Rise (Colton Dixon)

Chapter 16

Colton
I feel an utter sense of helplessness overcome me as I hold Alexis. I can’t believe everything she’s been through. And she doesn’t even have Jesus to help her deal with it all. I can’t imagine the kind of pain she must be in right now.
I don’t know how long we stand like this before she seems to realize what’s happening, and jerks away suddenly. She takes a deep breath and shakes her head like she’s trying to clear it, slowly reaching out and reclaiming her phone. She keeps her eyes locked on the ground.
“Sorry,” she mutters.
“Alexis…” I begin, but she cuts me off.
“Don’t. Don’t say I have nothing to apologize for and there’s nothing wrong with it, because I do, there is, and it’s not gonna happen again. Now are we going or not?”
I feel tears press at the back of my eyes at her words, but I nod slowly, gesturing out the door. “Yeah. They’re waiting for us outside the park. Most of them.”
She follows my gaze to where Mike and Eric wait and raises an eyebrow. “Scared to come by yourself?”
I shrug. “I didn’t exactly have a good experience last night.”
“Oh?”
I take a deep breath. “Three dudes had me at gunpoint cause they thought I had… um… hurt you, and apparently they…” I hesitate for the second time. “Know your mom.”
She exhales. “***holes. I know who you’re talking about. They sell ****** drugs to my mom. I’m surprised you’re here. How’d you manage to get away from them?”
I shake my head slowly. “Uh… the guys had a feeling and followed me here, and… well, phones can look like guns… and a whole lotta God, I guess.”
She rolls her eyes and mutters something indistuingishable and probably explict.
I continue quickly. “But… uh… Annie and Cory are both in the van, and they don’t exactly know precisely what happened, so can you keep a secret?”
She lets out a harsh laugh. “Ooh, perfect little Jesus boy, lying to his wife.”
I can’t help a small smile. “It’s for the greater good. And it’s not exactly lying… just… not telling the entire truth.”
She holds up both hands. “Oh, excuse me. Who am I to get in the way of the greater good?”
It’s not that I… aprove of, or enjoy everything that comes out of Alexis’ mouth, but I have to say it’s a little refreshing. Even if it comes out of her thinking she’s a total screw-up and there’s no use in trying to be anything else, she doesn’t try to hide who she feels like on the inside.
So many Christians try to act like they’re flawless instead of embracing the fact that Jesus makes them that way, and we could actually learn a thing or do from even the people we see as ministry opportunities.
Mike and Eric fall in step with us as we head back out of the park.
“How’s it going, Alexis?” Mike asks easily.
“Fantastic.” Sarcasm drips from her tone.
Mike just offers her an encouraging smile. “Well, I’m glad you’re coming along…. Even if Colton did hypnotise you into doing it or something.”
She doesn’t answer, and Eric turns to her instead. “So, is it normal for it to be this warm here in January?” he asks. “I thought Colorado was supposed to be, like, the skying place or something.”
She shrugs. “The mountains are the only things that stay covered in snow all winter. It’s not exactly normal for it to be like this in January, but it happens in February all the time. We pay for it with snow in March and April. And May.”
“So you’ve got like on-off winter from November to May?” he asks incredulously.
She just nods. “Basically.”
“That’s… different.”
“It’s Colorado.”
We fall into silence for the rest of the walk back to the car, but it’s quickly broken as we come into the van’s view by the panic button. And John’s just grinning in the driver’s seat.
I sigh. “Why did we decide to give the person who’s most immune to loud noises control of the horn?”
Mike laughs. “Because you don’t say no to John.”
This one’s a twelve-passenger van that Seth is borrowing from a buddy of his that lives in Colorado. He’s the youth pastor for a church around here and it’s the youth-trip van. It’s probably from the eighties, but it runs, and that’s what matters.
Finally, we reach the van and open the door, just in time to see cory wrestling with her husband for the keys. He’s laughing so hard that she finally wins and turns the panic off. Sad thing is, that was an obnoxious sound, but we’re all so used to loud ones that I doubt it bugged very many people.
I can’t help but laugh as I climb back to join Annie on the backseat. Her hands are jammed over her ears. Even if she has been to about a billion shows and she does sing with me whenever she travels with us, I guess she’s not quite as hardened.
“Babe, it’s over now,” I laugh as I sit down beside her, waving Alexis to a seat next to me. “You can take your hands down.”
“Well, since it’s not helping the ringing in my ears,” she complains, sending a seeting glare up to the front of the bus. “Cory, smack him for me.”
I hear the evidence of Cory’s obedience. Those two are something else.
I buckle and turn to Luke in the row in front of me.
“Figure out your seat belt while I was gone?”
He rolls his eyes. “I gave up on that thing, Mate.”
“Uh, not a good idea with how John drives,” Jen quips. “You’d better just make it work.”
He sighs and turns back to where his belt orginates, suspended from the ceiling, and pulls it down.
Five minutes of unsuccessfully trying to find two separate clips for two straps that click together… in which we’re all laughing too hard to really help him… and he gives up.
“I don’t care how John drives,” he groans. “That thing doesn’t work.”
Joel, through fits of laughter, reaches back from where he’s sitting in front of him.
“Do I have to do everything for you, Lukey?” he teases, and swiftly connects the two straps.
Luke stares at them for a long moment and lets out a long sigh.
“I thought the shorter one went across,” he says quietly after a long moment.
And we all just collapse laughing again as John finally pulls out, Cory cranking the volume as tobyMac’s Til the Day I Die comes onto the radio.
Alexis is looking at us all wordlessly, her face spelling loud and clear that she doesn’t exactly think a lot of our sanity. The sad thing is, she’s probably right.