Dark Hope (11 page)

“Do you always get your way?” I asked, somewhat in awe.

“Only when I’m right,” she smiled with a wink, sweeping up her books and heading out the door.

I looked at the books and papers strewed about our study carrel and sighed. It seemed as if I might have to get used to being the one to clean up after Tabitha’s big ideas and the mess that followed. I began tidying up, separating the books and magazines into piles for reshelving.

I looked at the clock. I still had time to kill before I could catch the extracurricular bus home. Idly, I typed my homepage into the browser and scanned the news. Celebrity gossip, another big company merger. There was nothing of interest until at the bottom of the page, I spied a link labeled “Miracle in Africa.” I clicked through. Some Ethiopian refugees were claiming that a miraculous light from Heaven had suddenly appeared and rescued them from the middle of a firefight between two warlords. The locals said it was the seventh or eighth time they’d seen the light.

As I was reading, the slow prickle of someone’s eyes on me worked its way up the back of my neck. I turned, half hoping it was Michael coming to see me. My heart fell. There in the stacks stood Lucas, eyeing me speculatively. I flushed, and he grinned, one eyebrow arching as if he knew exactly what I had been thinking. Hurriedly, I grabbed my things and abandoned the carrel, my fingers drifting up to touch my Mark and ward off his gaze.

After a week of work, we’d learned it wasn’t going to be as easy as we’d thought to set up the interviews with the human trafficking victims. Tabitha was persistent, but every place she called protested in the name of client privacy. We sat around my kitchen table, staring at the big red circle Tabitha had made on our research plan.

“We’re already behind,” she moaned. “If we can’t get anyone to talk to us, I don’t know what we’ll do.”

Mom muted her phone. She had an uncanny ability to follow a conference call and keep up with our conversation. Without turning from the presentation on her computer screen, she interjected, “I have a client on the board of Street Grace. Do you want me to call her and ask her for help?”

Tabitha squealed with delight, clapping her hands like a child. “Oh, Mrs. Carmichael, could you? That would be so awesome.”

“I’d be happy to, Tabitha. It sounds like a good cause, at any rate,” she said, carefully eyeing me.

Tabitha didn’t notice the look as she bounded across the kitchen to give me a hug. “Your mom is the best. I’m going to make you dinner as a thank-you, Mrs. C. Is that okay?”

Mom looked surprised. “Sure, Tabitha, as long as you clear it with your parents. And don’t forget about the technology risk; it is the biggest challenge facing this venture.”

Now it was Tabitha’s turn to look confused.

“Conference call,” I mouthed to her, pointing at the phone as I headed into the pantry. Tabitha followed behind me and began rummaging through the shelves.

“Your mom seems pretty cool,” she said, turning packages this way and that. “What about your dad?”

“He’s not here. They’ve been apart for a long time,” I said, paying an inordinate amount of attention to the nutrition label on a box of spaghetti.

She plucked some olives and capers from a corner and blew the dust off the jars. “This will do. You ever cook?” she asked me, pulling the spaghetti out of my hands.

“I’m more of the take-out type,” I shrugged.

She flipped her long bangs—today, streaked neon green—back as she turned and left the pantry. “My father taught me to cook when I was little. I do dinner for the whole family every Friday. You should come over this Friday. We can go out after. A bunch of us were talking about going to Stone Mountain after dark. It’ll be fun. And you can sleep over.”

“Isn’t Stone Mountain closed at night?” The doubt in my voice hung in the air but Tabitha plowed right through it.

“Live a little,” she said. “Besides, don’t you want to meet the people responsible for this?” She laughed, twirling around the kitchen with her arms full of the dinner groceries, and I had to smile.

All Friday my stomach was in knots. Sneaking into Stone Mountain Park, in and of itself, would have been enough to put me on edge. Tabitha had met all my queries about who was going and what we would do with a vague, “You’ll see.” And now, I found myself seated at the Franklin family dinner table at the start of my first ever sleepover.

I made a mental note not to call it a “sleepover”—it sounded so babyish—and refocused my attention on the five pairs of eager brown eyes staring at me.

With the exception of Tabitha, the Franklins were astonishingly
clean-cut. Mrs. Franklin sat at the foot of the table in a starched white shirt and pearls, her straightened hair done in a flip that seemed right out of the sixties. Dr. Franklin, at the head of the table, wore a green polo shirt and looked freshly shaved. The dark brown skin on both of their faces was smooth and unmarked by worry. They both looked impossibly young to have four children.

“Stop gawking at Hope,” Tabitha scolded as she placed a platter full of crab cakes on the table with a flourish that made the leather and chain bracelets on her wrist jingle. The flouncy gingham apron she sported looked ridiculous against her hot pink pants and black T-shirt. Her three younger brothers, carbon copies of their father, giggled and squirmed in their seats.

“It looks wonderful, Tabitha, thank you,” her father beamed as Tabitha took her seat next to me. “Shall we say grace?” Everyone else’s heads immediately snapped down, eyes closed, hands clasped, while I looked on, bewildered. I looked back at Dr. Franklin, who was frowning at the top of Tabitha’s head. “Matthew 7:13,” he continued, nodding at me to join them.

As I closed my eyes, Tabitha’s youngest brother, Sam, began to intone in his tiny voice, “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat.”

“Amen,” everyone added gravely. That is, everyone but Tabitha.

When I looked up from my folded hands, she was scowling at her father, who had a smug look on his face. “Romans 3:23,” she said, her chin lifting defiantly.

“Colossians 3:20,” Dr. Franklin retorted, peering down the table at us over his glasses.

“Nice, Dad,” Tabitha said, her voice dripping with sarcasm as she reached across the table for a corn muffin.

Dr. Franklin laughed. “Just my little Friday night reminder
before you two go out to join the festivities.” Bowls and platters began to pass around as everyone filled their plates.

“How much trouble can we get into at a youth group social, Daddy?” Tabitha sweetly replied, kicking me under the table when I started to correct her.

“Besides, Tabby looks scary,” Tabitha’s brother David said, grinning wickedly. “No boys are going to talk to her.”

“David,” warned Mrs. Franklin, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Tabitha is just expressing herself.”

“And I will be more than happy if no boys talk to her,” added Dr. Franklin. “Now, Hope, we are counting on you to be a good influence and keep Tabby out of trouble.” He looked at me over a forkful of salad.

“Sir?” I said, with a grin. “I don’t think there is much risk of Bible-quoting teenagers going astray. First Corinthians, chapter ten—”

“Verse thirteen,” Tabitha added triumphantly, finishing for me with a flourish of her napkin and then smiling at me gratefully.

Not a good idea to start sparring with a biblical scholar
. The voice in my head reprimanded me so clearly that I looked around, thinking surely someone else must have heard it.

The Franklins’ forks hovered mid-air. The boys eyed the scene with delight, shoveling in their food and watching the biblical repartee as if it were a heated tennis match.

“Well, then,” Mrs. Franklin said after a long pause, her eyes sparkling with amusement as she set down her fork and tried to repress a grin. “I believe Hope has a point, dear.”

“How did you come to know the Holy Book so well, Hope?” Dr. Franklin pinned me with a curious stare while Tabitha smiled to herself, taking in a bite of macaroni and cheese. “It’s very unusual these days. Unless you come from a family of clergy, that is.”

“Uh,” I said, squirming uncomfortably, regretting that I’d spoken up. “I went to Catholic school before I moved back to Dunwoody. And my dad is kind of religious.”

He looked at me, full of speculation. “Interesting. But I take it you’re not?”

I looked at Tabitha for help, but she just shrugged.

“Um. I’d say I have more of an academic interest.” My face burned with embarrassment. I didn’t want to get into my belief—or lack thereof—with a minister. I certainly couldn’t explain the heightened sense of antagonism I felt toward religion without getting into my entire confusing past with my father.

“I see,” Dr. Franklin mused. “But let’s take this piece of scripture. If we take the full context of Corinthians—”

“Daddy,” Tabitha moaned, rolling her eyes.

Mrs. Franklin nodded to the boys, who were squirming in their seats, silently dismissing them. They threw down their napkins and dashed away.

“Roger,” she said firmly as she rose from her own seat, beginning to clear the table. “I don’t think the girls want to engage in theological debate right now. I believe they need to get ready for their night out. Girls?”

Tabitha beamed at her mother.

“Can we help you clear, ma’am?” I asked.

“House rules,” she responded with a smile. “The cooks get the night off. Dr. Franklin and I will clean up.”

Dr. Franklin grumbled in his seat as we scraped our chairs away from the table. “Bested by two teenagers,” he muttered.

“Like father, like daughter,” Mrs. Franklin laughed as we ran upstairs to Tabitha’s room.

Her door was covered with dark posters, dramatic Keep Out
signs, and caution tape. As I swung the door open and crossed the threshold into her room, I let out an involuntary gasp at what I saw.

“What?” Tabitha crossed her arms defensively, jutting one bony hip out.

“It’s just so … pink,” I said, unable to keep a straight face. The room was a six-year-old’s fantasy: rainbows, unicorns, and every sweet pastel you could imagine. Clearly her “self-expression” had been stopped short of a redecorating budget. “The princess wallpaper is definitely you.”

She scowled. “Make all the fun you want. I just haven’t had time to redo it.”

“I see that,” I said, spinning around to take it all in. The posters of goth and emo bands looked wildly out of place next to the “Hang in There!” kitten calendar.

She ignored me, throwing open her closet doors. It was a bipolar closet: starched and preppy good-girl clothes on one half, lots of black and neon on the other. She roughly shoved the J. Crew half to one side, muttering “Sunday stuff.” Then she began whipping through the dark side of her closet, looking for who-knows-what.

“Aha!” she declared, pulling out a T-shirt that looked like it had been ripped to shreds and holding it up against my chest. “This will be perfect on you.”

“Uh, what’s wrong with what I have on?” I asked, looking down at my layered tee and polo shirt. I nervously fingered the fringe on my scarf.

“Bo-ring,” she judged, rolling her eyes. “Don’t you want to try something different for a change?”

“But nobody is going to see it anyway,” I protested, pushing the shirt away, “since we’re going to have our jackets on.”

She tossed her hair back, impatient with me. “At least let me do
your makeup and hair, then,” she said, throwing down the shirt and dragging me into her bathroom.

Before I could protest she’d plopped me down on a stool and started rummaging through drawers, pulling out tubes and bottles and all sorts of things I didn’t even know how to use. For all of her studied antisocial behaviors, she sure cared about fashion.

This is not going to turn out well
, I thought, sighing inwardly.

She stepped behind me to take an appraising look in the mirror. “You have good bone structure. We just need a little drama, a little edge. Here, let’s get this hair out of the way,” she said, sweeping my long hair back with both hands.

“No!” My hands flew back to stop her, but it was too late. My hair was tucked high on my head in a tie, and she’d flicked away the scarf I’d wrapped around my neck. I tried to cover myself, but she swatted my hands away.