Christy Miller Collection, Volume 1

by Robin Jones Gunn

  “He is?” Christy suppressed a shriek. “Why didn’t you tell me? What am I going to wear?”

  “I must go, dear. You have a good time today, and I’ll see you around two-thirty.” She walked out the door, shaking her head and chuckling to herself.

  Christy called out after her, “Tell him I’ll be right down!” She scrambled to pull on a pair of shorts and a shirt and gave herself a quick glance in the mirror before bounding down the stairs.

  “Hi, Todd! I’m sorry I left you waiting so long. My aunt didn’t tell me you were here. I mean, she told me, but not right away. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have left you here so long by yourself.”

  “It’s all right. Do you want to go to Disneyland?” Todd sure had a way with words.

  “You mean now?” Christy almost squealed.

  “No. Next Friday. For your birthday.”

  “Are you kidding? Yes! How fun! I’d love to go!” Then Christy paused, her enthusiasm visibly diminishing. “Who else is going?”

  “Just you and me,” Todd said. “Unless you want to take somebody else. It’s your birthday.”

  Christy blushed, ashamed for thinking Todd planned to take another Gus the Bus full of people to Disneyland with them. This was special. Her birthday. He must have thought of that.

  “No,” she replied softly, “I don’t want to invite anyone else. Unless you do.”

  “Nope. We can celebrate our birthdays together. You’ll be fifteen, and I’ll be one year old in the Lord.”

  “What?” Christy asked.

  “Remember that night on the beach after Shawn’s party? I told you I became a Christian last summer on July 27th, and that’s when you told me that’s your birthday. So, you’ll be fifteen, and I’ll be one.”

  Todd stuck out his square jaw and casually folded his arms across his chest. Christy thought he looked a little bit like Uncle Bob when he was about to tease her.

  “Are you hungry or anything?” Christy asked. “I haven’t eaten breakfast yet, and I think my uncle is still in the kitchen. Maybe we can get something to eat.”

  They found Bob in his usual chair at the kitchen table, dunking a donut into a cup of fresh coffee. “Morning! You kids want some donuts?”

  “Where did these come from?” Christy asked.

  “When your aunt went out this morning she told me I needed some exercise. So, I briskly walked right down to the donut shop.” He winked at Christy. “I could use some help destroying the evidence, if you know what I mean.”

  Todd and Christy laughed, and both pulled up chairs.

  “What’s the plan for today?” Bob asked.

  “Marti and I are supposed to go to South Coast Plaza around two-thirty. You’re supposed to meet us there for dinner.”

  “Good thing I asked you. My ‘social director’ hadn’t filled me in on the plans for the evening yet. Must have just been one of those things that slipped her mind,” he said good-naturedly.

  “Right,” Christy agreed, remembering the incident in her room that morning. “Her mind has been slipping a bit lately.”

  “You know, it’s only eleven now. If you two want something to do, you could take the tandem out for a spin. We bought that bike last summer thinking we would get some exercise, but we’ve only used it twice.”

  “That would be fun! You want to, Todd?”

  “Sure. Let’s take it over to Balboa Island.”

  Bob helped them pull the bicycle from the garage and gave them a push into the street. Christy waved quickly and put her hand back on the handlebar to help steady the wobbly monster.

  “I’m glad you’re the one in front,” Christy told Todd. “I’m not real coordinated on things like this.”

  Todd steered through the intersection; Christy did her best to keep her balance and not look at the cars roaring past them. They pedaled to the Balboa Island ferry. The ferry took on only a few cars at a time, but since they were the only ones with a bike they got right on. Todd pulled out a handful of change and paid their fare. The ferry lurched forward, chugging loudly on its short trip to the island.

  “Look at all the sailboats!” Christy moved closer to Todd.

  “Now there’s a hot catamaran,” Todd said.

  “Where?”

  “See, over there.” Todd pointed, and Christy moved even closer so that her shoulder briefly pressed against his. She didn’t know what a catamaran was, and she really didn’t want to ask in case she sounded dumb. She just liked having an excuse to be close to Todd.

  If only he would put his arm around me.

  Before Todd could make a move the ferry pulled into its dock, and they hopped on the bike. They rode up the narrow streets lined with little beach houses. Cottages, really. Christy liked all the stained-glass windows and bright flowers in the tiny front yards.

  “Do you want a Balboa Bar?” Todd called over his shoulder.

  “I’ve never had one.”

  They stopped at the ice cream stand, and Todd said, “You can’t go to Balboa and not eat a Balboa Bar. What do you want on yours? Chips? Nuts? Sprinkles?”

  Christy looked at the pictures of the varieties of the ice cream bar to choose from. People were waiting in line behind them, and the girl at the window peered at her impatiently.

  “I don’t know.” She hated it when she lost all her confidence like this. She put the decision back on Todd. “I’ll have whatever you do.”

  Todd ordered two of the chocolate-dipped ice cream bars with nuts. Christy hated nuts, but she didn’t say anything.

  They walked past the specialty boutiques along the main street, enjoying the treat. Christy tried to casually pick off the nuts as she ate her ice cream and barely paid attention to what they saw in the shop windows. Her mind felt bogged down with the frustration she had experienced a few minutes earlier.

  Why do I have such a hard time making simple decisions? Why do I always lose my confidence at key moments and act like a total idiot? Does Todd notice my insecurities? Does he like me? What about Tracy? Why is Tracy so much more self-confident and bubbly? Why can’t I be more like her? Then a strange thought hit her: How can I be true to myself, like Uncle Bob keeps saying, when I really don’t like who I am? Christy realized she kept wanting to be like somebody else. First Alissa, now Tracy. And at home she had always imitated Paula. Paula, she thought. If Paula could see me now! It’s a good thing I didn’t mail her letter yet. I’ve got lots more to tell her!

  “How do you like it?” Todd asked, indicating her ice cream bar.

  “I like it.” Actually, she had eaten almost the whole thing and hadn’t even noticed how it tasted. The sun was melting the chocolate, and she tried to lick the drips off the bar before they landed on her clothes. What a jerk I’ve been. I’ve hardly talked at all. I hope Todd doesn’t think I don’t like him.

  “So,” she began, realizing they had circled back to the bike, “what’s new with you?”

  “Not much,” he said as they straddled the bike and pushed off. “What’s new with you?” Then he smiled, and from the angle of his turned head, Christy thought she could see faint dimples in his bronzed skin. She hadn’t noticed them before.

  “This is fun,” she said. “Thanks for coming.” She leaned close to his broad shoulders so he could hear her.

  “Sure,” he replied, turning his head again. “We’re going to ride the long way back, over the bridge instead of taking the ferry. Is that okay?”

  “Sure.” Christy leaned forward to check for his dimples. She wondered what it would be like to feel his cheek against hers. Her imagination sprinted. What if Todd really starts to like me, and we start going together? Would he treat me the way Erik treated Alissa? What’s going to happen in the weeks before I go home? Will I break my promise to my parents and end up doing something I’ll regret later?

  Todd said something, but all she heard was the name Tracy. She clenched her teeth and said, “What? I didn’t hear what you said.”

  “I wondered if you knew what time it is. I
told Tracy I would give her a ride home from work at two.”

  Tracy! Why did he have to bring her up? Christy felt foolish for thinking about getting closer with Todd when he was far from having intimate thoughts about her. Christy pouted for the rest of the bike ride home. Todd didn’t seem to think anything of her silence.

  When they got to the house he helped her put the bike back in the garage. He smiled as if he were about to say something funny, but all he said was, “Later,” and sprinted to Gus.

  Christy watched Gus the Bus cruise down the street. As its faded tan backside disappeared through the intersection, she muttered, “Later.”

  Going through the back door of the house, Christy called out. Nobody was home. She scanned the refrigerator for something to eat and settled on a piece of barbecued chicken and a glass of milk.

  For a long time she sat with her elbow on the kitchen table, her head resting in her palm. A familiar wave of depression came over her. Up and down. Down and up. Her whole life was a series of waves rushing in and pulling back. She wished she could somehow even out … find something stable to latch on to.

  Having just spent the last two and a half hours with Todd, she should have been happy. Plus, she was going to Disneyland with him next week for her birthday. But she was miserable. All summer she had gotten everything she wanted and more. More clothes than she could wear—and she was going shopping again this afternoon. More opportunities to go places and do things than she had ever had at home. She had been spoiled rotten by her aunt and uncle for weeks, but she just didn’t feel happy, and she couldn’t figure out why.

  She glanced at the clock. A quarter till three, and Aunt Marti still wasn’t home. Typical.

  Christy wandered aimlessly through the house for a while, looking at all the expensive things that adorned it. The buying never ends for my aunt, she thought, and suddenly the words to the Debbie Stevens song “You Can’t Find It at the Mall” popped into her head. Hmmm. Christy was struck by a brief revelation. Maybe Debbie was right. Maybe I do need Jesus in my life. But that wasn’t something she wanted to deal with at the moment. She needed to pull herself out of this emotional slump, and thinking about Jesus Christ dying on the cross and about her being a sinner was certainly not going to cheer her up.

  She meandered up the stairs, trying to decide what to change into when the front door burst open. “Christy dear! Are you ready to go?”

  Christy snapped out of her fog and called down from the top of the stairs, “I’ll be there in a second.” She ran into her room and in record time changed into a denim skirt and one of the shirts she hadn’t worn yet. She didn’t even take time to look in the mirror but galloped down the stairs calling, “I’m ready!”

  Aunt Marti stood by the door with a stack of mail in her hand. She looked up at Christy and then frowned disapprovingly.

  “What in the world is on your face, dear girl?”

  “My face? I don’t know.”

  Christy scurried to the downstairs bathroom with Aunt Marti on her heels. There in the bathroom mirror she saw it. A big glob of chocolate from the Balboa Bar had streaked across her cheek and dried, leaving a skid mark that stretched from her upper lip almost all the way to her ear!

  Christy burst into tears. “No!” she sobbed. “No! No! No! Why am I such a klutz! Todd must have seen me like this; why didn’t he say anything?”

  Aunt Marti, apparently thinking Christy’s outburst was overdone, scolded, “This is no way for a young lady to act. Calm yourself. Here I thought you were all ready to go shopping, but you haven’t even washed your face. Now, go upstairs and do something about your eye makeup too. And that shirt doesn’t really go with that skirt, you know.”

  Christy stomped upstairs to redo herself according to Aunt Marti’s directions, muttering and sniffing all the way.

  Despite all the trauma they actually made it to South Coast Plaza by four o’clock. But Christy had a hard time getting into the mood to shop after all her aunt’s reprimands.

  “Christy, this is a cute skirt, don’t you think?” Her aunt held up a short green one.

  “No. That shade of green isn’t one of my colors, remember?” Christy jabbed. “But I like this.” She held up a pleated plaid skirt. “This is perfect, don’t you think?” It wasn’t even that cute, but it was something Marti would never select.

  After several encounters, Marti lowered herself into a chair and said with resignation, “It’s up to you, Christy. Whatever you want. You know what you like.”

  Christy did something she had never done before. She went through the racks, randomly picking whatever appealed to her and trying it on. If it fit she asked her aunt to buy it. She never looked at a price tag. Maybe the stack of new clothes would add up to more than five hundred dollars. It was stupid, she knew, but it was the only way she could think of to get back at her aunt.

  The total came to more than seven hundred dollars, but Aunt Marti put it all on her credit card without batting an eyelash. Suddenly, Christy felt sick to her stomach. Seven hundred dollars? She couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t do it. Besides, wasn’t it Uncle Bob who really paid the bills?

  “Wait,” Christy said to the salesclerk. “I, um, I think I may have gotten some of the sizes wrong. Could you cancel that? I need to go try some of these on. I’d hate to get home and find out some things didn’t fit.”

  Aunt Marti looked thoroughly annoyed. “Well, hurry along, dear. We’re to meet your uncle in half an hour.”

  Christy slipped into the dressing room, the clerk following her with the stack of clothes. She peeled through the pile behind the closed door and settled on five items. They all sort of matched, and they were the things she liked best. One T-shirt was even on sale.

  “Here.” Christy handed the diminished stack to the clerk. “This is all.”

  “You’re sure?” the clerk questioned.

  “Yes.”

  Marti didn’t say a word. She kept silent until they met Bob at the restaurant.

  “Well, well!” he said, eyeing their bags. “Looks like you’ve met with some success.”

  “Yes,” Marti said coolly. “If only your niece’s taste in clothes were as strong as her impulsiveness, we would be doing quite well!”

  Her comment hit Christy like a gale-force wind. That was it! Something snapped. In Christy’s mind, Marti instantly transformed from a sophisticated, rich aunt to a snooty, self-centered peacock. So what if she had enough money to buy whatever she wanted? She didn’t have much of a heart. Her lack of consideration for other people’s time and feelings had showed itself over and over again.

  Christy wanted to snap back, “I’m tired of you trying to make me into the perfect little daughter you never had. I don’t need your money or your lectures anymore. I don’t want to be the person you want me to be. I just want to be Christina Juliet Miller from Wisconsin. And if that’s not good enough for you, then that’s too bad.” But all she said was, “I’d like to have steak for dinner. Is that okay with you, Uncle Bob?”

  “Sure, honey. Whatever you would like.”

  Aunt Marti gave her a look of disdain and ordered the mini chef’s salad.

  Although Christy wasn’t really hungry, she ate all her dinner, including a baked potato with gobs of butter and sour cream and a butterscotch sundae for dessert—just to prove to Marti that she was her own person. That night when she couldn’t sleep because her stomach hurt, she wasn’t sure exactly what she had proved.

  Over the next few days Christy found more opportunities to silently rebel against her aunt’s manipulations. They were subtle little things that she was sure Marti didn’t even notice at first. But, for her, every act of insolence fanned the inner flame of dislike for her aunt.

  One afternoon when she came in from the beach she answered the phone and took a message for Marti about a special meeting at the community center that evening at seven. Christy purposely left the message hidden under the pad of paper until six-thirty that evening. Then she slyly put
the note on top of the desk and said, “You did get the message by the phone, didn’t you?”

  It wasn’t like her to be vengeful like this, but the more she held her frustrations inside, the more her bitter little darts flew. She had been around Marti enough to know what bothered her, and Christy purposefully did whatever she could to prompt the aggravation, like eating in front of the TV or leaving her sandy beach towel on her bedroom floor. Then there were the two killer pet peeves: slouching and nail biting. Christy did both, whenever possible, just to perturb her aunt.

  Like a wounded animal, Marti backed off. Her aggressive attacks digressed into a timid routine of gentle reminders.

  Coming in from the beach one afternoon, Christy met her aunt in the kitchen.

  “A letter came for you,” Marti said. “It’s on your bed.”

  “Okay.” Christy grabbed a handful of her uncle’s secret recipe chocolate chip cookies and headed for her room.

  “Say, Christy,” her aunt called after her, “why don’t you leave your towel here? I’ll throw it in the wash for you. And perhaps you’d like to take a napkin with you. Just in case,” she weakly added.

  Christy stuffed a cookie into her mouth, ignoring the suggestions and fighting back the guilt she felt over acting like such a brat. She didn’t like being this way, but once she started it was easier to keep up the antics than to stop. She had never been good at apologizing. Especially when the other person deserved what she was getting.

  Her room, bright and refreshing, looked tremendously inviting this afternoon. She found the letter on her bed, as Marti had said. To her surprise she saw it was from Alissa. Christy read it over and over, realizing how good she really had it. Alissa’s life sounded so sad and hopeless.

  Dear Christy,

  I arrived at my grandmother’s with very few problems. I would like to thank you and your uncle for the ride to the airport and for your help in getting me packed.

  My mother is keeping up with her alcohol control program, and the director of the center called yesterday to say that if she keeps improving, she will be released within a few weeks.