REPORT NUMBER: 5
REPORT TITLE: I Play with Garden Gnomes
SUBMITTED BY: Agent-in-Training Spencer Garmond
LOCATION: Grace’s Residence, 780 S. Pine Street, #107, Pilot Point, California, USA
DATE AND TIME: Tuesday, May 29, 5:52 a.m.
Tuesday morning, I picked up Grace for Mission League for the last time this school year. After today, there’d be no more classes until fall. Just our summer trainings and the Alaska trip.
Grace had texted me to come knock on her window, and I found her kneeling in prayer on her One Direction pillow.
I didn’t know what she saw in that Harry guy. He looked like a girl.
Grace seemed fine. No bruises that I could see from here. She finished praying, saw me, and opened the window.
“How’s your dad been?” I asked.
She clouded right up. “Fine,” she snapped. “Why?”
I shrugged. My question had said enough. She knew that I hadn’t forgotten about her dad, and I hoped she’d heard my unspoken offer. That she knew she could ask me for help if she needed to.
I just really hoped she wouldn’t need it.
****
The Mission League final came and went with little stress. I rather enjoyed learning survival skills this year, so they’d stuck with me without too much effort. The Bio 2 final I had first period, however… That one was going to hurt.
When I picked up my backpack to leave Harris Hall, I left Nick’s journal on the floor under his usual desk. I couldn’t think of any other way to return it without implicating myself. I figured Mr. S or Kerri would find it and give it back to Nick.
Unfortunately, I still couldn’t find mine.
****
Finals week and the days after flashed by, and before I knew it, Saturday had arrived and I was sitting in the Pilot Point gymnasium, watching Gabe, Isabel, Nick, and Alex—a guy from my basketball team—graduate from high school.
It kind of freaked me out.
I mean, it wasn’t that long ago that I was a skinny middle schooler, getting arrested for tagging. Now I was one year away from being a full-on grown-up adult. A man. I didn’t want any of that. Grownups were old and had jobs and excessive body hair. This also meant I had very little time to get my scholarships back. Most prospects my age had signed already.
None of that mattered, though. I needed to look ahead. Glass half full and all that jazz.
Alex invited me to his grad party, but I wasn’t feeling it. That crowd would only make me wistful about my lost scholarships and tempted to do things I really shouldn’t do. So instead I went to Gabe’s grad party, which was at his house. I ate cookies, drank punch, and teased Mary and Martha—mostly Mary, who was getting cuter by the day. After that I stopped by Isabel’s for a very similar experience. She had Cuban milk cake instead of cookies, Jarritos sodas instead of punch, and since Grace was there, I teased her instead of Mary. Afterwards, Grace asked for a ride home, and as we were driving, I wondered if our entire friendship was going to happen in my car. Was I nothing more to her than a chauffeur? Maybe it would change things if I asked her out. Or took her to do something date-like. To a movie or dinner or something like that.
Nah. Too risky.
So there I was, home by eleven on grad night. This only added to my feeling like a hairy, grown-up adult. When I came inside, I found Grandma sitting in her armchair, crocheting. I flopped down on the couch.
“How was graduation?” she asked.
“Good. Except Desh didn’t graduate. Got behind and couldn’t catch up. He’s going to try and finish this summer. But it’s Desh, so…” I shrugged. “He’ll probably repeat part of his senior year this fall.”
“That doesn’t mean he can play basketball again, does it?”
“Naw,” I said. “He’s already played four years. That’s the max.”
She moved her glasses down to the tip of her nose and looked over the top of the frames. “You okay? You look sad.”
“I’m fine.” Not really. “I feel like…” I sighed. “Everything’s changing.”
A wry smile. “Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted? To be done with high school so you can play basketball somewhere?”
“Yeah, but I’m still a long way from that.” And it still might not happen. “It feels weird getting older.”
“It will always feel weird. Wait until your my age.”
I didn’t want to think about being her age. “It’s just that things are going to be harder with Gabe and Isabel gone.” Those two had done a lot to keep me out of trouble.
Grandma nodded. “Easier with Nick gone, though.”
I chuckled. She knew me so well.
“And you still have Lukas and Wally,” she added.
Well, she was half right. I had Lukas. I didn’t have Wally, though, and I was very okay with that.
“So what’s next?” Grandma asked.
I had no intention of overthinking things just now. I gave her a huge grin. “It’s summer. Now I get to sleep in.”
****
Sunday afternoon—to celebrate the start of summer—my youth group had the annual Kickin’ it with My Gnomies scavenger hunt in which we divided into groups and ran around town to get pictures of our team and our garden gnome with different things on a checklist.
It was actually pretty fun.
I texted Grace to see if she wanted a ride, but she was already with Isabel. Said she’d see me there. So I drove the banana over to Cornerstone Christian and parked in the lot.
Every time I came here it reminded me of the night when I was twelve and our Seis Puños gang had tagged the place. The cops had showed up and caught me. Terrified, I had squealed on all my friends: Kip, Sammy, Jeb, Paco, and Nick. We all got in trouble. But Nick, as the preacher’s kid who’d given us the keys to the church, had gotten the worst of it from his dad. Whatever Pastor Muren did must have been so severe it scarred Nick for life because five years later he still hated me for squealing.
I went inside the church and downstairs to the youth room. The place was packed. The event usually brought in about forty kids. Pastor Scott—the youth pastor—was in the middle of announcements. He always had a million things going on: fundraisers, community outreaches, Bible studies, game nights, mission trips, prayer circles, the worship band—led by Gabe—girls night, guys night, prayer buddies, blah, blah, blah. But tonight he offered something new.
“We’re going to be having a baptism coming up on June 23. Why get baptized?” Scattered hands shot into the air. “Gabe.”
“Because Jesus said, ‘Go then, to all people everywhere and make them my disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.’”
“That’s exactly right. What else? Are there other reasons or benefits of being baptized? Drew?”
“Because it shows other people what you believe.”
“Yes,” Pastor Scott said. “Baptism is also a public confession of faith. An outward statement of an inward belief. A symbol of your new life as a Christian. It’s a chance to stand before friends and family and share what you believe.
“There are many ways to be baptized. Other churches might do things differently than we do. The word ‘baptize’ literally means ‘to dip under water,’ so I’m going to dunk you. Going all the way under the water is, I think, the best way to symbolize the death of your old self and the resurrection of your new self. It should be all in.
“So if you’ve made the decision to believe in Christ, I encourage you to pray about this. You can sign up on that list.” He pointed to the wall where a sheet of paper had been taped up. “Any questions? Yes, John.”
“Will I have to say something?”
“I’d like you to. Your stories matter. They help other people come to know God. So, I’ll explain to everyone what baptism is and why we do it, then I’ll ask each person to share why they want to be baptized. It’s as simple as that.”
I wanted to be baptized.
The thought caught me off guard, and I instantly started coming up with excuses: It would be too embarrassing. What would I say? Sue Adams from the Pilot Point Bulletin would probably write an article about it. It would be too embarrassing. I didn’t want people to know I had recently become a Christian. It was really nobody’s business what I believed, anyway. Besides, it would be too embarrassing.
All these thoughts made me feel guilty.
I was a chicken.
I wanted this.
Not true. I wanted to already have done this.
I needed to sign that paper on the wall.
No, I didn’t.
Yes, I did.
The debate nagged me through the rest of the announcements. When Pastor Scott told us to head to the gym, I lingered until I was the last one in the room. Then I scratched my name on the list under that of a seventh grader named Heather.
Done and done.
Take that, wimpy Spencer. Brave Spencer just schooled you.
I arrived in the gym just as Pastor Scott was counting off six teams. When he reached my friends, he tapped Grace’s head. “You’re a three.” Then Arianna’s head. “Four.” Then Isabel’s head. “Five.”
My eyes ran ahead of him. I’d be a four if I stayed here. I grabbed Lukas’s wrist and yanked him to my left, taking his place in line.
Lukas scowled. “Ow! What are you—?”
“Whoa, look at that!” I said, pointing at the doors.
Lukas jerked his head that way. “What?”
Pastor Scott passed us, naming me a three and Lukas a four.
Lukas punched my arm. “You dog.”
I just grinned.
When we’d all been numbered, Pastor Scott had us break into our groups. Threes were to stand under the basketball hoop, so I jogged there, jumped up and grabbed the rim, thought about doing a pull up, then worried about landing wrong on my knee when I dropped.
“Down, Garmond,” Pastor Scott said from somewhere.
I let go, putting most of my weight on my good leg.
Besides me and Grace, our group also had Luke—El McWilly—Williamson, Wally Parks, Xander Hicks, Mary Stopplecamp, and Sherry Palma.
I liked El McWilly—the freshman Tae Kwon Do expert—just fine. Wally was also in the Mission League and on Team Alpha. The kid was afraid of his own shadow, but I was used to dealing with him. Xander was cool. He was little bro to Jensina Hick’s, a former member of the Mission League who graduated last year. She still came to youth group with Xander because he had a hearing impairment, and she signed for him.
Mary Stopplecamp was one of Gabe’s twin sisters. She played basketball, and we were pretty good friends. I liked to scrimmage with her and stuff. She’d had a crush on me since Moscow and had told me many times that she and I were going to get married someday. The idea had been silly back when she was in sixth grade. But then I’d found out she was gifted in prophecy, like me. And over the past year she got a little older and cuter, and now she was in eighth grade and I just kind of felt weird around her these days.
Then there was Sherry…
Sherry was the one reason I didn’t like coming to this youth group on a regular basis. She had been my first and only “girlfriend.” We’d lasted six days freshman year before I broke up with her in the cafeteria. Told her I didn’t need any ball and chain at fourteen years old. She’d started throwing food at me. Then she’d started telling people all these horrible—fabricated—things I’d done to her.
It had been way ugly.
Thinking the night might get awkward, I kept my distance from Sherry and Mary, and leaned close to Grace, making sure my arm touched hers. She was holding the picture list. “So, what have we got to do?” I asked.
Grace, to my delight, didn’t lean away. “New stuff this year.”
I read the locations.
Kicking It With My Gnomies Picture List
•At the fire station
•Eating ice cream at DQ
•Shopping for hair dye
•In the river/creek
•With a human baby
•On PPCS Football Field
•At a piano
•Going down a slide
•With a boy with a piercing
•With a girl with pigtails
•With person in not-blue pants
•Jewelry for sale
•On a tricycle
•With a person holding a candy bar
•By “Welcome to Pilot Point” sign
•In a pick-up truck
•With a live animal (no dog/cat)
•Climbing a tree
•At a different church
• Wearing a hat (not a baseball hat)
ALL students must appear in each picture.
ONE item per picture. No combining!
Items must come from OUTSIDE the team’s homes/belongings.
Be BACK to gym by 5:00 p.m.
“Does at least one person in every group have a car?” Pastor Scott asked. “Someone who can legally drive other teenagers?”
I made a point of not looking at Grace since I’d been driving her around illegally for weeks. I’d only had my license for about a month and a half, and in California, under-eighteen drivers needed to have their license a year before driving with any non-sibling passengers who were under-eighteen. Frankly, I was surprised Kimbal hadn’t said anything, but maybe since he wasn’t a Pilot Point PD cop anymore, he didn’t care.
Jensina volunteered to drive our team.
“Group one gets first pick of their gnome,” Pastor Scott said.
The garden gnomes had been re-painted in various ways. There was a ninja gnome dressed all in black, a zombie gnome whose face looked all rotted, a glittery show choir gnome, a cyborg gnome, a chipped and faded high school musical gnome, and my personal favorite, a pirate gnome with a peg leg and an eye patch.
By the time we got to pick, the zombie and ninja gnomes were gone.
“Let’s get the pirate,” Mary said.
“Yes!” I said. “We want the pirate.”
Sherry ran up to the table.
“Get the pirate!” El McWilly, Mary, Grace, and I yelled.
Sherry came back with the show choir gnome. Wally walked over to examine it—without touching it, of course. The rest of us groaned.
I took a picture of three of the gnomes. I didn’t bother taking a close-up of the show choir gnome because that would mean walking over to Sherry, and I was trying to keep my distance.
Once all the gnomes had been claimed, Pastor Scott sent us off. We had to be back on time to win, and we would earn extra points for creative pictures. We made plans as we ran to Jensina’s van. Actually, we argued. I wanted to go by DQ and the fire station first. Sherry wanted to go to the drugstore.
Sherry won.
There were no pickup trucks in the drugstore’s parking lot, so we ran inside and got a picture with a box of hair dye. Then we took a shot with a clerk, who was wearing black slacks. El McWilly found a display of mood rings and we all gathered around him as he knelt and pretended to propose to Mary—who, in true Stopplecamp form said she had to pray about it. After that, I found a woman with a toddler on the toy row, but Sherry refused to pose with them.
“A toddler isn’t a baby,” she said.
“Toddlers wear diapers,” I said, noting the package in the woman’s cart. “Anything that wears diapers is a baby.”
“In that case, we’ll just get a picture with you,” she said.
“Be nice,” Mary said. “Let’s just get a picture with them. That way at least we have one in case we don’t see an infant.”
“I’m with Mary,” El McWilly said, sidling up beside her.
“Me too,” I said.
Sherry took off for the exit. “We don’t have time to waste taking useless pictures. Let’s go to the park for the slide.”
Jensina stomped after her, and we all followed slowly behind.
“We could go to Mrs. Martin’s house,” I said. “Canyon Creek goes right past her back yard. Plus she’s got a kiddy playground with a slide, trees to climb, and a pet bird.”
“Good idea,” Grace said.
That’s right it was. But once we were all loaded back into the van, Sherry vetoed.
“I’m not allowed to go to people’s houses I don’t know,” she said. “We can find a bird at the pet store and go to the creek at the park. There are trees there too.”
And that’s a sampling of how I spent the next hour and fifteen minutes of my life. Anything I said, Sherry contradicted, which Grace oddly seemed to find hysterical. Jensina was too busy signing for her brother to, you know, be the adult of our group. Wally refused to do any of the fun poses for various OCD reasons. And El McWilly seemed to have a thing for Mary, which shouldn’t have bothered me, yet I found myself completely annoyed by it.
To make matters worse, we ran into Nick at the park. He was wearing a pair of gray coveralls, standing beside a hand truck loaded with cardboard boxes, and was filling an opened vending machine with candy bars.
Since when did the little rich boy need a job? Pastor Muren had bought him a Lexus back when all he had was a driver’s permit.
“Person holding a candy bar!” Sherry yelled, running toward Nick.
Oh, man… Wally and I took our time catching up. It wasn’t like we stood a chance of winning at this point, anyway.
When we got there, Nick’s gaze met mine and he grinned. “Let me get this straight,” he said, chomping on his gum. “You need me to pose in a picture with all of you, holding a candy bar?”
“Yes!” Grace said.
“Please?” Sherry crooned.
I caught El McWilly poking a flower into Mary’s hair without her knowledge and shot him a glare that he unfortunately didn’t see.
Nick shrugged. “Sure.”
The girls cheered.
“But only if Garmond asks me very nicely.”
Grace sucked in a breath, and everyone stared at me.
And here I’d been trying to think of a way to warn this jerk wad about Kimatra’s pregnancy, but maybe I’d just warn her instead. She could do way better than Nick.
I faked a smile and spoke in stilted monotone. “Please, oh please, Nick, will you let us take a picture of you with a candy bar?”
Nick beamed and pulled a Twix out of the top box on his hand truck. “Why, yes I will. But only because Garmond begged.”
Grace and Sherry stood on either side of Nick. He put his arms around them, holding the Twix up to Grace’s mouth. He whispered in her ear. She giggled, then opened her mouth like she might take a bite.
I wanted to destroy him.
The rest of us crowded around and Jensina took our picture. After that we went to the slide and got another. All of us continually submitting to Sherry’s every order. See now? This was why I only dated her for six days.
We were the last group back to the gym. Jensina had been texting our pictures to Pastor Scott, who’d been compiling each group’s shots into slideshows. I sat alone on the back couch, eager to get as far away from Sherry as I could. When Pastor Scott finally rolled our slides, it pained me to have to live through the harrowing adventure again. I pacified myself by finding Grace in each image. The girl couldn’t take a bad picture. Neither could Mary. And why did I care that Mary was next to El McWilly in every single picture?
Why?
****
I didn’t stick around long enough to see if Grace wanted a ride home. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I drove to physical therapy, moping about the whole thing.
It was all single leg work tonight at PT. Single leg bike, single leg squats, single leg lifts to keep me from relying on my good leg. I put my earbuds in, cranked up the volume, and fell back on a strategy I’d developed long ago. I stopped thinking, let my vision blur, and traveled to the basketball court in my mind where my leg was strong and recruiting coaches were watching.
I’d just walked out the door of C Camp to head home when Grace texted me.
pick me up at ariannas tomorro morn 4 wrk?
Seriously? She’d practically ignored me during the scavenger hunt to giggle with my ex and now she wanted a ride? Why did she torture me?
Well, maybe I didn’t see this text. Maybe my cell was dead. I mean, I wasn’t her personal chauffeur. I had my own life to live.
Yet not sixty seconds passed before I texted back: What time?
5:54
How very precise.
That’s how I role
That’s right. She spelled it: r – o – l – e.
Just… wow. I had no comeback for that one.