“Yeah, well, just batting practice.”
“Don’t give me that. You’re gonna be just that hot in all our games this year.”
“Boy, I hope.” He sighed. “Man, it kills that you’re not out here.”
“Tell me about it.”
The older player leaned against the fence. “Ever see old Hilliard around?”
Bucky shook his head. “Not since . . .”
Dan sighed. “Jerk.” He glanced at Bucky’s cast. “You’re doing okay, though?”
“Yeah. As well as can be expected.” He managed a grin. “Sure is easier working at the bank than toting lumber over at the improvement center.”
“Yeah, you lucked out getting that gig.” He chortled. “Pay’s better too, ain’t it?”
“Just a buck more.”
“Still, it all adds up, my man.”
“You got that right.”
Dan was about to leave, when he suddenly turned back. “Let me ask you this, Stone. I mean, at church and all, I guess they say that you’ve gotta forgive Hilliard. For taking a shot at you. Right?”
The question startled the younger player. “I . . . guess.” He rolled his eyes. “To be frank, I haven’t thought a whole lot about it.”
“Wow. Are you kidding? If I had a broken arm because of a thing like that, man, it’d be in my head 24/7.”
“Well . . . I guess some. But I’ve tried to let it go.”
Dan grunted, thinking. “That’d be tough. Arm in a cast, and you’ve got to say to a guy like Jeff: ‘Forget about it.’”
The observation sat there between the two Christian players. Finally Bucky interjected: “Well, you know what? I guess God understands when it takes a while to process things like that. ‘Cause I’m not exactly ready to be his best friend.”
“I hear you on that one,” Dan grinned, trotting back toward the field.
• • • • •
The pizza restaurant that evening was wall - to - wall people. Music from the old-fashioned juke box pounded out over the roar of adolescent voices. Bucky could see about ten students from Hampton Beach High School crammed into one booth on the far side of the room.
“Man, that was some game last night!” he heard one of them boast. “You see that Litton hit? Four for four! The man was smokin’.”
He looked back at Deirdre. “You look terrific.”
The blonde cocked her head. “Now, Mr. Stone, don’t try any of your famous lines just to get me to pay for all this pizza.”
He laughed. “I won’t. You forget that I’m rich now.”
“Have they paid you anything yet?”
“Not until next Thursday.”
The crowd of Hampton Beach students paid their bill and noisily exited. Bucky decided to take advantage of the brief quiet spell.
“Listen, I gotta tell you something.”
A pause. “I’m all ears, Mr. Stone.”
“It’s about the Endorphin show. I can’t go.”
For a long minute Deirdre didn’t say anything, but Bucky could see her face clouding. “Why?”
He played with a napkin on the table. “Well, it’s just . . . not a place where a Christian can be. I went online and checked it out, and it’s just . . . booze, drugs, and X-rated songs. Nonstop.” He looked directly at her. “I’m totally sorry. But I can’t do it.”
She gave a little sigh, more resigned than impatient. “I figured you might say that.”
Bucky swallowed hard. “Yeah. Plus it’s a dance club, and I’m pretty much moving away from that too.”
“Is that more of this Jesus stuff?” Her voice was decidedly cool.
He nodded. For the first time since attending school, he had the unpleasant feeling of being almost . . . ashamed? Inexplicably a memory of Lisa flickered in his mind.
He looked at the girl sitting across the table. After months of tantalizing waiting, Deirdre seemed to be almost within reach . . . and yet so far away. A gulf that perhaps could never be bridged.
“Listen,” he blurted, his words coming in a rush, “I . . . really like you. I mean, for months. And now you’re sitting here with me, and I’m telling you I can’t do what I want more than anything to be able to do.” His face flushed.
She reached out and traced his hand with her finger. “Well, then do what you want to do, Mr. Stone. You’re in charge of your own life, your own decisions. Come on, mister. If you want me, here I am.”
He took a breath. “I can’t.” From somewhere deep within he found the strength to say it. “I can’t throw away the things I know are right. They mean too much to me.”
“God and all that?” Her voice was soft, more uncertain than he’d ever heard.
“Yeah.” There. It was out.
In the background the jukebox began a slow, sentimental hit, but neither heard it. “I want more than anything to be your . . . friend.” His gaze met hers.
Something flickered in her eyes, but only for a moment. Deirdre leaned closer, pushing the tray of unfinished pizza away before speaking. “Bucky, you’re a good guy. Lord knows I don’t at all mind looking at you either. I get all tingly watching you out there on the court.” Again her finger traced on his hand. “But if you’re waitin’ for me to join the Jesus Club with you . . . it ain’t never going to happen. Not now, not ever. I’m sorry.”
Something inside him twisted in pain. To hear out loud what he had suspected and feared all along wrenched him back to reality,
“What do you want to do?” he managed.
“I don’t know.”
Chapter Seven: “It’s Not Fair to You”
Bucky lay awake in bed for a long time that night, the digital clock on his nightstand blinking away the sleepless minutes. The ups and downs of the past two years at Hampton Beach High School crowded his mind with a mixture of confusing and jarring feelings.
Being in the athletic spotlight had brought bleacher-packed popularity . . . followed by the bitter scorn of the entire student body. But then came a second burst of fickle fame when the Panthers won the JV basketball championship just months later. Now he had been two months on the so-called “disabled list.” Up and down, up and down.
Tossing aside a blanket, Bucky shifted his weight away from his broken arm. A vision of Deirdre, her face bathed in the rose-colored lights of the restaurant, remained vivid in his memory. Deirdre . . . and Lisa. So different in their values and personalities, yet both with an uncanny way of making a high school boy’s pulse flutter like a wobbly football pass.
And then there was religion. God and church poking into every corner of his life. Christianity and Jesus with all of the gentle but insistent ways that his commitment to the teacher from Nazareth impacted his daily choices, his priorities, even his romantic impulses.
At last he fell asleep.
Monday morning he rode silently in Dan’s car on the way to school. “Man, you look worn out and it’s only Monday,” the older boy observed.
Bucky forced a smile. “Yeah, sorry. Just worried about some stuff.” He squinted as the morning sun flickered in his eyes through the dusty windshield. ‘‘Hear you had a pretty good game the other day.”
Dan brightened. “Yeah! Nine to two.”
“Good going.”
Once inside the science complex he went over to the chemistry lab and scanned the rows of tables and equipment. In the far corner Deirdre was setting up an experiment, her notebook spread out on the lab counter. She had on a protective white coat over her short skirt.
“Hey.” He looked over the array of beakers and other equipment. “Getting ready to blow us up?”
She smiled in a distant sort of way. “How’d you know?”
He shrugged. “I wanted to see if you’re going to be around at lunch.”
A pencil in her hand, Deirdre was already writing down some figures on the photocopied lab sheet. “Yeah. I guess.”
“OK. I’ll try to see you then.”
When she nodded in an absentminded way, almost aloof, Buck
y backed away without any further attempt at conversation.
The morning hours dragged by with each classroom clock crawling progressively slower as the noon hour approached. Finally the 12:00 buzzer announced the lunch break.
Scanning the quadrangle, he tried without success to spot Deirdre’s ice-blonde hair. “Where is she?” he muttered half-aloud.
“I take it you’re not straining and craning lookin’ for me.” A teasing voice right behind him startled Bucky.
“Oh, uh, well, not exactly.”
Sam gave him a knowing smile. “I saw her a minute ago over by the music building.”
Bucky hiked to the edge of the quad and turned the corner into the secondary dining area. Sitting with another girl at a table by the band room was Deirdre, her dark glasses reflecting the bright April sun. He approached the pair, his usual confidence evaporating.
As his shadow fell across her, Deirdre looked up. “Oh, hi.” She gestured toward her seatmate. “This is Jill. My lab partner from chem.”
Bucky nodded at the short redhead, then glanced back at Deirdre. “I kind of need to talk to you sometime.”
She looked over at Jill, who popped one final bite into her mouth. “Hey, I was just leaving anyway,” the girl announced. “She’s all yours.” The redhead gave Deirdre a conspiratorial look before gathering up her wrappings to leave.
His once-organized thoughts in a turmoil, Bucky sat down across from the blonde.
“What’s up?” She leaned forward expectantly. As he chewed on his lip for a moment before answering, his lunch sack, unopened, rested on the table as a barrier between them. Almost without thinking, he reached out with his free arm and brushed it to the side.
“I’ve been thinking about – you know – the prom and stuff. And you.”
“Uh huh.” She murmured it so quietly he almost didn’t hear her.
“I don’t know how to say this good,” he blurted out, “except to just say it. But really, to be fair to you, I better not keep trying to go out with you.”
Bucky could see a flicker of disappointment in her eyes.
“Why?”
He raised his hands in a gesture of futility. “Well, you know, the . . . thing in the city. At that club. I feel bad about bailing on that. And . . . I’d probably end up sitting out half of the prom too. In terms of what the band plays and all. This whole thing – look, it’s just not fair to you.”
A puzzled expression replaced the disappointed look. “Hey, so we don’t go to that club. I don’t really care about that.” For once she seemed to grope for words herself. “And if you aren’t into dancing, we can spend our prom time some other way.” She forced a smile. “Mr. Stone, I really don’t mind your extracurricular Jesus life. Not really. Why call it quits just because of that?”
“Well, it’s more than just that.”
“What then?”
Swallowing hard, he tried to force down a lump that wouldn’t go away. “I guess . . . it’s like we were talking about Saturday night.” He paused. “God and everything.”
“What about it?”
Slowly, carefully, he tried to force his thoughts into an organized explanation. “Being a Christian is more than just a one - hour - in - church thing for me. And if I’m into it and you’re not into it . . .” His voice trailed off. “Deirdre, it’s just going to be one thing after another, getting worse and worse.” He looked down. “I don’t want to do that to you.”
She sat there, her hand on the table next to his. Almost instinctively, she reached out and traced along his fingers. “You really think it’s like that?”
“My mom talked to me about it once,” he said, remembering. “Before I started going to school here. She said something like, ‘Someday you’ll have to tell some girl, “Well, it went this far and now it can’t go any farther.”’” He looked into her eyes. “I guess I didn’t believe her – and now here we are.”
A bit of an edge crept into her voice. “You went with some girl last year. I saw you. Lisa what’s - her - name.”
“I know. I took a chance. Turns out she was interested in – you know – Christianity and all, and it worked out pretty good. Until she moved away.”
All at once a tiny dam of emotion seemed to burst. “Look, you think I want to spend four years of high school like some kind of a monk? Sitting in my locker reading my Bible while everybody else . . . is off at a dance party or at the prom with you?” His eyes flickered in frustration. “This is a nasty awful decision I’m having to make.”
He was breathing hard. Deirdre had a startled look on her face.
The moment of tension passed almost as abruptly as it had hit. “I don’t think you know . . . how much I’ve wanted to go out with you.” His voice tightened. “I’m not doing this ‘cause I want to.”
Thinking hard, she seemed to look right past him. “I can’t believe this.” Then, her voice tired and resigned, she added, “It’s like a soap opera or something. What is it with you, Stone? We’ve got awesome chemistry, you and me. Can’t you tell that?”
“Yeah. I can. So?” He looked right at her. “It doesn’t change what I have to do.”
“So because you’re religious . . . that’s it? You refuse to even give us a shot? And see if it might work out?”
He swallowed hard, trying to push the lump in his throat down into his aching gut. “All I know is this. God is my first priority and I live for him. And unless I’m a complete idiot about things like . . . us . . . it’s going to be hitting us in the face over and over.” He took a deep breath. “Look. It’s music. It’s entertainment. It’s what movies I see. It’s what I read. It’s . . . no shortcuts at school, cheating, stuff like that.” He paused, knowing he had to say one more thing. “And it’s going to be me hanging onto my . . . you know, until I walk down the aisle with my wife. A long, long time from now.”
She stared at him. “Oh, my God. You’re serious.”
Bucky nodded, his face tight. “Yeah. And it’s not your fault, but you’d be wanting me to put Jesus on the shelf for just this thing and then that one. And I can’t.”
Her eyes glittered momentarily. “Look, I wish I could be like your other little girlfriend” – the last words had a twinge of sarcasm – “but I told you Saturday, it just isn’t in me.”
Sadly he nodded. A painful minute ticked by. “I will say this.” She looked right at him. “If anybody ever made me wish it was in me, Mr. Stone, you’re the one.” Her voice betrayed uncertainty. “There’s something about you . . . I don’t know, babe. You’re some kind of guy.” She reached out and grasped his hand for just a moment, giving it a tiny squeeze before letting go. “Goodbye, Mr. Stone . . .” Her eyes were damp.
Slowly she got up and eased away from the table. At last she turned and walked away without looking back.
• • • • •
After supper that evening Bucky flipped on the large color TV in the living room. It was the Giants’ first televised game of the new season, but somehow it held little interest. So it was almost with relief that he heard the doorbell ring.
“Hey, Sam! Come on in.” Picking up the remote control, he lowered the TV volume to a comfortable level. “What’s going on?”
The tall Vietnamese senior slipped into the easy chair next to Bucky’s couch. “Well, things bit the dust today,” he observed, his voice even.
“What are you talking about?”
“With Denise.”
“Huh?”
Sam picked up a pillow and gave it a dejected little toss. “Shattered, man.”
“Are you kidding?”
The older boy shook his head.
“‘Cause of the prom?”
“Well, that . . . and just a bunch of God stuff.” He shrugged.
Despite everything, Bucky found an urge to laugh building inside him.
“Man, what’s so funny?” Sam demanded, sensing his friend’s reaction.
Bucky shook his head at the irony of it. “I’ll tell you what’s s
o funny. Well, not funny, really. Deirdre and I just fell apart today too.”
“Are you kidding? Today?”
“That’s right, shorty. This morning at lunch. That’s what that was all about. So join the club.”
Sam forced a smile. “That’s unreal. Same thing! The prom?”
“Yep. Partly, anyway. It’s just God this, Jesus that.” Bucky stared at his feet. “Well, it wasn’t just that. In fact, she told me she didn’t really care that much about the prom or stuff like us being at church each weekend. It’s just . . . man, when you’re a Christian and your girlfriend isn’t, there’s just no way. Sooner or later, you’re dead. You and I have decided to put Christ first, and I can tell you this: Deirdre wasn’t about to settle for second place. Not a chance.”
His face somber again, Sam nodded. A figure appeared in the doorway. “I didn’t mean to listen in,” Mom said softly, “but I guess I kind of did anyway.” She looked at Bucky, then at his friend. “Is this the Hampton Beach Lonely Hearts Club?”
Her son sighed. “Yeah, guess so.”
Mom sat down next to Sam. “I’m sure sorry.”
“Well, hey, it was bound to happen.” Sam traced a design in the carpeting with his toe.
“What are you boys going to do?”
Bucky turned his gaze back to the television set where a San Francisco home run was just sailing over the fence at Dodger Stadium. ‘‘‘Sam and I are going to become the most loyal, rabid, faithful, diehard . . . bachelor fans the Giants ever had.”
Sam shook his head, then gave a weary laugh.
• • • • •
Monday afternoon he pushed open the front door of First California Bank, feeling the gentle rush of air conditioning. It was a warm spring day in the Bay Area.
“Right on time!” Mr. Willis happened to be in the main teller area as Bucky walked up to his usual window. “Have a good weekend?”
“Yeah.”
The manager glanced at his watch. “I’ve got a meeting with the Sacramento branch offices. At four. Can you imagine that? So I better get on the freeway. You folks behave yourselves. Don’t give away all our hard-earned cash.”
Veronica Steele came over just as he began to wait on customers. “Mr. Willis tells me you’re going be working three - to - six shifts now. Is that right?”
Bucky Stone: The Complete Adventure (Volumes 1-10) Page 37
