Good, Clean Murder (15 page)

It was Friday, the
day after what had been a very fun, if not exactly flirtation free, hour of
soccer in the park, and the day before Jane and Isaac would have had their date
had it not been against school policy. If she could muster the energy, she
thought she might like to dress up just a little for school.

A hot shower had
loosened her shoulders and relaxed her back, not completely but at least she
was more comfortable. She stood, towel wrapped, in front of her closet,
disturbed by the state of her clothes. Bleach stained house cleaning clothes
and church dresses. That was all. Nothing in between. She felt the need for a
pair of skinny jeans and a…she scrunched her mouth. She couldn’t imagine what
kind of shirts were considered cute and “in” right now, but whatever they were
she wished she had one. After her lean winter the closest jeans she had to
skinny were pretty baggy still. She didn’t even want to look at her shoes. Two
choices. Bleach stained converse or the black buckled Mary Jane style flats
she’d been wearing since she was a sophomore at prep school. She grabbed a
vintage Roly Burger t-shirt from one of her dad’s promo events in years past.
It wasn’t too bleach speckled yet.

And what did it
matter? It really wasn’t a date, after all. Just school like any other day. She
threw a light sweater over it and called it good. Not stylish, but good.

At school Jane
settled into her seat, in the clothes she had settled on. Settled. The word had
a depressing sound to it, like a dirt mound sinking into the ground after a
heavy rain. How badly had she settled?

It wasn’t like she
had
settled
on Harvest School of the Bible. She had graduated high
school with high honors. Her parents had given her carte blanche to pick a
school. This one, this little school with its missions focused Bible program,
was the one she had felt called to.
Had felt
. Past tense. When, exactly
had her feeling changed? Or was the problem that it had always just been a
feeling, and nothing more? Had she truly been called or had she merely made an
adolescent, emotional decision?

Jane crossed her
arms on her desk and laid her head down, stretching her neck. With only three
months left until “graduation,” if you could call it that, the “feeling” of
being called to Harvest hardly mattered. She certainly wasn’t going to quit
this close to the finish line.

Isaac stood at the
front of the class shuffling his papers. After exchanging a brief, rueful
smile, she avoided making eye contact, and he seemed to avoid her as well.
Whoever had been telling tales to Pastor Barnes needed to get the message that
she and Isaac were trying to be above reproach.

Or were they?

Graduation was
coming. Last year’s graduation had been fun. She had started at Harvest a year
after her high school graduation so that she could have a stash of money saved
up to allow her to work less as she went to school.

Still, though she
had started the program as a part time student, only taking the night classes,
she had had plenty of her friends from high school with her. The graduation
ceremony had been emotional, knowing that several of her friends were leaving
straight from the ceremony to short-term overseas missions. She sat up and
looked around the room. Her fellow students this year were not her friends the
way they had been the year before. Even though she had grown up with some of
them. Was it because they were so frivolous or was it really because her
attitude had changed over time?

Would she have
been better off to do one of the short term missions with her real friends?

Isaac began his
lecture. His microphone crackled and Jane sat up.

He caught her eye,
and despite her internal moaning she felt a smile creep across her face. Her
heart fluttered, against her better instincts.

No, she was glad
she hadn’t gone on a mission this year. Not exactly because she had met Isaac,
rather, because meeting Isaac had pointed out an important flaw in her
character. She felt like she ought to have been lost in thought over how to
serve the grieving and seemingly unsaved Crawford family, leading them to
Christ, helping them during their time of crisis, figuring out who was behind
the murders. But what was she doing instead? Moping. Decrying her current life
situation because she was sad that she didn’t have anything cute to wear for
Isaac. Clearly she wasn’t mature enough to serve overseas yet.

The smile
disappeared. If she wasn’t mature enough to go overseas yet, what was she going
to do after graduation?

Class dragged on
forever.

At the end of
class—Isaac had not given them a mid-way break—Sarah grabbed Jane by the elbow.
“Your futon has become the center of female social life here on campus. Come
enjoy it with us.”

Jane allowed
herself to be pulled away, but gave a fleeting glance in Isaac’s direction. He
was engaged in conversation with three of the more studious boys in class.

In the girls dorm
community area Sarah settled Jane on the futon with a mug of herbal tea and a
fleece blanky. As Sarah had promised, most of the forty girls who lived in the
dorm were lounging with them.

“Spill.” Sarah
leaned against Jane’s knees with her own cup of tea.

“I assume you
don’t mean literally.” Jane blew on the top of her cup to cool the hot liquid.

“What is going on
with you two?” Mina asked. She lay on her stomach on the indoor-outdoor
carpeted floor painting her nails. “We know he likes you, so, like Sarah said,
spill. Are you and
Mr.
Daniels an item or not?”

Jane took a drink
of her tea.

“Come on, Ice
Queen, we demand to know!” Trinity, one of the youngest at the school squealed
as she spoke.

“Ice Queen?” Jane
rested her cup on her knee. Moments ago, sitting at her desk, she had felt like
a twelve-year-old, but now she might as well be forty.

“Too cool for
school, Ice Queen. Too cool for boys. Just plain Jane, the Ice Queen.”

“Plain, I can
understand, but since when have I been icy?”

“This is the first
time you’ve ever sat in the lounge, Ice Queen.” Mina finished her nails off
with polka dots.

“No it’s not. What
are you talking about? I—” Jane stopped, mid-defense. She was about to say she
hung out in the communal room all the time, except that it had been last year,
with the other class. She had stayed here past curfew most nights, last year.
Mina was right. This was the first time all year she had sat in the lounge to
hang out with the girls. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be cold.”

“Forgiven. Now,
tell us what is going on with you and that handsome devil who teaches our
class.” Mina sat up. She waved her hands back and forth in front of her to dry.

“Nothing.” Jane
took another drink, heat rising to her cheeks.

“Because of Pastor
Barnes?” Trinity asked.

Jane chewed on her
bottom lip. If these girls had been last year’s girls they would have known
everything by now. “Yes, because of Pastor Barnes. There are rules against
instructors dating students.”

“Not fair!”
Trinity cried. “Totes not fair, like, really, really totes not fair. He is so
into you.”

Jane’s smile came
back. She couldn’t help it. He
was
into her. So much so that the other
kids noticed.

“So what are we
going to do about this grave injustice, my friends?” Sarah asked.

The girls began to
giggle, all of them at once.

“Oh no.” Jane
didn’t like the sound of the giggles.

“We have a
surprise for you, Jane.” Sarah stood up and motioned to Mina.

Mina stood up, and
fluttered a long, thin scarf out in front of her. “Stand, Jane.”

Jane did not
stand. She did not like the looks of that scarf, but Trinity and Sarah and a
couple of other girls dragged her off the futon, with minimal tea spillage.

Mina wrapped the
scarf around her head.

“You are coming
with us.” Sarah used her most ominous voice, the effect slightly ruined by the
sheer volume of giggling.

Jane allowed them
to lead her away. She had done something similar to a student last year. A girl
who was in love with a quiet, shy boy who sat at the front of the class. Jane
had helped sneak her friend into the boys’ dorm hall so that the love-struck
kids could have a little bit of privacy to “talk” about their feelings. It had
worked. Jane had received an invitation to their upcoming wedding shortly
before she was evicted, but where were these girls taking
her
?

They were outside.
They walked so far that Jane was certain they had left the school grounds. It
was cold, and Jane knew it was very dark.

And then it was
warm, and smoky. The crackle of a fire filled the air. Sarah had taken her to
the fire pit. Then she helped Jane sit down on a log.

The secret fire
pit. Jane remembered it well.

Sarah pulled the
scarf off and ran.

Jane was
completely alone. She leaned forward and stared into the fire. Last year, when
she had taken the time to make friends with the other students, they had come
to the secret fire pit in the woods. She missed them. Part time school had been
a bad idea.

She could hear
footsteps crunching on the forest floor, and then Isaac sat down on the log
next to her. He sat close, his arm warming hers.

“The guys told me
there was a student out here who needed some advice.”

“They were right.”
Jane leaned her head over on his shoulder. “What was I thinking, Isaac?”

“I think you were
probably thinking about using your life to grow God’s kingdom.”

“Yes, I was, but
my idea was bad. I should have done everything differently.” Jane kept her eyes
fixed on the crackling flames.

“Maybe, but isn’t
that true for all of us? We never know what the best idea really is until after
we’ve done something.” Isaac wrapped his arm around her shoulder.

“What a shame. I
can’t go back now and make the right decision.” Jane leaned forward and picked
up a stick. She poked into the fire with the green wood, sending sparks into
the night air.

“But you can use
this experience to help you make the next decision.”

“I don’t know what
the next decision is anymore.” Jane poked the fire again. The larger log rolled
off the burning pile. The fire dimmed with the loss of contact, but the white
coals glowed.

“I have an idea, but it’s going to sound really
stupid, and you probably aren’t going to like it.”

Jane doubted it would be a stupid idea. Isaac, in
their short acquaintance, had never sounded stupid, but from the serious set of
his mouth, she thought she might not like what he had to say.
 

“Never mind.” Isaac tossed the stick he had been
toying with onto the fire.
 

“You’ve got to tell me now. It’s only fair.” Jane
cracked the thin bark of her stick with her fingernail and began to peel away
at it.
 

“This is going to be a really long spring.” Isaac
lifted the hem of her sweater. He let the thin knit fabric fall between his
fingers.
 

“Isaac, I didn’t ask the boys to bring you here to
counsel me.” Jane peeled another long, thin, strand of bark off of her stick.
“I’m just moping right now. I swear my life—and I—aren’t usually this dramatic.
Everything will calm down after the funeral.”
 

“I figured you didn’t ask for counseling.” Isaac
smiled at her “And I wasn’t talking about drama. Your drama isn’t your fault.”

Jane let the strips of bark fall into the fire. They
lay on the coals, sweating and curling in the heat. They were too green to
burn. “Then what do you mean?”

He gave her sweater hem a tug. “I don’t want to wait
until May to take you out.”
His smile looked
a little embarrassed.

Jane leaned into his shoulder. “That’s not stupid, and
I
do
like it.”

“That wasn’t the part you wouldn’t like.” He let the
sweater fall from his fingers. Then he picked up her hand. “So, Harvest.”

Jane’s heart sank. “Yes?”

“You’ve earned a lot of credits here.”

“Yes. I have.” Jane looked down at her hand in his.
She was surprised again, by how rough his hands were. Not at all what she would
have expected for a career student.

“Remember how badly you don’t want to go on short-term
missions?”

“How could I forget?” Jane said.

“Do you remember what you said not so long ago about
how you don’t need my class?”

Jane’s hand went cold in his. “Yes.”

“You have a lot of credits, probably more than you
know. You could drop my class. You’d still get your certificate, and then, you
know…”