Samantha Sanderson at the Movies

by Robin Caroll

  “I think the Townsend woman is behind the bombing. My mom thinks so, too, after reading your article this morning. She said she’d met Jessica Townsend at a rally or something, and Mom said she acted like a zealot or something,” Grace said, keeping her voice low so Mrs. Beach wouldn’t call them out.

  “Really?”

  Grace nodded. “Mom said she went to one of those coalition meetings and thought it was more about bashing Christians than anything else.” She shrugged and sat back in her chair.

  Why would Grace’s mom go to such a meeting? Grace didn’t attend Sam’s church, but that didn’t mean she didn’t attend a church.

  But why would a Christian attend one of the Coalition of Reason meetings? It made no sense. Unless it was to get information for a news article, but Grace’s mom wasn’t a journalist. Was she?

  Sam turned and whispered to Grace, “What does your mom do?”

  “She doesn’t do anything but stay at home. Why?”

  Sam shrugged. “Just wondered why she’d go to one of those meetings.”

  “Because she thought it was a group who would help non-believers realize there’s a community for them not governed by biblical faiths,” said Grace.

  “Oh.” Sam turned back to her worksheet. Heat fanned her face, but no more than burned in her chest.

  Did that mean, like she thought it did, that Grace’s mom wasn’t a Christian? Did that mean Grace wasn’t either? Sam didn’t know if she’d ever really known a non-Christian.

  And she didn’t know how to feel about it.

  Sam tried to concentrate on the worksheet, but her mind wouldn’t shut up long enough. She couldn’t imagine not being a Christian. She knew not everyone had accepted Jesus into their hearts, but she just couldn’t understand why not.

  How could anyone refuse salvation? It just made no sense at all.

  Grace poked Sam’s shoulder. Sam turned around.

  “What’s the deal?” Grace asked.

  “About what?”

  “You curled up your lip when I told you why my mom went to that meeting.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Yeah, you did,” Grace said. “Do you have a problem with that?”

  “No. It’s none of my business,” Sam said.

  “Right. Just because we’re not part of some religious mumbo-jumbo group, we’re weird, right?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Sam argued.

  “You didn’t have to. It was all in the curl of your lip.” Grace shook her head. “Hypocrite.”

  “I didn’t mean that. You’re putting words in my mouth. Or in the curl of my lip.” Sam’s heartbeat hiccupped. She really did like Grace and didn’t want to offend or upset her. She hadn’t meant to do that at all.

  “Since we’re not some holier-than-thou Christian types, you think we’re weird, don’t you?” Grace’s voice rose above a whisper.

  “No.” Sam licked her lips. “I don’t.”

  “Sure. You can’t even admit it, but you’re thinking it,” Grace said.

  “I just don’t understand it is all,” Sam answered.

  “Girls, is there a problem?” Mrs. Christian asked.

  Sam turned to face the front of the room and shook her head. “No, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Christian sat back down.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply anything,” Sam whispered over her shoulder. “And I don’t think you’re weird.”

  Grace remained silent.

  The minutes felt like hours until the bell rang. Sam jumped out of her seat and faced Grace. “I’m really sorry. I don’t think you’re weird and I didn’t mean to make a face of any kind.”

  Grace hugged her books to her chest. “Most kids I’m friends with think my family’s weird because we aren’t Christians.” She headed toward the hall.

  Sam fell into step alongside her. “I can’t speak for anybody else, but I just don’t understand it is all.”

  “What don’t you understand?” Grace asked. She stopped in the breezeway right outside their math room.

  Sam’s heart caught sideways in her throat. So many times, Ms. Martha had assured them that when the time comes for witnessing, the Holy Spirit would give them the words. God, I need the words now.

  She took a deep breath. “I just don’t understand how anyone can learn about Jesus and not believe in Him.” She paused, studied Grace’s face to see if she looked mad. She didn’t, so Sam continued. “And He’s always there for me. He loves me more than even my parents and always wants the best for me.” She shrugged. “It’s like having my best friend in my heart, all the time. So I just don’t understand why anyone else wouldn’t want that . . . this.”

  Grace shook her head. “I just can’t buy into a loving Father or anything. Look at all the evil in the world. All the bad things that keep happening . . . even that bomb at the theater. If there’s a God who wants what’s best, why does stuff like this happen?”

  The same questions Sam wrestled with. “I don’t know, exactly. But I believe in God. I believe in His Son. And that bomb at the theater could’ve gone off. People could’ve been hurt or worse.”

  “But that’s just it, Sam. Bombs do go off. Planes crash. People die in car crashes. Bad stuff happens all the time. Where’s your God in all of that?”

  “I don’t have all the answers, Grace. I wish I did. But I do know that our time here is marked in years, but after here? Yeah, that’s forever. I want to have eternal life, and the only way for me to have that is to know that Jesus is God’s Son, He died for me, and I accept Him in my heart.”

  The bell rang.

  “I still don’t buy it, but thanks for not thinking I’m a freak for being different,” Grace said as she took two steps toward her own class. “See you tomorrow.”

  Sam rushed into her math class and sat at her desk, but her mind wasn’t on the Algebra equations Ms. Norton wrote on the board. Her heart felt extremely heavy.

  Had she failed at her first real-live witnessing situation?

  “Ms. Norton?” the school secretary’s voice over the intercom interrupted.

  “Yes?” the math teacher answered.

  “Can you send Sam Sanderson to the office, please?”

  Ms. Norton glanced to Sam’s seat. “For checkout?”

  “No. To see Mrs. Trees.”

  Ms. Norton raised a single eyebrow. “She’s on her way.”

  “Thank you.”

  Sam stood, her knees a little weak as she took the pass the teacher handed her and left. She made her way down the seventh grade ramp, the wind almost whistling as it pushed through the open way. She took the four concrete steps down to the office and opened the door.

  What had she done now?

  CHAPTER 12

  CUTTING TO THE HEART

  Ah, yes. Sam, come in,” Mrs. Trees answered the knock.

  Sam didn’t recognize the scowling woman sitting in one of the chairs facing the desk, but her heart plummeted to her toes as she recognized the man wearing the bulldog expression. “Hi, Dad,” she whispered.

  “Hi, pumpkin.” Well, at least he didn’t sound angry with her.

  Not yet anyway.

  “This is Jessica Townsend,” Mrs. Trees gestured to the woman.

  Sam took a moment to scrutinize the lady’s appearance. Short, dark hair with highlights in the front framed the woman’s face, but what struck Sam the most was her thick, dark eyebrows. Not exactly a unibrow, because they didn’t grow together, but they were just so thick. Her scowl seemed to have deepened in the minute since Sam had entered the office.

  “So you’re the young lady wreaking havoc in my life,” Jessica Townsend said. Her voice was nothing like Sam had thought it would be — instead of high-pitched and nasal, it was more hoarse, like she’d gargled with pebbles or something.

  Sam didn’t know what to say, so she kept quiet. The bell to change classes rang but was muffled in Mrs. Trees’ office.

  “Nothing to say to my face? You seemed to have plenty to sa
y about me in your blog,” Jessica said.

  “Watch the attitude, please,” Dad interjected. His bulldog expression morphed into something deeper, even more serious. The lines in the corners of his eyes drew his forehead down.

  “Did I step on toes, Detective?” No mistaking the woman’s snarkiness. “You’ll allow her to smear my name but expect me to be cordial to the brat? I think not.”

  Dad stood. “And I think this conversation is over.”

  “Are you going to arrest me, Detective?”

  “Let’s all just take a moment,” Mrs. Trees said, clearly out of her element in how to control the situation.

  “Ma’am,” Dad addressed Mrs. Trees, “you called me here to discuss my daughter’s news articles and her reporting for the school paper. I didn’t realize this was actually a confrontation. Had I known Ms. Townsend would be here, I wouldn’t have come. She is a person of interest in an ongoing investigation that I’m leading. It’s inappropriate for her to even be here on campus if she doesn’t have a child enrolled in this school and inappropriate for you to have called me here under false pretenses, and,” Dad glared at Jessica, “it’s most certainly inappropriate for her to refer to my daughter as a brat.”

  Yea! Go, Dad. Sam caught her bottom lip between her teeth.

  “Can’t take the truth about your kid, Detective?”

  “Ms. Townsend, please,” Mrs. Trees said. “Mr. Sanderson, I’m very sorry.”

  Dad nodded, then grabbed Sam’s hand and led her out of the office. The last few kids rushed to their third periods. The breezeway sat silent.

  “You’ve stirred up quite the hornet’s nest with your articles on that one, Sam.” Dad shook his head. “She’s one piece of work.”

  “They pulled the first article I had about her.”

  “Apparently not fast enough that she didn’t see it. She told your principal she demanded to find out who told you about her childhood past when she hit a nun.”

  One of the security guards brushed past them on his way into the office.

  Dad pulled Sam over toward the red brick wall. “Please tell me that she wasn’t in elementary school when she lashed out at a nun who happened to be her teacher and you made it sound like she was an adult.”

  “Her childhood? Puhleeze. Dad, she was twenty-two when she hit that nun, who was not her teacher, by the way. She was living in a convent, supposedly planning on being a nun, but I don’t know that for sure, which is why I didn’t put it in my article. Anyway, if it was such a non-event like she’s playing, there wouldn’t have been charges filed and a court-ordered stay at the mental ward.”

  Ms. Townsend was definitely a piece of work. And to have the nerve to show up at a junior high school and demand to confront a kid . . .

  Well, Sam was more than a little unnerved by that. Seriously? A grown woman feeling the need to challenge a kid—what was up with that?

  The bulldog expression returned to cover Dad’s face. “How do you know all these details, Sam?”

  “The court records of her case are a matter of public record, Dad.”

  His eyes narrowed down into little, bitty slits. “Yes, but you haven’t been to the courthouse to read the transcript, and I haven’t seen a huge bill on the credit card, so I’m pretty certain you didn’t order a copy.”

  Her throat tightened. “Dad . . .”

  “This isn’t a cloak-and-dagger game, Sam. This is very serious.” He pointed toward the office. “That woman in there isn’t playing. She’s aggressive and antagonistic and has you in her sights.”

  “I know, Dad.” Sam had to force the words past her ever-tightening throat to get them out. “But it’s a matter of public record, so there’s no source to name except public record. It’s all in the court transcripts, right?”

  “True enough. Okay. Listen, you go back to class. If you see that Jessica Townsend woman, you hightail it in the opposite direction. Do you understand me?” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I mean it, Sam. No trying to get a statement or anything for the paper. You go in the opposite direction. Don’t even speak to her. Got it?”

  “Sure, Dad.”

  He wasn’t buying it. “No, not sure, Dad. I mean it, Sam. If I find out you so much as said hello to her, I’ll ground you.”

  Ground her? For doing her job as a journalist? He had to be kidding.

  One look at his face confirmed he wasn’t. Not even a little bit.

  “Okay, Dad. I won’t.”

  He stared at her for a moment, then nodded. “Okay.” He leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “Go ahead and go back to class. Mrs. Willis will pick you up this afternoon.”

  “Bye.” She headed toward the media center for her third period class, computer keyboarding, then remembered she needed to grab her notebook from her locker. She turned the corner, out of sight.

  “Oh, Detective.”

  Sam stopped as Jessica Townsend’s voice called out to Dad. Sam inched down the wall and peeked around the corner.

  “What do you want, Ms. Townsend?” Dad faced the woman as she approached him.

  She stopped about two feet in front of him. “You’d be wise to warn your daughter of the dangers that come along with being a news reporter.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  Sam’s heart raced as she pressed closer to the wall so as not to been seen. She’d never seen Dad look like that. Mad, but in a calm way. It was really scary.

  “Of course not. I would never threaten someone in the presence of an officer of the law.”

  “At least that’s one smart thing you’ve said.” Dad turned and headed down the stairs to the parking lot.

  “One more thing, Detective,” Jessica called out.

  He stopped and pivoted. “What?”

  “Before you haul me in for questioning, I had nothing to do with that bomb in the theater, nor did my chapter of the coalition.”

  Dad smiled. It was one of those smiles Sam recognized — the one Mom called his Cheshire Cat grin. She didn’t know what exactly that meant, but she knew when Dad smiled like that, his sarcasm was likely to make an appearance. “I didn’t ask you.”

  “But your daughter planted the idea, so you might. I’d hate to have to contact my lawyer and suggest you might be harassing me. Putting your daughter up to writing ugly things about me and all.”

  Putting her up to writing . . . Sam gritted her teeth. For all she knew, Dad didn’t even think about Jessica Townsend being linked to the bomb.

  Dad flashed that grin again. “You call your lawyer, Ms. Townsend. Matter of fact, maybe you should put him on speed dial. I have a feeling you might want a lawyer present real soon.”

  “Samantha Sanderson, what are you doing out here?”

  Sam jumped and turned around. Heat burned her face from the inside out. “Oh, Ms. Pape. You scared me.”

  “What are you doing out of class?”

  “Uh . . . Mrs. Trees called me. I mean, I was in her office. Now I’m going to class.” It felt like her tongue was twisted into knots all of a sudden.

  “So why are you standing out here?”

  “I forgot my notebook. I’m going to get it.”

  “Then hurry up and do that.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Sam rushed to her locker. She got her notebook, then headed to the media center. She took her seat next to Makayla while Mrs. Forge droned on about not looking at your hands to type. It amused Sam to no end that keyboarding was mandatory, yet Makayla could run circles around most of the faculty. Especially Mrs. Forge.

  “Where have you been?” Makayla whispered.

  “Office,” Sam whispered back, then filled Makayla in on what had happened, and what she’d overheard between Jessica and her dad.

  “Wow. That woman sounds like a freak,” Makayla said.

  Sam nodded. “She’s a few colors short from a box of crayons, that’s for sure.”

  “Doesn’t it scare you? I mean, just a little? She pretty much threatened you.” Makayla’s big eyes we
nt even wider. There might not be much Makayla couldn’t do on a computer, but she didn’t want to get in trouble.

  But she did have a point. Not that Sam would ever admit to being scared.

  “Dad put her in her place quick enough.” Sam grinned at the memory. “That was really cool.”

  Makayla nodded. “I bet it was. I wouldn’t want to cross your dad if he was mad.”

  Mrs. Forge gave them their assignments, then shuffled back to her desk. It wasn’t a secret to anyone that she played solitaire all the time, but the kids loved it. Keyboarding was almost like having another study hall. As long as they didn’t get too loud, Mrs. Forge concentrated on her game, only looking up when she won.

  “So what did Mrs. Trees say about your articles? Was she going to take them down?” Makayla asked.

  Sam hadn’t really thought about that. “She didn’t say.” Surely she wouldn’t take down today’s post. But Ms. Pape had been on her way to the office . . .

  “Let’s see.” Makayla glanced to where Mrs. Forge sat behind her desk, her eyes glued to her screen. Mac’s fingers flew over the keyboard. Within seconds, she was past the school’s firewall and on the web.

  “Look.” She tapped the monitor, the paper’s blog page loaded on the screen. “Your story’s still posted.”

  Relief washed over Sam in waves.

  “Oh. My. Gummybears! You have over four hundred comments.” Makayla scrolled the mouse up and down to see the comments.

  Four hundred? Sam leaned closer to the monitor. “Slow down, I want to read them.”

  Makayla laughed and let go of the mouse. “You go ahead and read them. I’m going to use your station to do the classwork.”

  Sam barely paid attention as she swapped places with her best friend. Her eyes drank in the comments as fast as she could read them. Most of them were asking for more details about Jessica Townsend hitting a nun or not knowing what the Central Arkansas Coalition of Reason was.

  She skimmed through three hundred or so comments until she came across one posted ten minutes ago. From Jessica Townsend. Sam’s stomach twisted as she read:

  I went to this school today to try and get an answer as to why I’m being slandered without cause, but this “Sam Sanderson” had her detective father show up and bully me before he stormed out. That’s right, Sam Sanderson’s father is the detective heading up this case. Appears to me that he’s using his daughter’s paper to lead the investigation down the wrong path. Or is he asking her to report on things to distract everyone from the truth???