by Reni Huang
“There’s this great dim sum place I love off campus,” Natalie said the next day as she pulled out of the cul-de-sac behind Julia’s dorm building.
Crisscrossing across town, they were soon seated at a table with waitresses pushed their carts full of tiny dumplings, potstickers, and Shaomais around. Natalie ordered from one cart then said, “I heard what happened at retreat. Jane told me.”
Julia looked up, chopsticks frozen over the translucently wrapped dim sum.
“Don’t worry. No one else knows. Jane confided in me because she didn’t think what Alison did was right. And when you stopped showing up for Bible study and large group meetings, I was worried she might have really hurt you.”
Sitting back quietly, Julia mustered the courage to ask, “Who else knows I liked Wynn?”
“Other than Jane, I haven’t heard anything. I promise, Julia, I didn’t even realize you did. If I had, I would’ve told you about Kate Li. They’re both a year older than me, so ever since I’ve known them, they’ve always been together. They’re one of those couples that just makes sense. I guess I just assumed everyone knew Wynn was taken.”
“What’s Kate like?”
“Beautiful, confident, out-going,” she said, making Julia cringe. “They’re both Communication majors, but while Wynn wants to be behind the camera, Kate lives to be in front of it.”
Another cart came by, and Natalie ordered some small tins of Char siu bau and Lotus leaf rice.
Motioning for Julia to help herself, Natalie smiled and said, “Anyways, there’s plenty of other guys at A.A.C.F.”
Julia sighed, “Yeah, but none who are as good as Wynn.”
Natalie laughed and said, “What do you see in him anyways? I mean, sure he’s nice to look at, but so is Geoff, and Rob.”
“I don’t know. I just like how much he loves God. He takes it really seriously and puts the youth group kids’ needs above his own, and he’s thoughtful and funny and a really good leader.”
Natalie stopped chewing mid-bite and gave Julia a strange look.
“What?”
“I’ve just never heard Wynn described that way before.”
“Really? How would you describe him?”
Natalie paused to think then said, “Ambitious, private, and aloof.”
Julia considered that. She could see what Natalie meant. It was that guarded side of him. But what Natalie didn’t see was the other side of him, behind the wall he put up.
“How are things going between you and God?”
Julia smothered a longsuffering sigh.
God.
Why did everyone always have to bring Him up?
Julia forced on a smile, “Fine.”
“You know, sometimes God answers our prayers in ways we don’t expect.”
Julia stared at Natalie.
“I just don’t understand. The only thing I prayed for was to grow in my faith.”
“In both the good and the bad times,” Natalie added softly.
“So God chose to just bombard me with bad times?” Julia mumbled bitterly.
“It’s easy to have faith when things are good.”
“So this is the only way for me to grow in my faith? Maybe it’s better if I don’t ask God for favors if He’s just going to make my life miserable.”
“You know God’s not like that.’
“No, I don’t. Because it sure seems like He’s having a field day tearing my world apart.”
Natalie sat back quietly, and Julia wondered if she was praying.
“Maybe that’s just it,” she said finally. “Maybe it’s your understanding of God’s character that needs to grow, change. Maybe once you understand, experience who God really is, then that deeper faith in Him despite any circumstance will come naturally.”
* * *
Friday night came around and like a coward Julia hid out in the library when Wynn came by to pick up Lexi and Elliott for youth group at Leavesly Church. Julia wondered what the Cherry blossom trees looked like now. Mostly likely still stripped bare then frowned at her thoughts. She didn’t suppose she’d get to see the blossoms in full bloom come this spring. It was unfortunate. She had been looking forward to seeing the grass surrounding the church covered in pink snow.
Fifteen minutes after seven thirty, Julia hurried back to her dorm room to change into a pair of leggings, a loose top, and high heels. Lexi had seen a flyer on the bulletin board promoting this quarter’s dance classes on campus.
“Salsa dancing,” Lexi had cried excitedly. “I want to take Salsa dancing lessons! Ellie, will you take this with me?” Julia had laughed at the horrified expression on his face. But before he could say anything, Lexi moaned and said, “Oh, we can’t. It’s on Friday nights.” Then she looked at Julia and said hesitantly, “But I guess you can take it, Lia.”
She knew how disappointed Lexi was that she was no longer helping out with the youth group, now that their Three Musketeers pact was broken. But she was trying her best to let Julia be and make her own decisions.
At first Julia hadn’t given the dance lessons a second thought, but Friday nights was depressing without Lexi and Elliott. So she called Suzy and Gracie and asked them if they’d be interested in taking the class with her. Surprisingly, they had both enthusiastically agreed.
An hour later the girls were walking out of their Salsa class, laughing and making plans to grab some Jamba Juice for dinner. When she looked up, Julia spotted Alison with her friends coming down the opposite end of the campus gym corridor.
“Uh, oh,” Suzy said in a low voice, “Here comes Satan.”
Gracie giggled and nudged Suzy. But Julia kept her composure.
“Hi, girls,” Alison sang to them sweetly. They exchanged pleasantries, everyone on their best behavior. “Well, we better get going. We only have the dance studio reserved for two hours. Have a wonderful weekend, girls.”
Walking away, Gracie whispered, “That wasn’t too bad.”
Then Alison called back to them, “Will we be seeing you tomorrow? You know, for Wynn’s birthday dinner?”
Julia didn’t answer. There really was nothing to say when she knew she was being baited.
Alison laughed as if realizing her own mistake and sang out, “Oh, wait, I forgot, it’s kind of an exclusive party, just his closest friends. Well, I’ll see you girls around.”
Turning back around, Gracie murmured, “Spoke too soon.”
* * *
Julia woke up Saturday morning in a nasty mood. She took it out on the alarm clock as she yanked the iPod from its dock and impatiently tossed the music player onto her bed. Then she took it out again on the closet door, yanking it open and closed while getting dressed. Then when she went to the refrigerator and couldn’t find anything to eat for breakfast, she found satisfaction in slamming the heavy door back on the insulated box.
Lexi groaned from under the blankets and grumbled, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Julia snapped. Staring at the window, she saw that it wasn’t raining for once. All this grey mist was starting to make her question what was so great about living by the beach in Southern California. With a huff, she started gathering up her books, throwing them into her knapsack when Lexi leapt out of bed and grabbed her arm.
“Ok, enough is enough,” Lexi demanded.
Stunned, Julia stopped and stared at her.
“We’re going out.”
“But I was going to go study.”
“Nope, change of plans.”
“But it’s early on a Saturday morning. You never wake up this early.”
“I know, but if you don’t snap out of your mood, I am going to hurt you. I’m serious, Julia.”
“Where are we going?” Julia asked in a small voice.
“The lighthouse, I’m calling Ellie. I need reinforcement.”
Soon they were on their way, pedaling their rusty bikes back up the mountain.
“Can you just journal or something?” Lexi yelled at her the se
cond she hopped off her bike. “Do what you have to do to vent through all the stuff going on in your head. You’re driving me crazy!”
“I can’t journal!”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t trust it anymore, it’s not safe.”
“What do you mean?”
“I used to think it was foolproof. That’s why I was able to be completely transparent in them. But I can’t do that anymore. Now I have to watch what I write, to edit my thoughts. And I’m tired enough doing that every time I open my mouth to speak. Journaling is dead to me.”
“Lia, it doesn’t have to be like that.”
“Like what?”
“So, I don’t know, all or nothing, so extreme.”
Julia stared at her best friend. She didn’t get it. After all this time and Lexi still didn’t understand what it felt like for her to be stuck inside her own head. And why should she understand, she who was confident enough to express herself without hesitation, who was so used to opening her mouth and everyone instantly falling at her feet in adoration.
“Maybe if you came to church,” Lexi began, but Julia cut her off.
“Forget it. I’m over that.”
“What do you mean?” Elliott said when Lexi was too baffled to respond. He had been sitting back quietly staying out of it, until now.
“I mean, I’m done with blindly following a religion I don’t even know if I really believe in.”
Once the words came out of her mouth, Julia’s heart froze at the harshness of her words. It was strange, hearing herself say those words out loud. The thought had been rattling around inside her head for some time, but she’d been too afraid to actually face them. But now it was too late.
“You don’t really mean that,” Lexi tried again.
But this time Elliott waved her off.
Instead he said, “Tell me what you mean.”
“I mean this whole ‘child-like faith’ thing. Maybe it worked for me when I was a child, but I’m not one anymore. So I guess I’m saying I’ve outgrown clinging to church like some security blanket.”
Julia couldn’t meet Lexi’ eye, so she stared fixedly at Elliott. Challenging him, to argue with her, to rethink these huge claims she was making about her whole belief system. Maybe she should’ve scrawled out her tangled thoughts, free of consequence and judgment. But she hadn’t wrestled it out on paper, instead she had shouted at her two closest friends, pushing one to the brink of tears. The other hadn’t flinched but was staring steadily back at her.
Slowly and without anger, Elliott said, “Then this is something you need to seriously consider for yourself.” Lexi turned her round eyes on him, but he continued calmly. “There’s no point in pretending everything is fine if it’s not. It’s OK to figure things out for yourself, to figure out what you believe and what you don’t. If He really is a God who deserves your faith, then He’ll prove Himself to you.”
Ok, God.
Prove Yourself to me.
Chapter Twenty
She was being unreasonably irritable, Julia knew. But there were just one too many issues rattling around in her head, demanding to be released and dealt with. But she refused, safer just to keep it pushed down inside.
Lately she’d been resorting to running on the beach. Something about the rhythmic beating of her footsteps against the wet sand and the cold sting of the salty air got circulation pumping and her recently latent creative juices flowing. The harder she pushed, the faster she ran, the better she felt. Even though her fingers itched to pick up a pen and start scrawling out all her jumbled emotions and thoughts, it felt safer just beating it out of her system by pounding harder with each step she took.
As she reached the end of the beach where the sand met the cliff jutting straight from the ground up to the sky, Julia stopped and leaned over, grasping her cold knees and took a couple deep breaths.
It was then that she noticed a dark figure riding in from the crashing waves. There was something familiar about him. A few feet from shore he dived into the water, then stood up tucking his orange, yellow, and blue striped surf board under his arm.
Wynn.
He seemed to notice her at the same time. Julia hesitated, debating whether or not she should just turn around and run away. But she wasn’t a coward. Well, at least, she didn’t want to be one. Squaring her shoulders, she waited.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
They nodded to each other warily.
“Happy birthday. I heard it was yesterday.”
He seemed surprised that she knew. “Thanks,” he said.
There was a pause. “So I take it you’re no longer working with the youth group?”
“Yeah, I can’t, busy schedule. I thought Lexi told you.”
“Yeah. She did.”
There was an awkward pause and they both looked away.
“Well, I better go.”
“Wait.”
Julia turned around and waited.
“What’s going on?”
“What do you mean?”
He let out a frustrated sigh and raked his free hand through his wet hair. “I thought we were good. I thought everything was going good. You know, the youth group, the play, everything. What happened?”
Julia stared at him. Did he really not know? She hesitated. He looked wary but genuinely confused.
“Kate.”
His eyes widened for a brief moment. Then he looked down, eyebrows furrowed. When he looked up again, his expression was tight and unreadable. “Okay,” he says slowly, carefully.
“She’s your girlfriend, right?”
He nodded and she felt her heart crumble once more.
“I guess it was just a surprise. I thought we were friends. It was just weird to find out that all this time you had a girlfriend, and you never mentioned it.”
“She’s studying abroad.”
“But you never brought her up, not once.”
“What did you expect me to say? ‘Hey, I’m Wynn. By the way, I have a girlfriend.’ That’s lame,” he shrugged. “Why does it matter if I have a girlfriend?”
“But you, I mean,” Julia stopped, frustrated with herself, “Never mind.”
“What?”
“Nothing, you’re right. It doesn’t matter.” She took a deep breath and forced her best upbeat, carefree smile. “Well, I guess I’ll see you around then.”
“I hate it when you do that.”
Narrowing her eyes Julia glare at him. “Excuse me?”
“That fake attitude. Like everything is ok when I know it’s not.”
“I’m sorry if you think I’m a fake person…”
“You know that’s not what I mean. I just don’t like it when you’re trying to act like someone you’re not. Like at retreat. Who were you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I mean, don’t get me wrong. I loved that dance you did with your group. Didn’t know you had it in you. But the makeup, and the attitude, it’s like you were a completely different person.”
A thousand thoughts whirled through her head. The most painful one being how unfair it was that he was the one who could see beyond her false bravado. Not even Craig had been able to do that, and they dated for over two years.
“Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Kate.” He paused and continued uncertainly, afraid of sounding conceited. “Is that why you’re no longer coming to church, because I have a girlfriend?”
It sounded so childish when he put it like that.
“No,” Julia lied. “Like I said, I’m just really busy this quarter.”
She turned around and started jogging back towards campus. It was all in your head, the thought pounded again and again. Beside her, the ocean waves crashed relentlessly against the shore. The biting wind blew unyieldingly. But she couldn’t feel the cold too numb to react to the sting of the beating.
Chapter Twenty-One
Suzy was in her Marine Biolog
y class this quarter. Julia enjoyed spending time in the science lab, looking through the microscopes at the tiny creatures and matching what she saw with the illustrations and charts found in the glossy textbook. Everything was so intricate, every creature different, but so creative with their specific organs serving a specific purpose to allow them to thrive in their specific environment.
But as enthralling as she found it to be, it was proving to be hard to concentrate with Suzy constantly finding ways to distract her. She spent most of her time simultaneously checking out the different guys in class and then pestering Julia for more information about Elliott.
“You’re sure there’s nothing going on between Elliott and Lexi?” Suzy asked her for the hundredth time.
“Positive,” Julia murmured squeezing one eye shut to focus harder on the thin glass plate under the microscope.
“Because they seem abnormally close…”
“They are abnormal,” she smiled, “And close. But they’re not dating.”
Suzy laughed at that, as if she cracked an extremely witty joke. Then she leaned in to copy the notes from Julia’s paper.
After class, they were walking out of the chilly basement of the Science Building into the warm afternoon sunlight when they ran into Geoff.
“Hey, Julia,” Geoff greeted her. “I thought you’d completely dropped off from the radar” he joked. “What have you been up to?”
“Nothing much,” Julia said, giving him the usual line whenever she ran into someone from A.A.C.F., “Been really busy with classes and stuff.”
“So I heard from Wynn you’re no longer going to his church,” Geoff said.
“You’re not?” Suzy interjected. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“If you need a ride, I can drive you to AVC on Sundays,” Geoff offered.
“Yeah, you should come. Is Elliott still going to that church too?”
Julia smiled at her blatancy. “He and Lexi are both still serving at Leavesly Church,” she said a bit apologetically. Suzy’s face fell with disappointment.
Try as she might, between Geoff’s charm and Suzy’s insistence, Julia finally succumbed to their asking and agreed to catching a ride to church with Geoff the following Sunday.
* * *
Although technically still winter with it being January, Sunday morning was defiantly warm and sunny. It was a bit unsettling sitting in Aosta Verde’s beautifully bright sanctuary, and Julia couldn’t help feeling like the biggest fraud.