Looking for Cassandra Jane (The Second Chances Novels) (14 page)

“Yeah.” He nodded. “That’s when I first started drinking, you know, celebrating after the games.”

“Well, Jim, I hope you do what
you
want to do—not just what your mom wants you to do. We’ve got to be real and become our own people, you know. In the end, that’s all we’ve really got, anyway.”

He held up his coffee mug as if to make a toast. “Yeah, here’s to becoming our own people.”

I grinned as I clicked my cup against his.

Eleven

R
eturning to Brookdale High
wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d anticipated that day when I’d sat with Suzy out on the Crowley’s front porch. My friendship with Jim proved a real icebreaker during those first few days. And while we weren’t exactly dating, I sensed the relationship was building into something more. But by the end of the week Jim announced that he’d decided to go out for football.

I don’t know exactly why this disturbed me so greatly, but it did. I asked him if it was because of his mom, but he insisted it was just something he wanted to do and the coach had agreed to let him come try out even though the team had been practicing for a month already. Naturally Jim made the team—he was actually pretty good. I figured this meant he and I would be history now. And wasn’t it handy that Sally Roberts was a varsity cheerleader? She’d be right out there on the fifty-yard line jumping and screaming for him to S-C-O-R-E at every single game.

But during the second week Jim still showed no interest in Sally Roberts and continued to seek me out at lunchtime and after school. Toward the end of the week he asked me if I was coming to his first game. “Sure,” I said, wondering why, since I’d never really liked football that much before.

His eyes lit up. “And then afterwards maybe we can go out for a bite to eat.”

“Sure,” I said again, halfway expecting him to change his mind by then, mentally preparing myself to see Sally Roberts hanging on his arm after the game. I went to the game and watched the Brookdale Bullets narrowly defeat the Harris Cowboys, cheering for Jim from the stands, and to my surprise almost enjoying it.

Afterwards I stood outside the locker room (along with a bunch of other girls—none of whom spoke to me) waiting for Jim to come out. I must confess, I felt silly and out of place and almost left before Jim came out and even then I felt stupid and self-conscious and didn’t know if I could do this again. But then we went out for pizza and when I was with Jim people treated me like I really was someone. Even though that was a welcome change I didn’t like thinking that the only reason they were nice to me was because of him. The whole thing troubled me a lot.

The weirdest thing about that evening was when several kids who were well known as “Jesus freaks” came over to our table and started trying to evangelize us. I knew that some of these kids were the same ones Joey had hung out with last year but I pretended not to recognize them. Finally one of them, a tall, gangly boy, pointed his finger right at me. “Aren’t you Cass Maxwell, Joey Divers’s friend?”

Well, I couldn’t very well say no, so I just nodded mutely.

“Oh, go on, you guys,” said Jim good-naturedly. “Go on and convert someone else tonight.”

“Joey Divers had us all praying for you last spring,” said the guy, with an earnest look in his eyes. “Hey, Sara, Mitch, you guys,” he called over his shoulder. “Remember how we were all praying for that Cass Maxwell chick last spring? Well, this is her—she’s right here!”

And then about five of them came over and stood before our table, all staring at me as if I were some sort of sideshow freak in a circus.

“You guys need to just lay off,” said Jim, suddenly standing up. A couple of the other football guys at our table stood too.

I instantly felt a mixture of gratitude and shame. Grateful and proud that Jim was standing up to defend me, but embarrassed that I was spurning these religious friends of Joey who had actually prayed for me. “You guys really prayed for me?” I said, surprising even myself.

“Yeah,” said the girl named Sara. “Joey was real worried about you. One day we all got together and prayed around the clock—all night too.”

“Really?” I said, feeling a strange little twist in my heart.

“Okay, that’s just great,” said Jim sarcastically. “Cass really appreciates your concern. Now can you just clear out of here and let us finish our pizza in peace?”

As they started to back off I looked up into their faces and said, “Thanks.”

“Man, what a bunch of jerks,” said Scott Taylor (one of Jim’s football buddies). “Those Jesus freaks are really starting to get out of hand.”

“Yeah,” said Jim. “But you gotta admire their nerve.”

“Nerve?” said a girl named Tammy. “Don’t you mean
nerd?”

Everyone laughed. Everyone but me.

Jim drove me home that night in his mom’s car, parking just down the street a ways from the Glenn’s house—as I’d asked him to do. “You okay, Cass?” he asked as we sat in the darkened car. “You seem pretty quiet tonight.”

I shrugged. “I guess I’m just feeling a little out of place and trying to figure some things out.”

He slipped his arm around my shoulders and slid me over next to him. “That’s one of the many things I really like about you, Cass. The way you give me an honest answer and think about things more deeply than other girls.”

I turned and looked into his eyes—I could feel his breath on my face and suddenly felt a strange but not unpleasant shiver run through me. “It’s the only way I can be,” I said softly.

He pulled me closer and then covered my mouth with his in a long, slow, intense kiss. And then just as slowly he pulled back and a pleased smile crept over his lips. “Was that okay?” he asked.

I sighed. “Actually it was better than okay.” And then we kissed some more, and by the time I got out of his car I no longer remembered exactly what it was that had been upsetting me earlier.

All I knew was that out of all the boys who had kissed me before (and there’d been a few) no one had ever made me feel quite like that. And while the feeling was warm and wonderful and amazing, it also struck me that it was just slightly dangerous. Still I refused to think about that. I would only remember the comfort and security of being gathered into his arms—and that kiss!

Jim and I dated steadily for the next several weeks. And it was blissful, mostly. But the pressure was building between us. Before long Jim was pushing me to have sex with him. And I was considering it too. Why shouldn’t I? Everyone else was doing it. And who cared what I did? My daddy was in prison. My mama and grandma were dead. I was nothing more than a live-in maid to my foster parents. And it seemed my only real friend in the entire school was Jim, and other than this sex thing it seemed we’d been getting along just fine. So why not give in? It’d probably be fun.

But still something deep down within me—like this quiet, urgent voice—kept warning me not to. Was it God? Was it me? Was it the ghost of my long-lost mama? Or maybe it was just the memory of my old friend Bryn, who’d gotten into trouble not that long ago.

Finally I felt like I might actually be going crazy—didn’t they lock up people who heard voices? Okay, so it wasn’t an actual voice, but it seemed pretty real just the same.

And then one afternoon at school, between choir and geometry, I just totally lost it. I ran into the girls’ rest room and locked myself in a stall and sobbed quietly.
What should I do?
I kept asking myself—or maybe I was praying—I’m still not sure. But the next thing I knew, I heard a voice from above. And I looked up to see a head of blonde curls bending down over me.

“Are you okay?” asked the girl hanging over the side of the bathroom stall.

I recognized her as one of the Jesus freaks who’d confronted us at the pizza restaurant that night after the game. I just shook my head.

“Want to talk?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re already late for seventh period. I’ve got a car—we could just skip.”

“Skip?” I looked at her incredulously. “I thought you were supposed to be a Jesus freak.”

She laughed. “Just because I believe in Jesus doesn’t mean I’m perfect.” She tossed back the hair from her eyes. “And besides, Jesus might rather I spent time with you than snooze through biology. So how about it? Wanna go talk?”

“Sure. Why not?”

Her name was Sara Hanson and she drove a yellow Volkswagen bug. “My daddy got this for me on my seventeenth birthday,” she said as she slipped it into gear and pulled out of the school parking lot. “He’s just so glad that I’ve finally straightened out.” She laughed. “I used to be really screwed up. I was into drugs and boys and whatever trouble I could find. But then I found Jesus and now I live for him.”

“You were into drugs?”

She nodded. “Yeah, what a mess. And then we moved to Brookdale last year and these kids all started witnessing to me—especially Joey—”

“Joey Divers?”

“Yeah. In fact he’s the one who really got to me. He’s really smart and what he said made sense. And finally I just decided to give it a try. And well, here I am.”

She parked her bug down at the park and we sat there and talked for a long time. I told her all about Jim and how he was the only friend I had and I thought I might be in love with him, but I just wasn’t sure that I was ready for sex. It’s funny, I never told her about the voices at that point or the other things that had been confusing me. Instead we just talked about sex and she told me why she believed that Jesus had told her to stop having it. “I know it sounds strange,” she said, “but I really believe that Jesus wants me to love him with all my energy. Now that doesn’t mean that I’m having sex with him. I mean that would be pretty twisted, wouldn’t it? But it’s like I’m supposed to love him with all of me, and I can’t do that very well if I’m having sex with every guy who comes along.”

I’d never heard anyone say anything like that before. It sounded slightly fanatical, but it sort of made sense too. “So will you ever have sex then?”

She laughed. “Sure. At least I think so. But not until I get married. And I feel really sure that Jesus has some guy all picked out for me to marry. I’m thinking it might even be Joey Divers.”

“Really?” A strange jolt of jealousy ran through me, but I quickly dismissed it.

“Yeah, I think I’ll go to the university too.”

“Is that where he’s at?”

“Yeah. He got a full scholarship there. He’s such an academic.”

I nodded, fighting the lump that was growing in my throat. “I know. He used to be my best friend.”

“I thought you must’ve been pretty special to him. I mean why else would he ask us all to pray for you night and day like that?” She studied me closely. “Were you his girlfriend?”

I forced a laugh. “No, nothing like that. We were always just friends. Good friends.”

“That’s good. We should all be good friends. That’s what Jesus wants.” She reached over and touched my arm. “But how about you, Cass? Don’t you want to give your heart to Jesus too?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“I think you do. I think that’s why you’re thinking about all these things and getting so frustrated. I think it’s just because Jesus is reaching out to you—calling you to himself.”

I had the strangest sensation just then. Not exactly like when I went forward at church, but similar. A compulsion really. It’s as if I couldn’t resist, or maybe I just didn’t want to anymore. “You know Sara, you may be right. You see, I sort of gave my life to God last summer, but then everything just fell apart and I figured God had let me down and so I think I sort of reneged on him, if you know what I mean.”

“I know. But sometimes even when things are looking totally hopeless, we just need to keep trusting him anyway—and then he just turns everything around. But he can’t help you if you don’t let him, Cass. And he can’t show you which way you’re supposed to go if you just keep pushing him away from you. He wants to be your best friend, you know. You wouldn’t just push your best friend away now would you?”

I didn’t tell her I hadn’t had much experience with best friends as a rule (well, other than Joey—and I suppose in some ways I did push him away, eventually). “I don’t know.”

“Well, I know you wouldn’t. You seem like a good person to me, Cass—not that it matters ’cause Jesus takes us no matter how bad a shape we’re in. But I think if you really gave your heart to him—well, I think you’d be true to him.”

And for the second time that day I began to cry. “I don’t usually act all soppy like this,” I sputtered. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me today—I wonder if I’m going nuts or something.”

Sara just laughed. “It’s Jesus touching your heart, Cass. Just sit here real quiet for a minute and see if you can’t feel him touching you now.”

And so we just sat in silence in her little car parked down by Oak Grove Park where the trees’ leaves had all turned brown and red and gold and I tried to see if Jesus was really touching my heart like she said he was. And to be honest I truly think he was, and so right then and there I silently asked Jesus to really come into my heart. And it was as if this heavy load was instantly lifted from me. Finally after a long while I turned and told Sara, almost afraid to speak and risk losing what seemed to be going on in me. And she was so happy she hugged me.