By the time she was ready to take the stage, Lucy felt a nervous sensation in her stomach. She turned to Sheba and anxiously asked, "Why am I doing this again?"
"So many reasons, child," Sheba answered vaguely. "So many reasons."
"Could you maybe give me an example of one before I expose myself to a roomful of creepy strange men?" Lucy asked.
"Certainly," Sheba answered as she placed her warming hand upon Lucy's shoulder. "You have a pathetic sense of self-worth, and you've never thought you were beautiful. Dancing out there might help you to understand how truly desirable you are, and to realize that you don't need to worry about your fiancé's partner seducing him away from you just because she's attractive. And if you stop worrying about losing Kevin, then you might just cure your stress-induced headache."
Lucy shook her head in disbelief. "Wow. How do you know all this stuff about me?"
Sheba smiled and winked enigmatically, but said nothing.
Lucy closed her eyes and inhaled. "Alright. Here goes nothing, I guess."
The music started and Lucy heard her name over the loudspeakers. "Gentlemen, give a warm welcome to our newest dancer, Luscious Lucy!"
A spotlight hit her square in the eyes, and she could no longer see where she was stepping. She could feel Sheba's warm, caring hands on her shoulders, guiding her to her spot on the stage, but that was the only thing she could sense anymore. The lights had blinded her and the music had deafened her.
After what felt like an eternity but was actually only a few seconds, her senses began to return. Slowly but surely, she discerned figures amidst the blinding white light. Only they weren't the figures she had been expecting to see. Instead of a bunch of sleazy men seated in a smoky bar at dirty tables drinking watered-down cocktails, she saw the edges of a bright blue sky, white birds flying, and green leaves on trees blowing in the wind. Instead of hearing loud strip club music, she heard children playing, birds chirping, and leaves rustling.
She felt her feet touch ground gently and came to the inexplicable conclusion that she had just been floating. The white haze lifted much more visibly now, and Lucy saw that she now stood in a quiet residential neighborhood upon the lawn of a modest but pleasant white two-story house. Turning around to face Sheba, she asked, "Where am I now? And how did I get here?"
Sheba was mildly surprised. "You should know this place. You've been here before."
Lucy furrowed her brow. "What are you talking about?"
"Take a good look at that house. Does it look familiar?"
Lucy turned around and looked at the house again. At first glance it looked just like any other nondescript house, but the longer she scanned it, the more she felt a strange sense of déjà vu. The side panels, the roof shingles…
Then she realized. She had built portions of this house with her own hands. It was the one she had worked on with Habitat for Humanity so many years ago.
Too stunned for words, she turned around to face Sheba. After several seconds of trying to find her voice, she stammered, "H-how did you know?"
Sheba smiled tenderly. "Lucy, you should really stop worrying about how I know all these things and instead think about what they mean to you. For example, what does it mean to you that a low-income family was able to move into this house and comfortably raise their three children? What does it mean to you that they've been able to live here peacefully and quietly and safely for several years, and that their oldest is about to go away to college on scholarship?"
Lucy tried to think for a minute. "I-I don't know. It makes me feel good, I guess."
Sheba looked disappointed. "Just good? That's it?"
"I don't know," Lucy shrugged. "You haven't given me a lot of time to think about it."
Irritated, Sheba said, "But, Lucy, you shouldn't really have
to think about this, should you? I
mean, aren't you training to be a minister?
And as a minister, shouldn't you be overjoyed that you played a role in
helping a family that might have gotten stuck in a tough neighborhood – one
that could have pushed its children into all kinds of immoral activities – to move
to this much safer place?
"'Overjoyed'? Well, yeah, you're right,
I guess. Sorry, it's just that I'm
really confused about what's going on here…"
Sheba, calm for the most part up to this point, finally lost her temper. "Oh for crying out loud, Lucy. It really is all about you, isn't it? 'Why doesn't Kevin propose to me? Why does he want to spend time with his partner? Why won't Sheba tell me what we're doing looking at this house that I built with my own hands?' You want to know why I won't tell you? I won't tell you because it should be obvious, Lucy!"
Lucy began to sweat nervously. Softly, she asked, "Why are you yelling at me?"
"Me me me! Why are you yelling at me me me! For Christ's sake, stop thinking about yourself for two seconds and observe. Take in your surroundings. Figure out why I brought you here. Can you do that?"
But Lucy's head was spinning too fast, her headache pounding harder than ever. "Look, I'm sorry if I can't figure out your cryptic riddles, and if I can't figure out why we're here or how we got here, and I'm sorry that it bothers me that I don't know, but it does, okay? I wish you would just tell me already."
Sheba grabbed her forcefully by the wrist. "That's it. I tried to do this the nice way, but obviously it's not working. You're making this too difficult. We're out of here."
"Ouch! Where are you taking me now?"
"You'll see. And maybe this time you'll be able to pull your head out of your ass and figure out the point I'm trying to make."
Lucy was about to respond defensively, but she once again became enshrouded in a blinding white light. She again felt the sensation that her feet were being lifted from the ground beneath her, and the only other thing she could feel was Sheba's firm grip around her wrist.
"You don't have to hold my wrist so tightly," Lucy grumbled.
"Oh, but I wouldn't want your little precious self to fall, now would I?" Sheba asked sarcastically.
"Fall?" Lucy looked down but couldn't see anything through the blinding whiteness. Moments later, she felt solid ground under her feet and the white haze again began to lift. "Okay, what is going on here…EEK!"
She and Sheba barely had time to jump out of the way as a garbage truck plowed toward them at high speed. Barely missing them, the driver made a rude gesture and, with a thick ethnic accent, yelled, "Watch where the fuck you're walking!"
"How rude," Lucy muttered, picking herself up off the dirty street.
"Yeah, well, we're not in Glenoak anymore, Toto. Deal," Sheba joked as she again grabbed Lucy's wrist and pulled her down the street.
"Where are we, then?"
"Why don't you take a look at this car and tell me?" Sheba had pulled Lucy up to a parked black Camaro.
"That's Matt's car!" Lucy gasped. "So we must be in…New York City? But how did we get here so fast? We were just in Glenoak a couple minutes ago."
"Yeah, and we were in Fort Lauderdale a few minutes before that. Get over it already."
Lucy scowled. "I am tired of you telling me to get over this. I think I have every right to question you about what's going on here…"
Sheba interrupted her in order to change the subject: "Uh-huh, sure you do. Listen, do you remember when you worked on this car that one time?"
Lucy sighed and begrudgingly answered, "Yeah. It was really hard work, and dirty too."
"I'm sure it was, but try not to focus on that. Instead, try to think of how it made you feel when you were finished and the car started up again properly. Remember when you and your sister test-drove it around the block? Do you recall how you felt then?"
"I don't know. Pretty good, I guess," Lucy answered noncommittally.
"Well, weren't you proud? I mean, you had fixed Matt's mode of transportation, enabling him to drive to and from college whenever he needed to. That was quite an accomplishment, don't you think?"
"Oh, yeah, some great accomplishment," Lucy said sarcastically. "I fixed Matt's laundry-mobile."
"Yeah, you did, and now it's lasted him all the way across the country. I mean, look. Here it is, parked in New York City!"
Lucy rolled her eyes. "Sure, after zillions more oil changes and tune-ups at the Jiffy Lube that I had nothing to do with."
"But…but," Sheba began grasping at straws, "if not for that key tune-up that you performed, the car might have never made it to the next oil change." She nodded, satisfied with herself.
"Oh give it a rest," Lucy moaned. "Look, so I worked on a house once, and so I worked on a car once. That was ancient history. How does that have anything to do with my life now?"
"That's what I'm trying to show you, Luce. Don't you get it? You had special talents, which you enjoyed using. You used them for good, to help people. Those kinds of things used to mean everything to you. And your talents; they made you more of a well-rounded person and they made you feel good about yourself. But now you've let them go to waste, and it seems to mean nothing to you. And that, my friend, is a crying shame."
"No, it's not," Lucy disagreed calmly. "Kevin is my life now. The only thing that would be a crying shame would be for me to lose him."
"No, it wouldn't!" Sheba disagreed vehemently. "Losing yourself to Kevin is a much greater tragedy than you losing him would ever be."
"Shut up. You may know lots of things, but you don't know him and the way I love him."
"You're wrong; I do. I know that you only love him because you're scared no one else will ever love you. And I know that that's the exact wrong reason to hitch yourself to a guy. You need to believe in yourself, Lucy. I mean, look at the way he treats you. He knows the deal, that you'll do anything to keep him, and that's exactly where he wants you. Can't you see it, Lucy? Can't you tell how he gets off on that feeling of power and control?"
Lucy glared at Sheba and hissed, "Shut up! Kevin loves me. He loves me just like I love him."
"Puh-leeze. Wake up and smell the real world, china doll," Sheba said condescendingly.
Trying not to lose her temper, Lucy diverted her eyes downward and noticed a piece of garbage that had stuck to her sleeve, probably during her tumble earlier. As she picked it off, she caught a whiff of a horrible odor from a nearby sewer. Sheba's last patronizing statement replayed in her mind, and her anger finally erupted.
"Okay, that is it. I am tired of whatever game you're playing with my head. First I walk into your little strip club and you act like you couldn't care less about me. Then you find out I'm Mary's sister and you act all nice and sweet and start talking all kinds of bizarre psychic crapola. And then you take me on this completely freakazoid trip and start acting like a total – oh, forgive me for this, Lord – bitch!"
Sheba smiled tauntingly. "What kind of way is that for a future minister to speak to a potential member of her flock?"
"Oh please! You'll never go to church and you know it! You work in a place where women take their clothes off for money, and you also behave in an extremely cruel and non-Christian way."
"See, that's where you're wrong. I've gone to church every Sunday for the past fifteen years, and it was very Christian of me to take you on this trip."
Lucy sniffed in disagreement.
"Don't give me that attitude! Listen, twit. I'm missing work to take you around and show you these things, trying to remind you of the strong person you used to be, but there's not a grateful bone in your body, is there?" Sheba changed her voice to a nasally whine in order to mock Lucy: "'I don't want to be here. What's going on, where are you taking me? You're acting like a bitch.'" She turned the high-pitched whine off and continued, toughly, "You think I'm a bitch? Well I'll tell you who's the bitch, sweetheart. I'm looking at her."
"That is IT! I have HAD IT with you!" Lucy lunged at Sheba with her hands bent like claws.
"Oh no you don't," Sheba countered, ready for battle. As Lucy raced ahead, Sheba grabbed her arm and swung her around, using her momentum to send her hurtling toward Matt's Camaro. Lucy smashed into the rear bumper and grunted in pain.
Undaunted, she turned to face her opponent once again. "Ayeeeee!" she shrieked as she took another lunge at Sheba, aiming lower this time. Sheba tried to stop her by grabbing her hair, but it didn't quite work. Lucy plowed into her full-force, knocking her to the ground. She raised her arm up and then brought it back down, slapping Sheba hard across the cheek.
Sheba then reached up, grabbed a handful of Lucy's hair, and pulled as hard as she could.
"Ow, ow, ow, ow!"
"Lucy, this is ridiculous. Let's call a truce before we hurt each other."
"Fine, fine. Now please, let go of my hair."
Sheba obliged, but then Lucy immediately went back to slapping her.
"Certainly not a woman of your word, are you?" Sheba snapped as she attempted to restrain Lucy's flailing arms. In the process, she accidentally ripped off the sleeve of Lucy's dancing costume. "Shit! I guarantee you that's coming out of my paycheck. I hope you're happy!"
"Overjoyed!" Lucy shouted mockingly, in turn ripping at Sheba's gauzy blouse.
"You fucking dyke! That was Prada. You're dead, slut!"
Sheba rammed a fist directly into Lucy's face, hard. Stunned, the girl wobbled backwards off of Sheba's body and fell to the ground, unconscious.
"Damn," Sheba muttered with a sad glance at Lucy's limp body. "I really wish she would have listened to me."
***
A/N: The homosexual slur at the end of this chapter does not reflect my opinion, but rather the angered state of the character at the time. Thanks to Cypher for beta-ing portions of this chapter.