Christy caught the teasing tone in his voice. She guessed that if he really wanted to, Matt could have gone to the movies and gotten out of his commitment to clean up. Christy liked to believe he was sticking around so he could be with her instead of with Melissa.
“I suppose you have big plans already for tomorrow too,” Melissa said to Matt while casting a quick glance at Christy.
“We’re going to the Dells,” Matt said.
Christy noticed that he didn’t explain both families were going. It sounded as if just Matt and Christy had made plans to go to the Dells.
“I’m not doing anything,” Melissa said with a sigh. “Ever since Paula left, I’ve been trying to find somebody to do stuff with, but everybody always has plans that don’t include me.”
Christy couldn’t decide if she felt sorry for Melissa. Christy certainly knew what it was like to lose a best friend, and oddly enough, she and Melissa had both lost the same best friend.
Rather slowly Christy said, “Do you want to come tomorrow, Melissa?”
Melissa gave Christy a startled look. “Are you sure?” Melissa turned to Matt.
Matt nodded. “Sure. You’re welcome to come. It’s just a big family picnic like we do every year.”
“What time?” Melissa asked casually.
“Around ten.”
“Okay.”
Christy didn’t know if she should be pleased with herself for being kind and generous or mad at herself for including Melissa in her last day with Matt.
“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” Melissa said, rising to go.
Christy and Matt both said good-bye, then sat in silence for a few minutes. Christy wondered if Matt was upset that she had invited Melissa. It was hard to know since he hadn’t volunteered any information on how he felt about either Melissa or Christy. Perhaps the interest Christy felt toward him was as one-sided as it always had been.
“It sure was hot today, wasn’t it?” Matt finally said.
“Yes. It’s cooler in here now than it was a few hours ago.” Christy reached over to touch one of the daisies in the centerpiece. “I’m surprised any of these flowers are still alive.”
“It’s supposed to be hot tomorrow too,” Matt said.
“Oh,” Christy said. The last thing she wanted to talk about was the weather. “Hey!” Christy said, brightening. “Your mom said you were offered a scholarship to Rancho Corona. Why didn’t you tell me? I have some friends who want to go there.”
“Have you ever been there?” Matt asked.
“No, but it’s only about an hour from my house.”
Matt’s expression lit up considerably. “Really? I didn’t know Rancho was so close to where you live. Where are you going to school in the fall?”
Christy plucked a sprig of baby’s breath from the centerpiece and twirled it between her fingers. “I’m going to live at home and take classes at Palomar, the local community college. It seemed the best route for my first year since it’s the least expensive way to get my general ed classes taken care of.”
“I thought of doing that too,” Matt said, “until these full scholarships came in. They were both a surprise.”
“What were the scholarships offered for?”
“Baseball,” Matt said with a smile. “You didn’t think they were for academic excellence, did you?”
Christy shrugged and smiled, looking down at the flowers in her hand. “Some people have a burst of A’s their last few years of high school.”
“Were you one of those people?”
“No,” Christy answered with a laugh. “I earned every measly A I got. And believe me, there wasn’t a bumper crop of them, especially this past year.”
“Remember when we did those science projects in second grade with the lima beans and yours was the only one in class that wouldn’t sprout?” Matt leaned back and balanced on two legs of the folding chair.
Christy cringed. How could Matt remember that? She had pushed that painful experience far from her life. “Miss Kaltzer gave me a D. It was the lowest grade in the class, because she said I watered mine too much and killed it. I watered my bean just as much as everyone else did! That bean was a dud, and I still think the whole thing was unfair. It was a conspiracy! I think the janitor came in every night and watered just my bean.”
Matt laughed.
“I still hate lima beans. I refuse to eat them. As a matter of fact, I hate anything that resembles a lima bean.” Christy suddenly wondered if that was why she hated nuts.
Matt was laughing so hard the folding chair began to buckle underneath him. Christy noticed it and said, “Matt, your chair!” When he didn’t hear her, she reached over to grab his arm. Just as she did, the legs gave way and the chair went down, taking Matt to the floor with it.
Matt kept laughing. He was laughing even harder from the floor, which made it impossible not to join in. Christy chuckled as a crowd of concerned adults gathered around to see what all the noise was about. Matt took a moment before he gained his composure.
“Are you okay?” Christy asked, offering him a hand to help him.
Matt took her hand and pulled himself up. She noticed how rough his skin was. Her dad had rough hands like that, which Christy always had considered evidence of hard work.
“I think I can fix it,” Matt said to one of the older church gentlemen, who was more concerned about the broken chair than he was about Matt.
“No, this one’s ready for the junk heap,” the man said, carting off the pieces.
Matt’s mom and Christy’s mom had made their way over to the group surrounding their table. “Glad you could make it,” Matt’s mom said.
“I told you I’d be here in time to take down the tables,” Matt said.
“Well, I didn’t think you’d start ‘taking down’ the chairs,” his mom said with a light tone to her voice.
“Hey, I didn’t do that on purpose,” he spouted.
“I know, I know,” Mrs. Kingsley said quickly. “Your father wants to see you. He’s in the kitchen.”
“You’re in trouble now,” Christy teased.
“I’ll be back,” Matt said, giving Christy’s elbow a squeeze. Christy smiled and noticed that more than half the guests had left. Her grandparents were seated one table over, sipping ice-cold lemonade and saying good-bye to another couple who was leaving. Christy noticed Grandma and Grandpa were holding hands. It was so cute. She didn’t remember ever seeing her grandparents hold hands before. She had seen them kiss and hug, but hand-holding seemed so sweet and innocent.
Christy slid into a chair next to her grandma and smiled at the loving couple.
“What was all the commotion?” Grandpa asked.
“It was Matthew Kingsley,” Christy said. It surprised her that she used his full name, as if she were in grade school, tattling on him. “Matthew leaned back in one of the folding chairs, and it broke.” Then, for good measure, to prove to herself she wasn’t tattling, she added, “It wasn’t his fault. Mr. Gundersen even said the chair was ready for the junk heap.”
“That’s how it is with us old relics. Comes a point when we’re all ready for the junk heap.”
“Not you, sweetheart,” Grandma said to him with one of her charming smiles. “You’re as strong as you were the day we met.”
“When did you two meet?” Christy asked.
“Oh, you know the story,” Grandma said. “It was at a church social in Baraboo. He came to my house the next week to see me and then kept coming around until I finally said I’d marry him.”
“That’s right,” Grandpa said. “Her mother told me to hurry up and marry her so I’d stop eating them out of house and home. She said if we got married she would only have to feed me on holidays and occasional Sundays.”
Christy smiled. She had heard some of these kidding lines before. “How did you know Grandpa was the right man for you and that you were ready to get married?”
“You’re not thinking of getting married, are you?” Grandpa aske
d.
“No, of course not. I mean, eventually, yes. But not now.”
“You’re too young,” Grandpa said.
“I’ll be eighteen on the twenty-seventh of this month,” Christy said with a wry smile. She knew her grandmother had barely turned nineteen when she and Grandpa were married.
“You have a lot of time,” Grandpa said.
“I know. But when that time comes, how will I know if he’s the right one? How did you know?” She noticed that her grandparents had done a nice job of avoiding her question.
“You tell her, dear,” Grandpa said to Grandma. “I’d like to hear your answer.” He seemed fairly serious.
“All right,” Grandma said. She let go of Grandpa’s hand and reached across the table to take both of Christy’s hands in hers. Her new position caused her orchid corsage to bunch up on her shoulder and rest against her chin. Christy felt as if she was about to be told a great secret.
“It’s a choice, you know,” Grandma said, peering through her bifocal glasses and looking steadily at Christy. “You get to know someone and then you ask yourself, ‘Would I like to spend the rest of my life with this person?’ If the answer is yes, then you wait until you have a big argument. Or until something goes wrong, or he does something you don’t like. And when things are at their lowest, you ask yourself again, ‘Would I like to spend the rest of my life with this person?’ If the answer is still yes, then you know you’re in love.”
“That’s it?” Grandpa spouted. With a hoot he leaned back in his chair and laughed heartily. If he had been heavier, he probably would have crashed to the floor the way Matt had.
“No,” Grandma said defensively. “That’s only the beginning. You make one big decision and follow it up with a lifetime of little decisions that support that first one.”
Grandpa had stopped guffawing and was wagging his finger at Christy. “The real way you know if it’s the right person is to evaluate his background. Do you come from the same place? Then you have a much better chance of making it through the hard times when they come. That’s how you know if it’s a match.”
Grandma let out a low chuckle. “Oh really, dear. You and I both know plenty of couples with opposite backgrounds that have made it through lots of hard times.” She gave Christy’s hands a pat and said, “The real answer, Christina dear, is that when it’s right, you’ll know.”
13
hristy wrote as much as she could remember of her grandparents’ advice in her diary that night. The group had been at the church cleaning up until nearly midnight. Uncle Bob and Aunt Marti hung around until almost nine before Marti felt one of her headaches coming on, and they left.
Matt and Christy were assigned to kitchen duty, where they washed every pot, pan, cup, and dish the kitchen owned. First Christy washed, and Matt dried. Then, when she complained that her fingers were too wrinkled up, Matt washed, and she dried. Matt used way too much soap when he refilled the sink, and a rollicking soap bubble war broke out between the two of them.
Christy had dollops of foamy bubbles on the top of her head, and Matt’s back was covered when his mom stepped into the kitchen. She scolded them as if they were six-year-olds and left the kitchen shaking her head.
Matt and Christy went back to their soapsuds war until they were both laughing so hard that they called a truce. Handing Christy a dry dishtowel, Matt said, “So what else can you tell me about Rancho Corona? Do you think I’d like it there?”
They talked seriously about college and moving away from home for the first time. Matt admitted he was a lot more interested in Rancho now that he knew it was close to Christy’s home. “If I went there, do you think you would be willing to hang out with me sometimes on weekends?” Matt asked. “You could show me the sights. I’ve never been to California.”
Christy gave him a rundown of some of her favorite spots and how she made the adjustment when her family moved to California. When Matt walked Christy to the car in the church parking lot, he said, “I wish it weren’t so late. We could go somewhere and talk some more.”
“We have tomorrow,” Christy reminded him. Then she remembered she had invited Melissa to come along. She wished she were going to have him all to herself tomorrow.
Matt must have been feeling the same way, because the last thing he said to her was, “Maybe we can have some time to talk tomorrow, just the two of us.”
When Christy’s family arrived at her grandparents’, everyone headed right to bed. David tried to convince Christy to play another midnight round of Monopoly, but she turned him down. He decided to sleep on the enclosed porch since it was the coolest place in the house. Mom and Dad told him that was fine, and Christy was glad. That meant she had the bedroom to herself, and she could use the time to write in her diary.
After putting down her impressions of the evening, Christy chewed on the end of her pen and leaned back against the bed’s pillows. The soft light from the lamp on the nightstand cast a buttery glow about the room. She felt content. Tomorrow she would see Matt again, and that would be nice. She didn’t know for sure if there was something between them, but she didn’t feel as if she had to decide that yet.
Then, remembering the thoughts she had had about love at the reception, Christy wrote,
Here are two words I want to think about when it comes to relationships: commitment and intimacy. I think commitment needs to be the foundation for any lasting relationship—just like I didn’t have a deep and growing relationship with Christ until I first made a commitment to Him. With intimacy it’s about knowing the other person’s heart in a special way so that you share and treasure the same things that are important to him.
A thought came to her. She wrote quickly before it slipped away.
I never realized it before, but I want that kind of intimacy more in my relationship with the Lord. I want to share and treasure the things that are important to Him. I want to know what’s in His heart.
Suddenly Christy had such a clear thought that she held her breath. For one sacred moment, everything was still. If her guardian angel had even slightly fluttered one wing in that moment, Christy was certain she would have heard it.
God wants to have that kind of intimacy with me. He knows everything that I’ve tucked away in my heart, and He wants me to share it with Him.
She felt astounded that Almighty God had chosen to be committed and intimate in His relationship with her. Love was a choice, just like Grandma had said. And God chose to love her. Not just one time, but over and over again He made that choice, even when she did things He couldn’t stand.
As Christy scribbled that last thought in her diary, her eyes misted with tears. She closed her diary, turned off the light, and slid between the cool sheets. Outside the open window the crickets performed their nightly symphony. In the upstairs hallway the grandfather clock tick-tocked with unfailing rhythm, sounding its whole notes at the quarter hour.
Through the bedroom window came a welcome breeze. Christy turned her face toward the window and noticed the moonglow tiptoeing into her room. The summer moon spilled a filtered trail of thin, ivory light across the edge of her bed.
The beauty of the moment caused Christy to think of a verse in Psalm 68 that was a line in a song Doug had been teaching her. Sing to the one who rides across the ancient heavens, his mighty voice thundering from the sky.… God is awesome in his sanctuary.
As she watched the moon slowly shift its shimmering pathway toward the foot of her bed, Christy tried to remember the tune and hum it. God wasn’t thundering from the sky in His mighty voice tonight. He was murmuring. Or maybe He was humming the way she was, humming contentedly as He rode across the ancient heavens.
14
e’re ready to go, Christy! Dad said to tell you to hurry up,” David called out, pounding on the closed bedroom door.
“I’m coming, I’m coming!” Christy hollered back. She couldn’t believe they had let her sleep in while everyone else was preparing for the picnic. She didn’t hav
e time to shower or anything. In five minutes she pulled on her bathing suit, shorts, and T-shirt and frantically stuffed a few essentials in her backpack while trying to slip on her sandals at the same time. “Tell them I’ll be right there!”
Like a whirlwind, Christy grabbed her sweatshirt, a brush, and a clip for her hair. She flew from the bedroom and bounded down the stairs only to find Aunt Marti standing at the entryway wearing one her expressions of disapproval.
“Really, Christy, you should try to be a little more ladylike. This is your grandmother’s home, you know.”
“I know,” Christy muttered, not in the mood for any criticism this morning, especially from Aunt Marti. Christy slipped past her aunt and stalked out to the car, where Mom was loading the trunk.
“Why didn’t anyone wake me?” Christy asked, jamming her bag into an open spot in the trunk.
“I suppose we all had a lot going on,” Mom said, giving Christy a startled look. “What’s wrong?”
“Well, I would have appreciated having a little time to take a shower and eat something. It didn’t help that David kept coming up and banging on the door while I was trying to dress.”
“We’re only going on a picnic,” Dad said, entering into the conversation. He was lugging a big ice chest to the back of the car. “It would have been nice, Christy, if you would have gotten up and helped to make some of this food.”
“I would have been glad to, but no one woke me!”
“Seems to me a girl who’s almost eighteen years old can figure out how to set an alarm clock and get herself up in the morning,” Dad said gruffly. He hoisted the heavy ice chest onto the trunk’s edge, and with a bark in his voice he said, “You’ll have to make more room than that, Margaret. I told you the ice chest needed to go in first. Whose bag is that?”
“Mine,” Christy said, snatching her bag and sliding into the car’s backseat with a huff. She held her bag on her lap and sat there fuming. I can’t believe I went to sleep with all those dreamy, spiritual thoughts. Then I woke up this morning ready to bite the next person I see!