with the zipper on his backpack—“we wanted to give you something.”

  The boys shuffled into a solid line. The five-minute bell rang, and I shifted my weight, counting the nine seconds it took Sam to open his bag. Christmas was still a month away, but that didn’t mean they weren’t giving me a prank present. Valentine’s last year they bought me a blow-up doll; my birthday was an old tube sock Grant found under his dad’s bed.

  “I have to get to class, guys.”

  Sam pulled out a piece of black paper. On it, in white chalk, he’d written “RIP JIM NOLAN.” When I looked closer, I realized it was a tombstone. If it was a joke, it was sick, but if this was an act of kindness, well … that would be a big if. Sam flipped it around. On the back were a few hacked-up pictures of my grandpa and me, obviously printed off the computer.

  “We got these online,” Grant said. “For you to hang in your locker.”

  “Sort of a memorial,” Mike said. “I know how close you were with Jim.”

  “Don’t call him ‘Jim’ like you knew him,” Sam said.

  “My mom got mad that I used her scrapbook paper for the tombstone,” Porter said. “But it’s that stiff kind.”

  “Stiff.” Grant snickered.

  “It’s called card stock,” I said. One of the taped pictures fluttered to the ground. I knelt down to pick it up and stopped, staring at the grainy photo. Sam took it on 12/12/12, one of our biggest moneymaking wedding days to date. Grandpa and I painted 12s on our cheeks and made the numbers 1 and 2 with our fingers, although Grandpa got his mixed up so it’s twenty-one.

  I swallowed and looked up at my friends. “Thanks.”

  “Come on, Holls, zip up your hoodie a little.” Porter scrunched up his face. “I can see your bra.”

  “Ah, she’s wearing the green one,” Mike said, like he ever saw my bra, and like I had the same bra I did freshman year.

  I stood up and used a piece of gum to stick the tombstone in my locker. They’d never done something like this for me. It made the hurt bigger and smaller, if that makes any sense.

  I did well on the test, not because I had laser focus going in, but because I couldn’t fail a calculus test if I tried. I actually did try, last year, in trig, when my parents first told me about the divorce. Midway through I got so bothered that I erased all the wrong answers I’d meticulously biffed and zipped through it again. I screwed up the class curve with that test.

  My cry for help wasn’t even a meow.

  The day went downhill after that. It was that stupid envelope I’d been carrying around ever since the funeral, like I was going to run into Dax at the grocery store.

  After school, I spent seventeen minutes pacing across no man’s land, a.k.a. the parking lot separating Rose of Sharon and Cupid’s Dream. The half-finished condos a block east cast a shadow across the asphalt. Grandpa and I used to wager bets when they’d start construction again, but after three years the skeletal structure still remained undressed, a looming reminder of the still-anemic economy.

  I’d never looked between the two
chapels and imagined why a bride or groom would pick their garish monstrosity over our quaint slice of heaven. I honestly tried to look at both chapels objectively, but even from that in-between vantage point, the only positive thing about Cupid’s Dream I could think of was that Dax worked there. And I was the only one, in my family at least, who would view that as remotely positive.

  Eighteen minutes in, and I finally crossed the invisible line between the buildings. Too bad Grandpa’s brass band wasn’t there to signify that moment. There should be something heralding my visit to the dark side besides the traffic noises from the Strip.

  I would walk in, hand Dax the envelope, walk out.

  Walk in. Hand over. Walk out.

  I’d only been in Cupid’s Dream once. There’d been a power outage, and Grandpa Jim had sent me over to see if Victor had the same problem, or “if that SOB cut my power line.” The power was out block-wide, so I’d only seen the dark lobby before running back to Grandpa.

  Lighting didn’t help the space much. Every one of Grandpa’s rules was broken. Fake flowers, mauve and hunter-green decor. The front desk had a phone ringing off the hook, there were papers everywhere, and pictures of Victor with various celebrity patrons peeled off the wall.

  I sat down on the bench and noticed the faux finish was chipping off. The counter had a display case, like a jewelry store, selling garters and mugs and mini top hats that said, “I got hitched at Cupid’s Dream!” Behind the desk was this refrigerator with wilted bouquets on sale for $9.98. Hey, the marriage might not last, but at least the couple wouldn’t go into the double-digit price point on floral design.

  “Whattya need, sweetie?” a voice asked from behind a pile of paperwork. A woman’s purple-gray coif sprouted above the mound like a feathery petunia.

  I stood up so I could see the woman behind the counter, but all I got was more hair and the top of her glasses. “Lot of work, huh?” I asked

  She shuffled a stack to the side so she was finally visible. Her smile was coffee-stained but kind. “Big sci-fi convention in town this weekend. Drive-through chapel had more traffic than the I-15.”