Departures (21 page)

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,” Jana 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.

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.

As her competitive spirit kicked in, Sierra turned to face the middle seat and said, “Tim, how do you say ‘river rafting’ in sign language?”

Tim thought a moment and then said, “I don’t know. I’d probably sign it like this. This is ‘river,’ and then I’d spell ‘raft.’ ” His fingers moved quickly as he spelled the word.

“Do that slowly,” Sierra said, trying to imitate the letters with her fingers in the air. “Is this an ‘r’?”

“Like this,” Tim said, reaching over and readjusting the way she had her first two fingers crossed.

Sierra smiled. She knew she had just scored a point. Tim had touched her.

As quickly as the thrill of scoring came over Sierra, it left. This was Jana. They had competed for years in school and in sports but never when it came to guys. It felt different with guys, like it was unfair, because in relationships a person’s heart and soul were involved. Sierra didn’t like what she was feeling. She turned back around in her seat just in time to see Gregg pull into a gravel driveway and park the car in front of a log cabin. To the right was a sign carved in wood that said, “Mountain Bob’s River Rafts.”

“Everybody out,” Gregg said. Then, turning to Jana, he grinned and said, “Get ready to have an especially good time.”

Sierra hoped that didn’t mean Gregg was planning to topple their raft or some other such practical joke.

They were about to walk toward the office when Jana grabbed Sierra’s arm and pulled her back behind the large Suburban. “Look!” Jana squeaked.

Sierra looked around the side of the car. Then she turned back to face her friend, just as red-faced as Jana was. “It’s Danny!” Sierra said. “What’s he doing here?”

“I don’t know, but I’m not ready to face him.”

“You’re not ready to face him?” Sierra said. “What about me? I’m the one he watched doing a little star dance on the dock last night.”

Gregg apparently noticed the girls weren’t with them, and he came back to get them. “What’s going on?”

“What’s Danny doing here?” Jana whispered.

Gregg looked over his shoulder and gave a friendly wave to Danny. “Mom invited him. He’s your surprise.”

“My surprise? Why would Mom invite him?”

Gregg shrugged. “She sent me over to their house this morning, and I was supposed to ask him to come rafting with us.”

Jana gave Sierra a look of agony and said, “This is just like my mother! I’m sure she thought that if she arranged my social life, I wouldn’t have any reason to sneak out in search of my own adventure. She’s done this our whole lives, Gregg, have you noticed? She organizes everything to the last detail—even this.”