Three months later Sheen, Carl, and Jimmy were in Cindy's backyard. "Sheen, Carl, would you two stop playing around help a little!" Libby had decided that with their 'ever-growing'--currently they had a total of twenty people-- church they needed an underground hideout. Of course, Cindy was now three-months pregnant and couldn't help dig; and Libby… had to prepare for the next Bible-study. So, naturally, the guys ended up being the diggers; and with school being out, they spent most of the daylight hours digging.
"Aww… but Jimmy, we've been digging all day for the last three days!" Carl complained.
"Yea, and you can hardly tell! It just looks like a yard with no grass and a teeny-tiny indent."
"It's not my idea… but the girls found a way out of it and I'm not going to be the only one that is digging this thing!"
"Why don't you take a break Jim?"
"Because… I'll never come back to it."
"Sure you will!" Carl exclaimed," the girls' won't let you forget about it!"
"Yo, Neuron!" Nick swerved to a stop on his Skateboard on the sidewalk and walked over to the backyard. "Whoa, what are you doing?"
"Digging so that the girls can then make me make them a underground hideout,"
"Been missing you at the parties. Man, you don't know what you are missing. I mean… if you liked the parties before the disappearances… you should attend them now!"
Jimmy sighed. Not a day went by when he didn't think about his life before the rapture. For starters his mom was never there to hand him a pop tart as he left for school, and Dani was never there to talk to. "Cindy isn't really a party person anymore."
"She still on that religious kick?"
"Yea… I think she's serious."
"You are one strange guy, I would have dumped her when I heard!"
"It's the truth… I just can't believe it."
"I say you are all messed up, and in some serious need of a drink. Anyways, stopped by to see if you heard about the candy bar."
"What about it?"
"It re-opened an hour ago."
Jimmy threw down his shovel eagerly, "you sure?" Nick explained that he had just gone there and needed to go back to his house to get a few extra natas, and Jimmy quickly ran inside and told everyone the news.
"Nick, you need a band-aid." Carl pointed out; even though he was still convincing himself that the red stuff on Nick's leg wasn't blood.
"I don't do band-aids." Nick said in his cool tone that he had always had, even in his days of sucker sucking.
"Yea, Carl!" Sheen said acting as if that was the dumbest thing anyone had ever said, "band-aids are for kids… except the special edition Ultra-lord ones!" Sheen added showing off several Ultra-lord band-aids that were hiding blisters from the little digging he'd done.
"Dude, drop the Ultra-lord, it wasn't even cool back in fifth grade." Nick flipped his hair as he turned to leave, "Tell Neutron I'll see him at the Candy Bar, I'm going to go get Betty."
"Later Nicky!" Sheen said, disoriented from spinning in circles in the foot-deep hole for the last few minutes. Finally he ran into an edge and fell down, even though the world still felt like it was spinning beneath him. "I'll be needing another band-aid… soon as… I can see straight."
"Call me that again and you'll be sorry!" Nick yelled just before hopping onto his skateboard and heading to Betty's.
"Sheen, let's go!" Libby said, pulling on Sheen's arm in order to stand him up not two minutes later. The world was still spinning and so Sheen walked very disoriented to the candy bar.
At the Candy Bar Cindy, Libby, Carl, Sheen, and Jimmy all shared a booth just as they had done since fifth grade; and Alexa, Hanna, Kristy, and Bethany shared the booth next to them. Ms. Estevez and Jack were at a couples table elsewhere. "What can I get for you all today?" Sam said, no different than he had before the disappearances.
"Atomic Cocoa Blast." Jimmy said; Cindy kicked him. "Please."
"And a Purple Flurp please," Cindy added.
"I'll take a rocky-road ice cream and hot fudge," Carl ordered as Sam took down their orders, breaking the mechanical pencil several times,
"I'll have an Ultra-lord fudge sickle and a non-fat latte bar for my snickerpoodle." Sheen said, sliding an arm around Libby.
Libby slid right back out, "not that one either." She said. She couldn't quite remember when Sheen started trying to find a nickname for her. The only thing she knew was that it was about five years ago when apparently Jimmy had got them involved in some space game show. It was something about win or have your planet blown up, and the only reason she knew that much was Cindy constantly reminded her.
"Man! I will find one you like!" Sheen said, more determined than ever.
"Why don't you just call me my name?" Libby asked.
"Because, I would like to find a special name only I call you."
Libby smirked, "keep on trying then."
"Cindy?" Betty asked as she and Nick entered.
"Yea?"
"Hey, girl! Sorry I never got the cheer squad back together after those disappearances, been a little busy making sure Nick didn't go off the deep end. So I hear you got yourself pregnant?"
"As if you can't tell!" Cindy said.
"Honestly… I couldn't." Betty backed up a few feet and examined Cindy. Being only three months along didn't look too bad, and unless you had seen her in the skin-tight cheerleading outfits, not many people would notice the very light bump in her belly.
"Well… It's due in another six or seven months… so chances are I'll just drop out of school before it starts back up for the next year… if it ever starts up that is."
"Yea… I also heard about that."
"About what?" Cindy asked confused.
"That you were on a religious kick."
Cindy smirked, "call it what you want… but its not a religious kick."
Betty sighed, "good! So it's just rumor. I thought you'd gone all goody-goody two-shoes on us."
"Not completely…I just made a decision."
"A decision about…"
"My life… I mean… I messed it up a lot by…well…" Cindy gestured towards her stomach, "by getting myself pregnant. And quite honestly, I was in shock over Dani and Stacey and them not being there. Not to mention… there's the whole disappearances thing… I just had to know what happened. You probably remember Nick's party that night, the only party Libs ever missed… she was watching the Passion with the kids from the youth group. During the movie, the rapture… I mean disappearances happened and immediately after Libby gave her life to God. And I know it sounds crazy to you now, trust me, the first time Libs told me I totally ignored her. But believe me when I say that there is a God, He loves you, and during the next seven years HE will try to get your attention in so many ways."
Betty blinked several times, not really thinking at all about what exactly Cindy had just said. "You…you…you actually believe that?! I thought you were smarter than that! I can understand there being a god… maybe even more than one… but the God you talk about just doesn't' exist. If he did, you wouldn't be pregnant. If you decide to come to your senses and realize that, we'll talk, however…I just can't allow myself to be brainwashed by your people." Betty said, in her cheerleaderish we-are-too-good-for-you voice that she used with all of the wannabes.
"My people?" Cindy repeated. It was obvious that Betty wanted the conversation, and their friendship to end there; but Cindy just couldn't let her slip by. She really felt sorry for her. If there was a top three partiers list last year she and Betty took spots one and two, and to see the change that God had made in her own life… she couldn't' just let Betty walk away.
"Yes…your people. Your Bible-hugging, perfect, goody-two-shoes, 'my-life-is-not-my-own,' I-have-the-answer people! Besides, if I tried to continue our friendship right now, I'd be forced to turn you in. And although you are a little messed-up, I'm sure it's just a natural reaction to crisis that will blow over and I don't' see a reason to lock you up for that. So, due to our friendship, I'm calling it off so that I'm not forced to turn you over to the authorities until you come to your senses."
"I'll keep praying for you."
"Yea, a lotta good that'll do."
"God cares."
"Maybe a god cares, but it's not your God cause He just doesn't exist. He couldn't. You talk about a loving God who wants no one to die, well in case you haven't noticed, people are dieing by the thousands lately. Besides, after losing your mom in the earthquake I would think you yourself would realize He doesn't exist."
Cindy said a quick prayer, but the only way she felt God telling her to do something was to hold her tongue, so she said nothing, except another quick prayer for Betty.
"Your Purple Flurp, your Atomic Cocoa Blast, your Ultra-lord fudge sickle, your rocky road with hot fudge, and your non-fat latte bar." Sam said, passing out the orders.
"Thanks." Cindy and Libby said, while the boys started eating. The girls took another minute silently thanking the Lord for the food, which they knew one day would not be given freely to them.
"You know," Libby, said after a few bites of her non-fat latte bar, "I've been thinking…."
"Oh, just great!" Sheen commented. "Last time she said that all us men ended up spending all day in the backyard digging… and the next day, and the next day, and the…"
"Ok! Sheen we get the point… but really…" Libby tried to continue, but was interrupted by Jimmy.
"Since when did their little 'I've been thinking that we need an underground hideout' affect you? I've been doing all the work! I highly doubt you have even shoveled for a whole three hours since they told us to!"
"I tried, but I had blisters after just one hour." Sheen complained showing his Ultra-lord band-aids.
"Is that an excuse to quit?" Jimmy said, for the first time bringing his hands out of his jacket sleeves to reveal tons of blisters from shoveling.
"Jim!" Cindy gasped, her mother nature showing through.
"It's nothing, just a few blisters are there."
"But it's untreated! I demand you stay inside with me for the remainder of the week!"
There wasn't much Jimmy could say to that. If he'd learned anything the last three months it was that you do not argue with a pregnant woman, or make one angry either. Besides, a break would be nice. Not to mention I haven't shown her my sunburn yet. If she knew about that I'd be stuck inside for the rest of the year. Even as he thought that, he wasn't exactly sure how severe it was, all he knew was it hurt… a lot. Which was no help to his headache he'd had since the day before.
"You know what?" Hanna said turning around to talk to Cindy and Libby. In the last three months Bethany had silently and sneakily started doing less and less and now the whole group of Tribulation Saints, who had yet to think of a catchy name for their group, considered Hanna their leader. "I think that while not all of us should go away, I think we need to join forces with believers across the world,"
