"Let us greet each other with the peace of God."
It started out as a whisper, but slowly the volume increased to a murmur as the people began to greet each other saying, "God's peace."
The church seemed extremely crowded for a Sunday morning Prayer and Preaching Service. There was a whole whopping thirty people in church today if you counted my dad, the leader of this sorry excuse for a church. There were the usual old ladies in the front of the church, singing their hearts out, not caring how bad they were singing, the five ushers that helped the service run somewhat smoothly, and then there were a couple of small families that were at church every other week.
I did not want to be here. I had better things to do... like catch up on the sleep that I had thrown away at the party last night. My friend Karlie had wanted me to stay up and videotape Tim and Marcus following through with a dare which involved TPing Daniel Clink's house. That went well into the wee hours of the night. Needless to say, my parents did not know anything about this party. They thought I had just stayed up watching too many movies with Karlie.
No one liked Daniel. He had been the short kid all the way through grade school, but since then he had hit a growth spurt and was now the same height as me. Daniel was very skinny and pale. His skin looked like a red ink pen had exploded on him leaving millions of freckles behind, but the weird thing about him was that he had black hair. Freckles are usually accompanied with red hair, but Daniel was different. His eyes were blue, but they were hard to see because of the glasses that he wore all of the time. He was the nerd and the geek of our Senior class at Cliffview High. Some of the kids in my class even got creative and called him a Nerdygeek. They also decided that the name Geekynerd fit him too. So he was called whichever name that felt right.
The weird thing about all of this was that Daniel was sitting three rows behind me in church. He was the only one out of all of those people that I just mentioned that went to church. He always came with his dad each Sunday no matter what had happened the week before. I knew he got picked on all of the time, but I never did anything about it because I was accepted in the popular crowd. So I just went along with everything that happened to him.
There was one thing that no one at school knew about, not even Karlie. Daniel and I had been friends since Preschool because we were the only ones in our Sunday School class. I first started ignoring Daniel in school when I saw that he was bullied all of the time. I did not want to be bullied, so I stayed out of it all, but on the weekends we would always play together because there weren't many houses near by for about thirty miles. He was mad at me in the beginning when I would not help him out, but he got used to the bullying really quickly and I guess he did not want me to get hurt. I had known that he had a crush on me since second grade, but I didn't want things awkward between us, so I decided to keep being a normal friend to him.
The service ended really fast like it usually did and we all went outside to socialize. It was late August, so that meant that it was still pretty hot outside and there were still going to be refreshments outside. I grabbed an apple, trying to avoid as many people as possible, and went and sat in the little alley that was on the right side of the church that separated our house and the church.
I did not want to talk to Daniel because I knew he saw me last night and I didn't want that subject to come up at all. I felt like a traitor to him. I always did after my friends played some kind of prank on him. I saw him standing at the refreshment table grabbing a few things to eat. He turned his head in my direction and I quickly backed further into the alley, but I knew he had seen me. He always saw me.
"Hey, what is a pretty girl like you doing hiding from a gorgeous young man like me?"
"What gorgeous man?" my sarcastic mouth instinctively retorted, but then I immediately regretted saying it. "I mean-" I tried again, but Daniel cut me off.
"It's okay. I know I'm not the cream of the crop. I have tons of bruises and worms wriggling inside of me."
I couldn't help but smile shyly up at him. He wasn't very attractive at all, but after knowing him so long, I was starting to look beneath the physical appearance. We sat there in silence for a few minutes, not knowing how to continue the conversation. That's when Daniel's dad came over to us and broke through the awkward silence.
"There you are Daniel. Pastor Keller invited us to supper tonight. You don't have anything to do tonight, do you?"
"Not that I know of."
"Good. I'm looking forward to a nice evening with some decent food to eat." Daniel's dad looked at me and winked. "I don't usually get a gourmet meal at home. Daniel doesn't really cook. He could really use some cooking lessons from you."
"He could come over an hour earlier if he wanted to and Jessica could give him some educational cooking lessons." I looked up and saw mom offering a tempting invitation that she knew Daniel would not pass up.
"That sounds great!" Daniel exclaimed, "but only if it's okay with Jessica."
I looked at my match-making mother in the eyes and with my eyes, transferred a message saying, Really? She just smiled and nodded her head slightly. I exhaled slowly and said, "That's fine with me."
I could immediately feel fireworks going off within Daniel's existence even though we weren't touching. He jumped up and as he started to walk away with his dad he said, "I can't wait to finally learn how to cook edible food!"
My mom walked up to me and whispered in my ear, "Jess, give him a chance. He doesn't have many friends and he lives all alone with his dad. This opportunity will be a major ego booster for him."
She walked away as I thought about what she had said. I had never had a boyfriend before and I didn't really know how to act around boys. Daniel was different. We were childhood friends and I had never considered him to be a possible candidate for a boyfriend before. I knew that was what mom was trying to get us to do. She wanted me to marry a good Christian boy, but there were so many good looking guys at school. I would much rather have one of those boys date me, even marry me. I know God has a perfect match out there for me somewhere, but I'm starting to get a little impatient. I'm beginning to think that I'm never going to date. Seventeen and never dated, sounds a little daunting.
