Sold Out (2 page)

Laura didn’t come to practice today. It’s the first time she’s ever missed. She left a message with my mom saying she was busy. That’s all. Just busy. Allie and I tried to practice without her, and it wasn’t too terrible, but something was definitely missing. And it didn’t help much that Allie was more hyper than usual. I realize now how Laura really helps to calm that girl down some.

“What exactly is going on with you two any-way?” asked Allie as she crammed her drumsticks back into her pack.

“I’m not sure.” I unplugged my guitar and leaned it against the stand.

“I know how Laura can get on her high horse sometimes, but she usually apologizes later.” Suddenly Allie grew thoughtful. “One time she told me that she does that whole judgmental thing out of habit.”

“Seems like a bad habit.”

“Well, you know how her church can be sometimes. I’ve only visited twice, but the way that preacher can go on and on kind of gives me the heebie-jeebies. It’s like they’re all worried
about everyone blowing it, especially kids. The preacher is constantly warning everyone not to do this or that, not to make mistakes or get into trouble. It’s pretty negative if you ask me.”

“Yeah, I know. The only time I ever went there I felt sort of guilty for not going up to the altar when we were all supposed to ‘repent.’ But it just didn’t feel right to me at the time. I felt like I was being manipulated. Because I honestly felt as if everything was pretty much okay between God and me that particular day. And I really didn’t feel like God was asking me to go down there. The truth is, as stupid as I felt sitting in the pew all by myself and probably looking like some unrepentant sinner, I’d have felt like a hypocrite to have gone forward.”

Allie pulled on her sweatshirt. “But Laura really gets drawn into all that stuff—and her parents and brother too. It’s as if she’s afraid to make one single mistake. Maybe it has something to do with what she told us about her older sister, the one who got messed up with crack.”

“Maybe, but my brother Caleb has a drug problem too, and I don’t get all freaked about—”

“But that’s different.”

I shrugged. “I don’t see how.”

“Well, you’re different. And I guess you see things differently than Laura.”

“Yeah, and it’s okay to be different. I’m sure
not saying we all need to think alike. If Laura’s happy with what she believes, I’m fine. But when she starts laying her stuff on me…” I just shook my head.

“Remember when she told us how she needs to make these big statements against sin—you know, how she went on and on about it? Well, I think it’s like she’s worried that if she doesn’t draw these lines real dark and thick, she’ll come totally unglued or something. It’s like she’s scared she’s going to blow it really bad someday, just totally mess up her life, you know? Like if she doesn’t maintain these really strict boundaries, she’ll go out there and do something totally stupid and then go to hell.”

I laughed. Mat that it was really funny, but the way Allie said it was sort of humorous. “Yeah, I know what you mean, but I’ve talked to her about all this stuff before, and it seems as if she understands where I’m coming from. I’ve told her that I believe God wants me to reach out to everyone—no matter who they are or what they’re doing. And Laura even acts as if she wants to change-wants to reach out to the down-and-outers. Then I get my hopes up, like maybe she’ll step out of her little comfort zone.”

“And hang with guys like Spencer and Jake and Cesar?”

“Yeah, and Marissa too.” I glanced at my watch.
“Oh yeah, that reminds me—Marissa’s kind of lonely, and I said maybe we could do something with her this weekend.”

Allie shrugged. “Like what?”

“Good question.” I looked at the rain pelting against the window. “I was thinking a bike ride, but it’s pretty wet out there right now.”

“Wanna go to the mall? My mom finally paid me for babysitting Davie. Man, I about fainted when she forked it over. But, hey, I didn’t refuse it either.”

So we called up Marissa and agreed to meet at the mall then caught the bus over there. And, looking back, despite my little spiel about Laura getting out of her comfort zone, I am so glad that she wasn’t around to come with us today. If she had, I’m sure she would’ve said, “I told you so.” And suddenly, I’m wondering if Laura might not be more right on about these things than I realized. Or not. I’m still not sure, but I’m praying that God will straighten me out on this particular one.

Okay, this is what happened. Marissa and Allie and I are walking through the mall, nothing out of the ordinary. We’ve already stopped by the food court to split a calorie-laden cinnamon roll; hopefully all those carbs divided by three won’t hurt us too badly. And now Allie’s searching for the perfect T-shirt, whatever that might be. But so far nothing’s working for her.

We’ve just entered about the fourth store—
Madelyne’s—a pretty cool clothing store with a good selection of urban styles. Allie and I usually find something pretty rad there. Anyway, we’re just walking around looking at the new summer stuff and wishing the weather would cooperate a little. While Allie’s rummaging through a rack of new T-shirts, Marissa and I are messing around, acting goofy and joking about an ugly new style of jeans.

Then Marissa starts playing with a basket of thongs—and I’m not talking about foot apparel. She pretends like a hot pink thong is a rubber band, like she’s going to shoot me with it. Pretty funny. Then when I think she’s putting it back, she scoops up a big handful of the stupid stringy things and with a completely straight face just stuffs them right into her sweatshirt pocket. Like it’s no big deal.

Well, I’m speechless. I immediately glance around to see if anyone’s looking or if there’s a surveillance camera or anything. I’m not even sure why I do this. Although looking back now I must admit it’s probably because I remember that anxious feeling—wondering if you’ll get caught. And that’s because I stole a pair of black leather gloves once. It was from this really nice department store that my mom likes to shop at, back when I was in middle school.

Don’t ask me why I did it. It’s not like I didn’t
have any money. Who knows how our adolescent minds work? Oh, I probably thought I was being cool, tough, daring even. I was by myself at the time, and I never even told anyone about it—never actually thought about it much until today. But now I’ve decided that I’m going to put some money in an envelope (the price of the gloves) and put a note with it and just drop it off at the store.

But back to today. So, feeling a little stunned, I make this face at Marissa, a face that I’m sure says: “What the crud do you think you’re doing?” But she just laughs at me, then turns and walks right out of the store. Done deal. So now I’m suddenly faced with this dilemma. What to do? Turn her in? Force her to come back? So I go over and find Allie, grabbing her by the arm.

“Come on,” I urge.

“Huh?”

“Come on.” I nod toward the door.

“What d’you mean?” I can tell she thinks I’m nuts. “I just found a style I like, and I want to try it on to see if it—”

“You can come back later.”

“But they only have one—”

“Come on!” I take the T-shirt out of her hand, hang it back on the rack, then tug her toward the door, and we quickly exit the store.

“What on earth is wrong with you?” Allie looks seriously ticked.

“It’s Marissa.” I glance down the mall to spot Marissa sitting complacently next to a big palm tree planter. “She lifted some thongs,” I whisper, like the FBI might be tailing us.

“Thongs?” Allie looks puzzled now. “Like rubber thongs?”

I roll my eyes. “No! Like underwear. The point is she just grabbed a handful, shoved them into her pocket, and walked out.”

Well, now Allie starts laughing wildly, and frankly I don’t see the humor here. “What is so funny?” I ask as we approach Marissa, who’s looking pretty pleased with herself.

“You. You are acting so totally weird.”

“Me? What about Marissa? What she did was wrong.”

Allie nodded. “Yeah, I know that. But I swear, you’re acting just like Laura right now.”

Now I’m not quite sure how to react to this little comment—earlier it would have irritated me a lot—but right now I’m thinking, “Fine, at least I know Laura wouldn’t shoplift anything.”

“Come on, Chloe, just chill out.” Allie waves at Marissa like nothing whatsoever is wrong. “Don’t forget that Jesus loves everyone. Remember the thief on the cross?”

I literally stop in my tracks and stare at Allie. I am, for the second time in mere minutes, speechless—totally stopped by her words. And as
confused and conflicted as I feel inside, I suspect she is right.

But that still doesn’t make this kind of thing any easier. I know we need to forgive Marissa, but does that make everything okay? Obviously not. Should we have reported her? I don’t think so. Sometimes life is confusing.

I have to admit it was kind of cool letting Allie handle the little shoplifting episode yesterday. Thinking about it now I really admire how she very calmly told Marissa that we weren’t into that sort of thing.

“The truth is I’ve shoplifted before,” Allie confessed to both of us. “At the time I kind of rationalized that it was okay because my dad had just deserted us and we were flat broke and everything seemed pretty bleak and hopeless-like who cared anyway? But then I got caught.”

“You got caught?” I stared at her with fascination. “You never told me about this.”

She laughed. “Hey, it’s not like I’m proud of it. What really got to me was how unbelievably devastated my mom was. She was like totally crushed when they called her to come pick me up. I still remember her sitting there in the police station just sobbing like I’d murdered someone.”

“What happened at the police station?” asked Marissa, apparently impressed by Allie’s short-lived life of crime.

“I confessed. I mean, what was I going to do
when they’d obviously caught me red-handed? Then my mom and I had to sign some papers and agree to attend this all-day seminar about shoplifting—very boring, not to mention my mom was totally furious to miss a whole day of work. Then I had to do forty hours of community service—mostly shoveling Bark-o-Mulch at the city park. Plus I was grounded like forever, and my mom made me babysit my little brother without getting paid a penny for a long, long time.”

“Whoa.” Marissa looked down at her lap. “That’s pretty stiff. What’d you lift anyway?”

“Just some earrings.” Allie shrugged. “I think they only cost about ten bucks. But the truth is I’d stolen quite a few things before that. And I was actually starting to get pretty comfortable with the whole thing.”

“Have you taken anything since then?” I asked.

“No. After going through all that crud, I didn’t think it’d be worth it. Plus they promised me that my record would be expunged, that means wiped clean, if I stayed out of trouble for a year. Then, not too long after that—” she turned and smiled at Marissa—”I found God and I have a relationship with Him. And I know He wouldn’t want me to steal anything.”

Marissa didn’t really respond to that last bit. And despite Allie’s very cool lecture, Marissa
apparently didn’t feel the need to return her pocketful of “hot” thongs. So we pretty much parted ways, and I guess I still feel pretty lousy about the whole thing. Other than the way Allie handled it, that is. But personally, I’m still not sure what to do. I realize Marissa still needs us to love her, but I’m just not sure how I feel about hanging with her—or at least about going to the mall with her. I don’t really think I’m up for that again.

But here’s the good thing that happened today. I felt so bad about my fight with Laura that I wanted to talk to her before going to church. I remembered this time when Pastor Tony preached about how we shouldn’t come to church if we were mad at someone. The Bible says that we’re supposed to go take care of our problems with our brothers and sisters and then come to worship. So I decided to take that piece of advice seriously, and I got up early and rode my bike over to Laura’s (fortunately the weather had improved).

And as I rode, I practiced what I thought I would say to her. Still, I must admit feeling rather self-conscious as I stood on her front porch so early on Sunday morning when it looked as though the rest of the civilized world was still sleeping in. But thankfully her mom was up, in a lime green bathrobe and with a cup of coffee in her hand. She acted as if she wasn’t all that
surprised to see me, although I suspect she was. “You’re up early today, Chloe.” “Is Laura here?”

She nodded. “I think she’s still in bed, but you can go get her up if you want. You know where her room is.”

So I tiptoed down the hall to Laura’s room and quietly tapped on her door. I heard her sleepily say, “Come in.” So I did.

Laura’s head popped up from her pillow. “What are you—?”

“Sorry to wake you up.” I glanced around her tidy room. Laura is a total neat freak. “Can I sit on your bed?”

She nodded with wide eyes.

“I—uh—I just wanted to talk to you,” I began slowly. “I feel really bad about what happened on Friday, and I wanted to say I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?” Mow I must confess that I still felt like this was as much her fault as mine, maybe even more, but then I can only be responsible for my own actions—not hers. So this is where I started. Besides, this idea had occurred to me on the way over—if you really love someone, even though you believe she’s wronged you, maybe the kindest thing is for you to do everything possible to make it easier for her to say she’s sorry too.

I could see that Laura was holding back tears now. She pressed her lips together as if she was
thinking about what to say and then simply burst out, “I’m sorry too, Chloe. I don’t know why I was being so—so—”

I hugged her. “It doesn’t matter now. The important thing is we’re still friends.”

She nodded and wiped her eyes. “I didn’t know if you’d ever want to speak to me again. I thought about calling, but I didn’t even know what to say, where to begin.”

“I’ve thought about the whole thing a lot. And maybe we should just agree to disagree about some things.”

“Maybe so.”

“I mean, God made us all different for a reason, didn’t He?”

“I guess so.”

“And just because you feel one way about something doesn’t mean I have to feel the same way, right?”

“Maybe not.” She still looked troubled though.

“So are we okay then?”

She sighed. “Yeah. I think so.”

I glanced around her tidy room again, wondering, not for the first time, how she managed to keep everything in place. She even had an outfit all laid out for church. I’d probably just go in the jeans I was already wearing. “I guess I should probably go and let you get ready for church.”

She glanced at her alarm clock. “Maybe so.”

So I said good-bye to her mom, hopped on my bike, and headed home. I felt better, but I still felt like something wasn’t quite right. Maybe I was still just obsessing over that stupid little episode with Marissa and worried that Laura would find out and think Allie and I were nuts for hanging with her in the first place. Or maybe I sensed something wasn’t quite right with Laura. I’m still not sure. But I’m praying for Laura—that God will make her into the person He wants her to be. And me too!

Today Marissa told Allie and me that she doesn’t think she’ll shoplift anymore. “I thought about what Allie said and figured it’s probably not worth the risk of getting caught.” She smiled
impishly. “Still, I think I’ll miss the thrill—it’s such a cool rush to break the law.”

Cesar was the only guy still at the table. I thought it was funny how he’s always privy to these female conversations. “Sounds wise,” he said. “Where I work, they really prosecute shoplifters.”

Marissa laughed. “Yeah, like I’d go into Home Depot to take something. I can just see me putting a Skil saw under my T-shirt.”

“Well, you’d probably get caught even if you just swiped a package of nails. They’ve got some pretty tight surveillance going on in there.”

“Okay, I’ll keep that in mind next time I want to lift a ladder or bucket of paint.”

“How’s your job going?” I asked, eager to change the subject.

“Pretty good. It’s hard work, but I like it.”

“Jake said he wants to get hired there too.”

Cesar laughed. “Fat chance.”

“You mean the drug test?” asked Allie.

“Yeah, among other things.”

“It only takes about a week to get your system clean—that is, if you drink lots of water and take vitamins,” said Marissa, as though she knew this from personal experience.

I felt my eyebrows rise ever so slightly, and I wondered if this meant she was a user too, but I didn’t say a thing.

“That’s not the case with weed.” Cesar leaned back in his chair like he was the expert. “It’ll still show up in a UA for up to a month.”

“So you’re staying clean then?” asked Allie.

He nodded. “Drug free and glad of it. It helps me to know they can test me anytime they like. But I don’t want to go back to that. What a waste.”

“Good for you.” I smiled at him. Cesar really seems to have changed during the course of the school year. Okay, he might not be a Christian—not yet anyway. But he’s definitely trying to live better. And he seems pretty open to a lot of the things I’ve told him so far. I honestly think it’s just a matter of time.

“Well, maybe Jake will quit using too,” suggested Allie. “If he wants to get a job, I mean.”

Cesar set down his drink cup. “Yeah, my uncle says that you either quit or die. At first it sounded a little extreme to me, but the longer I stay clean—and see what my friends are doing—the more I think he might be right.”

Marissa seemed quieter than usual just then, and I wondered once again if she might be into something. Although she’s never admitted to anything, and she’s never slipped out to smoke weed with Jake and Spencer.

“Well, the best high I’ve ever had is with God,” I tossed in, watching for her to react. She didn’t.

“Yeah, me too,” said Allie. “Like sometimes
when we’re jamming and stuff, singing songs for God, man, it’s like way better than drugs.”

Cesar leaned forward. “I remember feeling a high sort of like that once. It was really weird. I went to mass early one day, back when I was in sixth grade, and the whole church was totally empty. I just sat on this back pew and sort of listened to the silence. And suddenly I got this really cool feeling inside of me, kind of like God was right there.” He laughed. “Pretty weird. But it seemed real at the time.”

Marissa jumped up. “Okay, you guys are really creeping me out with all this religious mumbo jumbo. I think I’ve had about enough.”

Allie held up her hands. “Hey, it’s not as if we’re trying to convert you or anything—we’re just talking about stuff that’s important to us.”

“And don’t worry,” I added lightly. “We don’t do an altar call or anything.”

Well, Marissa kind of laughed at that, then slowly sat back down. “Okay then, I can only take so much, and just so you know, I get enough preaching from my grandparents. I mean, they’re total religious fanatics who have no problem knocking me across the side of the head with their Bibles whenever they see the need. I’m sure they think I’m going straight to hell.”

Just then I noticed Laura looking our way from her “safe” table with her “safe” ftiends, and
I felt certain that she would be somewhat shocked to hear our conversation. And that bothered me. Sometimes I feel like I’m this giant rubber band stretched between these two totally different worlds. Not that I feel guilty for hanging with the kids with problems. Fact is, we all have problems. But sometimes I feel uncomfortable being caught in the middle and I wonder why we can’t all just get along—despite our differences.