If I wake Jana up and tell her Danny is waiting, I sure won’t be leading her to righteousness. But he’s out there waiting. If I hadn’t heard him say to tell Jana, I wouldn’t be having this tormenting decision to make. But I did hear him. I can’t pretend that I didn’t. And I can’t have insight if I’m not honest with myself and others.
“Ohh!” Sierra growled through her clenched teeth. She knew that if she woke Jana, Sierra would have to explain why she was outside in the middle of the night, and Jana might tell her parents, and they might be so upset with Sierra that they would put her on a plane back home. The only one home this weekend was Tawni, who was staying at her friend’s house. That meant Sierra would have to face her sister, and she didn’t want to have to do that.
Or she could tell Jana, and Jana would sneak out, and then the two of them would have to keep that secret from Jana’s parents. Sierra really didn’t want to do that, either.
But if she didn’t tell Jana until tomorrow, when they went berry picking, Danny would say something about seeing Sierra dancing around barefoot on the dock in the middle of the night. Then Jana would be furious with her because Danny would say he had told Sierra to get Jana, and then the rest of the weekend would be a disaster.
What am I thinking? The rest of the weekend is going to be a disaster no matter what. I can’t win here.
It dawned on Sierra that if she merely gave Jana the message, then Jana would have to make her own decision about whether to see Danny. Sierra believed she knew her friend well enough to trust that Jana would make the right choice. It was Sierra’s responsibility to tell the truth, not to try to manipulate the outcome of the situation.
Drawing in a deep breath, Sierra crawled out of bed and walked on still-numb feet over to the light switch. She closed her eyes, turned on the light, and then gently shook Jana’s shoulder.
“Jana, wake up,” she whispered.
“What? What’s wrong?” Jana pulled the covers up over her eyes.
“I’m really sorry to do this to you,” Sierra said. She glanced at the clock. It was almost three in the morning. “I have to talk to you.”
“Can’t it wait?”
“No, listen. I couldn’t sleep so I went out on the dock, and I was reading my Bible and looking at the stars and …”
Jana pulled back the covers and opened her eyes, staring at Sierra. “You went out on the dock?”
“Yes, but wait. I was having this really wonderful time with God, and then I heard this plop-splash sound, and it was Danny!” Sierra tried to calm herself and act with wisdom and insight as she told the next part.
Jana stared at her in disbelief.
“Danny talked to me, and he asked me to go for a ride with him. He didn’t even know who I was.”
“Did you go?” Jana asked in a small voice.
“No, of course not. I came back to the cabin. But on the way, he asked me to tell you to meet him out there.”
“Now?” Jana asked, sitting up in bed.
Sierra nodded. “I didn’t know if I should tell you or not, but I knew that if I told you, then you would know and wouldn’t be mad when we go meet Danny tomorrow, in case he acts like he already met me. Which he didn’t really, but, well, now you know and we can go back to sleep.”
Sierra stood and turned off the light.
“Sierra Mae Jensen!” Jana said loudly. Then, lowering her voice to a whisper, she added, “You turn that light back on this minute.”
When Sierra turned it on, Jana already was out of bed, pulling a pair of warmup pants on over her flannel pajama bottoms.
“What are you doing?” Sierra asked.
“What do you think I’m doing? I’m going to see Danny. Help me find my shoes.”
“Jana, I don’t think you should—”
“What? It’s okay for you to go out and carry on with him in the middle of the night, but I can’t?”
“I didn’t carry on,” Sierra said. “And I didn’t go out there to see him.” Then, because she thought it added a nice spiritual touch, Sierra added, “My appointment was with God.”
Jana stopped dressing and turned to look at Sierra long enough to give her the most pathetic “oh brother” look she had ever delivered. “Come on. You’re coming with me.”
“No, I’m not,” Sierra said.
“What? You can go outside in the middle of the night for God, but you won’t go outside for me?”
“Jana, this is crazy. Wait until the morning.”
Jana looked at the alarm clock. “It is morning. What difference will a few more hours make?”
“A lot! The rest of the world will be awake then. Jana, don’t go out there.”
“Why?” Jana stopped to scrutinize Sierra’s expression. “Did he say something? Anything?”
“No.”
“You saw him. Does he still look like the picture I showed you?”
Sierra couldn’t help herself. A grin broke through, and she said, “No, he looks much better.” As soon as she said it, Sierra slapped her hand over her mouth and scolded herself.
“That’s it; I’m going,” Jana said decisively, zipping up her jacket. “Are you coming?”
“No,” Sierra said, standing firm. “And I don’t think you should go, either.”
Without comment Jana slipped out of the bedroom and quietly went out the front door. Sierra turned off the light and rushed over to the window that faced the lake. She wanted to look out without being seen. She also thought that if Danny saw the light go out, he might take it as a signal to go away.
In the dim starlight, Sierra could see Jana—steady, predictable, nonrisktaker Jana—running toward the dock as if the winning goal for the soccer game depended on her.
“What have I done?” Sierra muttered, throwing herself on her bed. She considered running after Jana. At least if she had gone with Jana, Sierra might have been able to convince her to only stay a few minutes.
Sierra got up and paced the floor. Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe she should run out there just to make sure that all Jana did was say, “Hi, do you want to go rafting tomorrow?” He could say yes, just the way Jana had planned it before they went to bed. Then the two girls could go back to the cabin and sleep in tomorrow since there wouldn’t be any reason to explain why they felt a sudden urge to pick berries at the crack of dawn.
Sierra peered out the window once more. This time she saw nothing. No Jana. Only the form of the four Adirondack chairs on the dock. She didn’t see a kayak anywhere, either, although she knew Danny was good at hiding.
“I have to go down there,” Sierra convinced herself. If Jana had gone off for a ride with Danny, Sierra knew she would have to make another decision about whether to tell Jana’s parents. But first she had to try to stop Jana.
Sierra left the house, and she wasn’t real quiet about it this time. She closed the door too quickly, and it made a lot of noise. As soon as she was out the door, she took off at a sprint fast enough to match Jana’s dash across the grass.
When Sierra reached the dock, she spotted Jana. Not on the dock. Not in a kayak. But on the shore, walking toward Danny’s house.
“Jana!” Sierra called out.
Jana stopped, turned to see Sierra, and then stood still.
“Come back,” Sierra called to her.
It took Jana a moment, but she turned and came back along the shore. Sierra waited for her.
“Did you make it all up?” Jana asked.
“No, of course not! He was here.”
“Well, he was gone when I got here,” Jana complained. “How long did you wait before you told me?”
“I don’t know. Not very long. A little while. I had to think about what to do.”
Jana began to walk back to the cabin. Sierra trotted after her. Jana didn’t speak again until they were almost up to the cabin. “I can’t believe I came out here.”
“I can’t believe it, either,” Sierra said.
“Neither can I,” came a male voice from the ca
bin’s front door.
11
t took almost an hour for Sierra and Jana to explain the situation to Jana’s parents. They weren’t happy, but they weren’t mad, either. Sierra wondered how her parents would have responded. The Hills seemed pleased enough that Sierra and Jana had both told the truth and had admitted that they hadn’t made wise choices, although Sierra still wanted to think that her alone time with God had been special and not foolish or dangerous.
They all went to bed and slept well past nine o’clock the next morning. The proposed berry-picking trip was, of course, canceled.
The guys were up first, and Tim was making pancakes when Sierra meandered into the kitchen.
“Your pancakes woke me up,” she mumbled, lowering herself into a straight-back wooden chair.
“I was making too much noise?” Tim asked.
“No, you were making too much smell. It smelled too good to stay in bed.”
Tim laughed and scooped up two fresh pancakes from the griddle. “Here. See if they taste as good as they smell.”
Sierra smiled her thanks and went to work decorating the pancakes with two dots of butter for eyes and a happy-face smile from syrup. “See? Even Mr. Pancake is happy this morning.”
Tim smiled, lifted his hand to his nose, and then moved his first two fingers together quickly, as if he were flicking something away.
“What was that?” Sierra asked.
Tim stopped and looked at the hand sign he had just made. “Oh, I do that sometimes. I sign without thinking about it.”
“What did you just say?”
“That was the sign for ‘funny.’ ”
“Like this?” Sierra said, trying to imitate the finger movements.
“No!” Tim quickly corrected her. He looked as if he were trying to keep from laughing. “You just said ‘nerd.’ ”
“Whoops!” Sierra said, picking up her plate and heading for the refrigerator for some milk. “I better not try to say anything else until I’ve at least had my happy pancakes. It was a rough night last night.”
“So I heard,” Tim said. “You better pull yourself together, though, because we’re supposed to go rafting in an hour, which means we need to leave here in forty minutes at the latest.”
“No problem,” Sierra said. Getting ready quickly was her specialty. It was one of the few perks of not wearing makeup and having uncontrollable hair. Her hair did its crazy, curly gyrations all over her head no matter what she did to curb its exuberance. Sierra kept it long so that its weight would hold down the curl some. She had learned long ago that it didn’t matter if she spent an hour on it or one second—it always looked the same.
“Thanks for the pancakes, Tim,” she said, standing in the kitchen and eating them with vigorous bites. “They’re really good.”
“Glad you like them,” Tim said. “You know, it’s refreshing to see a girl enjoying food the way you do.”
Sierra licked the syrup off her lower lip and tilted her head, hoping he would explain that statement.
“The last girl I went out with never ate,” Tim said. “It wasn’t fun to go out with her because if I ordered anything to eat, she would just sit there watching me with this longing look in her eye, but she wouldn’t eat a thing.”
“At least she was an inexpensive date,” Sierra suggested.
Tim laughed and smiled at Sierra.
“Are you going out with anyone now?” Sierra asked.
“No.” Tim turned back to the stove and flipped two more pancakes onto a plate. “Is Jana up yet? These are for her.”
Sierra rinsed her empty plate and placed it in the sink. “I’ll go check on her.”
Sierra found Jana in the bedroom. Jana’s bed was made, and her clothes for the day were neatly laid out on the smooth bedspread. Sierra’s bed and her side of the room were a disaster.
“Tim made pancakes,” Sierra said, quickly stuffing her dirty clothes in her bag and pulling up her bed’s covers. “They were good.”
“I feel so strange about last night,” Jana said, sitting on her bed and sighing. “What am I going to say to Danny when I see him?”
“Hi?” Sierra ventured.
“And what about my parents? They’re used to my being so dependable. What was I thinking last night?”
Sierra decided it was best not to answer that one. She was actually having a hard time concentrating on what Jana was saying because Sierra was thinking about Tim. It was pretty great the way he found his way around the kitchen and felt at home enough to make pancakes.
“You know what I mean?” Jana asked.
Before Sierra had to come up with an answer, they heard a knock on the closed door.
“Jana, you want anything to eat?” her mom asked.
“Yes, I’ll be right there.” Jana dressed quickly. Then she told Sierra that if she got any more wacky notions about running out to the dock in the middle of the night or even going berry picking in the woods, Sierra was supposed to slap some sense into her.
“You don’t have to really slap me,” Jana said, turning at the door before she left. Sierra guessed that Jana was remembering the janitor at the airport. “All you have to do is talk me down.”
“That’s what I tried to do last night,” Sierra said.
“Well, try harder next time.” Jana slipped out and closed the door.
Sierra shook her head. A long strand of wavy blond hair fell over her face, and she flipped it back behind her ear. Things were never this intense or complicated with Jana back home. What is it about summer vacation that brings out the crazies in a person? I’d never go outside barefoot in the middle of the night at home, would I?
Sierra knew the answer. She might. If the conditions were right, she would have done exactly what she did last night, even at home. She was given to fanciful whims every now and then.
Stretching out on her not-so-smoothly made bed, Sierra thought about how, so far in life, she had no regrets. She liked that feeling. And she wanted to finish her life with that same confidence.
So what was she supposed to do with all these confusing feelings about guys? Just feel them? Or was she supposed to act on them?
I don’t think God would have made my emotions this way if this wasn’t a good and useful thing. But what am I supposed to do? Acknowledge my impulses but tame them? Or do I learn by acting on what I’m feeling?
Sierra closed her eyes and saw Tim in her imagination, standing in the kitchen with the spatula in his hand. She remembered the way he had smiled at her when she showed him her Mr. Pancake happy face. Was he smiling because he thought she was attractive and fun? Or was he smiling at her the way he would smile at an adorable little kid?
And he had smiled at her in such a wonderful way when she found the Lego piece at the mall. She liked his smile. She liked it when he smiled at her. She liked Tim. There, she had said it. Or rather, she had thought it. She liked Tim. Now, what was she supposed to do about that?
Jana burst back in the room, and Sierra shot upright in bed.
“Sierra, we’re almost ready to go. What have you been doing?”
“Daydreaming,” Sierra admitted, hopping up and dressing in a flash. “I was thinking about feelings and what we should do with them.”
“What do you mean?” Jana asked, reaching for her sunglasses and a bottle of sunscreen.
Sierra slung her backpack over her shoulder and grabbed the beach towel she had left wadded up on the floor. “Eww! This is still wet.”
“There might be a dry one on the line,” Jana suggested as she headed out the door. “Don’t forget to bring dry clothes to change into.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot,” Sierra said. She scooped up a pair of shorts from the floor and dug in her bag for underwear and a clean T-shirt.
Jana stopped and, closing the door, lowered her voice. “I’ve been thinking about some things too. And I decided something a few minutes ago.”
“What’s that?”
“First, let me ask you a question,” J
ana said. “What do you think of Tim?”
Sierra smiled a gleeful grin at her friend. Was I that obvious? Did Jana figure out that I was daydreaming about Tim?
“He’s wonderful,” Sierra said open-heartedly.
“That’s what I think too,” Jana said. “I mean, if I’m going to fall victim to a summer romance, it might as well be with someone I already know pretty well.”
“Like Tim?” Sierra said quietly, her eyes widening in disbelief.
“Yes,” Jana said triumphantly. “Like Tim, exactly!”
“What about Danny?” Sierra asked.
Jana paused, shrugged, and said, “I think I want to concentrate my efforts on Tim first.” She turned to hurry out to the Suburban, leaving Sierra standing in a stunned daze.
Now what am I supposed to do with all these feelings? Stuffing them in her backpack, along with her change of clothes, Sierra hurried out to join the others.
12
regg drove the four of them to the river-rafting meeting point. He was unusually perky and full of jokes. Sierra wondered where he had been all morning and why he had left his friend to make the pancakes.
Jana didn’t seem too bothered by any of Gregg’s teasing about her escapade in the middle of the night. She was too wrapped up in Tim, who was sitting next to her in the middle seat.
“How did you learn to make such great pancakes, Tim?” Jana asked, ignoring a comment Gregg had just made about how tired Jana looked.
Sierra was glad Gregg wasn’t harassing her about her midnight jig on the dock. But she wasn’t glad that Jana was trying out all her flirting charms on Tim. He was too nice of a guy. He would be sweet and considerate back to Jana, just as he had been when she had put his arm around her in the airport. He wouldn’t realize what all this was beginning to mean to Jana. And what was worse, Tim wouldn’t realize that Sierra was the one he was supposed to be interested in.
Unless …
Sierra began to devise a plan. The more she thought about it, the more sense it made. Jana and her family stayed at their cabin most of the summer. This year they were staying until the first of August. Sierra and Tim were only here as weekend guests. They were going to fly home together, and they would be together in Pineville for almost a month before Jana got home. It made no sense for Jana to start something that could only last a few days. Sierra had the definite edge on this one.