The Prince Charming List (22 page)

“Are you trying to cheer me up? Because you’re really bad at it.” I could feel tears bubbling up again so I stared out the grimy window. The cars on the road underneath us looked like toys. I should have been freaked out by this, but I wasn’t. I was flying above the trees in an ancient airplane—with Dex—and I wasn’t searching for a parachute.

“Kaylie’s mom is wrong,” Dex said matter-of-factly. “You didn’t tell Kaylie not to have the surgery—you told her it wouldn’t instantly change how she felt about herself. And you were right.”

“How did you
know
that?”

“She told me. While you were working the parade route, tapping little kids on the head with your wand, she was talking to me. I think she was afraid if she didn’t distract me, I was going to faint.”

If that was true, then why hadn’t Kaylie come to work? Why had she been crying most of the day? It didn’t make sense. But at the moment, nothing did. Maybe Dex wasn’t the ideal person to pour my soul out to, but he was the one who’d kidnapped me so he had to deal with the fallout.

“I want to do something that counts. Something that
lasts
. Look at you—you’re going to be flying medical supplies to missionaries. Why did God put you on that list? Why am I cutting people’s hair and you get to do
that?
”

“Maybe because I took someone’s place.”

“Well, maybe someone can take
my
place, then, so Mrs. Darnell can yell at someone else.” In the distance I could see the sapphire-blue shingles on the roof of Lester’s barn. We’d flown in a large circle and were heading back to the farm. I wasn’t ready to go back. Dex was right. Circumstances looked different when you were above them.

Both of us were silent as the plane thumped along the ground toward the pole building. It coasted to a stop just inside, the nose of the plane inches from the wall. Neither of us moved.

“Again?” I pleaded.

Dex leaned back, plucked his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. “No gas. We were flying on fumes the last ten minutes as it was.”

And thank you for not mentioning that sooner.

“Dex…thanks.” I wasn’t sure what I was thanking him for. Maybe for listening. And for saying just enough.

His eyes narrowed. “You don’t need a
hug,
do you?”

He sounded so uncomfortable that I laughed. “No.”

“Because I can.” From the tone of his voice, it sounded like he was offering to wear a wire and go into a room full of drug dealers.

“Really—I’m okay.” Whether I wanted it or not, the real world was back and I had to face it. I opened the door but just as I was about to jump down, Dex was there. He grabbed my waist with both hands and swung me down. Automatically, I clung to his shoulders. Which ended up with both of us up to our ankles in sawdust, not as close to each other as we’d been when I’d landed on him back at the apartment, but almost.

“Heather?” His voice was low.

“What?” I forced the word out. The butterflies were awake again and I couldn’t blame it on the turbulence this time. He hadn’t put his glasses back on. I kept forgetting his eyes were that soft shade of blue, like the comfy footy pajamas Annie dressed Nathaniel in.

“Give me your phone.”

I blinked.

“Your phone.” He held out his hand.

I pulled my cell from my pocket and gave it to him. He flipped it open and started cruising through my address book.

“Don’t call Kaylie…I can’t talk to her right…Dex!” The phone was ringing and he pressed it into my hand. I would have hung up except that I heard a familiar voice say hello.

“Mom?”

“Heather? I was just thinking about you.”

He’d dialed
home
. I couldn’t say anything past the lump in my throat.

“Honey? Is everything all right?”

Dex nodded at me. Prompted me to say something.

“Things could be…better.” I gravitated toward a stack of tires in the corner and perched on top of them. When I looked up, Dex was gone.

Half an hour later, I found him leaning against a fence post, feeding dandelions to one of Lester’s cows. I walked over and stood next to him but he didn’t look at me.

“Are you sifting through the stuff in your head again?”

He and the cow both swung their heads around. Dex looked confused. Finally, an expression I was used to seeing on his face. The pilot Dex and the sensitive I-know-when-a-girl-needs-her-Mom Dex had totally thrown me off center.

“What does that mean?”

“Oh, nothing.” I was embarrassed it had slipped out. “Annie just mentioned one day that you lived in your head a lot—sifting through stuff.”

I think she’d used the word
junk
. Maybe not. What kind of junk would someone like Dex—Mr. Missionary Pilot—have cluttering up his head?

Dex looked down at the ground and scuffed the toe of his shoe against the sun-scorched patch of grass under our feet. He’d suddenly retreated into himself like a turtle. And I was the one who’d tapped on his shell. “Annie is something else.”

I smiled. That was the truth. I bent down and picked a dandelion to feed to the cow, then noticed its ear.

“Is that
Junebug?
”

“Uh-huh.”

I dropped the dandelion. “She’s…vicious.”

“She’s a big baby.” Dex scratched Junebug’s crooked ear and she pushed closer. If she were a cat, she would have purred.

“That’s not what I heard,” I muttered, remembering the bite out of Jared’s T-shirt.

Dex patted her nose and then brushed his hands off on his jeans. “I’ll take you back to town.”

I let him get a few steps ahead of me as we walked to the car.

It was inevitable that I had to go back to Prichett. I felt better after spilling my heart out to Mom, but the numbness hadn’t completely worn away. Dex and I must have been at Lester’s for several hours. The sun was settling comfortably on the horizon for the night, fluffing the clouds around it like feather pillows. My stomach realized this and growled a loud reminder that we’d passed the acceptable time frame for supper.

I would have been horrified if that had happened in front of Jared. But this was Dex. “Do you want to come over? I’ll make us something to eat.”

He didn’t slow down. “No.”

I wasn’t sure if the disappointment I felt was because he didn’t want payment in the form of a grilled cheese or because he was back to using sentences that consisted of a noun and a verb. “Are you sure?”

“I have something to do.”

An hour later, Mrs. Darnell and Kaylie showed up at my door.

I
froze. Not even Kaylie’s quick hug thawed me out.

“Can we come in?” Mrs. Darnell looked different when she wasn’t on a crusade. Nicer. She wasn’t fooling me. She’d come back for round two.

I stepped back and let them file past me. Mrs. Darnell glanced at Dex’s bookcase, which was still in the center of the room, and found an empty spot on the couch next to Snap. Kaylie flopped down beside her.

The sudden silence in the room was very loud.

Kaylie leaned forward. “I’m sorry I didn’t come to work today, Heather. Saturday was…hard. I didn’t expect it to be so hard.”

She had to be talking about the parade. Or maybe the karaoke contest. I’d convinced her to pair up with me in a duet for that. Or was it when I’d taken a bandanna and tied her—ankle to ankle—to the cutest guy in Stephen and Annie’s youth group for the three-legged race? It didn’t matter. I’d cheerfully bullied her into the limelight the entire day, forgetting she was more comfortable fading into the woodwork. Or maybe I’d just ignored it. I was convinced Kaylie had been squeezing her outgoing personality into a mold designed for an introvert and it was time for Heather’s interpretation of freedom in Christ.

Scratch the gift of discernment.

“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have pushed you.” I cringed inside, expecting Mrs. Darnell to second the motion.

“You didn’t push me. I pushed myself. And I had a blast. Max, the guy you entered me in the three-legged race with, told me he was leaving for college next month and he wished he had more time to get to know me. We’ve been in the same classes for four years and I was always afraid to talk to him. I wouldn’t even
look
at him.” Kaylie’s voice cracked. “But yesterday—when the youth group led the songs during worship—that’s when it hit me. All the things I didn’t do. Not because of this birthmark but because I…hated myself. I thought the birthmark was all people could see but it was all
I
could see.”

I’d been too nervous to sit down, but now my knees turned into pudding and I wobbled over to a chair. The pain on Kaylie’s face jump-started my tears all over again. I’d put her through this.

“I told God how sick I was of living like this. Then I told Him I was sorry for letting a mark on my face get in the way of the person He wanted me to be—”

Wait a second. That sounded promising.
Maybe she wasn’t blaming me…

“And I thanked Him for you and Dex.”

Me and
Dex?

I must have asked the question out loud because Kaylie nodded.

“You both cared enough about me to tell me the truth. You said having the surgery wouldn’t matter if I didn’t accept that I was beautiful even without it—”

Was Mrs. Darnell hearing this? I let myself glance at her but not in an I-told-you-so way.

“What did Dex say?”

“Did you notice I wasn’t wearing the mask during the parade?” Kaylie asked.

“Nooo.”
Blushing
. I’d been too caught up in my role as fairy godmother, distributing pink plastic combs to all the miniature princesses that lined the parade route.

“I was about to put it on and Dex took it away from me. He said if I kept covering up my face, people wouldn’t see Jesus in my eyes.”

That sounded like a whole sentence to me. God had used Dex—and his blunt, unemotional way—to rewire Kaylie’s thinking. Why was I surprised? He’d used a donkey to get through to Balaam.

“I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions.” Mrs. Darnell’s eyes caught mine and held them. “I thought you’d taken on Kaylie as your little project. That you wanted to give her one of those makeovers so you and the salon would look good.”

Ouch. I guess Dex wasn’t the only one who’d thought I was shallow. “Kaylie’s already beautiful.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell her for years, but it didn’t come out the same way. She never believed me.”

I looked at Kaylie. “Does this mean you’re coming back to work tomorrow.”

Kaylie’s mouth dropped open and she twisted around to stare at her mom. “Did you tell Heather
I quit? Mother!
”

“You should have told me why you were so upset yesterday,” Mrs. Darnell said, a bit defensively. “What was I supposed to think?”

Oops.

“Moms can’t read our minds, they can only see us with the eyes that are in the back of their heads.” I winked at Mrs. Darnell and she relaxed.

“That’s true.”

“I’m going to meet with Annie once a week for Bible study and prayer,” Kaylie said. “Dex told me I should. He said she had some things happen that made it hard for her to see herself as beautiful, too.”

There was a question in her voice that I couldn’t respond to. Annie? She lived facing God. I couldn’t imagine there being a time in her life when she’d been afraid to look at Him. But Dex was right. People were complicated. Maybe even missionary pilots who moonlighted as carpenters.

“We better go.” Mrs. Darnell stood up, her arm wrapped around Kaylie’s shoulders.

“I’ve got to work tomorrow morning and my boss can be a real slave driver.” Kaylie bounced over and gave me another hug.

“I hope you can come for a cookout soon,” Mrs. Darnell said. “We’d love to have you.”

“I’d love to come.”
Now that I know I won’t be the main course on the grill.

“Invite your friend Dex, too.”

My friend Dex. Were Dex and I
friends?
When had that happened? Maybe somewhere between the kidnapping and the clouds.

“I can ask him, but Dex is kind of…antisocial.”

Kaylie’s eyes widened. “Antisocial?”

I rolled my eyes. Was I the only one who saw it?

A few seconds after they left, there was a tap on the door.

“This was on the step outside your door.” Kaylie handed me a large white envelope. “You probably didn’t notice it. See you tomorrow!”

I flipped it over and saw the gold foil label in the corner, printed with my home address.

“This might be it, Snap.” I bulldozed her to the other side of the couch with a pillow and sat down. “My future. Delivered by God via FedEx.”

I dumped the contents of the envelope onto my lap and started at the beginning—which was a detailed description of the job. It sounded perfect. Forty hours—most of them during the week but I’d also work some weekends…did I see the word
shopping?
There it was again. Shopping. Like in helping the clients shop for business attire if they needed it. Spending someone else’s money on clothes. Was this my dream job or what?

I fanned myself with the application.

My cell phone rang, reviving me momentarily. The name that popped up on the screen would determine if I answered it or not.

“Hi.”

“Mama B!” I squealed into the phone.

Bernice laughed. “I can have the worst day of my life and when I hear you say that, everything falls into place.”

“The worst day? There are no worst days when you’re on your honeymoon in Europe.”

“True. I’m calling to apologize and I’ll bet you know why.”

“The parade.”

Bernice groaned. “That was too quick. I’m surprised you’re still speaking to me. I hope you had enough time to come up with a float. I know Candy wouldn’t let you wiggle out of it just because you’re the new kid on the block.”

“Enough time?” I scratched the tip of my nose with the corner of the application. “I found a box of crepe paper by the front door on Thursday morning.”

“I am so
sorry
. I’m going to have to do something really big to make it up to you, right?”

I laughed. “Right.”

“Let me think. How about I turn over the Cut and Curl to you?”

My name was about to go down in Ripley’s as the only person who’d ever sliced off the end of her nose with a piece of paper.

“Heather? Are you still there?”

“I think so.” I pinched myself, just to be sure.

“I know I’ll see you in a month, but Alex and I have been talking—and praying—about something since we left Prichett and I had to call and tell you about it. One of the charities Alex supports is a camp for at-risk teens. A
Christian
camp. He didn’t even know that’s what the emphasis was.
Definitely
a God-thing.” She laughed and I joined in. Weakly. “The camp encourages artistic expression—painting, music, dance—and up until now, he’s always mailed in a check, but the director of the camp contacted him last week and asked if he’d be interested in teaching a six-week drama course. The next one starts in the beginning of November and if Alex feels he should say yes, I’ll go along for the ride. Maybe I can put my makeup techniques to good use again.”

Trying to process everything Bernice was telling me was like riding a bicycle under water. “Ah…he’d be good at that.”

“Which brings us back to you,” Bernice said. “I have to confess that as much as I love the salon, what I really want to be is June Cleaver à la Mrs. Alexander Scott. I want to bake cookies and make pot roast—”

In the background, I could hear Alex shouting
No, no, no. Not pot roast.

“—and I want to bring him his slippers at night—”

Hysterical laughter now.

“—and basically stick to him like a barnacle until he gets tired of me and scrapes me off.” She lowered her voice. “Which doesn’t look like it’s going to happen anytime soon.”

I couldn’t resist smiling.

“Since you don’t have a job lined up when you go back to the Cities, will you pray about managing the salon? Permanently. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather pass the curling iron to and I know you’ll let me come in and play with someone’s hair if I go through withdrawal.”

She was willing to give me the Cut and Curl. At twenty-one, I’d be running my own business. The application fluttered to the floor and drifted under the coffee table.

“Here, Alex wants to talk to you.”

“Heather?”

It was still a surreal experience hearing Alex’s voice. I’d been going to his movies for the past ten years and if I closed my eyes, I could see Devon Ross, undercover government agent.

“Hi, Alex.”

“Don’t think of this like we’re doing you a favor,” he said seriously. “You’d be doing us one. And you could hire as much help as you want or need.”

Had I told Bernice about Kaylie? No, I don’t think I had.

“I…ah, have a receptionist.” Might as well put that out on the table right away.

“Great. I don’t know how Bernice managed the customers and the telephone—”

“I ignored the phone!” I heard Bernice yell.

“I think your mom just sent a flock of pigeons to their death when she yelled,” Alex murmured. “They fell right off the roof across the street. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars.”

Bernice needed Alex. She needed the laughter that he brought into her life. If I could find The List, I would have added
makes me laugh.
But it was still missing in action. “I miss you guys.”

“We miss you, too,” Alex said softly. “But whatever you decide—whether you stay in Prichett or go back to Minnesota—we’re going to be like those barnacles Bernice mentioned. You’re stuck with us, sweetie.”

There was humor in Alex’s voice but an undercurrent of warmth, too. And love. He didn’t put any pressure on me to stay, but it was clear they wanted to keep me close. But I believed him when he said they’d trust my decision.

Bernice came back on the line. “I know this is a big decision. Talk to your mom and dad. Ask Annie and Elise to pray with you. Bree, too. And by the way, Alex is right…you’re stuck with us.”

“I like being stuck with you.”

“Keep in touch. And don’t hesitate to call me and complain if the PAC forces you to organize something. They’re good at that.”

“I will. And I won’t.” Best not to mention that I was heading up a committee for a PAC fund-raiser.

“Love you. We’ll see you next month.”

“Love you, too.” I closed the phone.
Next
month. Half the summer was gone already. I reached down and picked up the application. Up until five minutes ago, I was sure it had been the answer to the question I’d kept asking God—
what do you want me to do with my life?

Waiting for the answer had been challenging enough. I hadn’t expected it to be multiple choice.