Chapter One

I'll be the first to tell you that Thursday is not a good day for me. Monday is the first day of the week, so even if you're dreading the beginning, at least it's not bad for lack of energy. On Tuesday you've still got that forward motion. Wednesday things are getting a little slow but hey, it's the middle of the week, so you're able to pep talk yourself up. Friday is the last day and everyone knows what Friday means: the weekend! But then in between midweek and end-of-week, you have Thursday, for which I have nothing good to say --only that by Thursday I'm exhausted, fed up, and ready for the weekend.
All that in mind, it's needless to say that Curt, the youth director at my church’s decision to begin the weekend "at home retreat" on Thursday concerned me. I mean, yes, because of final exams it had only been a half day of school, but after three major tests in one day, I was ready to zonk out on the couch and not move for at least a couple of hours, preferably days. However, if there's one thing you can be sure to gain from a youth weekend, it's a sleep deficit. You don't go to retreat weekends to catch up on your sleep. I hadn't been to a Discipleship Now (the title bestowed upon these "at home retreats”) in four years, and even I knew going into it that I would not be resting up.
In fact, I was so desperate to get some sleep that I'm pretty sure I would have bailed on the whole thing had not Jordan agreed to go. Not that I planned on his presence having some impact on my personal experiences for the weekend, but I had been trying to get him to attend a retreat for a long time. He had sort of been going through a phase (for a couple of years . . . ) where he didn't really want to do anything with the youth group, which meant he didn't have any friends in youth group, which meant he wanted even less to do things with the youth group, and so on. Vicious cycle. But I had finally worn him down to agreeing to go, and I wasn't about to let him weasel his way out just because I was tired.
We had fun stocking up on junk food beforehand, raiding the snack aisles at the dollar stores (he teased me about my collection of good, healthy nutrition bars and packages of nuts and dried fruit while I made a face and shook my head at his selection of cardboard, grease-drenched chips and boxes of sugar-coated sugar). We rolled the windows of my car down and cranked the radio up so loud that the mirrors and windows were shaking and people gave us strange looks as we blew past them. There's just something energizing about driving along with your little brother and screaming Switchfoot lyrics at the top of your lungs, you know?
Though Curt had specifically said, "Doors open at 6:30," we pulled into my usual spot to the side of the youth group around 4:30. Nobody ever took Curt seriously on arrival times, and if it bothered him that so many of us always got there early, he never said anything. In a way, I'm sure he appreciated it, since that meant that by the time most people arrived, there were already games and conversations going on. A Party Starter Committee, if you will.
More people had arrived early than I had expected, though nothing had really gotten started yet. Crystal, Curt's wife, stood in the doorway to greet everyone and motioned to two different places for us to deposit our luggage, and Jordan was kind enough to carry my sleeping bag for me since, as he was quick to point out, "You're such a girl. I think you over packed."
I had just set my stuff down and waved at Jordan's retreating back when a tall, lanky, blonde rocket by the name of Cady ran straight for me and, wrapping her arms around my waist, proceeded to swing me around her in the air as she had developed the habit of some two years earlier.
"Bitsy!" she cried in a shrill squeal, then gave me a dramatic kiss on the cheek. I rolled my eyes at the name and her over-the-top hyperactivity and shoved her away. Randi, the third of the junior girls and the third of our little trio, was a good two inches shorter than me, yet it was I that was graciously given the cheesy nickname Bitsy. From Cady's point of view a good five inches over my five-foot-two-and-three-quarter-inch frame (I'm telling you, that three-quarters makes all the difference), I suppose the nickname was aptly given.
Randi came sprinting over a couple minutes later, apparently just as wound up as dear Cady (they didn't go to my school, and though Randi was in the same school district, she had exempted all her finals, lucky dog), and immediately the two began rattling off all their hopes for the weekend at a speed that no doubt sent all the neighborhood dogs cowering under porches and into garages. I allowed them their time, though, and let myself relax into a hard metal chair to grant my brain time to switch gears. In doing so, I noticed that someone had accidentally knocked a hole in the wall near the bathrooms. Oops. The building had definitely been through a lot.
Once upon a time, back when "Historic Grapevine" had been simply "Grapevine" (yes, the city differentiated between the two), the youth center's current building had been a little, small-town grocery store. Grapevine was one of the first towns to be built in Northeast Texas, after all. The building wasn't that old, though, or else it had undergone total modernization. One large room dominated the building while eleven smaller rooms branched off, their doors lining three of the four walls. Trust me, it's not as big as that makes it sound, though --the rooms were small and used as either offices or Sunday School classrooms or, for the time being, luggage storage. The fourth wall's main feature was the stage, which had recently undergone some remodeling and now looked quite nice. Black paint had covered over the dents, and shiny red and gold fabric provided a nice backdrop. A large projector screen had been hung on an angled wall to the immediate right of the stage, and Curt, the assistant youth director Benson, and whichever of the youth group boys they had conned into helping them had even set up a light display above our heads, disco ball included. To the right of the stage and seating area (rows and rows of metal chairs, many of which had definitely past their prime), was a black counter stretched in front of the door to a small kitchen area. The area in front of the counter was tiled black and white that matched the little booths and tables left over from our previous youth director Mike's dreams to make the area into a 50's diner type thing.
Us three girls soon moved to the far side of the building where we stretched out on a couple of the dozen or so couches and futons that drifted around the building. Another of Mike's dreams had been to do away with chairs and fill the place with couches, but Curt had immediately voiced a dislike of the musty old couches that had all been donated and upon his arrival had begun buying black futons to match the two long beige couches someone had donated brand new. Personally, I liked all the old couches. They had that old, familiar, safe smell. Whatever.
We hadn't been on the couches long, talking about random, nonsensical things as is often the case with teenage girls, when the assistant youth director Benson, a somewhat larger guy in his mid-twenties who basically dedicated his life to making people laugh, came strolling over, trailed by four guys I didn't know. I guessed them to be in their early twenties, perhaps late teens.
Benson gave us one of his big cheerful smiles, then forced himself into the small space between Randi and myself as he asked, "So, what are you three ladies up to?" Randi and I literally rolled onto him and had to wrestle to push ourselves off, much to his amusement.
"Nothing," I answered with an accidental yawn once I was safely sitting on the armrest. "Just sitting, talking, doing nothing."
"Yeah, Benson, give us something to do," Cady sighed dramatically, her eyes clearly on the four guys that just sort of stood there behind one of the couches awkwardly.
Benson bobbed his head to the music playing over the speakers in the ceiling, then stroked his chin as he thought, before finally shrugging, "I guess I could do that. Since Templin is about to fall asleep on us. Hey guys, these are the girls. Girls, these are the guys. Mingle. My job here is done." That said, he shoved himself off the couch and strode off, not concerned a wink further with any of us. There was a rather awkward silence for a moment during which one of the four guys wandered off, but I broke the thick air, motioning for them to sit down and starting, "Well--"
Cady quickly cut me off with her own introductions, though, and explained, "Hello. I'm Cady and that's Randi and that's Bitsy--"
"Makenna," I corrected, shooting her an unamused look. The guys smiled at her lack of concern and introduced themselves: Casey, Adrian, and Aaron. With Pete, the fourth that had wandered off, they were the band Curt had invited to play for the weekend.
As Casey was explaining that, Aaron sat down on the couch beside my perch on the arm rest and behind his back Cady mouthed, "Oh my good Lord, he's gorgeous," which I assume Casey caught from my other side because he snickered as I rolled my eyes. Cady had been with Matt for two months now and was still as keen on checking out boys as she had been while single.
When silence threatened again, Casey offered as a conversation piece, "So, you guys are in the youth group . . ."
"Yeah, we're juniors," Randi nodded. "And there are going to be what . . . four of us girls this weekend? We're combining eleventh and twelfth, right?"
"Yeah . . . no, they'll be more than four. Leslie's coming and Laura's definitely coming. Is there one more?" Cady answered, and the two of them ventured off into their own little conversation about who said they were coming and who had to work and so on, completely excluding the rest of us.
I decided to be a little more social and asked the guys, "What about you three? College? Or . . . "
"College," Adrian affirmed from across the low table where, seated beside Cady, he periodically sent her curious glances. "We're all three at Tarrant County College."
"Yeah, except I took this semester off to work and Aaron's leaving us for UTA in the fall," Casey added, reaching around me to shove Aaron's arm.
Aaron pretended to be apologetic, then shook his head, "Thank God. I'm so ready to be out of that school."
Casey, Aaron, and I continued to make idle chatter for a bit with Adrian really just listening and laughing, maybe making an addition every now and then but mostly sitting quietly. Cady and Randi continued whatever their discussion had moved to, completely ignoring us.
"Ugh. What tests did you have today?" Aaron asked when we got onto the subject of finals. I turned to look at him and had formulated maybe the first word of my response when his hand suddenly shot out and miraculously caught a football mere inches away from pegging me right in the face. I mean, it was so close I felt the wind and smelled the leather (yeah, that’s close). We looked at each other with these comedically shocked expressions frozen on our faces for an amusingly long moment. Then my eyes jerked to the far side of the room where I watched as Jordan transformed from an open-mouthed moron to an open-mouthed moron sprinting away.
"Here, can I see that?" I asked, holding my hand out to Aaron. He handed the ball to me, then our whole little group watched as I took that ball and pegged Jordan beautifully in the back despite his rapid movement. To be honest, I'm not sure how I did, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to repeat it, but man was it beautiful.
"Oh my--"
"Makenna, that was amazing!" Randi gasped, jumping up and high-fiving me. "How did you--"
I watched as Jordan limped off to the side to get a laugh out of the girls watching him, then shook my head, "I don't know! Wow, I'm pretty incredible, aren't I? I mean . . . and you!" I turned to Aaron and insisted, "That was a wicked catch. You just save Jordan's life."
"Hey, no problem. Good throw," Aaron laughed.
"You know what? This is a sign from God that we should go play football," Randi announced, pointing to the ceiling by way of motioning to God. Jordan tossed the ball my way again and though I saw it this time, Aaron still caught it and handed it to me, which made Cady mutter something about boys being boys or whatnot. I sat back down on the armrest holding the ball, determined not to let Jordan get it back. "Well, what about it? Football?"
"I don't know how to play," Cady quickly argued.
Aaron assured her, "We can teach you." He stood up and stretched his arms over his head, then nodded to Randi, "Football sounds fun, and it'll give us something to do. Except . . . do we have anyplace we can play? We're sort of in the middle of--"
"We can play in the parking lot across the street. The one behind the Mexican restaurant. That's usually the one we use," I explained, pointing to the lot that, though it belonged to the church, was the farthest from the church building and therefor usually mostly empty. At the moment, only two cars stood in it --a big blue Dodge Ram truck and a maroon Saturn, side by side at the far end of the lot. Plenty of room.
Cady grinned and clapped, "Sounds good. Randi, get people. You're the loudest."
"What? Since when am I the loudest? No, I definitely think Kenna--"
"Oh, fine," I sighed. Stepping up onto the low table, I yelled so everyone in the room could easily hear me, "Hey guys, we're starting a football game, so come on if you wanna play!"
"Nice," Casey laughed as I stepped down. "That's a lot of sound from such a little--"
"He called you short!" Cady interrupted with a peal of high-pitched giggles.
"I wasn't going to say 'short', per se--" Casey tried to defend, but I had already given him a mock glare and shoved Cady so that she fell back down onto the couch. I tossed the ball to Aaron and he walked out with Cady and Randi while I hurried off to get orange cones from the rec. closet.
It took longer than I expected because, annoyingly enough, the room was locked for probably the first time in its life as a rec. closet, so I had to find Benson, who told me to find his wife Holly, who told me to find Crystal, who told me to find Curt. I finally got the needed cones, though, and jogged out the back door and across the street to the parking lot to find a bunch of people already dividing into teams.
Aaron had been nominated captain of one, and when I approached, he asked, "Do you want to be the other captain?"
"Sure thing."
So we grabbed our teams (none of that "choosing players" crap; everyone just split into two teams with relatively the same number of people) and huddled on opposite ends of the parking lot while Aaron directed two little freshmen boys on where to set up the cones.
"Wait, who's offense first?" I called over after a second of confusion, my head sticking up over the rest of the huddle.
Aaron shrugged, then yelled back, "Do you want to be?"
"Sure."
There wasn't really much to plan. Basically, our plan to win was for Bradley, our elected quarterback, to throw the ball to whomever was open, and then it was the job of that person to run like crazy. Really, there's only so much planning you can do when you've got ten people on your team, some of which are girly girls that don't care in the least about the game and just want to play with the boys who, once they get into their competitive mode, are ready to stomp the other team into the ground by any means necessary.
Before the game started, and this is important to remember, Aaron wisely suggested that we make this a touch football game (as opposed to tackling), since, you know, we were playing on asphalt. We were already asking for injuries; the last thing we needed to do was give the boys free range to slam each other to the ground.
And so the game began. We set up, and I called play (random numbers such as my social security number, my birthday, and my student id for school that meant absolutely nothing but made Aaron laugh hard enough that he almost tripped), then passed the ball back to Bradley, and took off. The rules were different than those I was used to playing under with my group of friends on Saturday afternoons, but that was okay because we only followed the rules for as long as we could remember them anyway. And we played nicely, which was fortunate. For instance, when Megan, an eighth grade girl on Aaron's team, grabbed the ball and ran the wrong way, we didn't take a point for it, though they offered it out of all honesty.
We played long and hard. Every so often, someone (usually one of the younger girls) would drop out and wander back over to the youth center, but within seconds someone new would wander over to replace them. Of course, this meant it became a game in itself trying to remember who was on your team. Trace made a wonderful touchdown by convincing the other team he was with them, and though Aaron's team argued it was unfair, they then turned around and did the exact same thing to us. Then there were the side hoppers who apparently decide which side they wanted to be on. Randi, for instance, got frustrated on Aaron's team because none of the boys would throw the ball to her, so she came to my side halfway through. Marcus threw her the ball immediately, she made a touchdown, and spent the rest of the game grinning proudly over her moment of glory.
We played long enough that everyone got their own moment of glory. And some of us lucky dogs, such as myself, got multiple moments. I made several absolutely amazing passes and catches and even scored two touchdowns all on my own, one of which was made by literally diving underneath as a possible tackler flew through the air above me.
We hadn't been playing long when I instructed my team to growl threateningly at the other team to, you know, make things a little more intense (or comedic; take your pick). At first the other team was so surprised and overcome with laughter at the stupid glares on our faces that they messed up their play, so then Aaron told them to growl back at us. So before each play began, there would be several seconds of growling and glaring and, Aaron and I face to face, were the paragons, if I do say so myself. My smirks made it hard to Aaron to keep a straight face while I was able to better mask how amusing his "threatening" face was (not in the least bit threatening.) When the boys in the youth group began whispering sexist remarks to me to egg me on because they know how much that annoys me, Aaron got in on that --not the sexist teasing, but the teasing in general. At one point, during one of the periods of growing while crouched opposite each other, he mouthed, 'You're mine,' which made me laugh hard enough that I missed the play and had to run like an idiot to catch up with the rest of my team. When he teased me about diving for that touchdown only to, moments later, dive for one of his own but miss, my laughter aimed at him as he just laid there, staring up at the sky, prompted him to direct his pathetic pouting at me when he stood up. Of course, all the little junior high girls went running over to assure him it was okay, which made me laugh harder.
Randi elbowed me and whispered, "Ah, Heartbreaker Makenna is at it again," but I just rolled my eyes at her and went to set up for the next play.
The exchanges between Aaron and me weren't over yet, though. A couple minutes later, I decided to knock him off his feet. Literally, I mean. He wasn't my responsibility to guard, but whoever was supposed to be guarding him had ditched. So when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone pass the ball to him, I went flying through the air and, in one of those dramatic slow motion moments, caught the ball. It was beautiful for a split second, but then I don't know if the force of the ball knocked me back (surely not) or if Aaron grabbed me while I was in the air, but either way we both went crashing hard down to the asphalt, him onto his backside and me onto my side. I know my landing hurt as though I had just, I don't know, crashed down onto hard asphalt, so I'm sure his hurt just as badly, and for a moment we just froze in shock and pain and everyone got really still and quiet, staring at us for a moment before sprinting over to see if we were okay and to help us up.
"What are you smiling so big about?" Aaron demanded in a really bad attempt at appearing annoyed. "I think I just broke something."
"Ah, but it was totally worth it. Our ball," I replied, laying on the sugar extra thick. He glared and stepped forward as though to take it from me, but I quickly ducked away.
That was one of my glory moments, though really I think my anti glory moment outweighs it in everyone's memory. At least it does in mine.
See, I have this tendency to get beat up in every single game I play. Apparently I play too rough, too competitively, or some nonsense like this. And a scratched up elbow and hand from crashing into Aaron apparently didn't count as my big spill, or maybe God just wasn't read to call it quits yet.
Do you remember what I told you earlier and specifically mentioned was important to remember? Probably not. I mentioned that Aaron told everyone that this was to be a touch foot ball game, not a tackle football game, and we all nodded and said we agreed.
A funny thing, the memory of a guy. You know what I mean? I guess I find it amusing that they can forget something as trivial as the no tackle rule.
My team had set up our offensive play and we had decided to make me quarterback for once so that the other team would think we were planning on throwing the ball to Bradley who was a fast runner but had been our quarterback for the game so far, while instead I would throw it to Lizzie, who hadn't been guarded the entire game. However, all this planning was entirely unnecessary, seeing as how just as I stepped backwards to throw the ball, two senior boys decided to forget the no-tackle rule and bum rush the quarterback. I wouldn't have minded so much, I don't think, if I wasn't the quarterback. They came rushing at me and hit me from both sides at the exact same time, head on, bang, boom, bam, whammy. The force knocked me backwards right into the truck that I hadn't even realized we were so close to, and this of course sent me crashing to the ground with the wind knocked clean out of me.