When You Believe (16 page)

Shelby was shivering violently when Lydia saw the horrid thing knotted in her elbows against her body.

“What’s this?”

Lydia held out a hand for the soccer ball.

For a long moment Shelby just shook her head at Lydia, shuddering. Then, even then, she really didn’t let the thing go. She
just loosened her arms around it and the ball rolled out, bouncing onto the floor.

Lydia watched it roll away, reading it all the way until it bobbed against the trim in the corner.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry.”

She cupped Shelby’s purple fingers inside her own and blew.

Shelby leaned in, touching her wet head to Lydia’s.

“I j-just feel so ashamed.” Her first words since stumbling inside the door. “I c-can’t make it stop. People are l-looking
at me and… and thinking. And if they’re not thinking about what I’ve done, then they’re thinking that I’m a liar.”

Lydia began to towel Shelby off, her face gone taut with anger. She tousled Shelby’s hair. She rubbed hard, as if she was
trying to remove something that was much worse than water.

“H-He was my favorite teacher. I don’t know why I—” She lifted her face. “There isn’t anybody who can help me, Miss P.” Shelby’s
shoulders rose and fell.

The embers in the grate had caught fire again. Once she’d finished toweling the girl off, Lydia slipped in a few extra lengths
of hickory and adjusted the flue. She held up the nightgown. “You can put this on.” And got the first smile she’d gotten out
of Shelby since she’d walked in the door.

“You want me to wear that?”

“You can be fashion conscious if you want to,” with a lift of her eyebrows. “But it’s dry.”

The girl peeled off the straps of her dress while the fire played blue-golden on her skin. Then she stopped, blushing with
modesty, her arms crossed over the loose bodice of the dress.

“Oh, Shelby. I’m sorry. I hadn’t even thought—” Lydia handed over the huge wad of flannel. “There’s a guest bedroom where
you can change in here. Bathroom’s that door on the right. Put your dress on a hanger over the bathtub where it can drip.”

That age,
Lydia thought,
where one minute they’re ready to take on the world and the next they’re terrified by it.

When Shelby returned, she’d wrapped her wet hair into a towel turban. The nightgown enveloped her, dry and warm. She stood
in front of the stove, which was kicking out breakers of heat, while tiny glints of fire reflected in her eyes.

“You going to be okay?”

She was still buttoning, settling into the flannel the way she would settle into a hug. “Yeah.”

“Good.” A little smile of satisfaction, shared between them. Then Lydia asked, “Shelby, does your family know where you are?”

The girl shook her head no.

“How did you get all the way over here?”

“I ran.”

“Where did you run from?”

“From Sam. From the dance. After they did this—” she nodded toward the soccer ball. “Now I know what everybody thinks.”

She told Lydia how she’d burst away from Sam as he’d tried to lead her away from the kids who were taunting her, how she’d
sprinted through the woods. She told how she hadn’t been able to lose him until she’d stashed the ball inside the fork of
a sycamore and climbed up into the tree.

“And, does Sam think you’re a liar, too?”

“He wants me to be lying. I can see it in his eyes.”

As new hickory began to zing and hiss in the woodstove and cocoa began to warm on the burner in the kitchen, a gentle silence
overtook them. Their two sadnesses, once separate, churned and mingled.

Oh, Lord. Where are you when you feel this far away? Where are you when it hurts like this?

Lydia could smell cocoa scorching in the pan. She stood and asked, “You want marshmallows in your hot chocolate?”

“Oh, yes. Please.”

Lydia poured the hot drinks, stirring each mug with a careful twirl. She didn’t know where this awful feeling of shame was
coming from as she stood there in the kitchen, the spoon handle turning warm in her hand. It was as if something inside herself
had suddenly grown too heavy to bear.

If you are there, Lord, how could you allow something to happen that would let a guiltless girl feel shame?

Lydia opened the bag of marshmallows and pitched a handful into each cup.

Why won’t you take this away? You know it’s something I never wanted to walk through.

“I’m going to call your parents, Shelby,” she said when she walked back into the den. “I’ll tell them you’re safe here and
that I’ll bring you home. I don’t want them to worry.” The spoons clattered when she set everything on the coffee table. Lydia
took a quick sip of hers, gulped hard because it was hot. “I’ll also tell them to call Sam and let him know you’re okay.”

“Thank you,” Shelby said. “That’ll be good.”

Lydia didn’t have to look up the Olins’ number. She had called it so many times during this past week that she had it memorized.
After she’d spoken with them, she returned to the sofa and sat down.

“What’s this thing?” Shelby held up a clothbound book with the embossed etching of a tiger surrounded by stars.
THE LICHEN BRIDGE PECK-N-PAW
it said in silver leaf across the bottom.

“Oh, that?” Lydia gave a light laugh of dismissal. “My high school yearbook.”

Before Lydia could stop her, Shelby started snooping through. “Are you in here?”

“No.” Lydia shrugged it off. “Well, sort of. Maybe in one or two places.” And no need for anybody to find the right pages,
either. “Nothing big.”

“Were you popular?”

“No.”

Shelby smiled for the second time tonight.

“Why does that matter? Why are you smiling?”

“Because you keep saying no to everything. I guess you just wanted to look at yourself when you were young!”

“Oh.”

Shelby spooned a pile of melted marshmallow into her mouth. And Lydia decided Shelby’s smile had been enough of a treasure
that she could let her guard down a little.

“I was looking at it because of homecoming,” Lydia offered. “When you kids celebrate yours, it makes me think about mine again,
too.” She touched the girl’s shoulder. “I was thinking of the times I’ve gone back home since I moved here. Did you know I
was even planning a trip back there during the Christmas holidays? But I don’t think I’m going now.”

Shelby kept thumbing through the pages. She held it high in both hands and raised her voice to read aloud. “‘To one of the
nicest chicks I’ve ever met.’” A sidelong grin. “Ha! He called you a chick, Miss P. Who is this? Was he cute?”

“None of your business. Give that back.” But when Lydia tried to swipe it away, Shelby giggled and lifted it higher.

“‘Never forget Mrs. Bodkin’s French class and the FOOT patrol and the way Mr. Johnson made meatloaf in the Petrie dish and
the famous noise like a rhino. I STILL think you were the best lab partner. Remember, never eat Johnson’s meatloaf! I know
you will go far in life (especially with the rhino noise). Call me when you visit Northwestern, Stay sweet and good-looking,
Gary.’”

“There. Now you’ve read my yearbook. Are you happy?”

“I want to hear the noise like a rhino.”

“Well, you can keep wanting it, because that’s something you’ll
never
hear.”

On page 21, Shelby found the Future Scientists Club page and, beside a picture of a hanging skeleton someone had written,
“Mr. Jarrett after he loses 300 pounds.” They giggled at a bonfire picture with a wiener caught in mid-air where someone had
circled the wiener and noted, “The mysterious and profound floating hot dog of LBHS.” In the back of the book, in the advertising
section, someone had turned a milk carton that read “In Horn’s Dairy There Is Strength,” into a milk carton that read “In
Lichen Bridge There Is Nothing.”

Shelby’s hair was still up in its turban, but her tormented expression was gone. “Oh, here’s another one. Listen. ‘Lyd, your
friendship has always meant so much to me, especially because you’re always willing to listen to me whenever I need advice,
and boy have I needed it a lot this year! Especially at 3
A.M.,
remember?!? Not many people would have done that! It means a lot to me and I will remember it always. I’m not going to tell
you to be good because that’s hopeless! Have a great summer, Sarah A.’” Shelby pulled the towel down out of her hair and shook
her head. “That’s cool what that one wrote. About how you listen to her.”

“Thanks.”

“Where are you in here, Miss P?”

Lydia flipped a few pages and pointed out her photo.

“That’s you? No way.”

“Way.”

“Why’s your hair all big and poofy like that?”

“Because that was the style back in the dark ages of the eighties.”

“It looks like it was curled by a steam roller.”

“Steam rollers,” Lydia said. “Yes, we used those.”

“No, a steam roller. The kind they use to build new roads.”

“I am a staff member at your high school,” Lydia said. “Your high school counselor. You can’t talk about my hair that way.”

“Sorry.” With a lovely giggle, Shelby smacked the book shut and handed it over. Lydia poked it as far back as it would go
on the shelf.

“You know that one thing that girl wrote?” Shelby asked.

“Which one?”

“About how you were always willing to listen?”

“Yeah.”

Lydia heard a car drive up outside. She peered out the curtain. “There’s an old white Pontiac at the curb. Who is that, Shelb?
Is that somebody in your family?”

“My grandfather,” Shelby said as she circled her mug rim with one slow finger. “He must have volunteered to come pick me up.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

But Shelby only said, “I feel the same way about you as that girl in your yearbook did, Miss P. Whatever happens about anything,
I just wanted you to know.”

Sunday morning at Big Tree Baptist Church was a morning for wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses. But Lydia was having a difficult
time finding hers.

She grabbed for her purse and dug around in it. They weren’t there. She scrabbled around on the car seat, checking the cracks
and the drink holder. They weren’t there, either.

Just then, she remembered she’d been wearing them while she’d been driving. She checked the top of her head with her hand,
and there they were. She pulled them down over her eyes and glanced around, hoping that no one had seen that.

The sun was so bright that wet quartz gravel shimmered like opal underfoot. All things nearby and in the distance below them
shone with the same radiant, holy brilliance as a candle’s glow. Lydia shut her driver-side door and stood with her fingers
on the car mirror.

Elbow Knob, where the church stood, marked the highest point in St. Clair County. The view was beautiful all around it.

Lydia removed her sunglasses once more, and buffed the lenses against her shirt hem. As quickly as she’d taken them off, she
shoved them onto her nose again, as if hiding behind dark shades might well be the survival tactic of the day.

The Reverend Joe R. Douglas, a long-time fishing buddy of her Uncle Cy’s, came billowing across the parking lot in his black
chasuble. “Lydia, how are you this morning?”

“I’m fine.” What a great liar she was.

He must have caught her taking cover and knew exactly what that meant. “I read the article in the
Democrat Reflex
yesterday. You
are
involved in all this, aren’t you?”

“I’m usually involved when a high school student needs help. It’s my job.” Then, “There was an article in the newspaper?”

“Yes, very brief and full of facts. There was a police report. It included an official school statement, that an investigation
had gotten underway. That was all.”

“I see.”
Brad did what he said he’d do.

“You know, of course, that it’s everybody else in town who has been filling in the blanks. Charlie Stains, just days after
he bought our boat. It’s such a shame.”

She didn’t know whether he meant it was a shame that Charlie was being held responsible, or it was a shame that somebody responsible
had bought the church’s boat.

“Charlie always wanted—” Lydia stopped. Of course, she changed the subject. “You always come this far out into the parking
lot to greet bystanders, Pastor Joe?”

He gave a little grin and pantomimed the motion of setting a fishhook in a big crappie. “Only if I know somebody’s had a tough
week. Only if I’m not sure they’re going to make it to the door.”

The church door had been thrown open to greet the sun. Organ music, in what Lydia recognized as the somewhat questionable
but enthusiastic style of Dr. Duncan Minor, vibrated the sumac plumes in the brass umbrella stand that propped open the door.
Even all the way out here, you could hear Dr. Minor playing interlude hymns with the same relish as the theme song to
Rollerball.

In the lull between each new verse of song, snatches of conversation wafted toward them as churchgoers passed the parking
lot. “. . . rumors flying… no charges… investigation… that’s what I heard… there could even be a trial.”

“A trial in St. Clair County?”

“Right in that front courthouse room in Osceola, over there where you have to go get your vehicle licenses paid.”

For the moment, as Pastor Joe moved on to speak with someone else, Lydia held back. Until this moment on Elbow Knob, with
the bright world gleaming in 360 degrees around her, she had not been able to see the full view of her resentment toward God.
On the outdoor sign where Joe pasted weekly Scripture readings, it read: He will be like a tree planted by the water that
sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green.

Okay, so I’m not that tree in the Bible. My limbs are broken and dry. My roots have been ripped up out of the mud. I’m ready
to be crushed by the current. Okay.

Regret, as strong as a Missouri king snake, coiled tight around her middle. And, for some reason, Eddy Sandlin came to mind,
the story Brad had found on microfiche, the little lost boy she’d found, sitting in the middle of a rushing creek atop a dead
snag-wood tree.