Sixteen (4 page)

“Then I remembered
that Matt's dad was coming right back. I pulled back and started whispering violently that he had better put me down before his dad came back, or I'd never speak to him again. He did, and I was all business and apple-picking for the rest of the day."

Claire laughed softly, and Nicole smiled. The two women sat for a few minutes, Nicole staring out the window and Claire studying her mother. Then Claire slowly, carefully, asked the question burning into her mind. "Everything... it sounds so perfect. How...?" She left the question hanging.

Nicole looked back to her daughter. "How did you come about? It was the Fourth of July, and we went to an all-day picnic in the park..."

"I'm gonna get
a soda. You want anything?" Matt stood up off the old picnic sheet and brushed off his green T-shirt and blue shorts.

"No, thanks. I haven't finished the one I grabbed at lunch yet." From her position on the sheet, Nikki watched him walk away. She wore a comfortable light blue dress with a simple necklace with her curls hanging loose. While Matt walked over to the coolers of drinks, Nikki looked around. Earlier the sun hanging overhead had made it almost unbearably hot. Most of the families, especially those with younger children, had waited until later in the afternoon to join the party. Now, the setting sun cast a golden glow through the thousands of vibrant green leaves hanging off the solid oak and maple trees. This picnic was one of several recent community attempts to make the local people more aware of the beauty of their town. From the outside, the park seemed to be a fenced-in thicket of trees. In reality, though, those trees enclosed a large, oval-shaped clearing, perfect for picnics, dog shows, games of frisbee, and anything else the town hall could come up with. A small pond for feeding ducks and fish lay at one end of the clearing, and an elaborate wooden gazebo stood at the other. Right now, that gazebo sheltered the tables of food and coolers of drinks available for the people gathered for today’s picnic and fireworks.

Matt returned with his soda, but Nikki continued to watch the sky above her. The sun was just setting, and the sky burst into a brilliant array of oranges, reds, and pinks. Nikki sighed and rested her head against Matt's chest. The chatter in the park died down briefly as everyone paused to watch the wonderful colors blend and brighten, making the trees appear on fire. Then, the moment ended as quickly as it had begun, and the sky turned a colorless gray. The various couples and families scattered around returned to their tasks. After a while, the gray darkened into a deep purple, then faded into the navy blue of nighttime. She stared at the stars for a few minutes longer before turning her face up to see Matt.

"I love sunsets in the summer. They seem to harness the beauty of fire every day, without any of the harm."

Matt chuckled and nodded, falling back onto the ground. Nikki fell back with him, her head still propped against his strong, warm chest. They stayed that way for a few minutes, simply enjoying the perfect night. Then Matt looked at his watch.

"The fireworks should start soon."

Nikki just hummed, her eyes closed and her mind drifting. When the fireworks started, she opened her eyes to watch. The bursts and fizzles of color lit up the sky, and little children covered their ears. The lights occasionally formed shapes: stars, hearts, smiley faces. Then, the display ended with a dazzling finale in red, white, and blue bursts, snaps, and crackles. The silence echoed after such a loud show, and while families with sleeping children and couples who had been there all day began to pack up their things, Nikki and Matt stayed on the sheet and watched the smoke blow away with the clouds.

After the majority of the other partiers had left, Nikki and Matt finally stood up and started packing away their things.

"It's almost ten o'clock. When did you tell your mom you'd be back?" Matt asked as they headed for his car.

"I told Dad I didn't know exactly, but we'd be back late." She grinned.

Matt chuckled. "Well, we'd better hurry before your mom calls the police."

Nikki laughed. "Race you!" She took off past the trees.

"Hey, not fair! I'm carrying everything!" He caught up to her, and they put their things in the trunk of his red car. He started the Camry, and they were on their way. They talked about things that had happened at the picnic and other empty things, until Nikki thought of something.

"You know, you've been to my house and met my parents, and I've met your dad, but I've never been to your house."

"Really?" He glanced at her a moment, but returned his gaze to the road. "I could show you around really quick before I take you back home. How 'bout it?"

Nikki shrugged. "Sure, why not?"

He turned at the next intersection and within a few minutes they arrived. He pulled into the driveway and let her into the garage door, calling for his brother. She followed him into the kitchen, where he picked up a note lying on the counter.

“What’s it say?”

He turned to her. “Abigail and her dad are out shopping.” He shrugged and crumpled up the note before tossing it in the trash can by the kitchen door. “Guess we’ll do the grand tour, and you can meet my brother later. As you can see, this is the kitchen.” He gestured with his hands around each room, letting her peek around before moving on. She followed him he led her through the dining room and living room, further into the house. "This is Abigail's room... and this is my brother's room... and this is my sorry little space.”

Nikki laughed at the cramped room, cluttered with CD cases and piles of laundry.

Matt offered a sheepish grin. “I'm not much of an organized person, I'm afraid.” They continued with her tour. “This is the other bedroom. My sister-in-law, Lindsey, wanted to make into a guest room, but my brother felt a game room would get more use, especially after we made arrangements for me to live here. So he made it a game room, but he made sure to put in a twin bed and keep the closet open in case any guests actually did come. So far, only Lindsey's sister and my dad have ever slept in it." They made their way back into the living room, Nikki taking everything in.

"And that's the grand tour." He held up his hands as if to say
ta-da
then walked into the kitchen. "You want something to drink before we leave?"

"Sure."

"We have milk, water, Dr. Pepper, and a few Slice sodas. Oh, and apple juice."

"I'd like a Slice, please." She sat down on the sofa and slid off her coat. "This is a nice house."

"Yeah, my brother was lucky to get it." He handed the soda to her and sat down in an armchair, opening a Dr. Pepper for himself. Except for a single lamp sitting on an end table by the sofa, the house was dark. Their voices were the only sounds in the night. It felt as though Nikki and Matt were the only people in the world awake. "If he'd waited another day, he would have lost it to another couple who had been to the same open house."

"We talked for
a while, ended up sitting together on the sofa. He played with my hair, and we started kissing.” Nicole clasped her hands together in her lap and looked down at them as her voice grew softer with each word. “One thing led to another. Eventually, it was midnight -- I’d been there nearly two hours -- and we were on the floor when the phone rang. Matt answered it. My mom found his number in the telephone book after several wrong numbers and a little research. She demanded that I come home. I got dressed and Matt drove me home. I didn't speak to him again, avoided him for weeks."

"But... when did you find out? When did you get married? What about your mom?" Claire prodded her mother to finish the story.

Nicole sighed. This was the hardest part to tell, but Claire needed to hear it. She should have told her years ago, but she just couldn’t sit down and do it. Claire never showed interest in her mother’s stories anyway. Now she had to finish the story, for her daughter's sake. "Matt kept calling and emailing. He even would come to the house. I told my parents not to let him in -- that I didn't want to see him again. Mom was too ecstatic about my ‘getting over him’ to notice how... well, changed... I was. My dad and Christy noticed, and they were worried. Dad never really confronted me about it, but he would stop and ask me if I was okay whenever Mom wasn't around. Christy… she took a more direct approach."

Nikki peered around
her curtains to see who’d rung the doorbell. It was Friday, and Nikki’s parents would be home from work in an hour. Matt hadn't called recently, but she still couldn’t be sure if he'd really let go of her once and for all. Christy stood on their welcome mat, hopping from one foot to the other. The bell rang again, and Nikki sighed. Her best friend never gave up once she’d set her mind to something. Nikki thudded down the stairs and opened the door.

"Hi. We need to talk." Christy walked past Nikki and into the house.

"What do you want?" Nikki closed the door and followed Christy to the living room.

"You've been acting like this for too long. Either tell me what's going on or snap out of it. Everybody goes through hard breakups at some point, but only the wackos and people in movies go about moping for two months. School starts tomorrow, and I am here to make sure you are there, and you won’t gather negative attention."

Nikki just scowled at her. "I'm fine. Now go away."

"You aren't fine until you treat me like your best friend. Nobody tells their best friend to go away when they're getting over a breakup. Since I know you're not over it -- I mean, seriously, you have to stop
this
to be over it -- you are not fine." Christy gestured wildly with her hands as she spoke. It seemed like she contained all the energy Nikki lacked these days.

Nikki sighed. "Whatever. What do you want me to do, stand on my head and crack jokes?" She intended the comment to be funny and sarcastic; instead, Nikki just sounded old and tired.

"If that's what it takes." Christy softened. "C'mon, Nikki, you know you can tell me anything. Why not just let it all out? Get it over with?"

Nikki opened her mouth with a retort, but then she paused. She bit her lip, and suddenly burst into tears. "Oh… Christy! I..." She couldn't speak through her sobs.

Christy led her to the couch and they sat down. She rubbed Nikki's back. "There, there now, let it all out. It's not that hard."

They sat there for a few minutes, the room silent save for Nikki's weeping. Her body shook, and she gasped for air. After a while, she started to calm down, and she took several deep breaths. Christy waited patiently for her friend to tell her the story.

"I... we... we slept together. Oh, Christy, I know we shouldn’t have, but I didn't mean it to happen, and it was all so fast, and we were all alone, and one minute we're drinking sodas and the next... oh, Christy!"

Christy's hand paused on Nikki's back. The only sounds were Nikki’s shuddering sobs. How did this happen?

"Say something!” Nikki pleaded. “Please."

"Even if you didn’t mean to, it still isn't right."

Nikki nodded. "I know, but that isn't the worst of it."

"What? Do you feel guilty for ignoring him? It is rather natural after something like that."

"Yes, yes, but... Christy..." She suddenly shoved off the couch and paced to the television, then back to the couch. She popped her knuckles and literally wrung her hands while continuing this course for several minutes. "Christy, I think I'm... I think I'm pregnant."

"Pregnant?" Her friend sat for a minute, absorbing this, while Nikki continued to talk.

"Yes! I don't know what to do. I can't tell Mom, I can't, and I won't tell Dad, and I should tell Matt, but how could I tell him something like that?" She motioned wildly with her hands as she spoke, and her voice rose with each sentence. "And there's nobody to talk to, I'm so lonely, and I don't know what to do, -- Christy!" She broke into sobs again and collapsed back into the sofa. “I -- I can’t live with this -- it’s so awful, and I’m so ashamed. It just hurts so much -- and I can’t tell anyone. I can’t!” Her back shuddered with each gasp between sentences.

Christy calmed her down before attempting to speak. "I know you feel lonely, but you can always talk to me. And, even if you can't talk to me, you can still talk to God."

Nikki sniffled. "God?"

Christy nodded. "Nikki, I... well, I haven't been the best friend I could be. I've been a horrible Christian lately, but I'm trying to change that, and... I think it's better if I tell this to you when it seems like it's too late than if I think it won't do any good and never tell you. You see, Jesus, who is God's one and only Son, died on a cross for our sins. He came down to earth as a human. When He was thirty-three, He let soldiers arrest Him and take Him to court.

“Even though He was God's Son, Jesus let those soldiers kill Him. That was because He loved us. But three days later, a bunch of women went to His grave, and He was gone! See, because He’s God's Son, He came back to life. And because He came back to life, we can go to heaven someday when we die. Our sins are washed by the blood Jesus lost on the cross. Am I making sense?"

Nikki nodded and sniffed. She'd gone to a few Christmas services with Christy in years past, so she'd heard something similar to this. Bits and pieces had slipped through the deaf ear she'd turned to her parents' religious rants, too.

"Well, when we die, we go to one of two places -- heaven or hell. Hell is where the people who never believed in Jesus or His Father go, because they can’t go to Heaven with sin. Heaven is where Christians go -- true Christians, who believe in Jesus and have asked Him to save them from their sins. Not Christians who say they're Christians just because they go to a certain church."

Nikki sat taking all this in for a minute. The Christmas messages she'd heard were starting to come back. She had never paid very much attention, but fragments of the pastor's words were coming to mind. She asked, "What do I have to do to believe in Jesus?"

Christy smiled. "That's simple. You just pray to Him and tell Him you believe He died for you and you want Him to come into your heart and live in you. But first, you have to be sure that you really believe what you're saying -- just saying the words doesn't do anything. And you have to pray because you believe in Him, not because you're afraid of going to hell. Are you sure you believe in Jesus and God?"

"Well... how do I know for sure if this is real? I mean, I guess I kinda wonder... you just told me all this, and I’ve heard it at church and stuff, but… what makes it more than just a story? You know?" She laughed a little and sniffled. “Because if I could make up a happy story about erasing all my mistakes, I don’t think it’d be too hard to convince myself it was that simple.” She paused. “Especially right now.”

"God tells us about Jesus in the Bible. He also tells us about people who lived before Jesus and some people who lived after Jesus. It tells us about how God created the world and how we should live.”

Hope began to surface and blossom in Nikki’s heart, but she fought it. Could she really be freed from the shame of that night with Matt so easily? It sounded too good to be true. She asked the first question that came to mind. “How do I know that this is real? Anybody can write stuff down in a book.”

Christy sighed. “I really don’t know as much about the Bible as I should. And part of that comes with faith  -- in the end, after all the evidence from Christians and all the doubts from others, you just have to decide if you believe God or not. But I won’t try to tell you all about all the evidence we can find of God in nature or history, not right now. You
should
know, though, that since the story of Jesus and salvation -- which is what it's called when you become a true Christian -- is so important, He put in four different accounts of it. He told men what to write, and they wrote it, so we can know how to go to heaven someday. That’s one good point about the Bible. So many different men from different countries and times in history wrote parts of the Bible in their own languages, and yet the whole thing has been preserved to this day and never contradicts itself.”

Nikki nodded and looked down at her lap. Coming from Christy, it made so much more sense. Then again, she'd always assumed the preachers to be fanatics like her mother, and she took her best friend at her word. Maybe Nikki was a little too harsh on her mom sometimes.

"Do you want me to go get my Bible? I can show you.”

Raising her eyes to meet Christy’s, Nikki shook her head. "I get it. I believe you, and I want to have my mistakes washed away. But I've never prayed before -- not for real. What do I do? How do I tell Jesus I believe in Him?"

"You just... tell Him. You talk to Him, like you're talking to me.” Christy shrugged. “There’s not that much to praying. You tell Him that you believe in Him, and you want Him to save you and live in your heart forever. You can also tell Him anything you want, like about Matt or… or the baby. Do you want me to pray with you?"

Nikki nodded. Christy folded her hands, closed her eyes, and bowed her head. Nikki watched and mimicked her actions.

"Dear Jesus..." Christy paused after each phrase so Nikki could repeat her words. “I know that I am a sinner. I believe that You died on the cross for me. Please come into my heart and wash away my sins."

"I also want to tell You..." Christy let the sentence hang.

Nikki finished her own prayer, voice thick with tears. "I want to tell You that I don't know what to do. I... I met this guy, Matt, and now I'm... pregnant. Maybe. I don’t know. I just really need help. I guess if You're God's Son then You can tell Him that. I don't know if I should… well, I don’t know what I should do. But I want to do the right thing. So, please help me." Nikki paused, not sure what to say.

"Amen," Christy prompted.

"Amen." Nikki looked at Christy. "Thank you so much. I still don't know what to do, but somehow I feel better about it... like everything will be okay."

Christy smiled. "It will. But you do have to tell your parents about the baby. And you should tell Matt, too. He deserves to know. He or she
is
his baby, too, you know."

"Yeah." Nikki sighed. "Will you help me? Tell Mom and Dad, I mean."

Raising her eyebrows, Christy shrugged. "I can stay here with you, but you're gonna have to do the telling."

"I guess you’re right. They should be home in about..." She looked at her watch. "Wow. Twenty minutes."

"How about we go upstairs and wait for them to get back? Maybe your mom’s bookshelf has information on pregnancy -- you know, dietary stuff and everything."

Nikki wiped her cheeks and rolled her eyes. “Search my mother’s books for parenting? We won’t exactly find a jackpot.”

Her friend laughed and pushed her shoulder gently. “Hey, it’s an idea!”

"Okay, fine. Why not?” Both girls stood. Nikki meandered upstairs, and Christy followed.

Standing outside the office her parents used to store Mom’s books and Dad’s computer, Nikki gulped and looked at her watch. "What if it's a false alarm? What if I tell them and then I'm not... you know?"

Christy leaned against the wall by the doorframe. “Don’t you still think you should tell them? This is a big deal.”

Nikki rubbed her arms, trying to comfort herself. “I know that, Christy. But you know how my mom is. I just… I don’t think I can deal with that.”

"Well, you could do a test."

Nikki paused, then asked reluctantly, "Would you get one for me? I'll pay you back, promise," she added.

"I don't know. What if somebody saw me?” Christy raised her eyebrows and smiled. “I'm trying to be a better Christian, remember? Rumors about me being pregnant would not help that image." She giggled.

Nikki’s silence soon crowded the laugher from Christy’s face. "I can't do it. I just can't. You're the first person I've told, and I'd rather not... I just can't make myself say it to somebody else. It was hard enough telling you."

"That you’re pregnant?"

"Yeah," Nikki whispered.

“You’ll have to eventually, you know.” When Nikki didn’t respond, Christy thought for a moment. "I could ask my mom. I mean, you don't want to get it, and seriously, I can't do that, but she could. She's married, and Timmy and I are nine years apart. It's not... impossible." She scrunched up her nose and stuck out her tongue. “Weird and gross, yeah, but it would work.”

“Wait, no! You can’t tell her! I don’t want anyone else-”

Christy threw her hands up in annoyance. “What do you want me to do? You can’t buy a test. I certainly can’t buy one. If we don’t tell
someone
, then we won’t be able to get one at all. Better my mom than somebody else, right? Or we could ask
your
mom...”