“Your mama’s teaching you well,” he chuckled as he walked in.
I started to follow him inside, but then I heard an unwelcome voice that made me pause.
“Suck-up,” Ethan sneered as he approached the door. “Think kissing the coach’s ass means he’ll put you in the starting lineup this year, Carter?”
I felt my heart rate pick up and I clenched my hand into a fist as I remembered what Darla and her friends had told me about how he acted toward them in homeroom this morning. And now he was trying to harass me and a teacher too? Nope. This little twerp needed to be taken down a peg or two.
I let go of the door handle and cleared the distance between me and Ethan in two strides, gripping his shoulders and backing him up against the wall.
“Did you miss the lesson in youth group about respect and kindness last week, Ethan?” I bit out.
“Pussies don’t deserve respect,” he scoffed.
Had I been this much of an asshole when I was a freshman? I mean, I remembered being insecure and feeling like plankton on the social food chain here for a little while, but I never remembered being this cruel to people in an attempt to fit in.
“Everyone deserves respect,” I spat. “That includes Mr. Lively, and it includes Darla and her friends. I hear about you giving her, Kate, and Ashton any more trouble, and you and I are going to have problems. Do we understand each other?”
“Little Miss Goody Two-Shoes starts spending her time with faggots, and I’m the one you have a problem with?” he growled. “God hates faggots!”
“Might want to brush up on your Scripture, Smith,” I chuckled dryly. “Check out the Gospels, and you’ll find that Jesus never said a single word about homosexuality or transsexuality. But you know what He did say? Treat others how you want to be treated. So, unless you want what goes around to come back around to you, stay the hell away from Darla and her friends. Are we clear?”
“Whatever,” he muttered, shoving me so hard that it made me stumble backward.
Damn. For a freshman, the dude was built like a tank.
He stormed into the classroom, and I took a few deep breaths before following.
Well, it looked like trying to talk some sense into Ethan had done more harm than good. I really hoped I hadn’t ended up making things worse for Darla, Kate, and Ashton.
But I’d do whatever it took to make sure he – and everyone else – got the message loud and clear.
Anyone who messed with Darla Jones or the people she cared about was messing with me too. And anyone who knew me knew that I stopped at nothing to protect the people I cared about.
Chapter 3
Brendan
Can’t Erase It
NINE DAYS LATER
The second I walked into the children’s room at church, my ears were assaulted by the godawful sound of the VeggieTales theme song. No joke, whoever came up with that stupid cartoon had to have been high. Who was the genius who said, “You know how we can teach Bible stories to the kids? Talking vegetables!” And who were the other geniuses who just went along with it?
“Darla!” Nathan squealed, jerking his hand out of mine and running over to the table she was sitting at.
She looked up from the pile of pipe cleaners and beads in front of her and grinned at him. “Hey, Nate. How are you tonight?”
“We got to eat at McDonald’s! And I got this!” He proudly showed off the miniature platypus Beanie Baby that had come with his Happy Meal.
“That’s so cool! Do you know what that is?”
“It’s a purple duck. But they messed it up ‘cause it has four feet.”
She chuckled. “Nope. It’s actually a platypus.”
“What’s a pattypuss?”
I smiled as I took the seat on her other side. She had the patience of a saint with the little kids here. Most of the other kids in youth group just pretended to volunteer with the kids’ program on Wednesday nights so they didn’t have to go into the adult service, but Darla actually loved helping out with them. She worked with Peter – who had doubled as the children’s minister ever since the church had to lay off the guy who used to have that job last year – to come up with crafts that related to the lesson every week, and she never acted annoyed or bothered when the kids tried to talk to her.
“Platypuses are funny,” she said. “The only place in the world that they live in nature is Australia. They’re mammals with fur and they have a tail like a beaver, but they hatch from eggs like birds and they have webbed feet and their heads look like a duck. And they’re poisonous.”
“They’re poisonous?” I asked. “I didn’t know that.”
“Yep,” she giggled. “I think God was done making the rest of the animals and had a bunch of spare parts left over, so He just threw them all together and made something new. And He put it in Australia, because that’s where all the rest of the weird animals are, like kangaroos and koalas.”
“What about kangaroos and koalas?” her friend Naomi asked as she sat down at the table.
“I was just telling Nathan about how platypuses live in the same place as kangaroos and koalas. Nate, show Naomi your cool new toy,” Darla said.
Nathan held up his little platypus again, and Naomi smiled at him.
“Cute! Does it have a name?” she asked.
“Brendan said the tag says ‘Patty,’ but I don’t like that name,” he grumbled.
“Well, why don’t we come up with another name for it?”
I turned to look at Darla while Naomi and Nathan started chatting about possible names for that little three-inch purple platypus that was probably going to end up under his bed, never to be seen again, by tomorrow. She was beaming at my brother, and it made me melt a little seeing it. I knew she didn’t have a fake or insincere bone in her body, so I knew that the affection in her gaze right now was genuine. She loved him almost as much as I did.
Damn it. Thinking about how much I loved watching Darla interact with Nathan wasn’t going to help me reign in the feelings that had been threatening to drown me since the moment I’d acknowledged them.
“Is he really the first kid here?” I asked, desperate to distract myself.
“Yep,” she sighed, looking at me. “I’ll probably save this craft for next week if it just ends up being him and the twins. I can just color with them tonight.”
“And waste all those pipe cleaners and beads?” I teased.
“Good thing they won’t go bad.”
“What were they going to turn into?”
She grabbed a cross made out of pipe cleaners and blue, green, and teal pony beads out of her purse, then produced a spool of yarn. “Peter was going to teach about John 3:16 tonight, so I was going to have them make cross necklaces.”
“He would have loved that. He’s always saying he wants a necklace like mine, but there’s no way we’re letting him anywhere near nails,” I chuckled.
“Nails?” she asked.
I pulled the leather strap out of my shirt collar, showing her the cross necklace made out of steel nails wrapped together with silver wire that my Aunt Claire had made for me. My Uncle Paul worked in construction, so she’d taken some nails, dulled them down, and wrapped wire around them to make crosses, then put them on leather straps for all the men in the family last Christmas.
“That’s so cool!” Darla gushed. “Now I want to make something like that. Not that I’d do it with the kids. Pretty sure the parents wouldn’t like me giving their children access to pointy objects.”
“I can’t take credit for it. My Aunt Claire gave this to me a few Christmases ago,” I said as I let it fall back against my chest. “I’m nowhere near that crafty.”
“I am,” she chuckled. “I love working with wire. That’s why I like doing pipe cleaner projects with the kids so much.”
“Wire? Really?” I asked, curious what in the world she’d make out of wire.
“Yeah.” She held up her arm, which was sporting a bracelet that looked like silver wire wrapped
around real turquoise beads. “This is just wire and turquoise. I’ve made tons of stuff like this.”
Before I could say anything about how talented she was – because, no joke, my mom would have paid good money for jewelry that looked like that – the door opened, interrupting our moment, and Ethan Smith walked into the room. I groaned under my breath.
Jesus, give me strength, I prayed.
“Surprised they’re still letting you around the kids, Darla,” he taunted. “Or don’t their parents know that you spend all your time with gays?”
Oh, hell no. Not here. Not in church, in front of my four-year-old brother.
I rose from my chair so quickly that I knocked it over and stalked over to him, clearing the distance in four strides and backing him against the wall. He stared me down like it was a contest, wearing a smug smirk. How in the hell did his parents tolerate this kind of behavior? Or did they really not know how he acted when they weren’t watching him?
“You’re going to want to watch that smart mouth of yours,” I growled quietly. “I thought I made that clear. Or do you have a hearing problem?”
“What? Upset I called your little girlfriend out on her un-Christian behavior?” he goaded.
My blood started to simmer in my veins and it took every ounce of self-control I possessed not to punch that self-righteous smirk right off his face. But even if I were the type of person to get physical – which I wasn’t – this wasn’t the time or place for it, and I knew that.
“A, Darla’s my friend, not my girlfriend,” I snapped. “B, the only un-Christian behavior I see in this room is yours, because you seem to have forgotten the part where we’re not supposed to judge. And C, my four-year-old brother is in the room. Maybe this is completely acceptable behavior in your house, but you’re at church, in case you’ve forgotten. In the children’s service, no less, and I’m positive the parents would object to you behaving like this around their kids.”
The sound of the door opening again pulled my attention away from the confrontation, and Peter and Marie’s eight-year-old identical twins, Daniel and Dawson, ambled into the room, followed by their parents. I took a deep breath and stepped back from Ethan, and Peter looked back and forth between us, raising an eyebrow.
“Everything all right here, guys?” he asked.
“Yep,” Ethan said, smirking again.
“Other than him harassing Darla and teaching Nate a new word, yeah,” I clipped out, still suppressing the urge to hit something.
“A new word?”
“What? I just think parents have a right to know that the sweet, innocent girl teaching crafts hangs out with gays,” the little punk sneered.
“Ethan, go to the main service,” Peter instructed.
“Are you serious? She’s the one who hangs out with gays!” he exclaimed.
“In case you’ve forgotten, Jesus commanded us to love one another. That includes people who are different from us. As far as I’m concerned, she’s doing as the Lord instructed. You, on the other hand, have absolutely no business speaking like that in front of impressionable young children. Now, you can either go into the main service yourself or I’ll personally escort you there. Your choice.”
“Faggot lovers,” he muttered under his breath as he turned and left the room.
My jaw ticked and I balled my hand into a fist, wishing I was somewhere where I could just let it fly. I really, really hoped Nathan hadn’t heard that word. “Gays” was easy enough to explain away to him as “happy people.” “Faggot”? Not so much.
“Brendan, why don’t you go get some air?” Peter said.
“I’m fine,” I grunted.
“I know. But I still think you should get some air for a few minutes. Nate’s fine. He’s watching VeggieTales. I’m going to regroup and teach a lesson about how Jesus taught us to love everyone, and I’ll talk to Ethan’s parents after the service,” he told me.
I nodded. “Okay. I’ll be back.”
Taking a deep breath to calm my jittery nerves, I headed out the door and toward the parking lot. My thoughts were going at a million miles an hour, but I couldn’t actually distinguish any of them…other than disgust toward Ethan for treating Darla that way. She’d done absolutely nothing to deserve it. She was the kindest, most soft-spoken, and most beautiful girl in the world, and for some reason, he’d decided to single her out as a target for his abuse and hatred.
I was so lost in my own thoughts that I didn’t even notice Pastor Jones approaching me until I literally walked right into him.
“Crap,” I muttered. “I’m so sorry, Pastor Jones. I didn’t see you there.”
“You and I need to have a talk, Mr. Carter,” he said sternly.
Wait, what? What had I done wrong? Other than stop Ethan from teaching hateful language to a bunch of kids? With his conservative views, I was sure—
Oh, shit. If Ethan had gone straight to Pastor Jones as retaliation for my standing up to him, that meant he knew about Darla’s new friends now. And I had a feeling he’d be furious with her for making friends with anyone who was different.
But I couldn’t say that out loud. If that wasn’t what this was about, I couldn’t betray Darla’s trust by inadvertently telling him about it. She needed to know that she could trust me. That even if no one else in this church understood her befriending Kate and Ashton or supported her, I did.
“What can I do for you, sir?” I asked politely.
“You and my daughter seem to have gotten pretty friendly recently,” he said, like he was accusing me of something.
Damn it. It wasn’t about Ethan’s stunt. It was about something much worse. Something that, despite how hard I’d been trying, I couldn’t control. Every time I looked at Darla, every time I talked to her, my feelings toward her only got stronger and deeper. It was taking everything in me to do the moral and right thing and keep things platonic with her when everything in me wanted so much more.
“We’ve been friends for a long time, sir,” I choked out.
“She may be attending the same school as you now, Mr. Carter, but Darla has the mind of a child. She doesn’t understand how the world works, or what certain people’s expectations of her are. You’d do well to remember that, and to keep your distance from her. Remember what the Lord said in the Book of Matthew. ‘But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.’”
I was too stunned to respond, so, with a parting glare, he walked away, and I was left with my head spinning.
The mind of a child? Was he serious? Darla had always been one of the smartest people I knew. She’d shared her class schedule with me at lunch on the first day of school, and she was in all honors classes. She most definitely did not have the mind of a child. Was she sheltered and maybe a little naïve? Yes, of course, but that had to do with her upbringing, not with her lack of understanding or comprehension.
So why on Earth was he trying to get me to believe that someone I’d known for basically my entire life was incompetent? Did he actually think that I’d just take what he told me at face value and not question it? And why had he just threatened me in an attempt to get me to stay away from her? I could read between the lines and pick out the unspoken threat in that Bible verse.
Was it just because he didn’t want her dating? He clearly thought being around me would make her sin, and there was one glaringly obvious thing I could think of that he’d want to prevent her from doing now that she was attending a public high school. Maybe he thought he could prevent it by telling any boys who seemed to be interested in her that she wasn’t mentally competent. It was a stupid plan, because anyone who’d known her for longer than two seconds would know he was lying, but it only had to make sense to him.
Or was there something much worse at play here?
“Brendan? Everything okay?” Heather asked as she walked up next to me.
I sh
ook my head slightly, trying to make the uneasy feeling in the pit in my stomach go away. “Yeah. Everything’s fine.”
She chuckled. “Want to try that again?”
“Pastor Jones just told me to stay away from Darla and basically threatened to hurt me if I didn’t listen,” I sighed.
“Wow,” she scoffed. “Because we’re totally living in the eighteenth century.”
“I mean, I know she’s younger than me. I’m not an idiot. But we’ve been friends for years. So why is it all of a sudden an issue?”
“Because she’s in high school now. And public high school, at that. He knows she’s going to be exposed to a lot more stuff there. Like, you know, the mandatory sex ed that we all had to take in ninth grade. And the reproduction unit in bio,” she sighed. “He’s always been a drill sergeant with her. We’ve all seen it. That’s nothing new.”
“Yeah, but him threatening her friends to try to keep them away from her is,” I pointed out. “I don’t know. I’m worried about her.”
“I get that. I think we all are. But we have to trust that she’d say something if she was in trouble,” she said. “Anyway, you coming in to help with the kids?”
“Yeah. I left Nate in there watching VeggieTales. I have to make sure he knows it’s still okay to eat his vegetables,” I mumbled as we started to walk back toward the building.
“Oh, my God. I swear, after last week, I had ‘God Is Bigger Than the Boogieman’ stuck in my head for like three days straight,” she giggled. “I wanted to throttle whoever wrote that stupid song.”
I laughed. “Nate’s favorite right now is ‘Oh, Where Is My Hairbrush?’”
“Okay, that’s worse. You win,” she snickered. “So, how was the first football practice?”
“It was okay. I’m never going to be good enough for a scholarship or anything, but it’s fun.”
“If more guys looked at it like that, jocks might not get such a bad rap,” she sighed.
“How was cheerleading practice?” I asked.
“Not too bad. Mostly just stretching and warmups today.”
My Vows Are Sealed (Sealed With a Kiss) Page 4