Caleb + Kate (11 page)

“For Arbor Day, perhaps?”

“As a matter of fact, yes, for Arbor Day.”

“And you dug the hole and planted the tree completely?”

Her mouth opens and then shuts with a frown, both pouty and sweet. “I tossed in a few shovels of dirt for the photographer.”

“Like I said, ready to plant your first tree?”

“Give me that shovel,” she says.

Friendship with Kate Monrovi isn't a good idea. Something more than friendship would be disastrous. No longer do I resort to disparaging thoughts about her to keep my distance. That's not the right way to keep my feelings at bay. It's the easiest way, but not the right way. We plant the tree together, and I'm fighting with this energy that ignites between us. It's like being possessed. How can this girl get into my head and emotions so quickly? If she were anyone else on the planet, I'd believe she was exactly what I'm looking for—though I wasn't planning to find this “her” for another ten years at least.

After loading up the tractor, she says, “I have more questions. Can we talk? Maybe after work?”

There is something about her that sinks me in, like quicksand.

Temptation. Diversion. Kate could get me off track. I should stay far away. For so many reasons.

“I'm going into the city after work.”

“Oh.”

“Church,” I say, guessing she'll find that strange—and suddenly hoping she does. It would help me immensely if she were a Christian hater.

She frowns. “You're going to church tonight?”

I nod. “Why, want to come?”

The expression on her face is classic deer in the headlights. I almost laugh. Kate Monrovi at church—at my church—would be even more humorous.

“Okay.”

She said okay
? I act like this isn't shocking.

“Should I drive?” she asks.

Several hours later, I'm driving Finn's old jeep up to the employee entrance of the inn. I text Kate—we now have one another's numbers—and she comes out a few minutes later. Her feet pause when she sees the jeep that is minus doors and a top. There's a worried look on her face as she pulls herself up.

Kate's been game for pretty much everything so far. I wonder if she's always like this. After buckling her seat belt, she pulls out a rubber band from inside her purse and ties her hair into a thick ponytail.

“Let's just hope it doesn't rain,” I say, trying to soothe the awkwardness that I feel every time I first see her.

“So next question. My dad said you and your family came here on vacations.”

I nod. I don't want to go down this path.

“Have we ever met before?”

“It's going to get loud on the freeway, we won't be able to talk.”

“Okay.” But there's disappointment in her tone.

I can see she isn't one to be distracted from her Q&A. Do I lie when she asks again? Or do I tell her about my eight-year-old crush on her? We were here for two months that summer. I saw Kate often from a distance. She didn't play with the guests.

One day at the beach, Mom brought a pack of buckets and shovels for me to build a sand castle until Dad came down with the wet suits and boards.

My castle was partway built and a masterpiece in my eight-year-old mind. Then I noticed a little girl about my age with a wild mane breezing behind her as she ran for the beach. She kicked off her shoes and raced for the waves, screaming when the first one hit her toes. I was fascinated by her long blonde hair and perfect white skin.

Kate's older sister looked like a movie star; she had an entourage carrying her lounge chair, an umbrella, and delivering drinks to her. She shouted for someone to get Kate and put sunscreen on her—that was how I learned her name.

While I was watching her, a wave grabbed my green shovel. I didn't notice until I watched Kate race into the water, trying to reach it. Her sister screamed and hotel staff went running. Kate sank into a wave at the same time someone scooped her up. I remember people standing up to make sure the little girl was okay.

She sputtered and cried for a moment, and I saw the green shovel in her hand. After a scolding from her sister, Kate ran over and handed me the shovel.

“
Mahalo
. Thanks,” I said. “Want to build a castle with me?” Her sister called her and looked at me like I was a grubby little boy from the wrong side of the tracks.

“Stay over here, don't play with him,” she said to Kate.

“But he said I can help with his sand castle.”

“I said to stay here.”

We played separately the rest of the day casting occasional glances at each other. When I went out on my board, I wanted to impress her. She waved good-bye when her sister took her up the stairs.

Over the years, I would sometimes see her when we came for a visit. Once we walked by one another and she gave me the polite friendly smile she probably gave every hotel guest. There was no light of recognition that we were the children who'd almost built a sand castle together.

What would Kate say if I told her this story? I decide that I won't tell her. She'd feel badly that her sister treated me like that. If she'd remembered me, she wouldn't have asked if we'd met before. Such connections are best kept to ourselves.

In trying to get out of a mess, I quickly get myself in deeper. But wasn't it the good Christian thing to bring people to church? Yeah, the best intentions always sank with excuses like that.

KATE

If he'd asked me to smoke meth with him, I would have been less shocked than I am that Caleb has invited me to church. Church?

I've only known the guy one day—not even an entire day— but I felt I had him pretty well pegged. Bad boy, fighter, trouble, hero, flirt, surfer guy—which added up to him most likely being a player. He's even successfully avoided answering if he was seeing someone. He's good.

I did not expect church.

For one, it totally shocks me that Caleb goes to church at all, let alone that he was going tonight on his own. Then we arrive at his church, and it makes more sense. The congregation looks like a mixture of people from a music festival and a beach party. There are quite a number of people with tattoos, piercings, and motorcycle helmets under their seats. The pastor's arms are tattooed, which proves a bit of a distraction, I must admit.

Perhaps I'm a church prude, because I'm not sure what I think of all this. It's one thing to be around Monica or Oliver or various friends of mine who do whatever they want but don't attend church. Monica came to Sunday school with my family as a kid and sometimes claims to be a backsliding Christian, and Oliver says he's an obnoxious. I thought he meant agnostic, but he said, no, he's obnoxious to all forms of religion and spiritual enlightenment.

But these people here tonight are Christians. Not everyone is dressed like a biker; there's a number of hippie and rocker Christians, a group that appear to be rehab Christians, and finally one older couple who look like the Christians from my church. It's quite a mixture of ethnicity, style, and income.

Caleb introduces me to several people.

The music starts, and my skepticism fades. The mixture of people dissipates until they are united for this time, many with raised hands and some wiping tears from their eyes. I recognize a few songs from Third Day, POD, Jeremy Camp, and then Rich Mullens's “Awesome God.”

Our church attempts a few contemporary songs, but they inevitably turn out organ-based and churchy-sounding, with notes held too long and the tempo reduced to a snail's pace.

Caleb looks surprised when I know the words to many of the songs. He actually frowns when I turn to Colossians in the Bible—I brought a Bible from Dad's office, which Caleb stared at when I took it from my purse.

As we're standing in front of a couch—a frumpy, overstuffed couch—toward the front of the stage, suddenly Caleb hops up between songs and walks onto the stage. He hasn't warned me. He takes up a guitar on the stand and joins in the next worship song. I can't stop staring. At his fingers, at the way he looks with that guitar in his hands. He looks up at me and he's playing and staring and I think something in me just melted away into nothingness.

After the worship is over, Caleb returns and we say nothing to each other, we don't even look at each other.

The message—which is quite difficult to concentrate on because of Caleb beside me—is about the love of God. How God's love is greater than we can conceive. How we put limits on his grace and love, wanting everything to be safe by having rules to live by, works to measure our successes.

It's not exactly a new message. But the bits I hear strike me in a unique way. My parents have taken my sister, brother, and me to church since we were born. Our sermons are directly from the Bible, and everyone dresses in respectable attire. We grew up going to Sunday school and weekday Awana clubs. My sister never cared to explore a relationship with God, to even consider it possible. My brother was the Jesus boy for years, but lately, I see him tugged more into secular life. I know my faith withered considerably when one of our pastors had an affair, and I realize that it was about the same time I decided true love didn't exist. Perhaps there was some correlation there.

The tattooed pastor says, “The root of love is God. It doesn't matter who we are or what we believe. This is the core of life itself, whether we choose to believe it or not.”

On the drive home with the music rumbling bass through our backs from the speakers behind us, I skim over the texts I've received from my friends. Monica is annoyed that she again can't find me. I turn off my phone without replying. All the chatter gets old. The perpetually urgent news and scandals.

I settle further back into the seat, the music, and stare at the darkened road lit by the headlights. Caleb and I haven't spoken much since church ended. There's something unspoken between us that I can't quite put my finger on.

Maybe it was the message. About God being the core, the root of love. How does it all fit together with real life?

CALEB

This entire day could only be described as strange. At least, that's the word I'm sticking with.

We drive back with Red Hot Chili Peppers, one of their early albums, in the CD player. I give her my old leather jacket and a blanket from the back of the jeep, and I find it endearing that she tries hiding the fact that she's shivering.

At a stoplight, I ask, “Need anything? Coffee? Food?”

“I would, but I forgot about homework,” she says. “They don't give us a break for prom weekend.”

I have a compulsion to smooth down her hair. It's sticking up in all directions and she's this mixture of adorable and vulnerable that I want to protect and consume at the same time. It doesn't matter who she is. She's Kate and I'm Caleb. Last names, families, bank accounts, none of it matters right now. Right now, we're cold and we just left a great church service. The music and message were solid, and with her beside me, there was a sense of perfect peace.

“You were surprised that I knew some of those songs,” she says when we pull up to the hotel. So she was thinking about church on the drive home too.

“I'm always surprised when heathens know worship songs.” She gives me a playful knock on the arm, and I can feel a lasting impression of her knuckles in my skin.

“You have a lot of preconceived notions about me,” she says, not moving from her seat as the jeep idles.

“Likewise. You were surprised I went to church at all.”

This girl has a strange power over me. We're bantering, but it's for fun—not to win, like with Finn or others. I would probably lose every fight with this girl.

She's smiling and her eyes connect with mine. “I not sure why you invited me or why I went, but I liked your church. It's just very different from my church.”

“What's your church like?”

“It's more . . . traditional.”

“That can be nice at times too.”

She nods. “I'll have to invite you sometime.”

“Act surprised when I bring my Bible.”

“I will, for sure.”

There's a moment of silence between us, which could be awkward, but isn't. Finally she says, “I guess we'll see each other at school tomorrow.”

This hits me like a slap to my face. School is reality. How will she and I act toward one another once I'm on her territory, in her elite world? I'll definitely be the odd guy there. How will we be who we are now, there?

“If you weren't my official student escort, you'd probably be too stuck-up to talk to me.”

This strikes a nerve with her. “I can't believe you just said that.”

“You have to admit, it's true.”

“No, it isn't,” she says, sitting up in the seat.

“So how many guys like me have you dated?”

She stares a moment and shakes her head. “You're being unfair.”

“I guess I am, since I don't date girls like you.”

She gathers her things. “Thank you for letting me know. I don't consider this a date, so don't worry. Now as long as we both understand that, I guess we're good to go.”

I want to take it back, but now I'm feeling defensive, so I don't respond.

“I'm going now,” she says and before I can stop her, she's out of the jeep and gone.

Chapter Seven

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
(Act 3, Scene 2)

KATE

“Hello, my name is Kate Monrovi and I'm your student escort. Welcome to Gaitlin Academy—a school for tomorrow today.” I make myself smile, practicing this in my head, trying to decide if I should use it. Perhaps it will make him laugh and forget about last night's conversation.

“Hello, student escort Kate Monrovi, at your service.” Every one of my practiced lines sounds cheesier than the last. I'm trying to get from cheese to cuteness, and it's definitely not working.