Sway (12 page)

This display. Crap. I glance down at my sweater—my
red
sweater—and feel panic rise once again. My parents aren’t going to like it that I’m not wearing my signature pink. I open my purse to look for a scarf, a pair of earrings, a pin to fasten next to my heart. There’s nothing. My gaze drifts to the window. Nothing at all.

I take a deep breath before I ask the question. “Is there any chance you have something pink that I could throw on real quick? Like a glove? Or a hat?” It’s stupid and I can’t look at him while I ask it, so I stare straight ahead. Trees, flowers, and sterile concrete buildings sit idyll in front of me as though they haven’t a care in the world. I’m jealous of them.

I expect his laughter. I don’t expect his nonresponse. I glance over at him, but he’s still staring at me.

I frown. “Why are you looking at me like that?” He doesn’t answer; with his eyes locked on mine, he rolls the window down. The hum of distant conversation fills the car at the same time the color drains from his face. Still, he runs a hand through his hair and answers me.

“Check the glove box.” His voice is hoarse. “There might be a wristband that my friend Scott left behind one afternoon after we played basketball at the center. Don’t ask me why he chose that color. One of the many mysteries of being friends with that guy.”

I try to smile at his words, but there’s no humor in his voice. The wristband turns out to be red, the color mocking me once again. I close the hatch and lean back in my seat. It takes some work, but eventually I convince myself not to worry. I have more important things to think about than what color I’m wearing, like how Caleb will feel about this circus that is sometimes my life.

Much to my relief, he pulls the car forward again. My relief vanishes when—instead of accelerating—he turns into a parking space. I watch him lean forward, grip the steering wheel, and look at the crowd gathering in front of us. A faint alarm bell begins to ring in my head, but I have no idea why.

“Where’s my phone?” he asks. “Can you please hand it to me? They showed up a day early.” This time, his voice is lifeless.

Who showed up a day early?
I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I locate his phone on the ground under my seat—it’s fallen from the cup holder—and hand it to him. My heart nearly jumps out of my chest when I see the look on his face. His emotionless face hardens as he looks at his phone, punches a button, brings it to his ear, and stares out the window. I process all of this, yet I process nothing. He’s parked here, but I can’t figure out why. Before I have time to mull it over, he’s talking into the receiver.

“Man, don’t kill me…left it on vibrate in my car…yeah, I see them…maybe three, four dozen…yes, camera crews…anything we can do?” He tunnels a hand through his hair and it’s all I can do not to smooth it down for him. I just want him to smile again. “What did our lawyer say?”

At those words I forget about his hair as a sick feeling rolls through my gut…a feeling I don’t like but can’t begin to explain. He reaches for my hand and the figure eight starts again, almost desperate, the caress a reflection of his anxious demeanor. His look softens when he meets my eye. Somehow he manages to grin at me, a sad smile that clears away the frown lines between his eyebrows but does nothing to settle my racing heart. The car door opens and he climbs out, pausing in front of the truck to finish his conversation. Only thirty seconds or so pass before he hangs up and walks around to open my door.

Why is he opening my door?

With a quick glance around, I stand up to meet him and realize at that moment exactly how much I like this guy. He’s kind. He’s sweet. He’s the best looking man I’ve ever laid eyes on. And for a moment, that great-looking man’s gaze is locked on mine. I could swim in those eyes. Maybe even die in them.

Caleb kisses my forehead, then speaks against my skin. “We’re here.”

Maybe he notices the confusion in my eyes or the way I look toward the group of people gathering at the far edge of the parking lot. Maybe he doesn’t. But for whatever reason I may never know the answer to, he steps back. He looks at me, really looks at me. He looks at me and his face looks tired and I’m sick for sure this time.

“What do you mean we’re here?”

“This is the address you gave me. The center. This place.”

In my confusion, I can’t speak. Things might be better if he wouldn’t either.

“Kate.”

He says nothing else. He turns and picks up a flier that has fallen to the ground and blown toward us. A pink flier with my face at the top like every other flier that’s ever been printed in my lifetime. His face falls as he looks at it. With wary eyes, he looks at me. And he knows.

And, oh dear God I think I know too.

“Kate, we’re here.” It isn’t a statement this time. It’s a match over gasoline.

I just stare at him, feeling my spine begin to tremble with no way to stop it. But I need a second. Just one second to figure out what in the world is going on. But there’s no figuring it out, because it’s obvious, even though none of this makes sense. My head starts shaking, back and forth, back and forth.

“Caleb, this can’t be the right place.” My parents…the invitation…this rally. There’s no explaining it. I’m grasping at everything and nothing. And then I ask the question that I’ve wanted to ask for two minutes even though my voice is shaking almost too much to form the words. “Your foster center?”

I look across the parking lot at the crowd that’s still growing by the minute, at the foster center behind me, at the church across the street, at the cameras set around the perimeter like they always are, because my parents aren’t just controversial, they demand attention. Local, national, all of it. I pick out Jim in the crowd, his wife Shirley and their daughter whose name I can never remember even though I should know it by heart because they’re always here. Every single time, they’ve always been here along with almost everyone else in attendance. I don’t know if my parents pay everyone to show up or if they come because they believe in the cause my parents are fighting for. It’s never occurred to me to ask.

And then I see the nativity scene. The nativity scene that I didn’t see when we arrived two hours ago because we parked in the back. In the back, away from the controversy.

In the back, away from the offense.

I swallow as I study it, then turn away to focus on the flier still dangling from Caleb’s hand, the “Good Without God” words at the top that have never mattered before but now matter more than anything. My parents are here to protest this place like so many other places before it because of that nativity scene, a nativity scene that will ultimately harm—no, brainwash—innocent kids. Specifically foster kids, if I remember right. Foster kids who attend a church-run center funded by taxpayer money that needs to be shut down once and for all because God and government shouldn’t mix and this place is too stubborn to separate the two.

Oh, God.

Foster kids.

Caleb’s
foster kids.

This has happened so many times. This is just a normal way of life for my parents. For me. And every single time—whether at five or ten or twelve or twenty—my image has smiled from the top of that pink flier. Still, I have to grasp for something.

“You were in a bar.” It’s all I can say. All I can think.

He folds the flyer in half. “Kate, I was at the bar because I heard some of my kids were planning to show up there. A few of them have nowhere else to go. I can’t just leave them on the street.”

Of course he can’t. He’s too good of a person for that. But it still doesn’t explain why we’re here.

I’m frantically trying to figure it out as Caleb leans against the truck, paces the sidewalk, scrubs a hand over his face, taps his head against the door. And then he stops moving and looks at me. Really looks at me. And then he speaks. More than anything in the world, I want him to stop talking.

“Your parents are Don and Michelle Hawkins?”

I can hear the last thread of hope he’s holding onto, hope that he’s wrong, hope that I’ll say no. But I can’t say no…can’t breathe as I watch this nightmare crash around me. Of course he knows my parents.
Everyone
knows my parents. They’re only the most famous American atheists since Madeline Murray O’Hare.

A mix of anger and despair roll through me at the same time, and I barely manage a nod. He closes his eyes before slowly opening them again. Still, I’m not prepared for his next words.

“Kate, I work at this center, because it’s owned by that church.” He points to the steeple directly across the street and looks me in the eye.

“I work at that church because
I’m a pastor
.”

Caleb

“Blindsided”

—Bon Iver

M
y life stopped the day I turned seven. If you do the math, that means that for the past sixteen years, nine months, and eleven days, I haven’t been living.

My life started again four days ago when God introduced me to a princess.

If I had known I was going to die again so soon, I might have remembered to beg for more time.

It takes two seconds for everything to shift. Two seconds to understand why Kate doesn’t do Christmas. Two seconds to realize the girl I was beginning to fall for was the absolute wrong person for me. Two seconds for the one of the best days in recent memory to turn into the worst, as though catastrophe didn’t have time to consult me or was just too bored to take a few extra minutes. Because what am I? Just a guy whose entire life has gone to crap in every single way except one, but right now I feel too sucker-punched to care about that One Thing. I look up to heaven for a second in a question, but a bull-horn blast behind me rips away the answer I hoped for.

“The rally will start in five minutes,” a man yells across the crowd.

I ignore his words as the girl in front of me begins to sway. She reaches for the door to steady herself. “Caleb…” Kate struggles to grab a full breath. I know the freaking feeling. “I had no idea…not for one second did I think…”

“Neither did I.” The words escape on a bite, but there’s no way to make them gentle. If I believed in things like the Universe, I would say it is laughing hysterically at both of us right now. But I believe in God. I’ve believed in God for five years. This is the first time it gives me no comfort.

“So you’re Kathy Hawkins.” I’m resigned to the reality. I knew she looked familiar and…her driver’s license. Why didn’t I read her driver’s license that night in the parking lot? I just let Scott spout off her home address and filed it in my memory in the same place I’ve filed everything since my seventh birthday so that I don’t forget. I don’t forget anything anymore. Not names, faces, destinations, or useless facts, like how many miles it is to the moon. I can’t afford to forget things. All my memories might be gone tomorrow, and I’m the only who can keep them alive.

But I forgot where I’d seen her. Even the name Kathryn didn’t spur a memory. The brief realization that Scott didn’t remember it either doesn’t make things better. It just makes it clearer that we both suck.

“I’m Kate,” she says, bringing me back to the moment. “I hate the name Kathy. And I can’t believe you’re a pastor.”

She says it like a curse. Like I have some third-world disease that she doesn’t want to catch. I bristle, but I don’t say that I can’t believe she doesn’t believe in God. Because who doesn’t believe in God? Okay, tons of people, but whatever. I also don’t tell her that I hate her name, too. Not
her
, but the notoriety of her. The willingness of her parents to bulldoze over everything good I’ve tried to build in the last five years.

My parents have this thing…they’ll kill me if I don’t get there soon.

She was born into this. She doesn’t have a choice. In this one way, we’re the same. I didn’t have a choice either.

“Kathy! Kathy!” We both turn at the sound like two kids getting caught stealing candy before dinner. Her mother is waving her over. Her smile is wide, but even from here I can see it’s strained. The rally was supposed to start at eleven o’clock—twenty four hours from now, but I guess that’s the element of surprise you often hear about but rarely experience, lucky me—which gives her only one minute to pull it together and get onstage. It’s a scene I’ve watched played out on the news. Kathy goes up, says a few words about protecting precious minds, innocent minds that should be allowed to form and develop without the constraints of religious brainwashing. She rationalizes that it worked for her, and she’s all the better for it. Happier than most kids, even. Then Kathy steps to the right of stage, giving her parents the limelight while she smiles and claps at all the right parts.

I can’t breathe as I study her. Really, really study her. At the conflict building in her eyes. At the lower lip that’s currently being chewed into submission. At the frustration sizzling underneath her skin. At the way she looks at her mother, then looks at me. Hesitant. Torn. Breaths become uneven as she silently implores me to understand. I don’t, and then in a hundred ways that I can’t quite grasp, I do.

Kate doesn’t know what to do. Kate isn’t happy.

That makes two of us.

But here’s the difference: all hell’s about to break loose and I’m the one getting burned.

*