Chasing Hope (8 page)

B
randy walked down the sidewalk of the college campus. On this Sunday evening it was mostly deserted, with just the occasional student passing between buildings. As she approached the student commons, she thought about turning around and going back to the house. Grandma had insisted that she come find Sabrina and apologize in person, but initially Brandy had balked. There was no need to do it right away. It’d be better to talk to Sabrina in a couple of days, after things had time to cool off.

But Grandma was all wigged out, and Brandy wasn’t going to start acting like a coward now. Besides, grown-ups overreacted about these things so much. Sabrina was young enough that she likely had some idea what the reality was. She probably wouldn’t even need an apology.

Brandy passed the windows where she knew the snack shop was, and she knew that Sabrina was probably inside there somewhere, studying, or whatever it was that she did over here so much. She started up the stairs toward the front door, but before she
was halfway up, the door to the student commons flew open and Sabrina came out. Her arms were folded across her chest and her face was bright red. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to—” Brandy tilted her head to the side—“apologize, I guess.”

“You guess? You’ve got some nerve.”

“It was just a big misunderstanding. Like I told my grandmother, we decided to go camp down at the lake. We’d already gotten there and unpacked before I realized there wasn’t phone service. What was I supposed to do? It was an hour-long drive to get back there.”

“A whole hour? Oh, that would be terrible. Do you have any idea how long I spent looking for you today because you couldn’t be bothered to drive back close enough to town to make that call? It was a lot more than an hour, I’ll tell you that much.”

Brandy shrugged. She hadn’t really counted on Sabrina being this angry. Annoyed, yes, but this was over the top. Did these people really expect her to check in every time she went somewhere? Ridiculous. “Sorry. I didn’t expect Grandma to get so hysterical about the whole thing. Who knew she was going to get you involved in it? It never occurred to me.”

“It seems to me like there are a lot of things that have never occurred to you. You’ve got a grandmother who’s doing everything in her power to keep you safe, to help you
stay out of
juvie right now, and you don’t even respect her enough to make a stinking phone call and let her know where you are. No, I take that back. You should have made the call to ask her for permission before you went camping in the first place. She deserves respect. A simple phone call is not too much to ask of anyone.”

“Okay, deep breath. You’re getting a little worked up. It’s not like I don’t appreciate Grandma. I just
made a mistake.
I’m sure even you have made a few mistakes in your lifetime.”

By now, Sabrina had angry tears in her eyes. “I just cannot bring myself to understand the kind of girl who would treat the woman who loves and takes care of you with so little regard.”

“You have no idea what my life has been like.”

“I know enough to think you would appreciate something good when you’re living in the house with it.”

Those words hit Brandy harder than she’d expected. For just a moment, she thought about all the nice things her grandmother had done for her over the years, all the times she’d gone out of her way to help her, and yet . . . She turned her attention to the sidewalk. “Maybe you’re right.”

“There isn’t any maybe about it.”

Brandy looked up, knowing what the answer was about to be, but needing to ask it anyway. “Does this mean you’re not going to train me anymore?”

“We had a deal, which you broke.”

“There wasn’t anything in our deal about me checking in at home before going camping.” She held up her hand to stop the argument she knew was coming. “Okay, I get it, that was wrong, but it wasn’t part of the deal.”

“Drinking and smoking
were
part of the deal, though. You going to tell me you spent the night camping at the lake with your friends and you didn’t do either?”

Brandy lifted her head a bit higher, straightened her shoulders. “As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I’m going to tell you. I didn’t touch anything all weekend long. My crew didn’t like that so much—” she snorted a laugh, thinking about the look of horror on Janie’s face—“but I told ’em I was taking a little break.”

Sabrina scoffed. “Honestly? Why in the world should I believe
you
?”

Brandy knew the argument was lost. Right there. “There isn’t a reason, okay? I get it. Nobody takes my word for anything, and
I guess I understand that. But it’s the truth, whether or not you want to believe it.” And there it was.

The sun was starting to sink in the sky behind the campus buildings, leaving long shadows and increasing darkness in its wake. Brandy turned toward her grandmother’s house, shivering in the growing cold as she walked. High school cross-country had lasted less than three weeks. She supposed that was about two and a half weeks longer than most people expected.

Come to think of it, this was a relief. The pressure was off. No more early morning or late afternoon practices. No more conversations with people like Erin Methvin, who pretended to want to include her. Exactly. A relief. Who needed all that?

That’s when the full implication hit her. She needed all that. She’d just blown her last chance to stay out of juvie. “Why are you so stupid?” The question to herself came out louder than she’d intended but there was no one around to hear.

A brown paper sack blew across the sidewalk and came to a stop at Brandy’s feet. She drew her foot back and kicked it as hard as she could. It flew up into the air just as the wind came and pushed it right back down beside Brandy’s foot.

“Be at my house tomorrow morning at five o’clock. Sharp.” Sabrina called the words from somewhere down the street behind her.

“Tomorrow’s Monday.” Brandy shouted the words without turning.

“We’re having an extra practice this week.”

Brandy lifted her left hand in acknowledgment, but otherwise kept moving. Half a block later, she realized something. She was smiling.

P
ace yourself. Running faster only when you’re in front of me isn’t teaching you anything except about how to fake it.” Sabrina had to call the words out to Brandy as she ran by for another lap around the block.

Brandy had been a diligent worker both Monday and today without a single complaint about the early start time. Mrs. Jenkins had informed Nana that she was being shown an unprecedented level of respect and this had truly been a turnaround experience. Somehow Sabrina felt a little less optimistic, but that’s what grandmothers were supposed to do, so more power to them. Neither Sabrina nor Brandy mentioned the weekend’s debacle and the subsequent fallout. It had been relegated to exactly where Sabrina liked things that were unchangeable—in the past and forgotten.

Brandy disappeared around the corner and Sabrina looked down at the stopwatch, noting the time. She tried to picture Brandy, who just about now should be rounding the corner in front of the Benders’ house. Their little dachshund was likely pacing around the tidy lawn, poking his long black nose through
the slats of the freshly painted white picket fence. He’d yap a time or two each time she passed, then return to his pacing until the next round.

Sabrina could almost feel the ball of her foot absorbing the impact, the strain of her thigh muscles, the way her lungs needed just a bit more oxygen. The pure joy that could only be accomplished by the wind in your hair, entirely controlled by your own muscles, your own speed, your own willingness to override the body’s urge to stop and to keep moving further, harder, faster, to the place where only champions would dare to push themselves. How long had it been since she’d felt that? Its absence burned inside her; at times like this the heat became almost unbearable.

Stop.
Nothing good was to be gained by crying over what you couldn’t have, no matter how hard you worked for it or how badly you wanted it. Or how much more you deserved it than the people who actually might achieve it. Brandy rounded the corner.

“What makes you think I’m slowing down when I’m out of your sight?” She called out the words between gasping breaths.

Sabrina held up the stopwatch. “The clock never lies.”

“Great. Just great.” Brandy huffed past, her face red from exertion.

“Slow your pace the entire round this time. It’s time for a cool-down lap.”

Brandy cast a backward glance over her shoulder, clearly surprised, but she did slow her pace a bit. Sabrina watched her take the corner, then looked toward the sky, toward God, whose voice she had misunderstood. Maybe she’d never even heard it at all. It wasn’t that she’d lost her faith in God, it was more that she’d lost her faith in ever understanding Him.

Well, there was no reason to sit here and feel sorry for herself about the whole thing. The best she could do now was move forward with this new reality. Always push forward. It had worked
in running, and it would work in life. Launching her career in the best possible way was the thing she needed to think about now. This was where she had some level of control.

She looked down at her communications book, thankful for the streetlight overhead, and began to review the chapter they’d just covered in class. That was one nice thing about the days she and Brandy worked distance rather than sprints: it gave her a chance to do some studying while Brandy was out of sight. Multitasking was a good thing. And with at least half of the current page highlighted in pink, it was obvious there was much she needed to remember.

A minute later, Brandy coasted to a stop in front of her, then paced back and forth, cooling down. “How come you cut this morning short?” Her eyes were bright in spite of the fact that she was breathing heavily.

“I didn’t. We’re done for the day.”

“How come we’re not going the full hour?”

“We did.” Sabrina looked at her watch. “An hour and three minutes, to be exact.”

“Really? It didn’t feel that long today.”

“You seem to enjoy the distance work better than the sprints.”

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

“I’m glad, because you’re running in your first 5K this weekend.”

“Huh?”

“You heard me. There’s a 5K downtown on Saturday. I’ve already registered you. It’ll be fun.”

“Fun?” Brandy didn’t look at all convinced. “Well, yeah, okay, I’ll give it a go.”

“Yes, you will. Then, three weeks after that I’ve got you signed up for another one, a bigger one. It’s in Columbia, up near Nashville, very prestigious. This will be a nice warm-up.”

Brandy puffed her cheeks full of air, then blew out. “Bigger one. Cool.”

“You don’t run from a challenge.” Sabrina closed her book and jumped down from the retaining wall. “You’re going to make a great distance runner if you stick with it. Maybe you can finish what I wasn’t able to.”

Brandy stopped her pacing and studied Sabrina for a moment, her nose ring shining in the glow of the streetlight. “I’d really like it if I could do that.”

Sabrina’s heart came up into her throat, and even after she watched Brandy jog back toward home, she still found it difficult to swallow. “Maybe I would, too.” And maybe she truly would.

She went up the stairs to her room and picked up her phone to do a quick email check before taking a shower. The top email on the list was from Rita Leyva.
Oops. Guess I never emailed her back.
Sabrina clicked it open.

Dear Sabrina,

I haven’t heard back from you, so I wanted to double-check and make certain you received my previous email re applying for a position with Bridges. I am very anxious to connect with you as soon as possible, as I am leaving for South Africa at the end of the week. I would love to speak with you before then when you have a few available minutes.

In Him,

Rita Leyva

Sabrina hadn’t given the previous email another thought. She supposed she should call Rita back and at least thank her for the confidence, but she didn’t have time to deal with it right now. She hurried into the shower to get ready for her eight o’clock class and the rest of the day.

Hours later and back at her desk after three classes and a four-hour shift at work, she decided it was best to go ahead and make the call. Best to get it over and done with, and in spite of the fact that she wasn’t really interested in the offer, she didn’t want to seem rude or ungrateful. She found Rita’s number and called, already formulating her polite decline. But the conversation quickly veered out of her control. Rita Leyva proved to be a much more dynamic person than Sabrina had assumed and she was finding it hard to get her to take no for an answer. Her excitement bubbled over any obstacles, effectively drowning the subtle protests that Sabrina offered. Finally, Sabrina decided the only tactic that would work was the absolute blunt truth.

“Mrs. Leyva, I’ll just be honest with you. Truth is, for most of my life—including that time when I spoke to that youth group and wrote that silly devotional—I was utterly convinced that God had called me to be a public speaker as a ministry. I believed it with every fiber of my being.”

“That devotional was not silly. It was raw, but it was powerful. Just like your speaking. That’s why I’m so convinced—”

“I was wrong.”

The declaration hung in the air between them, leaving nothing but silence for the space of several heartbeats. “But you weren’t.”

“Don’t you understand? I either didn’t hear God after all, or I misunderstood Him so badly that I am obviously not the kind of person you need working in your mission organization. I thought God had called me to be a missionary via my platform as an Olympic medalist. Mrs. Leyva, there is no Olympic medal in my future. I am simply a person who thought she heard the voice of God when she did not.”

“The talk that I heard didn’t mention the medal. You simply
said you believed that God had called you into working on behalf of the poorest nations in the world, and that you believed that your running was the conduit that God was going to provide to get you where you needed to go. That you were going to trust Him with the process.”

“Exactly. See what I mean? Running was the key that would open doors. Running was why people would want to hear what I had to say. I was mistaken.”

“What if it was the key, though? Sabrina, running is what caused you to make that talk in the first place—it’s what led me to finding you. God used your running to bring us together at the perfect time.”

“I—” Sabrina opened her mouth to argue, but Rita Leyva was very persuasive in her way of twisting words around. Finally, Sabrina did manage to say, “You’re pulling my words out of context.”

“With all due respect, Sabrina, you might be pulling God’s call out of context. I beg you, spend a little time praying about it. Spend a little time going back and looking at that little devotional you wrote. Promise me you’ll do that before you give me a final answer.”

As Sabrina was more than firmly convinced that Bridges had nothing to do with her future call, it was an easy promise to make. “All right, I promise.”

“Great. Feel free to call me any time you have questions or concerns. Otherwise, I’ll prayerfully await your decision.”

“Thanks.” Sabrina hung up the phone and went downstairs in search of something comforting.

She had her head stuck completely inside the cupboard when she heard Nana’s laughter behind her. “Hungry?”

“Need chocolate.” Sabrina turned to flash her grandmother a smile and then returned to her choices.

“That bad, huh?”

“You have no idea.” She turned her attention to the back corner and finally found the Swiss cake rolls. She pulled out two packs and offered one to her grandmother. “Want one?”

“No, thanks.” She tilted her head and looked from the chocolate snacks to Sabrina. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on.”

“It’s complicated.”

“So I’m gathering by your choice of after-dinner treat.”

Sabrina peeled open the plastic wrapper. “I just got off a phone call. . . .” She relayed the conversation to Nana as best she could.

“Oh, I loved that little devotional. You made copies for all of us, remember? I still have it, not that I need it anymore. I’ve read it so many times I’ve practically memorized it.”

“Well, that’s embarrassing.”

“Why on earth? That devotional was heartfelt. Remember what you said about God calling the children of Israel out of Egypt? I certainly do. They all thought that was the greatest thing ever. Freedom, their own land. He parted the Red Sea, led them across.”

Sabrina rolled her eyes. The last thing she needed right now was a Sunday school lesson. “Yeah, and then they started whining and complaining and wanted to go back. Failure. End of story.”

“Ahh, you’ve forgotten what you said. You reminded us that they went three days without water right after the Red Sea. Three days. No water. When you wrote that part of the story, you were so utterly convincing, my mouth felt dry. You talked about a life-threatening thirst, an agonizing pain kind of thirst.

“You said they thought they were being called out to this life of freedom, and all of the sudden they were facing the possibility of a miserable death. Never would it have occurred to them that they were going to encounter the Promised Land through difficult situations like that.” Nana put her hand over her heart and smiled. “Beautiful thoughts, really.” She reached over and
squeezed Sabrina’s hand. “Now that I think about it, it does remind me of you, just a little bit. Maybe Mrs. Leyva is right.”

“What do you mean?”

“You thought you were going to serve God by Olympic glory. Well, maybe the truth is you are going to serve God because of your running, but through a much more difficult scenario than you’d expected—one involving pain and suffering and loss. Perhaps you didn’t misunderstand God’s call, perhaps you took some of the details in the middle for granted.”

The words hit Sabrina hard, much harder than she would have ever believed possible. She’d spent years of her life pouring all of her energy into something, believing with all her heart that God had called her there, only to have her own body betray her and make it impossible to continue. It wasn’t meant to be. It wasn’t. “You’re wrong.”

“Am I?” Nana let the question hang for just a minute. “Sabrina, you know I love you with all my heart. I’d give anything to take away your pain, and that’s the truth of it. I will always be proud of you no matter what you do or decide. But I think you should spend some time remembering your own words and praying about whether or not you might have turned back toward Egypt.”

The chocolate cake and cream filling stuck to the roof of Sabrina’s mouth. She gulped water so hard her eyes watered, then waited through a deep breath before trusting herself to speak. “It’s a nice thought, Nana, but you’re wrong.”

“Maybe so. That’s between you and God. I’m just telling you it’s something to pray about.”

Somehow Sabrina managed to climb the stairs to her room before the entire weight of all she’d hoped and all she’d lost crashed down on her in one giant hammer stroke. She fell across the bed, one question repeating through her mind. It was the same question she’d asked a million times before with no answer.