But just then David knocked on the bedroom door. "Christy, phone."
"Who is it?"
"Some girl."
Christy made a face at her dad that said, "Little brothers!"
He smiled.
"What's her name?"
"I dunno. I told her you were crying your eyes out in your room 'cause you were getting yelled at for not having a boyfriend."
"David!" Christy yelped and sprang from the bed then shot a glance at her father. "Is it okay if I go see who it is?"
He nodded, and she was out the door, grabbing David by the shoulders. "Why did you say that?"
David trembled-a mocking kind of "Help, I'm scared!" tremble. His words matched his comic actions. "You told me to always tell the truth on the phone."
Christy brushed past the little clown and retrieved the dangling receiver. "Hello?"
"Christy?"
"Yes, this is Christy."
"Hello! How are you? This is Alissa!"
"Alissa? You're kidding!" Christy had met Alissa on the beach last summer. They had written a few times but never called because Alissa lived in Boston.
"How are you doing, Christy?"
"Fine! How are you?"
"We're doing wonderful."
"We?" Christy ventured. "You mean you had the...I mean, you had your baby?"
"Last week. It's a girl."
"Really? That's great, Alissa."
"I named her Shawna Christy after you and, well, after Shawn. She's beautiful, but she doesn't have any hair yet."
Christy giggled along with Alissa. "You're doing all right, then?"
"Besides being twenty pounds overweight, yes. I'm probably doing better than ever before in my life, thanks to you."
"What did I do?"
"Christy, if you hadn't written me and encouraged me and told me that God cared about me and everything, well, when I found out I was pregnant, I probably would have killed myself or had an abortion or I don't know what. I never would have gone to the Crisis Pregnancy Center. The only reason I went was because you kept telling me to go to church and meet some Christians. I knew I couldn't just walk into some church, pregnant and everything, and expect people to accept me."
Todd's words flashed before Christy, and to get rid of them, she used them in her reply. "You know, Alissa, people look on the outside, but God looks on the heart."
"I know that now. That's what my counselor, Frances, tells me. She has a support group for expectant and new mothers at her home. I've been going every week. They talk about God a lot, and I'm starting to understand some of the things you told me in your letters about trusting God enough to give Him your heart."
The words stung. Right now Christy felt like she and God were having a tug-of-war with her heart, and she was winning. Apparently, Alissa and God were having the same struggle-only God appeared to be winning with Alissa. "Well, have you?"
"Have I what?" Alissa asked.
"Have you done that yet? Given God your heart?"
"Not exactly. Frances has explained it all to me: how I need to be sorry for what I've done to hurt God and ask Him for forgiveness and then surrender my life to Him. I just haven't done all that yet. It's always been hard for me to say I'm sorry, and I have an even harder time trusting someone to take control over my life, or however Frances explained it."
Christy felt disappointed. Ever since last summer she had wished Alissa would surrender her life to the Lord and become a Christian. She seemed so close to making the decision.
"How's Todd? Are you two still together?" Alissa asked, changing the subject.
"Not exactly."
"What's going on? Your brother said you were in trouble for not having a date or something."
"He got it all mixed up." Christy hesitated then decided to tell all to this faraway friend who had been so transparent with her. She concluded the whole saga by adding, "And things with Todd are not very great. He's taking some girl named Jasmine to his prom next Saturday, and since she's in a wheelchair, he seems to think I should feel sorry for her, like he does."
"She's in a wheelchair?"
"Yes, from a car accident. She's probably got long blond hair like yours, and I wouldn't be surprised if she's elected prom queen."
"Really?"
"Well, I don't know, but he's crazy about her, so I figure there must be more going on than he's telling me. I've put him on my list of just friends.'" Besides, he might not even be around this summer."
"Where's he going?"
"Hawaii. Don't you feel sorry for him?" It came out as sarcastically as she meant it.
"I loved Hawaii when we lived there. My dad and I used to walk on the beach every night."
Christy knew Alissa's dad had died a year ago. She wondered if she should venture a question about Alissa's alcoholic mom.
"Are you still living with your grandmother?"
"No, she kicked me out a couple months ago because I embarrassed her in front of all her proper Bostonian friends. She hasn't seen Shawna yet. Neither has my mom."
"How is your mom?"
"The same. She's been in and out of the same treatment program twice."
"So, where are you living?"
"With Frances's daughter. She's married to a really nice guy, and they have two little girls, so Shawna has built-in playmates."
"That's great! I'm so glad things are better for you."
"I think about you a lot, Christy, and how you said that God knows and cares about everything in my life. It's hard for me to believe, but I think about it a lot.
"Would you tell Todd hi for me? That is, when you start speaking to him again. Did I tell you he wrote me the most incredible letter a couple of months ago? Five pages long. I think I've read it a hundred times. I'm going to save it forever and let Shawna read it when she's old enough."
Todd wrote her a five-page letter? He's never written to me!
"I really need to go. And don't worry, Christy. Things with you and Todd will work out. They always do. But when you do talk to him, tell him I think he should have taken you to the prom."
"Right, I'll tell him." She said good-bye to Alissa, hung up, and added silently, That is, if ever speak with him again in my life.
On her way up the front steps of the school building Monday morning, a girl Christy barely knew came up to her. "Are you the girl who dumped Rick Doyle?"
"Excuse me?"
"I heard you gave Rick a taste of what he's always dishing out. Good for you!"
Christy ignored the girl's comments and entered the building. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw Rick coming in her direction. She got up the nerve to look at him, but when she looked, he wasn't there. She didn't know if he'd turned and gone the other way in the crowded hallways or if it hadn't really been Rick to begin with, but she just expected to see him.
Someone bumped hard into Christy's shoulder as they passed in the hallway. She turned and recognized the girl as one of Renee's friends.
"What is going on?" Christy muttered to herself. She hurried to meet Katie at their lockers as usual.
Katie gave her a cool look. "I don't know if I'm speaking to you or not."
"You too? Take a number. Or better yet, why don't you call me and when I answer you can hang up on me."
"What is that supposed to mean?" Katie said, giving Christy a disgusted look.
"I mean, I'm sorry. I know I messed everything up. I tried to tell you Sunday before the toddler class that I hadn't asked my parents yet, but then everything got going so fast..."
"You're trying to say this is my fault?"
Christy leaned against her locker and looked her friend in the face. "No, I'm not trying to say that at all. This whole mess is my doing. And I'm sorry it didn't work out the way we planned. I was hoping it would work out, Katie. I was dreaming big things. But my parents absolutely won't let me go."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm positively sure."
Katie seemed to soften. "You could have called me, Christy. It's pretty awful hearing it from one of Rick's friends."
"I'm sorry."
"What's worse is when I tell Rick's friend he doesn't have the story straight because I know what's going on and he doesn't, and then Rick walks up and says I'm wrong."
"Katie..."
"I don't know if I want you to apologize. You see, Rick's never been stood up before. I'd probably be more mad at you, except I think it was time he got some of his own medicine, and you were just the one to give it to him."
"I wasn't trying to-"
"Lance and I will have a miserable time without you, you know."
"No, you won't! You two will have a wonderful time. Besides, isn't Rick going anyway?"
"How would I know? He's playing it so cool. Nobody knows what he's going to do. Besides, why would he still want to go with me and Lance? He's not exactly friends with either of us."
The bell rang, and Katie gave Christy a playful slug in the arm. "Don't look so depressed. You've got to come up with a few smiles for cheerleading tryouts this Friday, you know. Wouldn't hurt to start practicing now."
Christy forced a pathetic grin.
"Never mind. Go ahead and be depressed all day today and get it over with. I'll check on your smile again tomorrow morning."
Christy shuffled to class. The luxury of being depressed all day didn't sound so bad.
"How was your weekend?" Liane, a girl in her algebra class, asked.
"It was interesting," Christy answered cautiously. She wondered who else knew about Rick. Liane didn't usually talk to her. Had her life become an open book at Kelley High School?
"Oh really? What was so interesting about it?" the girl probed.
"It was a hard weekend, that's all."
"Well then, I sure hope your week turns out better than your weekend!" Christy couldn't tell if the girl was being serious or sarcastic.
Class started and Christy thought, This week has to get better. Everyone is watching me! I have to work hard at tryouts, and on Friday I have to make the squad. It won't make up for the prom and Todd and Rick, but it'll show everyone that I did it And I did it on my own.
The algebra teacher passed out the corrected quizzes from Friday. He handed Christy hers first. A huge, red F had been circled on the top of the page. She had never received an F before. Ds and Incompletes, but never an F. In horror Christy discovered she had missed every problem. This was not the way to begin a week that was supposed to turn out better than her weekend.
"One-third of the class failed this exam. Those of you who did will need to take a makeup test," the teacher announced. "I'm giving the makeup tomorrow after school."
Oh, great! How am I going to be in two places at once? I need to be at practice, but if I don't make up this quiz, I'm in deep trouble. And when am I going to find time to study?
Her troubles didn't get any easier at practice. Renee huddled with her friends gossiping, and all three turned to look Christy over as she came on the field.
When Christy got close enough to hear, Renee said, "Well, at least my mommy and daddy are letting me go to the prom, not like some people we know, who are still too young to play with the big boys."
The girls giggled. Christy ignored them, doing her stretching exercises by herself.
"Watch, she's going to admit she's too young to be a cheerleader too. Just wait. Yoo-hoo," Renee mocked, "change your diaper before practice? We wouldn't want any accidents, you know."
Christy closed it all out, pounding a single sentence through her mind over and over: Ignore her. Ignore her. Then she added, I can do this. I can do this.
As the rest of the girls gathered, it became obvious that the hopefuls had dwindled down to the determined. Eight girls remained. On Friday the judges would select seven cheerleaders. That meant all but one of them would be chosen.
The girls were highly motivated now, each trying to prove that she deserved to be one of the chosen seven. As they ran through the cheer a few more times, Christy concentrated on making her arms the straightest, her moves the sharpest, her voice the loudest.