I took a moment to check out my cuticles.
Her eyes widened. “Vaughn.”
“I made a suggestion. Flippantly. And, possibly, handed over a skeleton key.” Sometimes it’s nice not to be the one everyone pays attention to.
She punched my arm. “Did you do that for me?”
I rubbed my bicep. “It wasn’t entirely coincidental.”
Her mouth dropped open, and her expression told me she was trying to figure out if she should yell at me or thank me. “I don’t need to be front and center. I know I’m loved, and that I shouldn’t seek out approval. But secretly?” She sighed and lowered her voice. “I suspect I tell myself that so I’m not sad when I don’t get noticed.”
“Do you want to be noticed or not? Because it sounds like you’re talking out of both sides of your mouth.” I dared to nudge her shoulder. “I’m not criticizing.”
Gracie didn’t move away. “When you’re a pastor’s daughter, guys tend to put you in the ‘untouchable’ category and never look at you again. I just like to feel special every now and then. You know?”
“Anytime you need to feel special, you come find me.” The words were out before I could stop them—a cartoon bubble over my head that wouldn’t burst.
Her brows pulled together in a frown. “Are you flirting with me?”
“I’m sorry.” I felt my face getting red. My face never got red. “Did I take it too far?”
“No. You took it exactly far enough.” The frown slipped into a grin. “I’m just trying to figure out the most effective way to flirt with you.”
A rush of adrenaline shot through my body. I didn’t know how to volley back, so I changed the subject. Because I was a chicken. “Speaking of flirting, where’s your husband?”
She blinked.
“Your fictional husband. Your real-life boyfriend.”
“My … you mean Shelby?” Gracie groaned. She slid her hands into her hair, clutching her head like it ached. “He is not my boyfriend.”
“Oh, really?” I crossed my arms and sat back to listen to this one.
“Have you ever seen us holding hands? On a date? A real, official date that wasn’t church-sanctioned or a school event? No, you haven’t. Because we’ve never been on one.”
“Then what’s the deal?”
“I’m a cover for Shelby’s real girlfriend.”
I almost fell out of my seat. “His real girlfriend?”
“She’s a very nice, liberal, feminist Christian named Ellie from New Jersey. They met at Bible camp two summers ago.”
“Do they make liberal feminist Christians?”
Gracie rolled her eyes. “They make all kinds.”
I understood why Shelby would need to use Gracie as an alibi. The father of a good old Southern boy would lose his mind if his son dated someone from New Jersey, let alone a liberal feminist from New Jersey.
“If you’re just a cover, why is he so protective? Protective to the point of being an ass”—I quickly corrected myself—“mean to anyone who looks at you?”
“He feels brotherly toward me, and my dad takes advantage.” She paused, watching a volunteer bedazzle the gift box that held the myrrh for baby Jesus. “What’s Shelby ever done to you, anyway? I know he’s a football player, but he’s not a stereotype. He’s not cornering you in the bathroom and giving you wedgies, is he?”
I shook my head.
“Does he stuff you in lockers? Duct tape you to flagpoles? Put Bengay in your jock … er … yeah. That kind of thing?”
I grinned. “You’re cute when you blush.”
“Don’t change the subject.” She was forcing herself to keep her eyes on mine. “Why don’t you like Shelby?”
The conversation had come this far, might as well see it through to the end. “The fact that he had you seemed like reason enough.”
“Oh.”
I stared at her foam belly. Unbelievably, it was the least embarrassing thing in the room. “I’m guessing if I asked you out, your father wouldn’t exactly be okay with that. I’m not a liberal feminist from New Jersey, but I can’t rate much higher.”
“Have you forgotten that Dad went to court for you?”
Look at the womb. Concentrate on the womb. “I haven’t forgotten. But there’s a big difference between bailing someone out of trouble and then letting your daughter date the troublemaker.”
“Give him some credit. He’s not like Shelby’s dad. I mean, I’m sure Dad and I would have a serious talk beforehand, but I’m smart enough to know right from wrong. Dad knows that, and he trusts me. As far as you go, he believes in what he does, and in second chances. He loves people. I’d go so far as to say he loves you.”
Loved me? “Why? I don’t follow the rules. Aren’t religious people into rules?”
“Rules make people feel safe. But they can turn into judgments. Condemnation is easy, Vaughn. The harder choice is love, and it’s one my dad makes every day.”
“He still wouldn’t let you spend time with someone like me,” I argued, mostly because I wanted her to convince me.
“You act like what I want doesn’t matter.” She didn’t sound pouty, she sounded strong. Certain.
My adrenaline was pulsing now. “Would you?” I stopped. Considered. Continued. “Ever want someone like me?”
Gracie leaned in. She smelled like … wood smoke. And fabric softener. “If you pulled fewer pranks and paid more attention, you’d know the answer to that.”
If she meant what I hoped she did, I’d never pull a prank again.
Probably.
The backstage door opened and closed with a bang. A cold wind rushed through the curtains, catching the pages of the director’s playbook. It held the prompts for every scene, the diagrams for all the stage markings, and possibly the location of the Holy Grail. We sprang to our feet to chase them down.
Gracie shivered, pulling the bathrobe tighter as she caught another flying page. “We’ll never find them all.”
“Sure we will. Then it’ll be as easy as putting them back in order.”
“I don’t think so.” She showed me the papers she’d grabbed. “No numbers. Mrs. Armstrong is going to freak out when she has to reorder them. It’ll disrupt her precious schedule.”
Mrs. Armstrong was proud of her director gig, and she made that clear with the laminated ID badge she wore around her neck. “Why wouldn’t she number her playbook?”
Gracie laughed. “Job security. If no one else knows exactly how the scenes are supposed to go, or where everyone is supposed to stand, or where the tape is placed on the stage, she’s necessary.”
I was on my knees, checking under the table of fabric. “Why would you need job security for a volunteer position?”
“To place yourself on the highest possible rung of the social ladder.”
“Church people are weird.” The moment I said it, I felt like a jerk. “Sorry. I have this blurt circuit that can’t be tamed. You might have noticed. Can we go back to when I wasn’t insulting?”
“That far?” she asked.
“How far?” I stood.
“Third grade.”
“What happened in third grade?” I pushed a box of halos aside to retrieve another wayward page.
“You broke all the pencils in your pencil box, and then told the teacher I did it. I had to write ‘Abraham Lincoln is on the penny’ five hundred times.”
I laughed. “I’m sorry.”
Gracie’s eyes sparkled. “So was I.”
The door opened again, and playbook sheets flew back into the air. Gracie ran to the right, lurching between the Dixie flag and a pile of scrolls. I ran to the left, onto the stage, dodging between hoop skirts and the trough that served as the manger. A horse—Confederate cap nestled between his ears—stood in the middle of the arena. He was flanked by General Robert E. Lee, who was in full Confederate regalia, down to his Smith & Wesson. There were five soldiers behind him, and they were in deep conversation with General Grant.
&nbs
p; Pastor Robinson joined them with a smile. It melted like Frosty in the hothouse.
“Uh-oh,” I said.
“Uh-oh, what?” Gracie peeked around me, putting her hand on the small of my back. I focused on standing up straight and wondered where putting my arm around her would fall on the awkward scale.
“Why are they here?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” I leaned forward, trying to catch the tone of their conversation.
After a brief and heated discussion—during which Gracie’s delicate hand never left my back—her father climbed the stage steps. He was smiling, but it wasn’t a real smile. I sensed panic.
“The Rebel Yell has a show tonight,” he said.
Gracie handed me her pages and stepped into his line of vision. “We have a show tonight,” she disagreed.
“Mr. Baron never removed tonight’s Rebel Yell performance from the website, so people were still buying tickets online.” Pastor Robinson gestured for us to follow him, and we made a beeline for the box office. After a brief discussion with the attendant, he turned around. “Not only are we double booked, but the Rebel Yell is sold out. And every single ticket for the nativity was distributed last Sunday. I … I don’t know what to do. The show is supposed to start in two hours. What a catastrophe.” Pastor Robinson ran his hand over his face. He looked so defeated and only twenty minutes ago, he’d been laughing.
Guilt swallowed me whole. But it was followed by a chaser of hope.
“Sir?” I stepped closer to him, clutching the playbook in both hands. My voice was the pitch of a tiny, wide-eyed Disney mammal. “I think I can help.”
“Really?” he asked. “How?”
“Catastrophes are my specialty.”
* * *
“I can’t believe you did that.” Gracie’s awe could have powered me through a triathlon. “What now? You’re just gonna throw stuff out there and hope something takes?”
“Pretty much. It’s like that spaghetti thing—throwing it at the wall to see if it sticks.”
“I wonder if that’s real,” she mused, tapping her finger against her chin. “Like, do you think the Olive Garden has a spaghetti wall? Do you think the wait staff has to draw straws to see who has to peel it off at the end of the night?”
I grinned. “Get to work.”
Gracie made a list of the traditional media outlets, and I drafted an announcement for the social ones. “I’ll call the radio stations first,” she said. “HOTT FM is playing Christmas carols, so I’ll start with them.” She winked at me before she turned away.
They’d played nothing but Christmas carols since the day after Halloween, and I predicted most of the population had retreated to gangster rap to escape the merriment. But I didn’t contradict her. She looked so hopeful.
A voice interrupted my thoughts. “We can manage the crowd, but the parking is another story.”
Pastor Robinson was beside me, and I hadn’t even noticed. I was thankful Gracie was still wearing the purple bathrobe, or he’d have caught me checking out her departure.
“We’ll have to round up someone to direct traffic,” he said. “Maybe there are some orange cones … we could make signs for entrance and exits…” He trailed off as his eyes scoured the junk backstage, seeking solutions.
“You work all the time, don’t you, Pastor Robinson?” I asked.
“Dan. You can call me Dan,” he said.
No, I couldn’t.
Then he frowned. “I don’t have office hours on Friday or Saturday.”
“I mean … you’re always on. Things don’t filter through your brain by going in one ear and out the other. There’s always something to process.”
I could see him doing some processing right now. After a moment, he nodded thoughtfully. And then he gave me the kind of answer that adults usually avoid. An honest one. “I do quite a bit of reading, studying, counseling. Lots of speaking. I can put those things out of my mind, especially when it comes to Gracie. But you’re right. There are always people who need caring for, and I can never turn that off.”
I wanted to thank him for leaving it on for me, but I didn’t know how. “Gracie said you believe in what you do.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“That’s … cool.” We looked at each other like we didn’t know where to take the conversation next.
I had questions, but I couldn’t drum up the nerve to ask them. Why had he chosen to be so kind to me after I’d screwed up his whole December? What made him arrange my second chance? Why did he have such an amazing daughter?
“Pastor Robinson!” The voice carried over the mayhem of the crowd. Rebel Yell versus Main Street Methodist. What were the odds? A woman holding three sets of angel wings and a fake golden brick waggled her foot in front of him to draw his attention. “We have a situation. It’s bad news/bad news.”
“Can we just pretend I know?” He rubbed his temples and closed his eyes. “Do you have to tell me?”
“Yep. Even though you can’t do anything about it. This one will need to be handled divinely.”
He opened his eyes. “Go ahead.”
“It’s snowing.”
There was a flurry of activity by the stage door, and it opened wide. Our town looked like a snow globe being shaken by a toddler. The flakes whirled in circles and spirals, but they were making solid landings. A layer of sparkling, icy white covered everything, including the road, and it was growing deeper by the second.
Winter had come early this year, and it had been unseasonably cold, but no one in our town had expected snow. The only time anyone worried about that kind of weather was if they were traveling. If this kept up, no one would move for days.
There wasn’t even time to hoard bread and milk. Or toilet paper.
“Hopefully … it will stop … soon,” Pastor Robinson said. He looked like he might face-plant at any moment.
“I don’t think so.” Gracie entered, sans womb, with her bathrobe open over her street clothes. “One hundred percent chance. Some sort of vortex situation. The meteorologists are ecstatic—you know how they love weather drama—and the kids are all mad since they’re already out of school.”
I felt a little giddy myself. As rare as it was, snow definitely created drama.
Kids in our town spent their childhoods perpetually frustrated by the pink radar line on weather forecasts that never dipped far enough south to bring snow, yet always included us in tornado warnings. I wasn’t far enough away from “kid” to subdue all my excitement, but I tried, thanks to the current situation.
“That’s not all.” Gracie approached her father and gently laid a hand on his arm. “The interstate north of us is already locked up, and the camels are stuck.”
“The camels.” His voice was dull, as if he’d just awoken from a nap. “Are stuck?”
“Yes, the camels,” Gracie continued. “And the sheep.”
“The … sheep?”
She broke the rest of the news quickly. “And the donkey and the ox. The traffic isn’t moving and neither are they. PETA will jump our ass—our literal ass—if we push for transport in this kind of weather.”
Everyone in Gracie’s general vicinity dropped chin. I didn’t know the church’s stance on alcohol, but Pastor Robinson looked like he could use a margarita. He took a deep breath, the kind that every teenager recognizes and fears. “Grace Elizabeth Robinson. I know that was a play on words, and your attempt at levity is noted, as is the time and the place you chose to attempt it. Now you owe the swear jar a dollar.”
Before she could reply, his phone rang. He answered, and the crowd around us broke up.
I stared at Gracie. “You just said ass.”
She shrugged. A grin followed. “I can usually get away with that one, since it’s in the Bible.”
“You said ass.”
“I’m aware of this.”
“You guys have a swear jar.”
She slid out her arms from the bathrobe, revealing a blue sweater that fit
so well it deserved a vacation home in the Bahamas. “It’s an old pickle jar we keep on our kitchen counter. My mom made it mandatory for my dad when he was in seminary, and he made it mandatory for me.”
“Your father swears, too?”
“Not anymore. Last year, he emptied it to fund a trip to the Harry Potter theme park in Florida.” Her grin went full blown. I wanted to kiss it right off her face.
“You wicked girl. You’re not at all who I imagined you’d be.”
“Ditto.” She hung her robe on a wall hook. “How many days has it been since you pulled a prank? I had no idea you could behave for such an extended period of time.”
“Maybe I’m trying to change. I’ve managed a streak of good behavoir before.” I glanced at Pastor Robinson, who was pacing while he talked. “Remember the Good Citizenship Award in fourth grade? And how every single kid was supposed to get it?”
She nodded and leaned against the wall.
“I tried so hard. Everyone had been giving me crap, saying I’d never be good long enough to get it, but during the last month of school, I earned it. I proved that I could handle myself. And then Mr. Weekly passed me over at assembly. I know my name was on the list, but he said every name but mine. No one would believe me. That’s when I realized everyone had already made up their minds about me. Why disappoint them?”
“Why not work harder?”
“I was nine,” I said drily. “‘Work harder’ sounds like parental advice, and I didn’t have the kind of guidance that you did.”
“I’m of the opinion,” she said, tucking her arm around mine, “that if you let a single life event define you, then all you need to change things—if you want them to change—is another.”
I stared at her arm on mine. And then, when I looked up, she was staring at me.
A loud commotion erupted around Pastor Robinson.
Gracie turned her attention to him. “What now?”
Mrs. Armstrong had slipped on a set of icy stairs, and she was on her way to the hospital with a broken foot. The pageant had lost its director.
My True Love Gave To Me: Twelve Holiday Stories Page 23