Christy Miller Collection, Vol 2

by Robin Jones Gunn

  Inside the small store, David turned to Christy. “I want to get this, Christy!”

  He held up a T-shirt with a cartoon drawing of a frantic-looking character driving on a road filled with obstacles. Across the top were the words “I Survived the Road to Hana.”

  “Will you get it for me?” he asked.

  Christy laughed. “Sure, David. I think we all should get one.”

  They all did and wore them home. The T-shirts were the first thing Marti made a fuss over when they stumbled into the condo at almost midnight—cold, tired, dirty, and hungry. All chattering at once, they told the details of their wild adventure.

  “And you actually drove, Christy?” Mom looked shocked.

  “Only the first hour back. When we stopped in Hana, when Todd called you guys, his foot was a lot better. So he drove the rest of the way. We were all wet from the rain, and it got so cold from the wind in that open Jeep!”

  “I’ll get some hot water going.” Marti headed for the kitchen, nearly tripping over the ice chest they had brought in. “We’ve got hot chocolate here somewhere.”

  Suddenly, Marti shrieked, grabbed the broom, and began to pound the floor by the opened ice chest. They all ran into the kitchen just in time to see a lifeless Sydney squished on the floor.

  “Aunt Marti,” David wailed, “that was my shrimp!”

  “Oh David, don’t cry. You uncle will take you out tomorrow night and buy you a shrimp dinner, won’t you, Bob?”

  David broke into a bleating-calf cry and ran from the room.

  “What did I say?” Marti asked.

  They were too busy laughing to answer.

  The final few days of their vacation breezed by as refreshing and fragrant as the summer trade winds. They lounged by the pool, walked along the beach at sunset, shopped, and dined at fancy restaurants. Christy and Paula got along much better than at the trip’s beginning.

  Their last night in Hawaii, Bob took them all on a sunset-dinner sail on a catamaran. About twenty-five tourists like them took the cruise.

  One of them was a university student from Denmark named Alex. Paula had set her sights on him the minute he came onboard, and within five minutes she had started up a conversation with him.

  The two of them talked nonstop the entire trip. It seemed to Christy that Alex was captivated by Paula’s Paula-ness.

  After they had eaten, Christy left the group and, with rocking steps, made her way to the front of the catamaran. She sat on the webbed tarp spread across the boat’s front.

  The sun had just been devoured in three swift bites by the volcano that rose out of the center of the island of Molokai. All that was left was a halo of red-orange-yellow-pink fuzzy clouds that looked like a huge party napkin, wiping the upturned lips of the greedy, sun-swallowing volcano. The ocean, so blue and clear and inviting, rocked her gently with its never-ending lullaby.

  Todd quietly joined her and stretched out on his stomach.

  “Hey, look!” He pointed to Molokai. “There are the two lights again.”

  “So, have you decided?” Christy asked, feeling a little coy.

  From the way the last few days had gone, Christy figured he had evaluated her and Paula and had made Christy his choice.

  “No, I haven’t,” Todd answered slowly. “I still can’t decide if I should go to college in the fall or try to get in on the pro surfing tour.”

  “That’s what you’re trying to decide?” Christy asked.

  Todd looked surprised. “Yeah. What did you think?”

  To avoid answering, she quickly asked, “You want to be a pro surfer then?”

  “No. I want to be a Bible translator.” In the twilight, his eyes looked as starry as the darkening sky above them. “My dream is to go to some remote tropical island where the natives have never heard the gospel. I want to live there, learn their language, and translate the Bible into their native tongue.”

  “You want to be a missionary?” Christy said the word reverently, with the same sense of awe and admiration she felt for the early missionaries to Hawaii.

  “Yes.” Todd said it like a true island dreamer. “I want to be a missionary.”

  It all became clear to Christy. She understood Todd better at this moment than ever before. Todd had the same never-stop-trying spirit the missionaries must have had when they kept rebuilding their church. Todd had the same God-fearing heart that prompted the Baldwins to pray for rather than retaliate against the sailors who infested their home and their island with mosquitoes.

  As far as making his home in the jungle—yeah, that fit too. Last summer when they went to Disneyland, Todd’s favorite attraction turned out to be the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House. Christy could see that Todd would make an outrageous jungle missionary.

  “You know, when we were in Hana,” Todd continued, “I started dreaming even more about being a missionary. Swimming in freshwater pools, living off the land, the smell of the air after it rains …”

  “You’d better make sure you take along a lifetime supply of bee-sting antidote!” Christy warned.

  Todd laughed. “Right! Don’t leave home without it!”

  He suddenly turned serious. “You did a great job that day, keeping cool in the emergency and everything. I might not have made it if you weren’t there. And I never thanked you for driving the Jeep for me.”

  “That’s okay, Todd. You know I did it as much for me as for you. I now have no fear of taking my driving test. If I can drive the Hana road, I can drive anywhere!”

  Todd laughed along with her. “Good missionary training for you, Kilikina.”

  Then he caught himself, as if he had said something he hadn’t meant to.

  Christy remained silent, absorbing Todd’s statement.

  He called me by my Hawaiian name. He thinks I’d make a good missionary. Todd thinks we’d make great missionaries together. He wants to marry me!

  “Of course,” Todd added quickly, “that’s another bridge, isn’t it? It has to be your own choice.”

  “Of course,” Christy said, camouflaging all her heart-pounding feelings. “Like your choice between college and surfing.” She pointed toward the two lights on Molokai. “The closer you get to that decision, the clearer your choice will become.”

  “This sure has been an intense week,” Todd said. “It seems like God had a lot He wanted to teach us.”

  Christy flashed back to Katie’s prediction about God doing something in her life during this trip. Wait till Katie hears about all these God-things!

  They were nearly back to shore now, and as the catamaran gracefully whisked its way into Lahaina Harbor, Christy delighted in the sight of the old whaling ship anchored there, ablaze with tiny white lights up one side, all the way up its mast and down the other side. The old Pioneer Inn, standing firmly before them, belched loud music and raucous laughter from its open barroom doors.

  Once again, Christy tried to imagine what Lahaina was like 150 years ago. She could picture the missionary ladies sitting on their front lanai at the Baldwin house only a block away, fanning away the mosquitoes in the warm summer-night air and praying for the sailors who had come into port that day.

  That night Christy prayed for Paula. She prayed that night and every night until Paula left to go back to Wisconsin.

  Things were different with Paula. Christy couldn’t exactly say in what way, but ever since the trip to Hana, Paula had changed too. She hadn’t become a Christian or even given any indication that she was interested. Still, she had mellowed in some way.

  When Paula, Christy, and her dad arrived at the airport the morning of Paula’s flight back to Wisconsin, they found out the flight had been delayed nearly an hour. To Christy’s amazement, Paula handled the news calmly.

  This is the first time I’ve been in an airport with Paula when she hasn’t drawn attention to us!

  Paula’s outfit may have drawn a bit of attention, though. She had on her Hana Road T-shirt, the shell bracelet Marti had bought her, some d
angling green gecko earrings, and a small backpack she had bought for herself that said Maui No Ka Oi. Todd had explained that it meant “Maui is the best.”

  With an hour to wait, the two girls automatically drifted over to the huge windows and watched the planes taxi down the runway.

  “It’s been a full two weeks,” Christy began.

  “It sure has! I can’t wait to get home and see if Alex wrote me yet. None of my friends are going to believe I met a guy from Denmark! I feel like I have something none of them do.”

  Christy felt like being snippy and saying, “Yeah, you still have your virginity, which is something none of them can ever get back.” Instead she said, “You have a lot that none of them have, Paula. And I don’t just mean a boyfriend from Denmark.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend, Christy. He’s an international acquaintance.” She sounded as if she had practiced that a few times in front of the mirror while trying to come up with the perfect title for Alex. “He is cute though, isn’t he? He’s so different from any of the guys at school—his accent and everything—and he was so nice to me. I still can’t believe he called me the morning we left Maui.”

  “Guys should be nice to you, Paula. You’re worthy of having the best guy in the whole world.”

  “You already have him,” Paula said with a sincere but mischievous tone. “And you don’t even appreciate him.”

  “Yes, I do!”

  “No, you don’t. He’s the only boyfriend you’ve ever had, so you don’t know how many creeps are out there. And he’s so loyal to you, Christy! When I went surfing with him and when we went for pizza that one time, well, I don’t think I should tell you this …”

  “You’d better tell me!”

  Paula adjusted her position and took off her sunglasses. “You’re going to hate me, but I think you should hear this. When we went for pizza, I tried to, you know, come on to Todd and stuff. That day we went surfing, he didn’t act interested in me, but I figured it was because David was there.”

  Christy felt anger rising within her. With tremendous effort, she pushed it down.

  “So when we walked to the pizza place, I flirted a bit with him. But he still didn’t respond or anything. Instead he gave me this really sweet big-brother talk about how girls shouldn’t tease guys by coming on to them and by wearing, you know, skimpy clothes. And how a girl shouldn’t let a guy tease her by touching her too much or saying a bunch of flattering things.”

  Paula kept looking down. “He told me I should hold out for a hero. He made me feel that I really deserved a prince and not just the first frog that came along. I want to find a guy who likes me for who I am and what I’m like on the inside, and not just for what he can get from me. I want to find a guy like Todd.”

  She looked up. “But don’t worry! I’m not trying to take him away from you anymore. He’s totally in love with you, Christy. When you’re around, no other girl exists. Believe me. I tried!”

  Christy didn’t know if she should be thrilled or furious.

  “I wanted to tell you before I left,” Paula said. “I guess it’s a good thing the plane was late so I had a chance to.”

  “Yeah, a good thing,” Christy said softly.

  A smile crept back into Paula’s expression. “I know, I know. Katie would tell me it’s not a ‘good thing’ the plane is late—it’s a ‘God-thing.’ ”

  “Does that mean you’re beginning to agree with Katie about God-things?”

  “I have to admit, Katie did make sense the other night at our slumber party when she said it was a God-thing that Todd got stung and couldn’t drive,” Paula said.

  “I don’t know. That whole ordeal was pretty scary.”

  “Right, but like Katie said, look what happened. You had to drive the Hana Road, and as a result, when you took your driving test, you passed with flying colors! That never would have happened if Todd hadn’t gotten stung.”

  “I don’t know. I might still have passed my driving test, even if I hadn’t driven in Maui.”

  “No, you wouldn’t have. You would’ve been too scared. And you know what else? If I hadn’t spent that time with Todd and if I hadn’t seen the way he treats you and other girls, I wouldn’t have gone back to setting high standards for myself. A lot of good things—oh, excuse me, a lot of God-things—happened on our trip, just as Katie said they would.”

  “Well, I’m still not positive I know exactly what a God-thing is, but I agree with you that our trip was good for both of us.”

  Christy smiled, but inside she felt completely serious. “Paula, there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about. I know we had some rough times during our trip, and I know I really came down hard on you. But I was trying to get you to become a Christian.”

  Paula squirmed a little bit, so Christy got right to the point. “I still want that for you really badly, but what I know now is that it has to be your decision. It’s your bridge, like when Todd jumped from it and when I drove across it in the Jeep. It has to be something you decide and commit to yourself, not something you get persuaded into. So I promise to let up on all the stuff I’ve been writing to you about and trying to push on you. I’m still going to be praying for you though.”

  “You can keep writing whatever you want. I don’t mind. I like your letters. They’re always really interesting. It’s like I told you in Maui, you’re probably right about God and everything. It’s just that I’m the kind of person who has to figure things out for myself.”

  The two friends smiled their agreement, and then Christy started to cry tiny, salty tears. “I wish we could start this visit all over again and be as close at the beginning as we are to each other right now.”

  Paula also let a tear or two drip. “But then we wouldn’t have learned all the stuff we did.”

  Christy nodded and brushed her tears off her cheeks. “I’m glad we keep trying, even though over the years our friendship kind of goes up and down.”

  “I’m glad we keep trying to rebuild it every time too,” Paula agreed.

  Christy pictured the church the missionaries had built in Lahaina. Todd said the church was destroyed more than once. Then the last time they rebuilt it, they learned from the past and faced the two doors so they could both open toward each other. That way, when the wild Kona winds came, they blew through the church rather than against it.

  “I’m going to miss you, Paula,” Christy said, picturing herself as one open door facing another open door. She knew the strong winds of heaven now had the freedom to blow through, rather than against, their friendship.

  “I’m going to miss you too. I’ll try to write more, I promise,” Paula said. “And maybe I can come back out at Christmas or Easter, because the way I see it, you still owe me a trip to Disneyland.”

  They both laughed. A few minutes later, when the plane boarded, the two friends said good-bye with laughter, hugs, and tears.

  It was a painful farewell for Christy, and she felt a sweet sadness all the way back to Bob and Marti’s house.

  Bob had returned from Maui, and he and Christy’s dad had made plans to go car shopping after they took Paula to the airport. Marti met them at the door with a look that Christy had come to recognize. It said I know something you don’t know.

  “Christy dear,” she said almost immediately, drawing her into the entryway. “You did bring a bathing suit with you, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Splendid!” Marti clapped her hands together. “Then you don’t need to go car shopping with the men. You can go lie out on the beach.”

  Christy knew something was up. She raced to the conclusion that Todd must have come back with Bob. He was probably out on the beach right now, where she had first met him last summer. Marti was trying to set it up so that Christy would be surprised when she went out on the beach and just “happened” to stumble into him.

  Christy obediently scurried upstairs and slipped into her bathing suit. She pulled back the white eyelet curtains and checked
out the beach to see if she could spot Todd’s orange surfboard.

  Nope. No sign of Todd or his board. She would play along with Marti’s surprise and go down to the beach.

  The beach was crowded, as Christy would have expected for a Saturday afternoon in August. She wove her way around several different clumps of people, not sure who she should be looking for. Then someone called her name.

  It was a girl’s voice. She looked all around and didn’t see anyone she recognized.

  “Christy!” It came from a girl sitting all by herself on a beach towel near the water. Christy moved toward her, certain she had never seen the girl before.

  She had blond hair pulled back in a ponytail and wore a bikini that looked too tight for her pudgy stomach and thighs. The girl sat up straight and waved excitedly as Christy approached.

  Who is she? How does she know me? I don’t remember meeting anyone last summer who looks like her.

  “Hello! You found me! Did your aunt keep it a surprise?”

  As soon as she spoke, Christy recognized the unique accent. “Alissa?”

  “Yes, hello! Did I surprise you?”

  The girl-turned-young-woman, now stretched out on the beach towel, looked nothing like the tall, slim, blond-haired model who had slinked her way across the sand last summer.

  Christy tossed down her towel and sat next to her friend. “I can’t believe it! How are you? What are you doing here? Where’s your …” She was about to say baby but felt she was getting too personal. “I mean, where are you staying?”

  “So much has happened. I’m not surprised that you didn’t recognize me. No one ever told me how much having a baby changes you both on the outside and the inside.” Alissa looked a bit shy, an expression Christy had never seen on her before.

  “My mom is doing so much better dealing with her alcoholism that we decided to come back and finish the vacation we never had last summer. We got here yesterday. We’re staying for three weeks. I couldn’t wait to see you and tell.” Alissa hesitated.

  Christy was anxious to hear more, but she sat quietly, using only her eyes to say, “Go on.”