They watched a moment longer as the crowd poured onto the field before Dad uncrossed his long legs and stood up slowly. “Well, that’s it, Buck.” He looked over at his son sympathetically. “Look at it this way. It was a classic series – seven games. The Giants were fortunate to even be there. There’s no disgrace in coming in second.” He gave Bucky an affectionate swat on the rear end. “Let’s get some sleep.”
Bucky nodded glumly, then forced a quick smile. “You’re right. It was an awesome World Series.” He got to his feet and switched off the TV. “And I’m gonna get to bed right now; I have a really important appointment in the morning.”
Dad looked at him quizzically as the pair made their way upstairs to bed.
Chapter Eight: Party Date
“Now, step into that left binding again and let’s see how it fits.” The muscular blond salesman showed Bucky how to fit his ski boot into the intricate binding and demonstrated the lock-in mechanism. “Does that seem about right?”
Bucky nodded with a grin. New skis! Dad had finally agreed that he could pick out some ski equipment – if it was on sale. They had gone round and round on the topic of skis versus a new snowboard . . . and he had finally decided to stay with the more traditional sport.
“Now, to get out of your skis —on purpose, that is,” the salesman chuckled, “simply push down on this part right here with the point of your ski pole. That releases your binding. See?”
Minutes later, a happy Bucky and a slightly poorer Dad were toting three packages to the car. “Thank goodness Rachel Marie is only six,” Dad grumbled good-naturedly. “That gives me a few years to save up for when she wants to take up this high-priced sport too.”
“Don’t worry, Dad. These are going to last me a long time. The salesman said the bindings can be adjusted later for bigger boots if I need them.”
“When did you say this ski trip was, again?”
“Mid-January.” Bucky shifted the skis to his other shoulder. “But the pastor invited me to go with him and his son in three weeks . . . if there’s snow by then.”
“Pastor Jensen is a skier?” Dad seemed surprise
“He claims to be,” Bucky laughed. “Actually, I hear he’s pretty good. He and his son have been going for years. Carl’s home for that weekend from college.”
“Here we are,” Dad announced, pulling the car keys from his pocket with his free hand. “Let’s load this million-dollar cargo.”
On the way home, Bucky scanned the horizon as a frown furrowed his brow. The clear blue sky seemed to be announcing that winter was still a long way off.
“Relax,” Dad said, noticing. “It’s definitely getting colder every week. I’m sure the snow will come right on schedule.”
“Yeah,” Bucky decided. “Alpine Meadows, here I come!”
They drove in silence for a few minutes. “How’s that kids Bible class coming along that you’re working with? Mom tells me you’re helping in Rachel Marie’s division.”
“Fine. I guess. The kids are so fidgety in there I wonder sometimes how much they get out of it.”
Dad smiled. “I suspect they pick up more than you think.”
“I suppose.”
“Your PowerPoint idea work out? With those music files you were going to stick in?”
“Yeah.” Bucky glanced at his shining new equipment perched on the back seat. “I’ve got to admit, it really has helped make the Bible more meaningful to me when I use it every weekend with those little kids. It’s like the pastor says – sharing the gospel makes it come alive.” He thought about Sam and his recent efforts to talk about Christ with him.
Dad looked over at his son but said nothing.
Two weeks passed. It looked like the snow was finally going to cooperate with Bucky’s plans.
“They open up tomorrow!” he heard a ski club member confide to a friend. “I heard it on the radio this morning. Heavenly Valley, Sierra Ski Ranch, Alpine Meadows, Squaw Valley – they’re all starting lifts this weekend.”
Bucky let out a small whoop. The weekend trip was on!
“What’s the celebration?” a voice at his elbow wanted to know.
He turned quickly. “Oh, hey, Lisa. Nothing, really. I’m just going skiing this weekend, that’s all.”
“Really? Got room for anybody else?”
Bucky reluctantly shook his head. “I’m going with my church pastor and his son. I’m afraid it’s a carful.”
Lisa paused for a moment, appearing to want to say something else.
He looked at her curiously. “Well?”
For once the self-assured girl seemed a little tentative. “I wanted to ask you if, that is, if you would think about maybe going to the school Christmas party with me. If you don’t have any other plans, that is.” Her words finished in a rush.
“Huh?” Bucky looked confused.
“The Christmas party,” she repeated. “Would you like to go?” She appeared to regain her usual confidence.
Bucky still didn’t understand. “I . . . guess so,” he stammered. “Sure. But . . .” His voice trailed off in embarrassment.
“What?”
He took a deep breath. “You just – kind of startled me. I guess I should have come and knocked on your door or something.” He blushed.
The perky girl put a hand on his arm. “You goof, it’s a reverse date. The girls are supposed to do the inviting. Didn’t you hear the announcement yesterday? Plus it was up on the school’s web site.”
“I guess not.”
“Well, how about it?” Lisa looked at him expectantly with a spot of color in her cheeks. “Now that you know I’m not out of line.” She added the last bit teasingly, her composure returning.
“I . . . sure, I guess.” Then he caught himself. “Wait a minute! When is it?”
“This Saturday night. Seven-thirty in the gym.”
“Oh,” Bucky grinned. “Sure. Saturday night’s OK. What kind of a party is it?”
“Oh, you know, the usual. Lots of snacks. Extremely loud rock and roll. Just like every other year.”
He nodded. “Sounds OK. Seven-thirty? Do I just meet you here or what?”
She laughed lightly. “Yeah, just meet me here. That would work.”
Bucky was still slightly dazed. “OK.” He looked down at her. So cute! “But remember, I’m going skiing the next morning. So you have to get me home early.”
She nodded cheerfully and moved away slowly. Bucky watched her retreating form. He found his pulse quickening with anticipation. It wasn’t until she turned the corner that reality hit: There’s going to be a lively discussion at home over this announcement!
Chapter Nine: Walking Off the Dance Floor
“I don’t know, Bucky. I just don’t know.”
The tall freshman had just finished telling Mom about the unexpected invitation to the Christmas party. Now she sat thoughtfully, twisting a lock of her auburn hair between her fingers.
“I guess we both knew this was one situation you were going to have to confront at high school,” she said at last. “If only – ”
“Mommy!” Rachel Marie’s plaintive voice from the upstairs corner bedroom interrupted her thoughts.
Mom rolled her eyes. “Let me guess. Another drink of water?” She got out of her chair and headed upstairs. “Don’t go away, mister,” she called over her shoulder. “I’m not done with you yet.”
A minute later she was back. “Ghosts,” she announced. “Every strange shadow in that child’s room is a ghost now.” She sat back down. “Kids are funny. I reminded her that Jesus would protect her, and she said, ‘I want you to!’”
Bucky waited.
“Where were we? Oh, the party.”
“It’s only a party,” Bucky pointed out. “Not dress-up. It’s not really even a date or anything.”
Mom still looked worried. “This is that same girl you mentioned noticing at registration, isn’t it?”
“Uh huh.”
She looked at him fondl
y. “Honey, it’s perfectly natural for you to be interested in girls; you’re nearly fifteen. Old enough to date. But this girl – Lisa, is it? – may or may not be a Christian. You might have absolutely nothing in common with her besides the fact that she’s awfully pretty.”
“And very nice. And smart. And . . . I like her,” Bucky asserted. “Mom, I can’t go to high school for the next four years and just sit at home every weekend watching TV with you and Rachel Marie. That’s not realistic.”
“You’re right,” she said helplessly.
“If we go out a couple of times and I find out that Christianity is a total non-starter for her, that she thinks it’s a huge joke, then that’ll be it. You know that.”
His mother nodded slowly. “Yes, I do. And I already realize that I can trust you to start deciding these kinds of things yourself. You’re almost a man now. But I want you to think about something: any girl you go out with is a candidate for a more serious friendship, and that could turn into a real problem later on.” Her voice softened. “I just want to spare you that, sweetheart. It’d be real hard to tell some girl, ‘Things have gone this far, and now they can’t go any farther.’”
Bucky stared into the flickering flames of the fireplace. Lisa was the kind of girl he could get seriously interested in; he knew that. He already had a major case of the tingles every time she walked by, and it was hard to imagine that she would be the kind who would mock his faith. But who knew?
He stood up at last. “Well,” he said, stretching his frame to its limit, “I think it’ll be OK. I’ll just go for a little while, keep it real casual, and get home early. I’m going skiing the next morning, remember?”
“That’s right,” Mom recalled. “Well, I’m sure things will be all right.” She stood on tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “Ouch! Somebody needs a razor!”
Saturday evening, Bucky dressed carefully for the party, trying on several shirts before deciding one was just the right shade of casual. He looked in the mirror critically, rubbing his cheek tentatively with his thumb. There was a sandpaper feel, he decided, grinning as he headed down the stairs.
“‘Bye, honey,” Mom smiled at him. “You’re just meeting at the gym?”
“Uh huh.” Bucky zipped up his blue ski jacket as he gave his bike pedals a spin backward. “I told you it was no big thing.”
“Well, take a Bible along and read John 3:16 to her.” Mom forced the teasing remark, giving him a little smile to show that the earlier fears had been laid to rest.
Waving quickly, he wheeled his way through the cold December air toward the school campus.
Lisa was waiting at the front entrance of the gymnasium, dressed in a new rose-colored outfit Bucky hadn’t seen before.
He smiled self-consciously. “Hey. How’s the party?”
“I just got here. But something in there smells awesomely good.”
The pair walked inside. Bucky noticed a small knot of students over in one corner and caught a glimpse of a match being struck. He looked away quickly. Seeing young people his own age smoking cigarettes still rankled him.
Lisa noticed his glance. She sniffed. “Smoking’s so dumb!” She shook her head impatiently. “My mom would ground me for a thousand years and then shoot me if I ever even tried a cigarette. It took her three years to quit.”
That’s good. Bucky made a mental note to tell Mom.
Together they made their way over to a table loaded with food. Bucky handed Lisa a paper plate before picking up one for himself.
“Wow, look at all this stuff!” He pointed at the piles of sandwiches and other goodies.
“Here,” she grinned, plopping a dainty sandwich onto his plate. “I want you to try these, Jill and I made them in home ec yesterday.”
He peered at it closely. “What is it?”
“I’m not telling. It’s my secret recipe.”
He grabbed a couple of them, hoping it wasn’t some variation of frog’s legs. Moving down the table, he loaded up with some potato chips, mini-pizzas, and a cupcake dripping with red frosting. Balancing two cups of punch on his plate, he motioned toward a small table on the far side of the gym. “How about over there?”
As they sat down, Bucky paused to admire the hastily constructed decorations. Streamers, Christmas balloons, and a huge evergreen tree had transformed the building. “Wow, you’d never know this was the gym.”
“Yeah, where we sweat out aerobics every week,” Lisa laughed.
Bucky was about to take a bite when he remembered grace. What should he do? Lisa was already munching on her tuna sandwich. He mentally rehearsed the line he knew he should use: “Do you mind if we say grace? We always do at my house.” Instead, he waited until she was looking away for a moment and silently said a hurried one-line prayer to himself, looking up quickly. Good! She hadn’t noticed.
He devoured the tasty snacks, a bit unhappy over his lack of courage. Lisa chattered amiably about cheerleading at last night’s football game and her mom’s new job. “You haven’t tried my new recipe,” she accused, noticing his uneaten sandwich. “Come on, or you’ll hurt my feelings.” She gave him a mock pout. He picked up the tiny hors d’oeuvre and took a careful bite.
“Well, what do you think? Am I a terrific cook or what?”
A loud insistent beat suddenly interrupted the conversation. A student rock band had taken its place on the stage, and an amateur version of a number one single, currently on Billboard’s Top 40 radio chart, filled the gymnasium.
Bucky turned back to Lisa, but conversation was nearly impossible. The amplified music was too loud.
She drank the last of her Christmas punch. “Look, they’re dancing!” Already a group of teens were filling the center of the gym floor and moving to the solid beat of the song.
Lisa hastily pushed her plate aside. “Come on,” she urged. “I love this song. Let’s go for it!”
There was a brief moment of hesitation. “I’m not really into it,” he managed weakly.
“Oh, come on. That’s what we’re here to do, par-tay.”
They moved out to the periphery of the floor and began to sidestep and dip to the hard beat of the hit. A host of old memories came flooding back to him as the band’s bass player pounded out the beat and shimmied through a scorching run between verses. He remembered a party at the end of sixth grade, just before he’d become a Christian. He hadn’t been particularly interested in girls at the time, but one had certainly seemed interested in him.
He remembered dancing with her, awkwardly at first, and then with growing confidence. “How old are you?” she had asked him after the second song, tossing her hair out of her eyes.
Even then he had been tall for his age. “Fourteen,” he lied.
“Me, too,” she grinned.
They had danced to a third song. Slower. And closer.
“Let’s go outside,” she had suggested afterward. Now Bucky remembered that feeling again, that rush of being overwhelmed. He looked up at Lisa, and saw a flushed, eager look in her eyes as they made casual contact. Earlier, she had just looked cute; now she looked downright sexy.
The drummer finished the song with a pounding flourish and a tight blast from all three guitars. The gym erupted with applause, and the band quickly launched into the second song of their set. Bucky colored visibly as the lead singer teasingly mouthed the sex-drenched lyrics. Couples knowingly sidled up to each other and began rocking and making suggestive moves to the beat. “Watch out for the teachers, you guys,” he heard one junior near him hiss. “They hate this ‘dirty dancing’ stuff.”
For a moment, despite his misgivings, Bucky began to emulate his peers on the dance floor. His cheeks were crimson but Lisa grinned happily as she slipped an arm around his waist and began bumping her hips against his upper thigh.
Suddenly he stopped. A memory, just a quiet thought, from something Pastor Jensen had said in church last month came to him. “What’s it all worth to you?” he had asked the congregation. “How much is Jesu
s worth to you when you have to make a tough decision? When your peers say, ‘Come on,’ but you know the Lord has a different path for you? What do you do when ‘holy’ stands mano y mano with ‘unholy’?”
He turned to Lisa, not knowing quite why, and said resolutely, “I can’t dance anymore. Not when it’s like this.”
She eased closer, not understanding. “Oh, come on. This is the easiest of all. Show me what you got, lover boy.”
“No!” He was more insistent this time.
Lisa sighed and turned back. “Big chicken!” She walked away from the gyrating action, looking back at him curiously.
Slowly the crimson flush receded from Bucky’s face. After the sultry hit came to a noisy conclusion, he motioned toward the exit. “Can we go outside for a minute?”
She nodded wordlessly and followed him toward the door. Once outside, Bucky took a deep breath of the cold night air and felt his self-assurance returning. Please, Lord, he breathed silently, help me to explain how I feel.
Still silent, the young girl next to him shivered slightly. “Didn’t you bring a coat?” he asked.
She shook her head in irritation. “Mom said she’d pick me up at ten. I didn’t figure on being outdoors.”
“Here.” He unzipped his jacket and put it around her shoulders.
Her face softened. “Thanks.”
The pair walked over to a picnic table and sad down next to each other. The sounds of a third hip-hop classic were coming through the open door of the gym, but its muted volume made normal conversation possible.
Bucky took a deep breath. “I’m sorry about what happened in there, but . . . I just don’t dance much now. It’s not really even a case of not knowing how; I don’t believe in it any longer.” There. It was out.
She looked at him. Her face held an expression he couldn’t interpret. “I don’t get it. You don’t believe in it? What do you mean?”
He kicked at a rock under his shoe. “I became a Christian a couple years ago, along with my mom. Ever since then, I’ve tried to live the way Jesus would want me to, and the kind of dancing the kids are doing in there, I just don’t think is something he wants me to do.”
Bucky Stone: The Complete Adventure (Volumes 1-10) Page 6