by Nancy N. Rue
I had never seen anybody shudder before, but she did it. And then she suddenly seemed so weak and small, I thought maybe the wind might blow her away.
“This isn’t over, Jessie,” she said in a very different voice.
But as she staggered away, fighting the ocean breeze that was almost too big for her, I could tell it was over. I could tell by the now-familiar gathering feeling. The feeling that was Yeshua, driving out the demons.
The Atlanta airport seemed different when we were waiting for our flight to Birmingham. I didn’t get the feeling that I was trapped in a squirrel cage, or that I was about to be picked up by the airport police. I was pretty sure you didn’t get arrested for putting back something that you thought you stole.
“Where are you going to leave it, Jess?” my dad said.
I hugged RL like I’d been doing ever since we left Jacksonville. It was kind of comforting, because even though I knew we were only going back to Mountain Brook so I could tell the judge I wanted to be with my dad and he could sign the final papers that said he had full and permanent custody of me, I still had a few baby bats in my stomach. He’d promised me fifty-seven times that we were coming back to Florida. The last time I’d said we had to, because Bonsai had promised I could make my first California roll when we returned. I was pretty sure Rose had put him up to it.
I brought RL up to my nose and smelled its leather. “It’s hard to let it go.”
“I can understand that.”
“What if I’m not ready to go on to the regular Bible?”
“The ‘regular Bible’ is still going to speak to you, Jess. That’s the way it works.” He reached over and squeezed my knee. “Besides, RL says you’re ready, right?”
That was true. The night I’d told him about the book, I’d opened it to the last page I’d read and new words came up to meet me.
You’ve discovered why I was left for you, the words said. It’s time for you to leave me for someone else who is hungry for me. But you are not alone. You will always have Yeshua. You will always have his Word.
“You okay?” my dad said now.
“Yeah.”
He let go of my knee and stood up. “I’m going to see if I can get us in the exit row.” His lips did their twitchy thing. “Any problem with that?”
I wrinkled my nose at him. He wrinkled his back. I was sure anybody watching would have known we were father and daughter.
He started toward the counter.
“Dad?” I said.
It was a second or two before he turned around, swallowing that Ping-Pong ball.
“Do you have a pen?” I said.
He nodded toward his bag, eyes all swimmy. “Look in the outside pocket.”
I did and found one and put RL on my lap. Other people had carved their initials into the cover or drawn pictures on the empty pages, and I felt like I should do something too. I didn’t know what until now.
Now I opened to the back and formed the words in my head first so I wouldn’t spell them wrong and then decided it didn’t matter.
“If you ever want to talk about what you learned from RL,” I wrote, “call me. Meanwhile, I’ll be praying for you.”
I signed it Jess K. and wrote my cell phone number. Then I closed the book for the last time and held it close to me and whispered, “Thank you.”
“You ready, Jess?” Dad said from a few steps away. “They’re boarding.”
“Okay,” I said.
I looked around and saw a bench, outside a bookstore, where somebody searching for something to teach them might go. I wove through the people going past and put RL on the seat.
Then I turned to my dad and walked to the gate to start my new life. My real life.
ABOUT THE REAL LIFE BOOK
You might have figured out before Jessie did that when she opened the leather Real Life book, she was reading stories from the Bible. They aren’t the actual Scriptures, of course, but they are inspired by what Eugene Peterson did in The Message, which was to use modern, everyday language that makes you realize the Bible is for and about you. Jesus spoke in the street language of his day, so it only makes sense that we should be able to read his words that way. In fact, Eugene Peterson was inspired by a man named J. B. Phillips, who in 1947 wrote The New Testament in Modern English so his youth group could understand the Bible and live it!
Of course, no matter what translation of the Bible you read, it doesn’t actually “talk” to you the way Real Life carried on a conversation with Jessie. Or doesn’t it? Scripture is the Word of God and a Word is meant to be spoken. When you really settle in with the Bible,
• doesn’t it make you ask questions?
• doesn’t it answer the questions that pop into your head?
• doesn’t it seem weirdly close to the exact things you’re going through now, even though the stories were told thousands of years ago?
• doesn’t it sometimes say something you didn’t see the last time you looked at that very same part?
Reading the Bible really is like having a conversation with God, and I hope the Real Life book helps you open up your own discussion with our Lord, who is waiting for you to say, “Can we talk?” Comparing what Jessie read to the actual passages in the Bible might help you get started. All of them are found in the gospel of Luke, who even more than Mark, Matthew, and John, showed the love and sympathy Jesus had for the people who didn’t fit, the people who others said were weird, sinful, and not to be hung out with. Luke also shows how much Jesus respected women. It seemed like just the thing for our Real Life girls–and for you.
THE SCRIPTURES
p. 70: Revelation 10:9
pp. 71-73: Luke 4:31-37
p. 98-99: Luke 4:40-41
pp. 122-124: Luke 5:1-11
pp. 145-146: Luke 5:27-32
pp. 156-158: Luke 6:27-36
pp. 172-173: Luke 7:36-50
pp. 194-196: Luke 8:26-39
WHO HELPED?
One of the most fun parts of writing a book is working with experts who know all kinds of things that I don’t. These are the pros who helped me make Motorcycles, Sushi & One Strange Book feel like real life.
Max, chef and owner of Sushi Max in Lebanon, Tennessee, who showed me how sushi is made (and fed me the best eel and avocado roll this side of Japan).
My husband, Jim, who took me to St. Augustine and carried me on the back of Headley, our Harley, wherever Jessie would go.
Two books about ADHD in teenage girls, which helped me understand Jessie: A Bird’s-Eye View of Life with ADD and ADHD: Advice from Young Survivors (by Chris A. Zeigler Dendy and Alex Zeigler); and Understanding Girls With AD/ HD (by Kathleen G. Nadeau, Ellen B. Littman, and Patricia O. Quinn).
Katie, Regan, Liana, and Julia, my blog buddies, who named Rocky, right down to the Oswald Kenneth Luke.
Madison McGinn and her mom Kristen Richardson (both my nieces!), who shared Mountain Brook, a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, with me. We even had ice cream at the Mountain Brook Creamery.
Eugene Peterson, the author of Eat This Book, who showed me how the Real Life book could speak to Jessie.
Preview
BOYFRIENDS, BURRITOS
& AN OCEAN OF TROUBLE
[REAL LIFE]
a novel by
nancy rue
CHAPTER ONE
I didn’t wish the car accident had killed me. But lying there on the table in the emergency room as that bald doctor with the tangled eyebrows shined his tiny flashlight in my eyes, I would have settled for unconscious. Just a nice coma so I wouldn’t have to answer any questions. My few seconds of blackout didn’t seem to count, because no one had stopped interrogating me since the paramedics had arrived on the scene.
The doctor–Jon Wooten, it said on his name tag–dropped the flashlight into his coat pocket and put his warm hands on the sides of my face. I tried not to shiver.
“So, you hit your head on impact?” he said, nodding at my throbbing forehead.
“
No.” I hoped what I’d learned in my drama classes would kick in as I faked a smile. “The air bag hit me. Those things are dangerous!”
“It got you right here.”
He brushed his fingers along my cheek, and I winced.
“We’ll clean that up and get you some ice for the swelling,” he said. “It’s an abrasion–it won’t leave a scar.”
I was so not worried about a mark on my face. What I was worried about was getting out of here before–
“All right, we’re going to have you change into a gown so I can examine you.”
Before that.
“I’ll have a nurse help you.” He nodded at my father, who was standing in the corner of the curtained cubicle where he’d been asked to stay. “She’s definitely had a concussion. I may want a CT scan to rule out internal injuries, but let’s see if there’s anything else going on first.”
He motioned for Dad to follow him and then swept out.
Dad nodded, but he came to me and leaned over the table. His face was gray, his pale blue eyes wet around the edges. In the harsh hospital light, I saw lines etched in his face that weren’t there when I left the house that night, as if he’d just gotten old that very minute. He had to be even skinnier now too, and the thinning place on top of his head made him seem somehow fragile. My father never showed much emotion except when he had to put a young dog to sleep. The way he was looking at me, I could have been a terminal puppy.
He was a veterinarian, but a doctor’s a doctor. He couldn’t be missing the fact that my heart was slamming at my chest and taking my breath away. “Bryn, this is serious,” he said. “Don’t downplay it–tell them everything, you hear?”
His Virginia-soft accent didn’t usually affect me that much. Probably because he didn’t actually talk to me that much. But right now it was doing me in. I swallowed back the sob that threatened to burst from my chest. At least he wasn’t asking me what I’d been doing in a car alone with Preston.
“Brynnie?” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “But I’m really not hurt.”
Except for the pain in my stomach and the ache in my arm and the throbbing in my head, that was the truth.
As soon as he disappeared through the curtain, panic grabbed at my insides and climbed all the way up my throat and gagged me. I plastered my hand over my mouth and prayed I wouldn’t throw up. Then I prayed that Dr. Wooten would learn about a sudden outbreak of the plague in Virginia Beach and forget about me, and Dad and I could go home and pretend to forget this whole thing happened.
But there was as much a chance of that as there was that once I was clad in a flimsy gown, that doctor wasn’t going to see what was under it. I wasn’t so worried about tonight’s injuries. Those bruises wouldn’t rise to the surface until at least tomorrow.
It was Wednesday’s evidence I was worried about. I couldn’t let him see that. Not with Dad standing there. At least my mother wasn’t here. At least there was that.
A nurse in turquoise scrubs and a messy ponytail slipped in through the curtain, a gown and a sheet over her arm. She looked at me like I was one of Dad’s patients, recently brought in from a storm drain.
“Hey, girlfriend,” she said. “I’m Cindi. How you doin’?”
“I’d be better if I could just go home,” I said. “I bet you have people way sicker than me to take care of.”
“Nope. You lucked out tonight.”
She put her hand on my shoulder, and I tried not to cringe.
“I’m going to need you to take everything off and put on this precious gown.” She gave me a winky smile. “It’s not a good look for anybody, but it’s all we’ve got.”
If she was trying to get me to relax, it wasn’t working. My mouth dried up, and I could feel my hands oozing sweat.
“Once you get that on you can lie back, and I’ll cover you with the sheet.” She tilted her head at me. “Are you cold?”
I was, even in my pink sweater, even though it was June and everybody else at the party had been in tank tops. It was pointless to pretend I wasn’t shivering now. I could almost feel my lips turning blue.
“I’m going to go get you a blanket,” she said. “If you even start to feel dizzy, lie down and I’ll help you get undressed when I come back.”
When she left I fought back more panic. Jesus, what do I do?
I wasn’t swearing. I was really asking Jesus, just like I’d been doing for the last three months. I hadn’t gotten any answers. I would have given up a leading role for one right now–because if there was any way out of this beyond a miracle, I wasn’t seeing it.
I pulled the thread-thin blue gown to my face and breathed in the hospital smell and begged Jesus to make me disappear. Outside the cubicle, sneakers squealed past on the linoleum. I could either do it now or do it ten minutes from now or two hours from now. But they were going to make me do it, and the longer I put it off, the more suspicious they were all going to be.
I pushed the gown from my face. Okay–do it fast–like it’s no big deal. Make up a story about the bruises. Promise to be more careful with my bird-boned, five-foot-one self in the future.
I couldn’t come up with anything else.
I pulled off the sweater, the one Preston said back in the beginning made me look delicious, and yanked the deeper-shade-of-pink long-sleeved tee over my head. The pain seared through me like I was being sliced with a bread knife, but I was now beyond crying. Fear steals your tears–I’d learned that. Still, I didn’t dare look at myself as I fed my arms gingerly through the holes in the gown.
Tying the thing in the back was almost not worth the agony involved, but it might keep the doctor from seeing that part. Not that he would need to. The black-and-purple handprint around my bicep told enough of a story by itself. I was going to have to think of a better one, and tell it with a sheepish smile. Assure them it would never happen again.
Please, Jesus–don’t let it ever happen again.
Things were tangling in my head and I couldn’t allow it. I put all my focus on wriggling out of the rest of my clothes and tucking the gown tightly around my legs and draping my hair over my shoulders. Maybe they’d believe some lame story because I was blonde. I was about to pull the sheet up to my neck when Nurse Cindi slid the curtains apart, already talking.
“Are we set?” she said.
Her lips stopped moving in mid-word. Even while I was retreating behind the sheet, I caught the flicker that went through her eyes. It was gone almost before it was there, a trick they must teach in nursing school. But it had lingered long enough for me to know she knew.
Any story I came up with was going to be perfectly useless. I buried my face in my knees.
“I’ll be right back,” she practically whispered. “No worries, girlfriend. We’ll take care of this.”
No. Jesus, please don’t let them “take care of it.” You take care of it. Make it go away.
He didn’t. Instead, the curtain parted again, and I groped for my smile and the strands of my story. Everything on Dr. Wooten’s face came to a suspicious point. Nurse Cindi wasn’t even trying to hide the pity on hers.
“Where’s my dad?” I said.
“Filling out some paperwork,” he said.
I let go of a ragged breath that dragged through my ribs. Good. I didn’t want him here for this.
Without a word, Dr. Wooten pulled back the sheet and examined my arms with only his eyes. I could feel him taking in the bruises–some of them pale blue and red, some dark purple, a few a sickening yellowish green. Cindi watched him, watched me, looked at him again. A whole conversation went on while nobody said a word. I had to stop it.
“Those are old bruises,” I said.
“I know,” he said.
“I got them playing football.”
“I’m going to have you lie back for me.”
“Seriously. I’m a double linebacker.”
“There’s no such thing as a double linebacker, Bryn.”
“Single?”
Doctor Wooten pressed his hands on my abdomen and that’s when I lost it all–my smile, my loser attempt at a story, my hope. The sucker-punch pain in my stomach throbbed worse now than it had when it first happened. I squeezed the sides of the table and cried without making a sound.
“This one is new,” he said. “Were you wearing a seat belt?”
I shook my head and waited for the lecture. The doctor only frowned and pulled the sheet back up to my chest. Nurse Cindi smoothed and tucked and bit at her lip.
He rolled a stool close and sat looking at me long and hard. I should have seen it before: he had eyes you didn’t lie to, even if you thought your life depended on it.
“Let’s talk about how this happened,” he said, “without the football scenario.”
He put his hands on my neck and felt around, his eyes never leaving mine alone. He wouldn’t find anything there. It never happened in a place I couldn’t keep covered up. I didn’t own any turtlenecks.
It was a random thought to have at that moment, but my mind was trying to leave my body. This doctor with the bald head and the intense brows and the eyes that saw everything must have seen that too, because he said, “Who did this to you, Bryn?”
“It was an accident,” I said. My voice was so thin I could hardly hear it.
“Was it an accident every time?”
“He didn’t plan it. He just got mad and it happened.”
“And he hit you in the stomach.”
I started to shake my head, but he went on. “You have a large hematoma that’s rising even as we’re looking at it. Probably a broken blood vessel in your abdominal wall, which could be serious. If you weren’t wearing a seat belt–”
“Maybe I was–”
“Bryn. Who did this?”
His voice had gone soft around the edges. I closed my eyes and felt the tears slither into my ears.
“I’m sorry this has happened to you,” he said. “We don’t want it to happen again, so you need to tell us who’s been hurting you.”
“I can’t.” I opened my eyes and let them plead for me. “I’ll make it stop, I promise.”