012. Her Great Flood

Tuesday. Nina had youth group.

At lunch, I hid my face in my hair. I had never seen her in the cafeteria, but maybe she was good at hiding. Maybe she would find me and accuse me in front of everyone. Josie touched my hand. Josie stroked my knuckle. Josie loves…

Lucy, the devil worshiper, was sitting next to me. “So, I was at the graveyard last night,” like almost all her stories started, “and this thing, it was like a total spirit thing, I swear, it came out of the ground and like… it talked to me.”

She wasn’t speaking to me. Elijah, the mourning of nothing, sat across from us, and Trisha, the loner with friends, sat next to him. “What did it say?” Elijah asked. “I bet it wanted a blow job.”

Lucy threw a fry at him. “She told me to tell her husband that there was no hell. It’s just a bunch of white nothing.”

“How do you know it was a she?” Trisha asked.

None of them paid attention to me. I was pulling apart my ham-and-cheese Wal-Mart sandwich, making a mountain out of Bunny Bread. We respected when someone was having a bad day and didn’t talk to them. We were all close for stupid reasons; Elijah and Lucy had seen a man get hit by a car, and Trisha lived in the same trailer park as me.

But they didn’t know my secret.

“I guess she knew,” Elijah said, “because it didn’t ask her for a blow job.” He threw a fry back at her, but it landed on my sandwich.

I flicked it away. All I could think about was how warm Nina’s hand had been, like the inside of a car after it has sat in the sun too long. So hot your lungs wither and you can’t breathe, but so comforting. I wanted to hold her hand again. I wanted to find her, but I didn’t dare look up. I wasn’t even sure I would go to her house again.

“So, did you find her husband?”

“No, she like… Well I looked around and it turns out her husband was dead too, so. Ghosts can be weird. They just don’t pass on. I tried asking her if she was in purgatory but--”

“Dude.” Lucy nudged me. “Some chick is staring at you.”

My mountain was almost an inch high, but my hand had twitched and knocked it over. “Damn it, Lucy. I was making something.”

“But this chick is staring at you. She looks weird.”

I glanced up quickly, because it didn’t matter if I saw her or not, I knew it would be Nina. Whether she knew it was me or wanted to be sure it was me, she was now walking closer to our table. I put my head back down, and pretended she wouldn’t find me.

“She’s the girl I tutor. Just some freshman.”

“She’s coming closer,” Lucy whispered.

Elijah turned around to stare. “Should I be worried?”

“Just ignore her,” I mumbled.

“Hiya, Josie!”

It was too late. She stood behind Elijah and Trisha, staring down at me with her huge eyes. Slowly, I looked up. She held a box and wore a red gingham dress. I could feel the looks my friends were giving her.

“Oh… Hey, Nina. What’s up?”

Trisha mouthed, “Double-You, Tee, Eff?”

Nina was holding the box out, like she was trying to give it to me. “Oh, nothin’. I made you somethin’ and I wasn’t sure I would find you or not and since I have youth group tonight I thought I’d look for you. Real glad I found you, then!”

She handed me the box. It was just plain, white cardboard, like the boxes grocery store birthday cakes come in.

“Thank you.” I feigned apathy for my friends, but I smiled at her nonetheless. Maybe she knit me a sweater. I didn’t care; Nina gave me a gift.

She stood there and watched me for a moment. I think she wanted me to open it with her there. I didn’t. I saw her look at Lucy, then Trisha, then Elijah. Her face lost its color.

“Well,” she began, trying not to stare at the fish hook in Elijah’s eyebrow, “I’ll be seein’ you tomorrow. You can still tutor me, cantcha?”

“Yeah, I don’t have anything else to do.”

She smiled weakly, waved, then walked away.

Lucy leaned over and whispered, “Open it!”

“Bet it’s a dead animal.” Elijah poked the box.

I slipped my finger under the lid, and lifted. I practically heard Lucy’s jaw hit the floor.

Elija leaned over the table, “What is it?”

“They’re just cookies,” I replied, trying to close the lid before he could see.

“Just cookies!” Lucy screamed.

Trisha took the box from me. “She gave you Jesus Cookies!”

White frosting covered the cookies, and “Jesus Luvs U!” was written in pink frosting. I snatched the box back and closed it again.

“Oh my Devil,” Lucy whispered. “Who is she?”

Elijah tried to take the box from me, but I swatted his hand. “She’s just my tutor.”

“Is she like…” Gina waved her hand and tried to find the right words. “…one of those Christians who bomb abortion clinics and sacrifice goats and dunk people under water to initiate them into their cult?” While speaking, she too tried to take the box. I pulled it closer to me, then put it on the floor beneath my feet.

“It’s called baptism, and no, she’s just a little weird.”

“Honey,” Elijah started, “A little weird doesn’t begin to cover the fact that she made Jesus Cookies for you.”

I stared at my pile of Bunny Bread crumbs. It had been flicked all over the place and squashed into the table. I swept it onto the floor with my hand and ignored him.

They were silent.

When I looked up, they were all staring at me.

“What?”

Elijah made puppy-dog eyes. “So, what are you going to do with the cookies?”

I gently kicked the box at my feet to be sure it was still there. “Not give them to you, that’s for sure.”

Lucy leaned over and smiled at me. “Aw, come on, Josie. It’s not like you’re going to eat them, right?”

Trisha was silent for a moment more, then said. “I still can’t believe she gave you Jesus Cookies.”

My eyes wandered over the small, lunch-room crowd. I found Nina standing by the vending machines. She had a tiny smile, but it wasn’t directed at me. I could see the way her lips curled, and it was beautiful. My heart shriveled in my chest because I knew I couldn’t have her.

“I think I’m going to feed them to the rats under my trailer.”

She kept smiling at something else, always smiling. She smiled like you would expect God to smile down on earth and all its happy creatures, ignoring the sin, because He could drown what He didn’t like in a Great Flood. Everything made her happy. I wanted to know if she ever cried, but I knew there was no reason for her to cry because she had God.

There were too many reasons for me to cry. Would there be less reason to cry if I had Nina? Maybe she could drown me in her Great Flood.

I didn’t feed the cookies to the rats under my trailer.

For the next few weeks, I hide the box in my closet. Slowly, I ate all of them. I didn’t even like cookies, but she made them for me. I don’t think she understood what she meant by them, or maybe she did. I pretended she did, because anything else was too depressing.

I touched her hand. I stroked her knuckle. But Jesus still loved me. Maybe she loved me, too.