Newfangled

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Tuesday, September 1st

Dear Journal,

I have officially been going to R&R Junior High for one week and one day. Today I met Franny. She is awesome sauce. Why do people say awesome sauce? It sounds weird. I’m getting off topic. Franny is in my homeroom, but I didn’t meet her until today. Jason asked me if I wanted to sit with him at lunch, and I decided to try my luck at the smart kid table. Franny was there. She has red, curly hair, and whenever she laughs it bounces all over the place. And she laughs a lot, so it is like, always bouncing. She pointed to my Deplorable Debbie shirt and told me she loves that cartoon. Best friends at first sight? It’s pretty likely. She even wrote me a note after lunch and handed it to me while I was waiting for my mom to pick me up. I’m going to tuck it into you on the page next to this entry for future reference.

Olive read the note again.

Hi Olive! I’m so glad you decided to join us for lunch. I hope you don’t mind, but I asked Jason to ask you. I noticed your shirt this morning. I don’t know you, like at all, but you don’t seem like the kind of person that would normally hang out with Trish and Jacey. They are ok and all, and I could be totally wrong, but you seem more like a Mashable. That’s what we call ourselves, me and Jason and the rest of our group. I know some people call us nerds behind our backs, but you better believe that when they need help with homework they come to us. Well, I better get back to geometry. I’ll see you tomorrow. -Franny

I also have to tell you, Journal, that Dad got hurt at work today. Something went wrong with one of the shelving units in his office, it’s on wheels or something, and it totally fell over and landed on him while he was putting some files away. I really need to pray for him more. So he had to go see the doctor and the doctor said that he has strained a muscle in his back and will have to take muscle relaxers and have at least a week off of work, resting at home. This is going to drive all of us crazy, because Dad doesn't like to sit still. He doesn’t seem too upset about the accident at work though, so that’s good. He said sometimes things just get worn out, it isn’t anyone’s fault. That’s all for now. Love, Olive

“Hey honey, did you finish your homework?” Sophia popped her head into the doorway.

“Yeah, I was just journaling.”

“Ok, are you finished?”

“Yeah. Do you need something?”

“Actually yes, I do. I need to go get your Dad’s medicine from the pharmacy. Can you make sure James doesn’t take forever in the shower and then ask Zoe to get in? I will tuck everyone in when I get back. It may take a while because I have to wait until they can fill the prescription. His pain pill that they gave him at the doctor’s office is wearing off and he’s starting to hurt.” Sophia explained.

“Dad actually told you his back was hurting?” Olive asked.

“Well no, but he’s starting to scrunch his face up, a wife knows these things.” Sophia mimicked the face that Tim had been making.

“Oh, yeah that doesn’t look good. Go ahead. I’ve got you covered.” Olive assured her mother.

“Thanks honey! I knew I could count on you.” Sophia went into her room, grabbed her purse and headed toward the bathroom. “James,” she said, “Olive’s in charge. You better listen to her or else!”

“Ok, Mom.” James shouted from behind the shower curtain.

Olive realized it would probably be at least 20 minutes until she could convince James to get out of the shower, so she went downstairs to try to cheer up her Dad. She went into the kitchen, got three big scoops of peanut butter cup ice cream out of the carton from the freezer, and took it to her dad.

“Thanks sweetie. You aren’t having any?” Tim asked.

“I’m on shower duty, but after I get Zoe taken care of, I might have some. She’s upstairs playing with her plastic bricks for now. So what actually happened today? Mom said something about the file cabinets being on wheels. I didn’t even know that was possible.”

“Well, they have a bunch of file cabinets next to each other. They go all the way from the floor to the ceiling. They are on a track and can be adjusted. Each one has a handle and you can turn it to move them around depending on which one you need to get to. It saves space that way.” Tim dropped some of the ice-cream from his spoon onto his shirt. Olive got up and came back with a paper towel.

“Thanks,” he said, using the paper towel to wipe off his shirt.

“So, how did one fall over onto you?”

“Well, that is a good question, and I don’t really know the answer. What I do know is that the system is pretty old. We bought it from another office when their company went out of business.” Tim took another bite of the ice cream. “This is so good. Mmm, peanut-buttery.”

“Peanut-buttery isn’t a word, Dad.” Olive said, smiling.

“Give your ol’ Dad a break, will ya?”

“So you’re saying you don’t normally make up words in your normal, un-injured state then?” Olive was really trying not to laugh.

“Thank you again, for the ice cream,” he said, winking.

“I had better convince James to get out of the shower before he turns into Prune Boy, the creepy de-moisturizing super hero.”

“De-moisturizing? Really? That’s a real word, is it?” Tim responded.

“Don’t even,” Olive shouted as she headed up the stairs.

:: :: ::

The next day at school Franny waved to Olive once they got into homeroom.

“Good morning Olive!”

“Hey Franny, thanks for the note yesterday. Here, I wrote you back.” Olive held out the single piece of paper that had been folded into a neat, little rectangle.

“Oh, look how cute the little babies are,” Jacey interrupted.

“What are you talking about?” Franny demanded. To Olive’s surprise, Franny sounded totally calm.

“Everyone uses their cell phones to text now, no one writes notes. That’s for old fashioned losers that don’t have phones.” Jacey looked over at Trish, who was texting her at that very moment. Jacey’s cell phone buzzed. “See, like that,” Jacey said.

“My parents trust me, so I don’t need one of those fancy tracking devices. Plus, I don’t have to worry about being distracted from things that aren’t really important.” Franny explained, shrugging her shoulders.

Ms. Finney couldn’t help but overhear the conversation as she came back in from filling up her water bottle at the fountain. “I think letters are more personal and show that the other person is willing to invest time in their friendship,” she said. “I like getting letters better than texts, that’s for sure. As long as the notes are read after, and not during my class. Now, who’s ready to start talking about the Balkans? I know I am!”

There was a collective groan throughout the classroom, but it didn’t seem to bother Ms. Finney. Olive wished she could have switched groups, but she may have hurt Jacey’s feelings by sitting with Jason and Franny at lunch yesterday, so she decided not to judge her too harshly. We all have bad days. Then Olive settled in, ready to learn about the Balkans, whatever they were.

Ms. Finney told all of the students not to look at the folders that were placed at different stations, because she didn’t want them to spoil the surprise. Today they would be going on a tour of the Balkans, and she didn’t want anyone to start the tour early. She was clearly excited.

“In addition to traveling to different destinations today, you will also decide on a Balkan themed subject for your next art project, pastels!” She held up a pastel drawing of what looked to Olive like Baklava. Olive hoped her stomach wouldn’t growl. The classroom was pretty quiet, and baklava was one of her favorite desserts.

“Ok, now everyone,” Ms. Finney interrupted Olive’s thoughts, “get into your color groups and look up at the board. I wrote your groups’ first destination, and from there you will go to the right every 10 minutes. Make sure you look at the photos in each notebook, and write down the population and language facts. Tomorrow we will be talking about the histories of these different countries.”

Olive had to bite her lip to keep from groaning, working with Jacey and Trish right now was going to create more tension. At least she had Jason in her group.

“Oh, wait. Sorry,” Ms. Finney interjected, “I forgot to read one of this morning’s announcements. It is about the school paper and the yearbook. If you are interested in joining the yearbook club, meet in room 803 during lunch next Monday. If you are interested in joining the newspaper, they will meet in room 601 after school next Wednesday. Does anyone need me to repeat that? Actually, I’ll just write the club, day and time up here on the board so whoever wants to can copy it down after our exercise. Is everyone ready to start? Ok, let’s go!”

After visiting the Macedonia and Montenegro table, the teams quickly realized how interesting this project was and everyone got into it. Even Trish and Jacey’s icy attitudes thawed a bit until the bell rang, signaling it was time to head to English class. There the class did this read aloud thing that Mrs. Tam liked to call “Pretzels,” where each student had to read part of the story aloud and then tag someone else to read next. Olive hated it. She understood that Mrs. Tam was testing for reading ability and comprehension, but no one ever remembered to “Pretzel” Olive, and when Mrs. Tam asked if anyone hadn’t gone toward the end of the class period, Olive was always forced to raise her hand. After playing “Pretzel” and having Mrs. Tam ask the follow-up questions, Mrs. Tam asked Olive to bring up the stack of books that everyone was reading from. Mrs. Tam had said on the first day that she didn’t want anyone in the following class reading ahead before class started, so she simply removed the temptation from their desks. As Olive was carrying the books to Mrs. Tam’s desk she heard Miles Jefferson mutter, “Nice legs,” under his breath. Apparently he hadn’t meant to say it out loud because when Olive looked back at him, his face turned the color of a Washington apple. This is turning out to be one very weird day, Olive thought. She had no idea how much the word “weird” would come up in her head over the next two weeks.

:: :: ::

All the way from her math class to her locker, Olive debated about where she should sit for lunch. If she kept sitting with the Mashables, Trish and Jacey were going to get more hostile toward her. Alternatively, she didn’t want Jacey to have the satisfaction of thinking that she could boss her around. “The path of righteousness isn’t always the path of least resistance,” she heard her mother’s voice in her head. Sophia was always reminding her children (and sometimes herself) that the best choices were not always the easiest ones. Sitting with Jacey and Trish would be a good short term solution, and it would probably mean that they would be nicer to her, but both girls were so mean and constantly gossiped about everyone.

Well that settles that, she thought, I know God wouldn’t want me hanging out and gossiping every day at lunch. The Mashables it is.

“Question,” Olive said, setting down her brown paper bag on the table, “why are you guys called the ‘Mashables’ anyway?”

“It’s all Audrey’s fault,” Franny said.

“It’s true.” Audrey paused to wrinkle her nose at Franny. “So I guess I can tell you the story.”

Olive unpacked her half of a sandwich and orange. She had eaten the other half in between English and Math since she didn’t want to eat too much right before gym class.

“We all know each other from elementary, but we started hanging out last year. We met on a field trip to see the high school where our advanced math classes would be for this year. Besides that class we don’t really have a lot in common. I heard the teacher that oversaw the trip talking about how we don’t really mesh well as a group. She had put us together as a buddy group, and I guess we just all seemed really different from each other. But we instantly realized that we had fun with each other. So we started sitting at the same table for lunch and waiting for our parents together after school.”

“I still don’t get how that ended up with you guys calling yourselves the Mashables,” Olive responded.

“I’m getting to that,” Audrey said. “Soon after that we were waiting around and I was telling the other guys what our teacher had said during our trip. It was funny because obviously we do mesh well. Anyway, my mom was pulling up and my brother, Brayden, heard me telling the story. He’s four. He said he didn’t understand what was so funny about us not mashing well together. His exact words were, ‘Of course you don’t mash together good, that sounds really uncom-forble.’ When I told everyone the next day what he said, we decided it was only right to call our little group of mismatched friends the Mashables.”

“I don’t get it,” Olive said.

“You know, I was talking about meshing, and Brayden thought I said mashing. He thought we were talking about smashing into each other. It’s funny right?” Audrey was trying really hard to sell her story.

“Yeah, it’s a weird Junior High thing that seemed funny at the time. Just go with it, Olive.” Jason reassured her with a wink.

“Ok, but I still don’t get why your teacher would say you don’t mesh. Why does she think you are so mismatched?” Olive asked.

“Well we have the jock,” Franny said, pointing to Jason, “the goody goody, cheerleader,” pointing to Audrey, “the brainy nerd girl,” she pointed to herself, “the genius,” she pointed to their friend Bobby, “and now the new-girl, Jesus freak.”

Olive realized she was talking about her, and smiled. Franny smiled back. Finally, Olive had some real friends at school.

:: :: ::

The rest of the week went by quickly. The Callis family missed church on Sunday since Tim was still recovering from his back injury, so Olive didn’t get to see her friends Anna and Melissa. She was bummed, but she understood that her dad needed his rest, and her mom was busy taking care of him. Monday, Olive had gone to the first yearbook club meeting and met a few different kids. Dean was the editor, and Amber was his assistant. They were both in eighth grade. The other seventh graders Olive would be working with seemed nice. There were three girls and a boy.

On Wednesday night at Youth Group, Olive felt really weird. Melissa and Anna were both missing, and she hadn’t heard from either one of them all week. Not a single email or phone call. Of course, they were also adjusting to going back to school and were busy with their own lives. Strange things happened all night. First, one of Jim’s guitar strings broke and they had to do the rest of the worship set acapella. Jim was one of the guys that lead worship at Youth Group. Several different people usually took turns. Then, as Pastor Chaz was praying he choked on his spit and had to stop for a few seconds. Jim walked up and finished the prayer while Pastor Chaz composed himself out in the hall. Then the microphone wouldn’t work properly and everyone plugged their ears as the high pitched feedback squealed through the room, for the third time that evening. Finally, as it was getting closer to Youth Group being over, Pastor Chaz settled into his message.

“Wow, this has been an interesting evening,” he said. “Tonight I wanted to talk about loving our enemies. I will be talking about it for the next few weeks, but I thought I would give you a preview by looking at the life of Jesus. I know you all are going through a lot. As teenagers, and pre-teens, you face a lot of social pressures, and that includes dealing with mean kids. I wish it were different, but there will always be selfish people that don’t care about the feelings of others. In Hebrews 4:15 we read, “For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

He paused to let the words sink in.

“Jesus knew what it was like to have people be mean and get in His face. He constantly dealt with others insulting Him and even betraying Him. He was rejected by His own brothers at one point. But the way He responded should be an example for us, of how we should respond when people treat us poorly. Jesus loved them anyway. In fact He said this, ‘But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil. Therefore be merciful, just as your Father is also merciful,’ in Luke 6:35-36.”

Olive felt her stomach sink as she realized the implications of these verses. Yes, Trish and Jacey had been pretty hostile to her, but she wouldn’t consider them enemies. Still, she knew she needed to show them mercy and grace.

Okay God, she prayed, I know I can’t do this on my own, but if You will help me, I’ll do my best to be nice to them.

Pastor Chaz closed in a prayer and Jim played one more song. He had fixed his broken guitar string during the lesson, apparently. Since Anna and Melissa were missing, Olive left the room right away to meet up with her family. They were sitting with a couple other families drinking coffee in the entrance of the church that also doubled as a fellowship area.

“Hey, Dad. Is your back doing ok?” Olive asked. It had been Tim’s first time out of the house. They had agreed to bring him to church if he would relax and let his back heal for the rest of the week. The excitement of being let out of the house had helped him get through the very boring week. Sophia happily wheeled him around in a wheel chair they had borrowed from a friend.

“Yeah, for now. I need to take another muscle relaxer when we get home.”

“We have been keeping him company out here,” Mr. Sims said. Felix Sims was in Tim’s men’s prayer group that met twice a month. He had been friends with Tim for as long as Olive could remember. “It’s great that they play the message out here live during service,” he continued.

The Franklins were there as well. Olive was thankful that her parents had such great friends. She remembered both Tilda Sims or Janie Franklin as favorite babysitters. Olive had stayed with the Sims while her mom was having James, and then again when Sophia had had Zoe. They didn’t really have a lot of family close by with Grandma and Grandpa living in Indiana, but God had brought them church family to be there in times of need.

“Hi Mr. and Mrs. Franklin, Mr. and Mrs. Sims,” Olive said waving. “How are all your kids?”

“Janie is doing very well at her first year in college, she said to tell you hi, Olive.” Mrs. Franklin responded. “Everyone else is doing well, thank the Lord. Jenna and Mark just bought an apartment in New York. Hopefully I’ll be able to go out there and help Jenna decorate,” she added. Olive had been a flower girl in Jenna and Mark’s wedding five years ago.

“Sorry to cut this catch-up fest short,” Sophia interjected after returning from getting James and Zoe out of children’s ministry, “but I need to get Tim home before he starts hurting again. Please keep praying for him. Love you guys and see you on Sunday. Goodnight.”

Olive, James, and Zoe waved at the Sims and the Franklins as they headed out the door. It may have started out as a bizarre night, but at least it ended on a happy note.