Paige Torn

by Erynn Mangum

  Eighty seems to be the magic number, though. Every time it reaches almost a hundred bulletins, the machine fritzes out and causes a paper jam.

  So I sit there, frantically counting the folded bulletins as they spit out at me, and every time I reach seventy-nine, I quickly stop the machine, turn it off, let it cool down for a few minutes, and then start it up again.

  This thing has more personality than Peter and his parents combined.

  I really need to stop giving him a hard time. Even if it is only in my head.

  “Hi, Paige,” someone says behind me and scares the daylights out of me. I jump at least six feet off the chair and turn to see Pastor Louis, our senior pastor, walking past the desk.

  “Didn’t mean to scare you,” he says, smiling.

  Pastor Louis looks like a pastor. I sometimes wonder if when he was born, his mother named him “Pastor Louis” because he just is a pastor in every sense of the word. He’s a great teacher, a great listener, and one of those guys who goes and visits every person from his church who is in the hospital.

  “No, no. It’s fine. I just didn’t hear you come in.” My heart is beating so hard I think I might break my bra strap.

  “Pulled out the old folding machine, huh?” Pastor Louis watches the machine spit out bulletins.

  “Yes, sir.” And I’ve lost my count. I have to turn it off early just to be sure it doesn’t jam up again. “Did Geraldine tell you what happened?”

  He nods. “I actually was at the hospital visiting Mrs. McCreary when she called to tell me, so I just stopped by the waiting room there. Her shoulder doesn’t look so good.” He smiles pastorally at me. “Thanks for helping her out like this, Paige.”

  “Sure.” I stop the folding machine, turn it off, and set the timer on my phone for three minutes.

  “Learning the tricks?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’ll have to teach Geraldine. I’ve told her for years that she’s going to end up with arthritis in both arms because of folding all those bulletins every week. Well, I’m going to go study up for tomorrow. Have a nice day, Paige. Thanks again.” He waves and disappears down the hall to his office.

  I end up leaving at four o’clock. I will have to rush to get the anniversary party arrangement done for Layla. And I still haven’t eaten lunch.

  I stop by a floral shop and pick up a dozen yellow roses, some baby’s breath, and some filler greenery. Then I go by a local craft store and buy a vase, floral tape, and some white twinkle lights. I save the receipts. Layla is going to pay me back.

  I get home, eat a small can of Mandarin oranges, and put the wreath back in the closet. The way things are going, I’ll have to use it for next winter’s wreath.

  Layla printed out a picture of the way she wants the flower arrangement to look. I turn on the TV to HGTV and start cutting the flowers.

  Two cousins are just about done demolishing a kitchen when I finish with the arrangement. It looks almost exactly like the picture, at least in my opinion. I text Layla.

  IT’S DONE WHENEVER YOU WANT TO COME SEE IT.

  She writes me back not even thirty seconds later. ON MY WAY. STOPPING BY PANDA EXPRESS. MANDARIN CHICKEN AND CHOW MEIN?

  YES PLEASE. AND THANK YOU. Apparently my Mandarin oranges have been a good appetizer for tonight’s dinner. I unlock the door for her and sit back down to put a few finishing touches on the arrangement.

  Layla gets to my apartment around six. “That weird guy was there again.” She comes in with the bag of aromatic Chinese goodness.

  “Weird guy?” I look up from my table with a frown. “Did you lock the door behind you?”

  She sets the bag on the kitchen counter and goes back to lock the door. “The guy who always asks me what kind of dipping sauce I want.” She nods to the TV where the cousins are chatting up the camera about some rare form of mold they’ve found in the walls. “Great show, by the way. Makes me wish Peter was the carpenter type.”

  “You mean one of the cooks?”

  “Yeah.” She fakes a shudder. “He’s weird.”

  “It’s his job to ask you that, isn’t it?”

  “Well, he doesn’t have to do it all scarylike.”

  This coming from the woman who has to walk through Murder Alley to get to her front door.

  “What kind of sauce did you get?” I ask.

  “Mandarin and sweet and sour.”

  My stomach starts growling.

  She looks over at the table and gasps. “Paige!” she squeals and then jumps up and down. “Oh my gosh! That’s incredible! It’s beautiful! It’s more than I could ever have imagined!”

  I grin. “It’s just flowers, Layla.” If she gets this excited about an individual centerpiece, I don’t want to be around when she starts picking things out for her wedding.

  Layla is very exuberant.

  She goes on and on about the centerpiece until the cousins finish the kitchen and Layla’s orange chicken is completely cold. I’ve already interrupted her long enough to pray and start eating mine before my stomach decides to just bust out of my skin and grab the Styrofoam to-go box itself.

  Which would have been just a little disgusting.

  “Seriously, Paige. It’s amazing. You’re like a crafting genius or something.” She finally picks up her fork and stabs a piece of orange chicken.

  “Thank you,” I say for the sixty-eighth time.

  “You know what else is amazing?” she says after she swallows.

  “What?”

  “Orange chicken. I mean, really. How do they get the exact mix of sweetness, spiciness, and orangeyness all in one bite?” She stabs another one and holds it up to her eye level. “Maybe they feed the chickens orange peels.”

  “I’m pretty sure chickens only eat like bird-seed stuff.”

  Any knowledge I have of chickens comes purely from Disney movies, and considering the thirty seconds of screen time they get in Cinderella, I’m not really a chicken expert.

  But I swear Cinderella fed them bird seed.

  Layla shakes her head, waves her fork, and swallows. “Not true. My cousin’s best friend’s mom raises chickens, and she said one time she was eating lunch out in the backyard and had this jar of that premade queso out there and the phone rang inside. When she got back outside to finish her lunch, the chickens had eaten all the queso.” Layla sighs. “Apparently, she found three of her chickens dead the next day. Which is a great reason not to eat premade queso, in my opinion. Apparently there is something toxic to life forms in it.”

  “Why was she eating lunch with her chickens in the first place?” I ask.

  “Maybe they’re like dogs to her.”

  “Dogs that lay eggs?”

  Layla shrugs. “I don’t claim to understand her. Or chickens, for that matter. I mean, if I were the first person to ever own a chicken, I’m pretty sure it would never be known that eggs could be eaten. The thought of picking up something that your animal pooped out, cooking it, and eating it is a little weird, if you ask me.”

  I laugh at Layla. “You’re disgusting.”

  “And I also just went vegan.” She makes a face and pushes her dinner away.

  “What about the steak, chicken, and shrimp gourmet dinner in the Burgundy sauce?” I ask, grinning.

  “No chicken. Maybe steak. At least it’s not called the same thing as the animal it came from.”

  I finish my dinner and close the Styrofoam container. “So, what are you up to tonight?”

  “I don’t know. What are you up to tonight?”

  I shrug. “At some point before February, I’d like to finish my January wreath for the door.”

  She waves her hand. “Eh. You live in an apartment complex. As far as I’m concerned, that’s excuse enough not to put up wreaths, a welcome mat, or Christmas lights.”

  “Scrooge,” I accuse her.

  “Call me all the bad names you want.” She falls onto the couch. A show about backyards is starting. “I’m an apartment dweller and p
roud of it. Hey, do you have any peanut butter?”

  I find some in my pantry. “Why?”

  “I saw a recipe for this amazing peanut butter and pretzel and chocolate dessert thing online.”

  “I don’t have pretzels,” I say.

  “Oh, well. Want to watch a movie?”

  “Only if I can work on my wreath while we’re watching it.”

  She shrugs. “Fine by me. What sounds good for a movie?” She gets up and digs through my DVDs. “Oh! How about Clueless?”

  I nod. I’ve seen it a million times, so it is a good movie to watch while I am going to be distracted. But I am going to finish that wreath before February. Even if I don’t sleep from now until then to make it happen.

  My phone rings right as the glue gun gets hot enough to actually melt the glue and right as we’re introduced to Cher’s amazing life. I take a deep, calming breath. It’s like my phone has it in for this wreath.

  “Want me to pause it?” Layla calls from the couch.

  “No, I’ll be back in a second.” I go into my bedroom so the background volume isn’t so loud. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Paige. Hi, it’s Tyler.”

  “Tyler.”

  “From church? Rick gave me your number.”

  Of course he did.

  “Hi.” Tyler seems like a great guy. A really great guy, actually. But I just don’t have the time for anything right now.

  Not if it has taken me three weeks to glue twelve flowers onto a wreath. Even if a relationship is something I want, it just isn’t fair to the guy to be so preoccupied with everything else going on.

  “Hey. Listen, since Rick and Natalie are a little preoccupied with their new baby right now, Rick asked me to take the new lesson plans for the youth group to everyone.”

  “Okay. I’ll be at church tomorrow. I can pick it up from you then.”

  “Right. He wanted us to get a chance to look over them before the leaders’ meeting.”

  “What leaders’ meeting?”

  “The one after second service tomorrow?” Tyler says, sounding apologetic.

  Rick never tells me anything.

  “I didn’t know there was one,” I say.

  “Yeah, I kind of got that. Sorry. I hope that works. I know you’re pretty busy.”

  I hold in a sigh. “No, yeah, it’s fine,” I lie. “I don’t have any plans tomorrow.” Which was the blessed truth five minutes ago. Now I do.

  My apartment hasn’t even been vacuumed in like two months. Which I guess isn’t a big deal since I am usually only here to sleep.

  “So, anyway, do you mind if I drop this off?”

  “Right now?” I ask.

  “In like fifteen minutes, if that’s okay.”

  I shut my eyes, trying to remember what my living room looks like. “Uh, sure.” I tell him my address.

  “Thanks. See you in a bit, Paige.”

  I hang up and walk back out to the living room. Layla is helping herself to an unopened bag of gummy bears that has been in my pantry since last Valentine’s Day. “Good luck with those.”

  “Why? Are they mean bears? They look so tame.” She grins at me.

  “They’re probably hard as rocks.”

  She bites into one and shakes her head. “Tastes fine to me. Thank God for preservatives. Everything okay?”

  “Tyler’s going to come by and drop something off for youth group in a few minutes.”

  “Who’s Tyler?” Layla asks, now rooting around in my fridge. “Goodness. Being a vegan is not fun. I’m starving all the time.”

  “You’ve only been a vegan for about an hour, Layla.”

  “I’m still starving.” She pulls out a container of strawberry yogurt. “Is yogurt vegan?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m saying that it is. Can I have this?”

  I look at her and laugh. “Sure. Take whatever you want.”

  “In that case, I might have a few of those corn chips you’ve got in the pantry too.”

  “Also probably stale.”

  “You need to go grocery shopping.”

  More than that, I need to clean out my pantry, but that will have to wait for another night.

  I straighten up a few things around the living room while Layla sits back down on the couch. “So you didn’t answer my question.” She crosses her legs underneath her.

  “What question?” I toss the throw pillows back on the chair, picking them up from where I had tossed them on the floor.

  “Who’s Tyler?”

  “Oh. You haven’t met him?”

  “No. Is he cute?”

  I think about it. This is Layla asking. She isn’t going to be happy with anything except the truth. And seeing how she is about to meet him, I can’t lie. “In a flannel-shirt kind of way, sure.”

  “Like those logger guys on TV?” Layla pops a gummy bear into her mouth. “Because those guys are not very cute at all. No offense to the loggers.”

  “No.” I rub my head. “I don’t know. He’ll be here in a few minutes. You decide if he’s cute or not.”

  “I will.”

  “Good.”

  “But may I remind you that I’m engaged, and since I’m engaged, I’m automatically obligated to set you up with any cute, single Christian guy we meet so you can also share in my Forever Happiness,” she says, watching the movie during her entire speech.

  I sigh. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “So if he’s cute, I’m getting his number.”

  “You don’t think Peter will have a problem with that?”

  She shakes her head. “Peter is just as concerned with your Forever Happiness as I am.”

  I have my doubts about that one, but I’m not going to argue with her.

  Tyler knocks a few minutes later. I open the door. “Hi, Tyler. Come on in.”

  “Hey, Paige.” He comes in, looking … well, flannel-y. He has on faded jeans that are shredded at the hem, work boots, a blue-plaid flannel shirt, and a red puffy vest. He has a Bass Pro Shop hat smashed down over his wavy hair.

  Layla waves from the couch. “I’m Layla. Nice to meet you, Tyler.”

  He smiles at her. “Nice to meet you, too.” He looks at me apologetically and hands me a stack of twenty or so papers stapled together. “Didn’t mean to interrupt girls’ night. Sorry.”

  “Well, we — ” I start.

  “We’re just hanging out,” Layla interrupts. “Not an official girls’ night by any means because, you’ll notice, I’m eating gummy bears and not Oreos.” She points to the bowl. “Actually, are Oreos even vegan?”

  “Layla’s a recent convert,” I tell Tyler. “Going on an hour and a half.”

  “Change has to start sometime, somewhere,” Layla says seriously.

  “Nice campaign speech,” I say.

  “Vote for vegetables! Just say no to lamb chops!”

  Tyler laughs. “Are you sure those are just gummy bears?”

  “Oh yes. That’s just Layla.”

  She grins at him. “Come in. Take off your shoes and sit down for a bit. Ever seen Clueless?”

  “No, but I’ve seen Clue.” Tyler sits in the chair.

  “The game?” Layla asks.

  “The movie.”

  “Ack,” she groans.

  “Ugh, really?” I protest, sitting down next to Layla.

  “What? I thought it was kind of funny.”

  “I hate to inform you of this, Tyler, but it is not a funny movie,” Layla says.

  “At all,” I add.

  He holds his hands up, surrender-style. “My apologies. I didn’t realize I was with the movie police.”

  I swipe one of Layla’s gummy bears, and she shoots me a dirty look. “Excuse me, do you mind? Famished vegan over here.”

  I point. “My sofa, my gummy bears.”

  “Fine.” She sighs, closing her eyes. “You may have three.”

  Tyler grins at us.

  Layla finishes chewing a gummy bear, studying him. “So, Tyler. Wha
t is your last name?”

  “Jennings.”

  “What does your mother call you?”

  “Um. Tyler.”

  “What is a childhood secret that you’ve never told anyone before?”

  I elbow Layla.

  “Ow!” she yells.

  “Leave him alone. He barely walked in the door,” I say.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay. I’ll answer the question. When I was in the third grade, I found what I thought was a dinosaur bone in the sandbox at school. But this kid, Arnold, came and stole it and told everyone it was his.” Tyler’s face gets very sad. “He even took it to Show and Tell.”

  “So you were a suffering silent one,” Layla says.

  “Well, I beat him up on the playground after Show and Tell.”

  “So you were the vengeful, angry one.” Layla nods. “I see.”

  “All before my conversion,” Tyler says.

  “You don’t eat meat either?”

  “Are you kidding? That’s all I eat. No, I meant before I became a Christian.”

  Layla sighs sadly. “We can’t all be helping protect Bambi. I guess some of you have to be out there shooting his mother. There are no heroes without villains.”

  I laugh.

  “For such a recent vegan, you sure have a lot of passion for it,” Tyler tells her.

  “Tyler, meet Layla,” I say.

  He grins. “So. When did you guys become friends?”

  I look at Layla. “Fourth grade?”

  “Fifth. Remember? You got assigned to the desk next to mine.”

  “Oh. That’s right. Mr. Hillerman.”

  She nods solemnly. “Yeah.”

  Tyler looks at us. “What was wrong with Mr. Hillerman?”

  “Nothing. Except he almost destroyed this.” Layla waves her finger back and forth between me and her.

  “He made us switch to desks on opposite sides of the room the second week in the school year,” I tell Tyler. “Layla was making me laugh too much in class.”

  “She still can’t laugh silently,” Layla says.

  “I can too!”

  “No, sweetie. You can’t.” She pats my knee. “But don’t worry. It’s a learned skill. Mr. Hillerman just didn’t give you enough practice time. Just think, if it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t have had that whole Spelling Bee Horrificalness.”