Point of No Return
Page 1
Point of No Return
Copyright © 2006 by Focus on the Family
All rights reserved.
A Focus on the Family book published by
Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188
TYNDALE and Tyndale’s quill logo are registered trademarks of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Focus on the Family and Adventures in Odyssey and their accompanying logos are federally registered trademarks of Focus on the Family, Colorado Springs, CO 80995.
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. TM Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved worldwide (www.zondervan.com).
The books in this collection were originally published as:
Point of No Return, © 1995 by Focus on the Family
Dark Passage, © 1996 by Focus on the Family
Freedom Run, © 1996 by Focus on the Family
The Stranger’s Message, © 1997 by Paul McCusker
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior permission of Focus on the Family.
A note to readers: The Adventures in Odyssey novels take place in a time period prior to the beginning of the audio or video series. That is why some of the characters from those episodes don’t appear in these stories; they don’t exist yet.
Editor: Liz Duckworth
Cover design: Jacqueline Nuñez
Cover illustration: Gary Locke
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McCusker, Paul, 1958-
[Selections]
Point of no return : four original stories of suspense, time travel, and faith / Paul McCusker ; [cover illustration, Gary Locke].
v. cm. — (Adventures in Odyssey ; 3)
Summary: Four stories set in the fictional town of Odyssey follow the adventures of the Whit’s End gang as they learn valuable lessons in helping their fellow man, forgiving, and living their faith.
Contents: Point of no return—Dark passage—Freedom run—The stranger’s message.
ISBN-13: 978-1-58997-332-9
[1. Conduct of life—Fiction. 2. Christian live—Fiction. 3. Friendship—Fiction.]
I. Title. II. Series: McCusker, Paul, 1958-
Adventures in Odyssey ; 3.
PZ7.M47841Po 2006
[Fic]—dc22
Printed in the United States of America
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 /16 15 14 13 12 11
To Matt and Sam Butcher
With special acknowledgment to Marshal Younger and his Underground Railroad episodes for the Adventures in Odyssey radio series.
CONTENTS
BOOK ONE: Point of No Return
BOOK TWO: Dark Passage
BOOK THREE: Freedom Run
BOOK FOUR: The Stranger’s Message
CHAPTER ONE
Friday Night
JIMMY BARCLAY looked into the deep blue water. It was still. Faintly, he could see his reflection looking back. It didn’t look much like him, though. In fact, it could have been a complete stranger…but it wasn’t. That had to be his young face looking up out of the water. The blue, still water.
There was also the scent of pine.
He got on his knees and looked closer at the deep blue water—pondering it. He waited.
This was really stupid, he knew. At his age—a mature and wise 10 years old—he shouldn’t be in this situation. He never should’ve let Tony talk him into it. How many kids of 10 try to smoke their best friend’s father’s cigar? What made it worse was that Jimmy thought people who smoked cigarettes were Neanderthals. So why did he try the cigar?
He rested his head against the porcelain, sending a tiny shiver through the toilet bowl. The deep blue water rippled. The scent of pine was overwhelming. Mom must have cleaned in here today, he thought. He couldn’t imagine when, though. His mother worked part-time as a dental receptionist and was on every committee the church could think up.
A new wave of nausea worked its way through Jimmy’s stomach, and he prepared himself for it. Again, he stared into the deep blue water. Again, it was so still.
At that moment, he tried to remember how many puffs he had taken on the cigar before Tony said he was turning green. He couldn’t remember. Too many. Way too many.
The wave subsided, and he sat down. He rested his head against the cabinet that housed the sink and prayed for deliverance. He begged his stomach to make up its mind: Either do it or don’t do it. Let’s stop playing around.
Of course, I wish you wouldn’t do it, Jimmy told his stomach.
From his room down the hall, he could hear music. Tony, his best friend, was listening to—singing along with—some CD he had brought over. Jimmy winced. It sounded as if Tony had the volume turned up full blast.
Jimmy wondered how long it would be before Donna, his older sister, would hang up the phone downstairs and yell at him to turn off the music. He thought about hollering for Tony to turn it down but was afraid to. He didn’t know what it would do to his stomach or his mother’s freshly cleaned bathroom. He leaned over the deep blue water again in case.
Tony screamed along with a song.
How could he be so energetic when Jimmy was sitting on the bathroom floor ready to die? Easy. Tony was good at talking Jimmy into doing stupid things and never doing them himself.
Jimmy grabbed the sides of the bowl, sure that something was about to happen. He held on and waited.
This is so very very very dumb. When will you learn? When will you stop acting like such an idiot? You’re a jerk, Jimmy Barclay, and you’d better never let this happen again.
As if to say it agreed, his stomach settled down. It seemed suddenly at peace.
After a moment, Jimmy stood up slowly. His head swayed a little. He dropped the cover over the deep blue water and turned to the door. Everything would be just fine.
He paused at the mirror and looked hard at himself. A little green around the gills maybe—but nothing too terrible. Just Jimmy Barclay looking a little sick. Boy, it’s a good thing Mom and Dad are out.
He opened the door, turned out the light, and headed for his room. He didn’t notice that the music had stopped. It didn’t click in his mind that all was deathly silent. When he entered his room to find Tony sitting quietly on the edge of his bed, he still didn’t think much of it….
Until he saw his mom at his CD player and his dad looking over the remains of the cigar.
There are no words to describe the look on their faces, but most kids know it when they see it. Jimmy knew it well. His stomach turned upside down, and he considered running back to the bathroom.
“Get ready for bed, Jimmy,” his dad said as he walked out of the room with the cigar. His mom looked at him with an expression of complete disappointment and followed.
And that was it.
Jimmy looked at Tony.
Tony shrugged and said, “I didn’t hear them coming. I would have done something if I knew they were coming.”
“How could you hear them with the music going full blast?” Jimmy asked. “They probably heard it at the restaurant and came home to investigate.”
His dad yelled from the kitchen, “Do you need a lift home, Tony?”
Tony looked at Jimmy. Jimmy shrugged.
Tony shouted back, “Oh, no thanks. I’d better walk.”
“Good night, then,” Mrs. Barclay called out.
“I guess that means I’m leaving now,” Tony said to Jimmy, grabbing his jacket from the foot of the bed.
“I guess so.”
“See ya,” Tony said as he drifted out of the room. “Call me when you get paroled.”
“Thanks, pal.”
Tony opened the front door and called out a final farewell to Mr. and Mrs. Barclay before retreating into the crisp Friday night.
Jimmy sighed.
From somewhere on the front lawn, Jimmy could hear an outburst of Tony’s laughter.
George Barclay, Jimmy’s dad, was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee. Mary, Jimmy’s mom, was at the counter pouring herself a cup. Donna also sat at the table with a stricken look on her face. Obviously, his mom and dad had already read her the riot act. Jimmy guessed that they held her partly to blame for what had happened. She had been on the phone when she should have been keeping a closer eye on him.
“You’re home early,” Jimmy said brightly.
After a moment of silence, his dad spoke. “We’re home early because I decided to go see your grandmother tomorrow. I may leave first thing in the morning.”
Grandma Barclay was Jimmy’s dad’s mom. She had been sick over the past couple of weeks, and they were worried it might be a relapse of her cancer. She lived a couple of hundred miles away.
“Oh—you’re going by yourself?”
His dad looked darkly at him and said, “Your mother was going to come with me, but it’s clear that we can’t leave the two of you alone.”
Guilt poked at Jimmy’s stomach. “I can go with you,” he offered.
“No, you can’t.” His dad looked Jimmy full in the face now. That look was still there. “You’re on restriction. For the rest of your life. Maybe longer. And when we get a minute, your mother and I are going to talk about what to do with you. I can’t figure which is worse: the fact that you lit matches in your room or the fact that you tried smoking a cigar. Maybe they’re equal. And there’s Tony coming tonight when we told you before you left that you weren’t to have friends in. And that music you were playing at a speaker-blowing volume. Not forgetting to mention the water balloon battle you had in my study last weekend, the fire you started in the garage with the blowtorch the week before, the call we got from the librarian about you and Tony knocking books off the shelves, the fight you had with Kelly next door over that bike, and, and…Jimmy—”
He stopped as if his anger had tied up his tongue. “Just go to bed,” he finally said.
In his room, Jimmy began unloading his pants pockets. It was something he always did before undressing and going to bed because, if he didn’t, his mom might accidentally wash something like coins, a crumpled dollar, some gum he had bought at Town Center Drugs, lint….
So much for the left pocket. He emptied the right. More lint.
He tossed everything onto his dresser, where his eye caught the framed photo of Grandma Barclay. She’d lost a lot of weight since that picture was taken. The cancer did it. It had been eating her alive a few years ago, but everyone prayed for her, and it went into remission. Jimmy wasn’t so sure prayer had made her better, but he didn’t dare say so out loud.
You wouldn’t know how ill Grandma was if you saw only the picture with its soft-focus close-up that made her wrinkles less noticeable, gave a nice shine to her white hair, and accented her bright blue eyes. They were stunning eyes, the kind that made Jimmy feel funny because he suspected they could somehow see much deeper than eyes should be allowed to see.
Grandma Barclay was a very devout woman. As far as anyone knew, she had never missed a day of church in her life. Hers was a deep-rooted, practical faith. It was as real and natural to her as breathing. Jimmy’s father felt the influence of that faith and tried to instill it in both Jimmy and Donna. Donna liked church. Jimmy thought it was boring. He would’ve stopped going if his parents didn’t make him attend. He once talked to them about letting him stay home, but they wouldn’t hear of it. He had to go, and that was that.
Jimmy’s parents fussed with him for a while about his lack of faith. They did everything they could to get him interested. But lately it was as if they had given up on him. His mom said that they had decided to stop worrying and let God do the rest.
That was fine with Jimmy, because God seemed to want to leave him alone, too.
Grandma didn’t fuss about it at all. When she found out Jimmy didn’t like church, she just smiled and said he would enjoy it eventually. He would have to. The call in his life was too strong.
Jimmy didn’t know what she meant by that. He wondered but didn’t want to risk a lecture by asking. He got off easy, and that’s all that mattered. But sometimes he thought about the call and tried to figure out what a call would sound like. Not that it would make any difference. When Jimmy grew up, he wanted to be a singer in a rock band.
All these thoughts swirled around in his churning mind as he fell asleep. The last thing he would remember was the sound of thousands of fans cheering him as he performed in a huge auditorium.
CHAPTER TWO
Saturday Morning
THE OCTOBER SUN played peekaboo with Jimmy’s left eyelid through the crack between the half-drawn curtains on his bedroom window. Swimming to the surface of wakefulness, he was aware of the irritation the sunlight caused him. He moved his head. The sunlight hit his right eyelid. He moved his head again. Relief.
But not for long.
Right on cue, his head throbbed. He rolled over with a groan and tried to open his mouth to lick the cobwebs off his lips. His tongue felt like a fuzz ball. His eyes twitched but wouldn’t open. He was numb all over.
He rolled over onto his back again and rubbed at his eyes until they could open.
His room looked as if someone had hung a giant piece of gauze over it. He blinked. The gauze separated like a curtain, and he made out the specifics—so familiar and so cluttered. Posters covered almost every inch of wall space. The small desk was piled high with magazines, school papers, comic books, and only heaven knew what else. The closet was an outpouring of clean and dirty clothes, games, games, and more games. A chair was covered with more clothes. A small table held his CD player and surrounding stacks of CDs. And there was the ancient oak dresser with the Old West wagon-train lamp and 96-ounce beer mug half filled with pennies. Also on top, as a testimony to the night before, was the junk he had taken out of his pockets last night.
He moaned as he remembered what had happened.
He remembered Tony, the cigar, deep blue water, and…his parents coming home.
He scanned the room, trying to remember where he threw his alarm clock. He had no idea what time it might be. He sat up, and his head protested.
As he struggled to get out of bed, the door slowly opened, and Donna peeked in. She looked annoyed until she saw Jimmy swing his legs off the side of the bed.
“Mom wants to know if you want some breakfast,” she asked.
He shook his head. “Maybe later” was all he could manage. His tongue wouldn’t let go of the roof of his mouth. After a moment he asked, “What time is it?”
“Almost lunchtime.” She retreated.
“Donna?”
She returned and said, “What?”
He hesitated, then: “Are Mom and Dad…still mad?”
“What do you think?” she asked and left again.
He gingerly stepped out of bed and grabbed at the nearest stack of clothes.
In the bathroom, Jimmy tried to use water to flatten some of his hair. It stuck out in 12 directions. He looked at his face. His eyes looked tiny. He leaned closer to the mirror and checked his chin and top lip for anything that might look like a beard. He couldn’t wait until he was old enough to shave.
Grabbing the skeletal remains of a bar of soap, he scrubbed his hands. And he began to think—not the way the world’s great thinkers do, but with all the concentration he could manage. He replayed the night before in his mind and wondered what made him act the way he did.
He searched his mind for something or someone to blame.
Blank.
Nothing.
He did what he did because it w
as what he wanted to do. That was all. There really wasn’t any other reason, was there?
Something was just out of reach in his mind. A thought, a feeling…he wasn’t sure. But it made him feel that something was wrong. Maybe something was wrong with him. Maybe he should try harder to behave himself. Maybe he should change somehow.
But he was only 10 years old. What could be wrong with him at the age of 10? How much can a 10-year-old be expected to change? He shrugged and walked out of the bathroom.
Mary Barclay sat silently at the table drinking a cup of tea. Jimmy halfheartedly ate some sugar-coated cereal that promised to be part of a nutritious breakfast. His head still sent dull thuds to his eyes. Did cigars make everybody feel so bad?
His dad had gone to Jimmy’s grandma’s house. It didn’t really sink into Jimmy’s mind what was happening, but someone called that morning to say his grandmother was in great pain and had to be put back in the hospital, and the doctors were playing guessing games about radiation and maybe chemo, but there were no promises, no guarantees, because she was almost 80 years old and not as strong as she used to be.
His mother looked Jimmy directly in the eyes and asked, “Why, Jimmy? Why do you get into so much trouble? The past few months have been one incident after another. Last night was the last straw. Why do you do it?”
His mouth was full of sugar-coated cereal, so he couldn’t answer her.
“I wanted to see your grandma, too, but—” She looked down at her cup of tea. “I can’t trust you anymore.”
Jimmy swallowed hard. He could tell by her tone that she wasn’t just trying to make him feel guilty. She wasn’t even trying to make him feel bad. She was speaking in a neutral voice as if she were telling him about the weather. That made it even worse. Jimmy searched frantically for the right words to say—something to convince her he could be trustworthy.
He couldn’t think of anything. So finally he offered, “I’m sorry, Mom. I just got carried away. It won’t happen again.”
The words sounded hollow even as he said them.
“That’s what you keep saying over and over.”