Who Made You a Princess? (24 page)

I lay on a nice squashy chaise longue on the veranda, overlooking the hillside heavy with grapes, and listening to birds and
the sound of a fountain somewhere out of sight.

Bliss.

The only thing that would make it perfect would be—

“Something to drink?” Mrs. Loyola put down a tray with a pitcher of iced tea and a couple of glasses on the glass table next
to me.

“You’re a mind reader.”

“No, only selfish. I wanted some, myself. I’m only sharing it with you so I won’t look bad.”

This time I could laugh without pain, or maybe it was all the pills I’d taken so I could survive the ride up here. Didn’t
matter. It felt good to laugh.

“Where did Lissa and Gillian go?”

“They dragged Jeremy and that other boy—Jake?”

“Tate.”

“Right. They went off into the grapes to have a look. Gillian’s never seen live grapes in the wild, as it were. I think she
wanted to capture a bunch and bring them back to eat. Though that’ll probably be a surprise. Cabernet grapes aren’t exactly
Thompson seed-less.”

“Do we get to stomp them?”

She laughed and shook her head. “No stomping here. It is harvest, though. The vineyard workers go down the rows with the tractor”—she
pointed into the distance—“and load the grapes into half-ton plastic bins. Those go on a flatbed truck, which takes them to
the winery.”

“Aren’t you a winery?”

“Afraid not. We’re what they call a boutique vineyard, only fifteen acres. We supply one of the bigger ones. It’s a hobby
for my husband and an excuse to get out of the city for me.”

“I hear you,” I said, a little too fervently.

Her eyes were so kind. “I hope I didn’t say anything I shouldn’t have when you arrived. The situation upsets me. I apologize
if I let my feelings go and embarrassed you.”

“Don’t.” I wished I had the guts to touch her hand. “The situation upsets me, too. Which is way understating it.”

“I wish I could do something. All I can do is pray, though, so I’ve been doing that.”

I blinked. “Pray?”

“Yes. You’ve heard of it?”

With a roll of the eyes, I said, “I’m surrounded by praying friends. I’d have to be deaf not to hear of it.”

“You don’t know how lucky you are,” she said softly.

“Lucky? My parents are selling me to a prince for a forty percent stake!”

“Not about that. To have friends who care so deeply. Who go to the Lord for you. That’s a huge gift.”

“I know it.” I did. I just didn’t know what to do with it. Maybe, with the situation the way it was, I should start looking
into that.

“I can’t tell you how thankful I am for your friend Carly,” she went on. “Since he started going with her, Brett is a different
person. I don’t get calls in the middle of the night from our restaurant managers, telling me he’s wandering on the waterfront
with his friends, stoned out of his mind. I don’t hear from the police anymore. He studies, he rows…he actually made the dean’s
list for the first time, did you know?”

I shook my head.

“Carly is so fearless about being who she is in her faith that it shook him up. It made him see me differently. He actually
talks
to me.”

To hear her tell it, this was the equivalent of getting a two-million-dollar necklace. But she probably already had one of
those. So it was even better.

“So that’s why I browbeat you all into coming this weekend. To thank you for being his friends.”

Or for being Carly’s friends. But…wow. What was going on with Brett, anyway? He couldn’t be putting it on, because Carly would
see right through that. And if she didn’t, Lissa would. Could it be possible that Gillian was right? That God worked through
people and changed them, and then started changing everything around them?

Was I sitting here listening to this sweetheart of a lady, who had tears in her eyes, she was so happy, because one day in
junior year, Carly had decided that she needed God?

Did it really happen like that? Could it happen to me?

Because it was becoming plain that I wasn’t doing a very good job of managing my own self. Even my ability to trust myself
was kind of shaky. Here I was, looking at the powers my girlfriends seemed to have because of this God thing—and I had nothing.

Why did God keep sending me praying people?

What was He up to?

If I was quiet during dinner (something Mr. Loyola called “meat gravy” that was more like this massive stew and tasted amazing),
they must have chalked it up to the drugs, because no one bugged me about it. And when I went upstairs early, no one said
anything then, either.

Except before I went, I found Mrs. Loyola in the kitchen.

“Um, Mrs. L.?” Instead of answering, she turned and gave me a hug. “Do you have an extra Bible lying around?”

No fuss, no muss. She just took me into a room full of books and fabric and big, clumsy pencil sketches tacked on easels,
and dug one out from under a pile. “Keep it.”

I brushed off the pebbly leather binding. “I can’t do that.”

“Sure, you can. I have a couple of different versions for studying. This is the NIV. It’s pretty easy to follow.”

“But I—”

“Shani.” She stopped me with a look. “Let me do this one thing for you.”

One thing? Out of the dozens she’d done for me today alone? “I, um…okay.”

She was so practical about it, as if I’d asked for a hot water bottle or another pillow. I took the Bible back to my room,
brushed my teeth, climbed into bed, and looked at it.

My grandmother used to read me passages when I was a kid, and she’d quote stuff like, “Train a child in the way he should
go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.” That was a favorite when I’d been bad. But there were interesting stories,
too. The lady who freaked when she found one of her gold coins was missing, and tore her house apart until she found it. The
guy who bought up some real estate because he’d heard there was a treasure buried there.

But I didn’t know what I was looking for. And if I did, I didn’t know how to find it. But there had to be a reason why my
friends went to this book when they were down about something, or when they needed to make a decision.

Um, Lord? You there? I could really use a hand, here.
I opened it on a random page.

“For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.’”

Oh, gack.
Thanks a lot.
I nearly gave up then and there. But when I closed it and looked out the window, there were all those rows and rows of grapes
in the moonlight. Gillian told me once that people produced fruit, too. Like honesty when you talk. And kindness, like Mrs.
Loyola. And love and joy.

Hm. Maybe there was a reason Jesus was always talking about vineyards. I flipped to a different place, looking for stuff about
fruit. At the very beginning of Proverbs it said:

“… they will eat the fruit of their ways

and be filled with the fruit of their schemes.

For the waywardness of the simple will kill them,

and the complacency of fools will destroy them;

but whoever listens to me will live in safety

and be at ease, without fear of harm.”

Okay, I could live with that. Because my parents were welcome to the fruit of their schemes—it wasn’t going to be me eating
it, that was for sure. Proverbs was interesting. I kept going.

“Choose my instruction instead of silver,

knowledge rather than choice gold,

for wisdom is more precious than rubies,

and nothing you desire can compare with her.”

Hah! Rubies or not, if that wasn’t referring to a certain necklace I could name, I didn’t know what was. I liked what it said
about choosing. Because as far as my dad was concerned, I had two choices: marry Rashid or face total ruin. There was no Plan
C.

But what if there was? “Choose my instruction,” it said right there in black and white. What did it mean to be instructed
by God? Was He like Mr. Milsom in the bio lab, ranting at people about cleaning up their benches? No, probably not. It probably
meant just what I was doing. Reading. And listening.

Okay, Lord, I don’t know anything about this, but I am for sure listening now. Can You give me some instruction, please? Do
I really have the power of choice here? Or are You gonna make me obey my mother and father so they can hand me a big helping
of the fruit of their schemes? Is that what You want for me, Lord? Because if it is, I’m not liking it much.

I know I don’t have any right to come around asking, but can You help me choose a path? Show me what I’m supposed to do? Because
I don’t have anywhere else to go. You’re it, big guy.

And one of us has to do something. Soon.

I
HOBBLED INTO THE
dining room the next morning to see Danyel Johnstone sitting at the table, yakking it up with my friends as if he’d been
here all along.

My mouth opened, but no sound came out.

“Hey, Shani.” He got up and came around the table to give me a hug.
Ow
. “I got in at two in the morning. I didn’t think you’d appreciate me waking you up to say hey.”

“How…what…”

Carly put up her hand as if she were swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Which I suppose
she’s had a lot of practice at lately. “I did it. I sent him an e-mail yesterday with a map telling him how to get here. If
you’re going to kill me, do it in private, okay?”

“Kill you?” Finally, brain caught up with mouth and produced words. “I don’t think so.”

I glanced up as Mrs. Loyola came through the door to the kitchen with a big plate of French toast—a refill, obviously. The
hoglips around the table had apparently not waited for every last one of us to haul our butts out of bed. “Morning, Mrs. L.”

“Hi, Shani. I’m so glad you invited Danyel.”

“Do you really have rooms for all of us?”

“I have him in the sunroom on the daybed. It’ll be fine to sleep in, but it gets warm in the afternoons.”

“You can put me on the floor if you want,” Danyel said. “Like I said last night, I don’t care.”

“The next person who turns up gets the floor.” She filled a pitcher of syrup and put it on the table. “
La Gallina Contento
is officially full. The last time that happened, I had the entire rowing team here for the weekend. The grocery store in
town probably hasn’t recovered yet.”

She raised an eyebrow at Brett, who shrugged. “What can I say? We eat a lot.”

After breakfast, Lissa and Gillian made Tate wash the dishes while they dried. Carly and Brett made like vapor and vanished,
and I found myself walking (slowly) across the lawn with Danyel.

I think the whole maneuver was planned. Those girls are good.

“So, car accident.” Danyel stretched out on the grass, which sloped to a stand of oaks and then the grapevines beyond. In
the distance, the tractor
put-putt
ed in slow motion down the rows. “Feel like telling me what happened?”

“You mean Carly hasn’t already?”

“She gave me the headlines. I’m having a hard time believing them. It’s like reading
News of the World
if you’re not one of the Men in Black.”

So I filled him in. It took a long time—not including the parts where he got up, stalked around the lawn saying not very nice
things, and then sitting down again to get the next installment.

“I gotta tell you, I’m having a real hard time with this.” He folded himself up beside me as if he intended to stay put this
time. “I don’t know how you handle it.”

“I’m not,” I confessed. “Mostly I’m just whining to my friends and crying. I finally tried to read some in the Bible last
night.”

His warm brown gaze felt as good as sunshine. Better. It went all the way through me. “Yeah? Did it help?”

“I don’t know.” Then I reconsidered. “Yeah, it did. My dad says I have two options. But the place where I was reading showed
me I might have another one. It said to choose instruction over riches.”

“So, what—you’re going to go to college instead of get married?”

“Duh. I don’t think that was the instruction it was talking about. That’s, like, reading the Bible, right? And listening to
God.”

His gaze never left my face. A quality I discovered I liked in a guy. Not that there was much I didn’t like about Danyel.

“You surprise me,” he said.

“Why? Did I read it wrong?”

“Not that I can tell. The Spirit must be working it with you.”

My whole body just…suffused. I felt warm all over, right to the heart. But was it because I had Danyel’s complete attention,
or his approval, or because I was happy about the Spirit doing its thing?

Oh, stop analyzing it and just be happy you can feel anything at all. Think about this time last year, when you were walking
around the halls at school like a robot, with nothing to look forward to but graduation. No friends, no life, no joy about
anything except seeing how far you could run up your credit cards before your dad called to yell and give you some attention.

“This situation stinks,” I said, “but I guess I can be happy about that. The Spirit, I mean.”

“You guess? I know I’m happy about it.”

“But I’m not like you. You and Lissa and Gillian and Carly…you’re all God’s little BFFs. I don’t have any clue what I’m doing.”

“You’re going to the Bible for answers, aren’t you? That’s what us BFFs do.”

Huh. Maybe. “I’m going to you, too.”

“Another thing BFFs are for. God wants us to find the answers. And to give us more questions to ask Him and each other.”

“You being here is an answer. And I didn’t even pray…for that.” A lump formed in my throat and I swallowed it down.

He smiled at me. “I bet Carly did.”

Then, Carly-like, she acted. And it was totally the right thing to do.

“So if you read, and you prayed, and it looks like the answer is clear, what are you going to do about it?” he asked.