Be Strong & Curvaceous (3 page)

I thought of the way our place had been when I was a kid. Noisy, flamboyant, with relatives coming and going all the time. My dad had bought his parents a house down the street from us with his first million, and their place was the same as ours. No relative was allowed to come through the San Jose airport without at least staying overnight. And since my grandparents each had half a dozen siblings, that made for a lot of houseguests.

Now we’re down to three bedrooms and two baths in the condo, and my grandparents are gone and the houses sold. Even so, when Dad is in town, we have a lot of company. Poor Shani. From what she’d told me, growing up in that big mansion in Chicago must have been like growing up in a walk-in freezer. She did pretty well for being brought up by housemaids moonlighting as nannies, if you ask me. On top of a great sense of style and genius with her hair, she’s sassy, smart, and has a comeback for everything.

She and Gillian are just the way I’d like to be. Fearless.

Again with the monkey brain. I needed to settle my thoughts. What was wrong with me? It was like my mind was doing total God avoidance. Not that I was really trying to avoid Him. But you know how it is with big decisions. You put them off until they either go away, solve themselves . . . or become Really Big Issues. I seemed to have arrived at door number three while I was aiming at doors one and two. Which happens a lot with me.

“It’s seven, you guys,” Gillian said. “Let’s get started. I guess we don’t have to do intros this time, do we?”

We joined hands and Gillian started us off. As she prayed, I felt myself squeezing Lissa’s and Jeremy’s hands tighter and tighter. Shani passed. After her came Jeremy. I only had a few minutes to make up my mind—to walk up to that choice and face it head-on. To say yes—or no.

Poor Jeremy. As he finished praying, he gently tried to take his hand out of mine. I’d squeezed so hard it had turned red.

I closed my eyes and opened my mouth. Nothing came out.

Ten seconds went by. I tried again. Nada.

“Carly?” Gillian asked softly. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” I managed. “Just give me a minute.”

They did. Lissa’s hand squeezed mine with reassurance. “Father,” her voice came strong and sure, “please reach out and put Your hands around Carly. She needs You.”

And suddenly I knew that was the answer. As simple as that—I needed God. And He, for some reason, needed me, too. And wasn’t that the coolest thing?

“Father,” I said, my voice getting stronger with every word, “thank You for wanting me. Thank You for my friends, who show me every day that needing You is a good thing. I want that, too.” Happiness began to warm me, deep inside. “I want to be Your child for good.”

And you know what?

It wasn’t such a hard choice to make, after all.

Chapter 3

A
FTER PRAYER CIRCLE, we usually walked down the hill to graze in one of the restaurants on Fillmore, or just went to Starbucks for a latte. But tonight I was still in recovery. All I wanted to do was hang out and talk about what I’d decided with my friends. So everyone except Jeremy, who wasn’t allowed in the girls’ dorm, came back to my room with me.

“Oh, good.” Gillian took in the empty room with a glance, and made herself at home on my bed. “We have the place to ourselves.”

Nothing wrong with being glad about that, was there? I tried to imagine talking about choosing God with Mac in the room, lying negligently on her bed with a cynical, maybe even mocking, expression in her eyes. Nuh-uh. Impossible.

“I’m so happy.” Lissa hugged me—for at least the fifth time between Room 216 and here—and flopped at Gillian’s feet. “Now I feel like I can talk with you about anything.”

I rummaged in the cupboard and found a jumbo bag of Ruffles. “You couldn’t before?”

“Mostly. But not about everything. Now I feel . . . free.”

I paused for a second, testing my emotions. “Know what? So do I. Isn’t that weird?”

“Define
weird
,” Shani said. “Weird was watching your face back there. Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I said softly. “More than okay. I feel peaceful. Like I finally did what God wanted and He’s massively happy about it.”

“But what did you do, exactly?” Shani’s forehead was creased, like she was trying hard to solve a math problem from the senior textbook without having gone over the material first.

“I realized that needing Him was okay.” How simple was that? How simple, and how amazingly complicated. “I’ve been dealing with this for months. As you guys could probably tell.” How to put it so they’d understand? “And it got to the point where I had to do something. Or nothing. But I had to make up my mind. It almost felt like it had to happen now.”

“Okay, that’s weird,” Shani said a little flatly. “Is God going to push you in front of a Muni bus, or what?”

“I saw it in a vision,” I said solemnly. “Tomorrow, while I’m crossing to go to the field house.”

Her face went slack, and I burst out laughing. “Come on, Shani. You know God doesn’t do stuff like that.”

Embarrassment mixed with a little defiance in her expression. “How would I know? You guys all seem to be the experts.”

“Far from it,” Lissa said with a snort. “Just ask Gillian about the first time I met her.”

“She thought I was going to whip out the incense and smoke her out.” Gillian grinned at her. “And I thought she was going to whip out the Humboldt County leaf and smoke
me
out.”

I had to laugh. Talk about a collision in your expectations. “And you both turned out to be believers.”

“Yeah, putting our absolute worst feet forward,” Gillian said. “It’s not about being perfect or experts. It’s about listening and talking and having a relationship with a God who loves you more than anything.”

“I wish I could believe that,” Shani said, a little wistfully. “But I just can’t wrap my brain around it.”

“It’s not the brain,” I said quietly. “It’s the heart. I felt like mine was going to explode. And not in a cardiac-arrest way.” I waggled my hands, trying to gather up the right words. “A love way.”

“Huh.” Shani tried to take this in, then shook her head and got up. “I’m going to go up and finish unpacking,” she said in a not-very-subtle change of subject. “Last term of junior year already. Everybody got their community service credits in?”

“Lots of stuff going on. I’m being a grunt on the prom committee—excuse me, the
Cotillion
committee.” Trust Lissa to snag that one. And trust her to let Shani think she was getting away with avoiding the issue. “The seniors are in charge, so it’s one of the few things Vanessa isn’t running. Cotillion sounds so old-fashioned, doesn’t it?”

“This is an old-fashioned kind of place,” Gillian said. “Just don’t make me wear a white gown and pretend to be a deb.”

“I don’t think debs exist in California,” Lissa said. “The species went extinct in the fifties. Anyway, Vanessa’s got her hooks in the really cool thing—the fashion show in June.”

“Fashion show?” I might be a brand-new Christian, but that didn’t mean other stuff couldn’t get my attention. Especially if it had anything to do with clothes. “What kind of fashion show?”

“Charity gig, of course, meaning gobs of credits,” Lissa said. “Word is it’s going to be called Design Your Dreams. A bunch of San Francisco and L.A. designers are going to send their clothes and Spencer students will model them. The charity part is what the people will shell out for tickets. Students can model their own stuff, too, if they want. It’s almost like an audition for the people who want to go into the fashion industry.
Project Runway
lite.”

“And we haven’t heard about this why?” I demanded. I would get a dress into that show or die. Period.

“Uh, because school hasn’t officially started yet?” Shani pointed out. “Relax, girlfriend. You’ll get your chance to strut your stuff in front of Stella McCartney.”

“Or the Mulleavys,” I said dreamily. “Or Tori Wu or—”

The door opened, and all of us turned to look. A little sinking hole formed in my stomach, draining the excitement and warmth out of the evening.

Mac looked us over. “Hello again.”

“Mac, this is Shani. Shani, Mac.” They nodded at each other.

“Did you have a nice time at tent meeting?” Mac shoved her trunk against the end of her bed and began pulling things out of it. A pair of riding boots and a helmet. Books. A leather jacket in black and red that looked as if it might be worn by a motorcycle racer. Shoes: heels, flats, sandals.

Lissa lost the thread of the most interesting conversation I’d had in weeks and watched the shoes come out of the trunk the way my grandma’s chickens watch her hands when she brings the leftovers from dinner out into the yard.

“Not a tent meeting,” I said. “Prayer circle. And yes, we did.”

“Carly’s a Christian now,” Gillian told her. My hands jerked, as if they wanted to fly up and cover her mouth. “It was amazing. We were all just talking about it.”

“You mean you weren’t before?” Mac asked me. “After tea?”

“I—I’m not sure,” I stammered. Could I feel any more uncomfortable? And why? I should be singing it from the school roof, shouldn’t I?

“So what am I to expect now?” she went on. “You’re not going to be a bore and preach or anything, are you? I really can’t have that.”

“No,” I said. No fear of that. Or of speaking. Or of doing anything but ignoring each other.

“Good. What
are
you staring at?” she demanded of Lissa.

“Are those custom Balenciagas?” Lissa breathed, her gaze locked on the high-heeled sandals dangling from Mac’s fingers.

“These?” She glanced at them. “I suppose they are. Good eye.”

“My mother has a pair,” Lissa said with longing.

“You can borrow them, if you like.”

Lissa looked as though she’d died and gone to heaven. “Serious?”

Mac shrugged. “They’re from the spring collection. When I get the fall ones, I won’t want them anymore.”

Which sort of put a different spin on it. She’d be better off donating them to Career Closet. Lissa straightened. “Thanks, but we’re probably not the same size.”

“Whatever.” She lifted an eyebrow at me. “I found your Ms. Tobin. About the room arrangements.”

“Oh?”
Please, Lord. Let her have found another room
.

“The only other empty bed, apparently, is with you.” She glanced at Shani. “So since I’m already here, I may as well make the best of it.”

“Could you be any more unkind?” Gillian inquired. Her tone might have been polite, but her eyes sure weren’t. “Carly is the nicest person you could hope to meet. You don’t need to treat her like trash. Or the rest of us, for that matter.”

Mac smiled. “I have the cleaning staff deal with trash. I thought I was treating you rather differently.”

Gillian was up off the bed by now. “Different is right. I suggest an attitude adjustment.”

“I suggest you toddle off to bed, little rice ball.”

Gillian flew into her face. “You want to repeat that?”

The smile had spread into a grin. Mac was enjoying this— deliberately antagonizing anyone within reach. “Are you deaf, too? I said—”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Which one?”

“Why are you so mean?”

Mac shrugged. “What difference does it make? You can always leave.”

“And Carly gets to be stuck here with you? We’re better friends than that.”

“Oh, are we all going to have a nice, cozy pajama party? Because if not, you’re going to have to get out sooner rather than later. Do us a favor and make it sooner, would you?”

“Are you
looking
to make enemies?” Shani asked her. “Because let me tell you, this school isn’t the place to do that, if you can help it.”

“Why is it so different from anywhere else?” The emotional temperature in the room was this close to redlining, and she looked as cool and amused as if she were at a garden party.

“The people who go here make things happen,” Shani said. “If you make enemies out of everybody, what’s going to happen when you leave and want an internship or a summer job?”