Holly's Heart Collection Three (26 page)
“What on earth?” I muttered to myself. And go, I did.
“You silly,” she said, hugging me. “What sort of letter is this?”
“A nutty one.”
“You can say that again.” She was giggling. When she calmed down, Andie said she was sorry, too. “I shouldn’t have called your stepbrazen a brat.”
“
Brousin,
” I said.
“Huh?”
“Forget it; I get the idea.” I laughed.
“So how’s the tutoring going?”
I used her skinny locker mirror to primp. “I’m actually learning some math, finally.”
Then a peculiar look crossed her face. “And, uh . . . how’re things with Sean?”
“We correspond pretty often. Why?”
“Just wondered.” I turned to look at her. Now she had a squirrelly sort of grin. “Guess I’ve been a jerk about that, too.”
“That’s okay.”
“What a waste of emotional energy,” she admitted. “Even if we do go separate ways in the future, we’ll always keep in touch, right? No matter what.”
“Always.”
She closed her door and hoisted her books over to her left arm. “Uh-oh.” She stared down the hall. “Guess who . . .”
I turned to see Zye Greene and Ryan Davis.
“It’s the Double-X Files,” she muttered.
“Aliens at school?” We laughed.
“Something like that,” she whispered. “Hey, did you hear? Ryan might be coming to our church youth group.”
“You’re kidding. Really?”
“Danny Myers invited him. Danny is trying to evangelize the entire Dressel Hills population, I think.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?” Suddenly I felt sick inside. I’d treated Ryan poorly. Just because I didn’t agree with his racial prejudice was no reason to reject him as a person. A person who was most likely struggling like the rest of us—probably searching for truth. Bold Danny had the right idea, whether Andie approved of it or not.
Now Ryan and Zye were coming our way.
“I wonder what they want,” I said.
“Well, I’m outta here,” Andie said, turning to leave. “I’m not hanging around to find out.”
I stood there for a minute. It was time I stopped being so rude to these guys. Sure they were upperclassmen, and yep, they’d humiliated Andie and me during freshman initiation, but they were human beings. Jesus had come to save them, too.
Zye stopped a few yards away to talk to another guy, and Ryan spotted Stan, who was fumbling around at his locker. The two of them stood there talking like old friends. Once, Stan glanced over at me, looking a little sheepish.
I headed for second hour, wondering what was going on. Were Ryan and Stan hanging out again? And if so, why hadn’t Stan told me this morning on the bus? Things were absolutely confusing.
During choir Andie and I sat together for the a cappella songs. We were forming a unified front against Jared Wilkins, who kept looking my way, trying to get my attention. By the time class started, I’d filled Andie in on his mystery note.
“Don’t do it,” she strongly urged. “Do
not
meet him for lunch. He doesn’t know a thing; I can almost guarantee it.”
“Paula says we can’t be sure,” I teased.
Andie opened the music folder, ignoring my comment. “There has to be a better way, you know, to find out who’s been writing those letters.”
“Will you help me?”
“Super sleuths to the rescue!” she said, laughing. Knowing she had agreed to join forces with me made the solving all the more intriguing. We would get to the bottom of all this. One way or another!
MYSTERY LETTERS
In algebra class Mrs. Franklin passed our homework back to us. I did a double take at mine. There was a big, red
A
, almost the way a grade school teacher would write it, high on the top of my paper. I’d missed only one problem.
After class I showed Andie. “Check it out.”
“Well, congratulations. The girl not only writes, she does math,” she joked.
We were headed down the hall when I noticed Ryan. He was standing in front of my locker, blocking it.
Andie took charge. “Excuse us, please!”
Ryan didn’t budge. He was looking at me like he wanted to talk.
“Oh, I get it,” Andie said. “You want some privacy.” She backed away, and Ryan smiled.
“Hey, wait up,” I called to her. Then, slowly turning, I looked at Ryan. “Mind if I open my locker?”
He stepped aside. “You know,” he began, “I think you should keep writing . . . a lot. You’re very good.”
“Thanks.” I thought he’d already said that earlier.
“Everyone’s talking about that one letter, uh, that mystery dude.”
I reached for my English notebook. “Yeah.” I laughed. “Even my homeroom teacher asked me about it.”
“So, like . . . who is it? Do you know?”
“Beats me. But I intend to find out.”
Ryan scratched his chin. “I bet I know someone who could help you with that.”
I shut my locker. “Who?”
Ryan ran his fingers through his mousy brown hair. “You’re lookin’ at him.”
“You?”
“Hey,” he said, holding up his hands. “It started out as a joke—Zye’s idea. But the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. Writing secret letters to a pretty editor. A real kick.”
I still couldn’t believe it. “Stan told me there was no way it was you.”
His eyebrows arched. “He said that?”
“Not exactly, but—”
“Well, Stan was the one who helped set it up,” he blurted. “He gave me your home address and all.”
“He did what?”
Ryan nodded. “Someone else helped, too. Someone who says he and you were close friends once.”
“Don’t tell me. Jared?”
“Looks like you’ve got at least two guys paying close attention these days.” He started walking with me.
Sean’s the only one who really matters,
I thought.
“You’re not mad, are you? I mean, it’s not so bad, is it, getting letters like that—from a secret admirer?”
I refused to lead him on. Wouldn’t be fair. By his smile and the way it looked like he was going to walk me all the way to fourth-hour class, it seemed as though he liked me.
Ryan began to explain. “For the past few weeks, I’ve wished I could do something to change your mind about me. I was a bigoted jerk about your friend Andie. Nobody can help who their parents are. Or their skin color.”
Was he apologizing for his prejudice?
He kept talking. “Another one of your friends has been talking to me about going to church. We’ve even discussed the creation of man and how we’re each made in the image of God. Wow, that struck me as real cool.”
My mind was still reeling. “Danny knows what he’s talking about.”
“You got that right. The guy knows the Bible upside-down . . . inside out.” Ryan’s eyes were shining. “Danny knows something else, too.”
I didn’t need to ask. It probably had something to do with Danny and me—how we’d been pretty close when I was back in seventh grade.
“I’ll say this,” Ryan continued, “whoever the guy in California is—the dude you’re writing to—well, he should be counting his blessings. ’Cause the guys back home are feeling shut out.”
“That’s nice of you,” I replied, deciding not to tell him it was none of his business about Sean.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jared and Stan hanging back, trying not to be seen. I turned and waved, and they fled.
I wanted to finish my conversation with Ryan before encountering the likes of either my brousin or my former first crush.
“More than anything,” I said, leveling with Ryan, “I’m glad you said what you did before about racial hatred. It’s a frightful, destructive thing, not only for the victim, but also for the person doing the hating. I’m glad you’ve had a change of heart, Ryan.”
The bell rang.
“You’re quite a girl,” Ryan said. He turned to leave.
Something in me wanted to tell him I would actually miss reading his creatively weird letters. But I watched him go in silence.
I wondered, as I took my seat in my next class, if I, too, had been prejudiced. Thinking back, I realized I’d sized up Ryan based on my emotions at the time. Shoot, I’d tuned him out last summer because of a pimple.
Sure, he’d shown despicable signs of racial prejudice, but what had I done to help him? It had never crossed my mind that I should invite him to church or have a serious talk with him about God’s plan for mankind.
I had messed up.
I met Jared before lunch. After quickly filling him in, telling him I already knew who my mystery writer was, I excused myself and went to the library. There, I found a quiet place. Alone.
Without being noticed, I pulled my tiny New Testament out of my backpack and found 2 Corinthians 12:9: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
Thank you, Lord
, I prayed from my heart.
Thanks for your grace. Please help me always remember what Ryan said today. Show me how I can help others. Not just my Christian friends, but others, too. Amen.
I pulled out my spiral notebook and began writing to Sean. He was anxious to hear about the success of my column. I’d have to remember to scan a copy of
The Summit
to email to him.
And there was something else very important, too. I wanted to share the Bible verse in Corinthians with him—the one that had made all the difference for me.
For
H
OLLY’S
H
EART
fans
everywhere, and especially—
Holly Allen
Holly Bradham
Holly Breuer
Holly Ferguson
Holly Holdren
Holly Loritts
Holly Pinkham
Holly Tang
Holly Weymouth
Hollie Zaborski
EIGHT IS ENOUGH
Not every girl finds out exactly one month before her fifteenth birthday that her mom’s going to have a baby. But that’s what happened at my house.
During Sunday dinner on January 14, somewhere between meat loaf passing and potato mashing, my stepdad sprang the news on us. By us, I mean my ten-year-old birth sister, Carrie, and our four stepsiblings, who were also our blood cousins. Their dad, my uncle Jack, married Mom after Dad’s sister, Aunt Marla, died.
Anyway, Stan, sixteen; Phil, eleven; Mark, ten; and the present baby of the family—Stephanie, age eight—and Carrie and I had totally different reactions to the bundle-from-heaven alert.
“This is so-o cool!” Carrie said. “If it’s a baby girl, I’m gonna start practicing my baby-sitting skills right away.”
Mark crossed his eyes. “It better not be a girl. We’ve got enough females around here!”
“Three girls and three boys,” Carrie reminded him. “We’re even Steven.”
Stephie sat next to Carrie, pouting, probably not entirely because of Mark’s comment. After all, she did hold the “baby spot” in our blended family, and by her frown I figured she wasn’t ready to relinquish it anytime soon.
“If it’s a boy,” Phil said, “I’ll be teaching him to figure square roots long before he can walk.”
Uncle Jack leaned his head back and laughed. “Who knows?” he said. “Maybe we
will
have another genius in the house.”
Stan didn’t say much. Neither did I. As far as I was concerned, this baby news was bad news. The house was already crammed to capacity with six kids. There was absolutely no room for another body around here, pint-sized or not!