Chop, Chop
Book One
By L.N. Cronk
Published by Rivulet Publishing
Cover Photography by Inga Ivanova.
Spanish translations provided by Vicki Oliver Krueger.
Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION ®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
2 Timothy 4:7
~ ~ ~
HE’S GOING TO be the youngest person executed in our state since the death penalty was reinstated in 1975. Men, women, and even a few children line the driveway leading to the gate of the compound. Flickering candlelight illuminates their sad or angry faces. They wave their signs and occasionally pound on the windows of our car, as if they are angry with us. I wonder briefly why they’re mad at us when they don’t even know why we’re here.
I am squashed in the middle of the back seat with Laci on one side and our old Sunday school teacher on the other – not old as in aged, but old as in she’s not my Sunday school teacher anymore. It’s because of her that Laci and I are here, attending our first execution.
I peer ahead as the gates swing open to let us through. There was a time when I hardly ever cried, but now it seems like anything can set me off and the tears start to slide down my face again. I’m not embarrassed anymore because they’ve both seen me cry more than I care to admit. Laci reaches over and takes my hand. I lean my head back on the headrest and close my eyes.
~ ~ ~
TO TELL THIS story, I am going to have to start with Laci, and since it starts with me and Laci, and ends with me and Laci, you’re probably going to think that it’s a story about me and Laci. But you’re wrong . . . it’s not. Not really. But I can’t just jump into what the story is about. I have to start at the beginning, and that does mean starting with Laci.
I’ve known her ever since we were in preschool and I remember hiding under the stairs with her and tasting Play-Doh. I realize that this sounds disgusting, but I’m going to have to be completely honest with you if anything good is going to come out of recalling this story. Telling this story is the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do, and if nothing good is going to come of it, then I’d just as soon not go through with it at all.
Anyway, I remember hiding under the stairs and tasting Play-Doh with Laci. If you ask most grown-ups, they’ll admit to tasting it too. That makes it especially disgusting when you think how many other kids had probably tasted it before we got to it, but for some reason, this is my earliest memory of me and Laci together.
Laci was (and still is) very pretty. I think I have probably always realized this, even before I was old enough to be interested in girls, but Laci has never been worried about her looks. Instead, Laci has always worried about other people.
When she was four years old, her mother was watching a talk show on TV and it featured people who were cutting their hair off and sending it to Locks of Love to be made into wigs for children who – for various medical reasons – did not have any hair. Four-year-old Laci apparently took one look at a little girl on that show who had no hair, made the giant mental leap that she could help, and insisted that her mother help her cut off her long, pretty, brown hair so that they could send it to Locks of Love. She still has the little thank-you card that they sent her in return.
I don’t remember any of this, but I’m told that the next day she showed up at preschool and I thought we had a new boy in class. When Mom picked me up that afternoon the preschool teacher told her, “David really freaked out today . . .”
Apparently, even after the teacher calmed me down, I refused to have anything to do with Laci and I never hid under the stairs with her and tasted Play-Doh again. Like I said, I have no memory of this, but my mother thinks the story is quite funny and she’s told it so many times that I figure it must be true.
I do remember though, in the second grade, telling Laci that I liked her hair long. She had grown it back and it was cascading down past her shoulder blades. She smiled at me and said “Thank you, David,” but apparently she didn’t care too much what I thought because she whacked it all off again a few weeks later. Evidently, Laci thought that her head was a hair farm.
It had grown out long again by the time we were in the fifth grade. In addition to preschool and elementary school, Laci and I went to church together too. One day, in Sunday school, our teacher was talking to us about the importance of giving. One of the students said that what Laci was doing – growing her hair out and donating it – was another way of giving to others. The teacher thought this was an excellent point, but I didn’t agree.
“Why on earth not, David?” the teacher wanted to know.
“Because,” I explained, “it says in the Bible that when you give to the needy you’re not even supposed to let your left hand know what your right hand is doing . . . you’re supposed to give in secret.” The teacher looked surprised. She probably thought I never paid attention during lessons.
“You’re only supposed to let God know what you’re doing,” I went on. “Everybody knows what she’s doing.”
“Well, I suppose that technically you’re correct, David,” the teacher said, “but what Laci’s doing is kind and very giving and there’s really no way for her to do it in secret.”
“That’s not true,” I argued. “She doesn’t have to cut it so short and make herself look like a boy. She just does that so everyone will know that she’s giving it to Locks of Love.
“She could get her hair cut shorter in a way that looks nice,” and I glared at her as I emphasized the word nice, “and then people would just think that she’s had a haircut. No one would even have to know what she did with it after it was all cut off.”
I don’t remember what the teacher said to me, but I do remember that Laci looked down at her hands which were folded in her lap. I felt a little twinge of guilt (but not much) and for some reason I felt quite proud of myself when she came to school a few months later with her hair in a short, but feminine, bob.
By the time Greg arrived in town, Laci and I were pretty much friends. I don’t mean that we hung around together or anything, but we saw each other all the time – either in class or church or something – and I figured she had forgiven me for freaking out in preschool and for being mean to her in the fifth grade. One time I even thought she might have been flirting with me when she asked me to help her with her locker because it popped right open on my first try.
I told myself it was probably just a lucky break.
It was the summer before seventh grade when Greg moved to our neighborhood and Laci’s hair was at stage two. (Somewhere along the way I had developed my own private system for assessing what phase Laci’s hair was at in the “grow it out and chop it off” cycle. Stage one is when it’s so short that she can’t even get it into a ponytail. Stage two is when it hits her shoulders. Stage three is when it’s long and you know she’s about to get it cut off again.)
But back to Greg . . .
When I first saw Greg, it never occurred to me that I was looking at someone who was going to become the best friend I would ever have. I’ve never been the most social person in the world anyway and I already had two great friends . . . Mike and Tanner. I figured that was pretty much all I needed.
Like Laci, I had known Mike and Tanner for most of my life. Mike also went to the same church, but was a grade below me, and Tanner was in the same grade as me, but went to a different church. In just one year, Mike would be at the junior high school too, and until then we had soccer and basketball and baseball and Scouts and summers at the pool.
It was at the pool that I first saw Greg. We h
ad just finished swimming and Tanner had taken his youngest brother, Jordan, to the kiddy pool. Mike and I were drying off on the concrete, waiting for him. Neither one of us was going to get into the kiddy pool with them because (even though we didn’t have little brothers or sisters ourselves) we knew enough not to trust the swimmy diapers that the little kids all wear. When Tanner finally convinced his mom to take over watching Jordan, he joined us in the sun.
“Hey, Dave!” he said to me. “See that guy over there?” Tanner nodded toward the kiddy pool. Mike and I both sat up on our elbows and looked.
“What about him?” I asked.
“His name’s Greg. He’s new here. His family just moved to Cavendish from Florida. He’s going to be in the seventh grade this fall too.”
“Lucky,” Mike muttered, lying back down.
“Oh quit whining,” I told Mike. “I’d gladly stay in the sixth grade.”
“Not all by yourself you wouldn’t!”
“Oh, yes I would!” I said. “You’re the one who’s lucky. We’re going to have eighth graders stuffing our heads into toilets and filling our lockers with syrup and hours of homework every night . . .”
“It’s not gonna to be like that!” Tanner argued.
“Yeah, I know. I was just trying to make Mikey feel better.”
“Thanks a lot,” Mike said.
“No problem.”
I looked at the new kid again. He was playing with Jordan and a little girl. I hoped for his sake that the little girl was his sister – that was the only excuse someone his age had for hanging out in the kiddy pool.
“We should try to be nice to him,” Tanner continued, still looking at me.
“Well I wasn’t planning on being mean to him,” I said.
“I know, but I just meant . . . well . . .” Tanner seemed unsure how to word what he wanted to say. “I just feel sorry for him, that’s all. It’s got to be hard moving to a new place and starting junior high school without any friends.”
“Nobody’s worrying about me starting sixth grade without any friends,” Mike said.
“Oh, stop it!” Tanner said, hitting him with the back of his hand. “You’ve known everybody in your grade since you were in kindergarten.”
“Preschool,” I corrected him.
“Anyway,” Tanner continued, “I was just thinking how I would feel if I were him and I thought maybe . . .”
“Sure,” I agreed. “We can save a spot for him at the lunch table, and I’ll share my locker with him, and you can carry his books for him on the way home from school and–”
“Oh shut up,” Tanner said, smacking me this time. But he had a big grin on his face and I could tell he knew that I was going to be nice to the new kid.
Nobody, it turned out, needed to worry about the new kid. Greg would have been fine without any extra niceness from me or Tanner or anyone else. The next time I saw him was at church the following Sunday. The entire congregation was murmuring about the arrival of a new family. After church, Mike and I were standing against his mom’s car talking when Greg walked up to us, carrying the little girl we’d seen him playing with in the pool.
“Hi!” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Greg White. This is my sister, Charlotte.”
“Hi,” I said, looking at his hand. Rising seventh graders didn’t shake hands with each other.
“I’m Mike!” Mike said, sticking his hand into Greg’s and pumping it up and down.
“I’m David,” I said, hesitantly sticking my hand out. Greg shook it and Charlotte eyed me suspiciously.
“Listen,” he went on. “My dad’s going to be leading a new youth fellowship group. It’s for junior high school students. I wanted to invite both of you to come.”
Here he was, the new kid – the one who was supposed to be feeling awkward and lonely – but he was inviting us to something.
“I’m only going to be in the sixth grade,” Mike said glumly. (Mike was kind of big for his age.)
“Oh,” Greg said as a woman approached us.
“Do you want me to take Charlotte?” she asked Greg.
“No,” he said, “she’s fine. Mom, this is Mike and this is David.”
She looked at us and smiled. Mike stuck out his hand and for some reason I felt like smacking him. She shook both of our hands.
“So nice to meet both of you!” she said. “I’m sure you boys are going to enjoy getting to know one another. Did Greg tell you? My husband is going to be leading a new youth fellowship group. I hope you’ll both consider joining.”
“I can’t,” Mike said, “I’m only going to be in the sixth grade.”
“Oh, what a shame. Well, next year maybe?”
Mike nodded as she turned her eyes to me.
“What grade will you be in David?”
“Seventh.”
“Oh! Wonderful! You and Greg will probably have some classes together . . .”
I nodded.
“Da-da!” Charlotte said, pointing in the direction of a man who was talking with my parents near the church steps.
“You want to go see Daddy?” Greg asked her. He looked at Mike and me before leaving. “I’ll be seeing you guys around, okay?”
“See ya.”
“Bye.”
We watched them walk toward my parents and Greg put Charlotte down on the ground so she could waddle over to her father.
“What do you think?” Mike asked.
“I think he’s lucky Tanner talked us into being nice to him. Obviously he’s going to have a hard time making friends.”
“Really?”
“No, not really you moron. I was being sarcastic.”
“Oh,” Mike said. “Are you going to join the youth group?”
“Well, look at them all over there talking . . . what do you think?”
We watched Greg and Greg’s parents talking with my parents and we saw my mom lean down to pick up Charlotte.
“I think your mom’s going to make you join youth group whether you want to or not!” he said, laughing at me.
“See?” I told him. “Being in the sixth grade might not be so bad after all.”
What actually turned out to not be so bad after all was the new youth group, which started up two weeks later. During the first few weeks after I met Greg I was (for the briefest amount of time) slightly resentful of him. Now remember that I am trying to be completely honest here. Besides, who wouldn’t be just slightly resentful if some new guy moved to their hometown and was soon hanging out at the pool every day showing their best friends how to turn flips off the high dive? And after church in the fellowship hall, I walked past just in time to see Laci dunk his head into the water fountain as he got a drink. He splashed her with water and she squealed. I really couldn’t have cared less if she flirted with him, but it was a little discouraging to think that in just three weeks he’d pretty much landed in the same spot I’d spent twelve and a half years getting to.
Two weekends before school started, Mr. White took the youth group on a Saturday trip to Six Flags. By this time, I was over my brief and slight resentment of Greg. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was that made everyone like him, but whatever it was, it worked on me too.
It was a three-hour trip each way so we had to leave at six in the morning. Nick’s mom drove one car with our only three eighth graders (Matthew, Evan and Nick) and I rode in the White’s van with the other seventh graders – Greg, Laci, Ashlyn and Natalie. Somehow I got stuck in the back with Laci. On the drive we listened to contemporary Christian music for the entire three hours. I’d never heard the songs before so I didn’t join in as they held imaginary microphones to their mouths and crooned along.
“Come on, David!” Greg said, reaching back and pretending to stick a microphone in my face.
“I’m not singing,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
“Is he always this grumpy?” Greg wanted to know. Laci and Ashlyn and
Natalie all nodded.
“I am NOT grumpy!” I told them.
“Let me scoot over so I don’t get struck by lightning,” Laci said, moving away from me.
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “I’m not grumpy.”
“Yes, you are,” Natalie said and Ashlyn nodded.
“I’m a very HAPPY person!” I argued, and they all laughed.
“Yeah,” Laci told Greg. “This is him at happy . . . watch out when he’s mad.”
“Now, now,” Mr. White said from the front seat. “I don’t think David’s grumpy. Some people just aren’t as . . . jovial as others, that’s all.”
“That’s how we’ll describe you from now on,” Laci agreed. “Non-jovial.”
“It’s easier just to say that he’s grumpy,” Greg said.
“I’ve never seen anybody lose a tan so fast before,” Greg was saying a few hours later. “You look really, really white.”
I moaned.
When we’d arrived at the park, Mr. White had let us go off on our own and the girls separated from the boys. All the guys kept trying to convince me to ride a roller coaster with three loops on it, but I didn’t want to go.
“Come on, David . . . don’t be chicken,” they’d said.
“I’m not chicken,” I’d answered. “I get motion sickness.”
I really did. My older sister Jessica had wound me up on a tire swing when I was four and I was so sick afterwards that Mom had taken me to the doctor.
But the guys didn’t listen and hadn’t given up . . .
Now we were sitting at a booth and Greg was eating a turkey leg and curly fries. I was a little put out with him for eating in front of me while I was so sick, but he’d been the only one that had stuck around while I was hanging over a trashcan for fifteen minutes so I couldn’t really complain.
“Wanna fry?” Greg asked.
I moaned again.
“At least you’re not wasting a lot of money on food,” he said, and I put my head down on the table.