From the Publisher

Things are finally getting better for Laura Duffy. Kind of.

Despite nursing a broken jaw, Laura is finding a good balance between God, friends, school, and family. But something is happening at Panama Beach High School that is going to rattle every part of Laura’s life.

A group of new students has arrived whose olive skin and awkward accents draw unwelcome attention from the school’s angriest group of burnouts. No one is sure where the new kids came from, why they don’t seek friends, or why a bully named Wolf is making their lives so difficult.

As tensions rise, Laura finds herself wanting to help, but is frustrated by God’s seeming silence. And just when it looks like the tides have turned, things get much, much worse.

Join Laura as she struggles to figure out how to be friends with outsiders, extend grace to enemies, and make sense of events that can do far more damage than a broken jaw.

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Table of Contents

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Fault Lines

Zondervan

Chapter One

At least, it fit Celeste's definition of a whisper, which meant everybody sitting within six feet of us heard it. That included our group-me (Laura Duffy), my girlfriends Stevie and Joy Beth, and Trent-plus four other kids, who had either dozed off or were so stupefied by boredom they couldn't even nod in agreement. One guy actually had drool oozing from the corner of his mouth.

"He's trying," Stevie whispered in my other ear. She nodded at the pastor perched on a stool in front of us-Pastor Ennis-who at the moment was clapping his hands into a clasp for about the five hundredth time. I was fairly certain his palms were going to slide off of each other the next time he did it. They had to be clammy by now. There were enough sweat beads sparkling on his high forehead to drown somebody. He was probably hoping at this point that it would be him.

"So, come on, folks," he said. "I know there are some hot issues ya'll want to discuss."

"How about how to get ourselves out of here?" Celeste hissed to me.

"Somebody over here?" Pastor Ennis said. He looked so hopefully in our direction I knew he hadn't heard her exact words. But SOMEBODY had said SOMETHING, and he was grasping at it like the drowning man he was sure to be if he didn't wipe that forehead pretty soon.

Stevie raised her hand. He immediately grinned at her, which most people did the minute they laid eyes on her. If she hadn't been one of my best friends, I probably would have wanted to smack her for being so perfect. She had a smile that lit up her whole latte-colored, Latina-flavored face, including eyes that made you think of pure chocolate. You'd swear her smile even made her hair glow, although the highlights there came from a bottle and shone in big, loose, carefree curls. She raked a hand through them now

"Yes, ma'am!" Pastor said.

"I'm sure we all have issues," she said. She spread her smile over the eight teenagers in the room, actually waking up the kid with the drool problem. "But we don't know each other well enough to just start baring our souls."

She gave him another smile that clearly indicated it wasn't HIS fault that no one had spoken a word in the forty-five excruciating minutes since he'd called the "meeting" to order.

Pastor Ennis nodded seriously at her, his very-high forehead wrinkling into furrows all the way up to the cropped-short honey brown hair that predicted he'd be bald before he was forty. Thank heaven he didn't have a comb-over, or Celeste would have been beside herself. As it was, she was squirming like a little kid who had to go to the bathroom.

The pastor was still nodding. Drool Boy had gone back to sleep.

"So what you're saying is that we need to just-fellowship-get to know each other?"

"Right!" Stevie said. She made it sound like he'd just had a major break-through.

"So-then-" He glanced at his watch. "What do you say we break for refreshments and ya'll can mingle and get to know each other?"

Stevie opened her mouth to say something, but he had already disappeared through the doorway that led down the hall to the church kitchen.

Drool Boy opened his eyes and blinked. "Is it over?" he said.

"Did it ever start?" Celeste said.

Joy Beth grunted, and then exchanged glances with Trent. I knew what the grunt meant-it was Joy-Beth-ese for "You got that right." But the look with Trent, that I hadn't figured out yet. They'd only been an item for about a month, and I knew they were totally into each other because she grunted at him more than she ever did at anybody else, and he actually spoke whole paragraphs to her which were NOT about nuclear physics or differential calculus.

Pastor Ennis reappeared carrying a cooler, and his cute pixie-haired wife followed with seven Domino's Pizza boxes. Nine people couldn't have eaten that much sausage and pepperoni if we'd been starved on a desert island. Make that eight people. Drool Boy had wandered out the door.

"Ya'll eat up and mingle and break the ice," Reverend Ennis said. "We're going to give you some space."

"I hope he takes a Valium," Celeste said, her husky voice, thicker than usual with Brooklynese. "Dude's a nervous wreck."

"I don't think he's ever tried to start a youth group before," Stevie said.

Joy Beth grunted. "What was your first clue?"

"You better eat some of that pizza," I said.

I definitely couldn't eat any. I still had my jaw wired shut from having it broken a month before. Nothing went into my mouth unless it entered through a plastic syringe that looked like it was designed for Big Bird's vaccinations. I could talk, teeth clenched together, but between the wires and the orthodontia I was already equipped with, I was slowed down in the verbal department. Celeste had gotten pretty accustomed to talking FOR me.

I put one hand on Celeste's back and one on Stevie's, and we went to the table where the three remaining kids pretty much had the extra-large "All the Meats" devoured. I was pretty sure they had stuffed their mouths so they wouldn't have to talk. Laura the Responsible One kicked in. After all, I was the only one who knew their names because I was the one who went to church there at Cove Community. Celeste went with me sometimes. I had dragged Stevie and Joy Beth and Trent to this meeting with a promise of coffee at Books-A-Million-my treat-when it was over. If it ever WAS over.

I tapped each of my friends with a finger.

"Celeste Mancini, Joy Beth Barnes, Trent Newell, Stevie Martinez-meet Alex, Genevieve, and Vanessa." I shrugged, rather ungracefully, and added, "Sorry I don't know your last names."

"It's not like there's going to be a test," Stevie said. She offered her hand to shake Vanessa's and gave her the smile.

Alex stuck his paw out and lifted his eyelids above half mast for the first time the whole evening. "How long do we have to stay without it looking like we're ditching him?" he said to her.

"How long can you stand it?" Celeste said.

Alex then focused in on Celeste-blonde hair draping down from her white visor, freckles dancing across a sunburned nose that refused to be anything but absolutely real-and then looked back at Stevie as if he couldn't decide which one to hit on first. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Feeling like the over-lookable sidekick was the downside of having drop-dead gorgeous friends-even when I wasn't talking like I had lockjaw. I was pretty white-bread, built like a Missouri bean pole, with hair that wasn't completely red or completely brown, and generic brown eyes. My only really distinguishing feature was the ruddy color of my Midwestern corn-fed cheeks, which betrayed my every emotion with a simple change of hue.

"I've already stood it longer than I can," Alex was saying.

"We wouldn't let him split," Genevieve said. "Our dad's the Mac Daddy at this church. If he found out, we'd have to mow the church lawn or something."

"I'd rather do that," Joy Beth said.

She would. Anything requiring physical activity appealed to Joy Beth. Swimming was her big thing, though only recently had the docs let her start practicing with the team again because her diabetes was finally under control. She'd be on the John Deere right now if it meant getting out of standing around trying to think of something to say. She looked up at big ol' bad-hair-day Trent through her panels of lanky, not-quite-blonde hair, and he blinked down at her, as usual, as if his contacts were malfunctioning.

"We're tryin' to think of some heinous punishment for Duffy," Celeste said, nudging me. "She dragged ALL of us here."

Stevie glanced over her shoulder at the Ennises, who were sitting in a far corner of the room trying not to look like they were watching us, and leaned in. "At least he tried."

"Now he can check it off his to-do list," Alex said. "I personally don't need a youth group. I've got my own friends-I come to church-I obey the Ten Commandments-I'm good to go."

Vanessa looked up at him with a cocked eyebrow. "ALL of them?"

"Let me guess which ones you're missing," Celeste said.

Laura the Responsible One said, "Could we not go there? We need to come up with some 'hot topics' for Pastor."

"That's what I'm doing." Celeste wiggled her sandy eyebrows at Alex. "Whatever commandments he's not obeying are probably some pretty hot topics."

"There's a really good reason why I don't 'obey' them," Alex said. He gave a square grin. "Because I don't WANT to. Look, if you guys decide to plan a 'youth group' beach party, I'm there. Otherwise, forget it."

"I think we've stayed long enough," Vanessa said. "I have SO much homework to do."

"You think he'd mind if we took some of this with us?" Alex said.

Trent picked up two pizza boxes and handed them to him.

"Could they have BEEN any more rude?" Stevie said as Alex and his two sisters headed for the door, a double cheese with pepperoni in their possession, without a word to the Ennisses.

"I can't look," I said. I poked Celeste. "Does Pastor look totally humiliated?"

"He looks like-'THAT didn't go well'," Stevie said.

"It didn't," Joy Beth said.

"So here we are-'getting to know each other'," I said. "Anybody ready to bare your soul?"

"That's all we do!" Stevie said. "My emotions are naked when I'm with y'all."

"I'm so glad you didn't say that in front of Mr. 'Don't-You-Think-I'm-Sexy'," Celeste said, nodding in Alex's wake. "He would have jumped you right here."

"That's an image I can live without," Stevie said.

"So what are we going to do?" I said. "I don't want to hurt Pastor Ennis's feelings. He did try. And youth groups CAN be a blast. I used to go to one when I first moved here...."

"Here they come," Joy Beth muttered. She turned her face to Trent's chest. He selected his fifth piece of pizza and gave it his full attention.

Stevie directed the smile at the Ennises, while Celeste put her lips to my ear. "Are you thinkin' about that group you used to go to with Richard?" she whispered.

"Yeah," I said.

"Are you thinkin' about Richard?"

"No!"

"Liar. Your first date with him was at a youth group beach party."

"Okay, yeah. So?"

I actually hadn't allowed myself to think about Richard in months. Even now, as memory pulled into view of his shiny hair tousled over his forehead as he pulled me up the sand dunes at St. Andrew's Bay State Park, smiling a shiny smile full of more braces than I had, looking down at me with his head cocked in a way that made me feel like nothing else could, I didn't spend more than a few seconds looking at it. After all, there was Owen now ...

Besides, thinking about Richard did strange things to the color of my cheeks. They either turned scarlet with embarrassment, or purple with hidden anger. It was safer just not to go there.

Pastor Ennis stepped in beside me and shoved his hands into his pockets. I noticed that at some point he had wiped the perspiration off his face. Probably that cute little wife had taken care of that.

He looked down at me from six-foot-two. "How did ya'll think it went?"

Nobody spoke. Even Stevie was waiting for me to be the one to verbalize the poor guy's humiliation.

Hello, God? I thought. A little help here?

There was no whisper, no gentle tug, which meant I probably didn't need any help. What was there to say except the truth? Besides, Celeste looked like she was about to blurt something out, so I said quickly, "We really appreciate you trying to get a group together. It's hard, though, to just-start talking."

Pastor Ennis nodded, his face solemn. "Maybe I should have started with the pizza."

"Or an ice-breaker," Stevie said.

"Something for people to do so they don't even know you're trying to get them to make nice," Celeste said.

I gave her sleeve a tug. She gave me the big blue-eyed "What? What'd I say?" look. She was absolutely my best friend in the world, but she had the tact of a large semi tractor-trailer rig. Must be because she was from New York.

"Thanks for being honest," Pastor Ennis said. "You want to take some of this pizza home? I was expecting a bigger turn-out."

I felt a pang for him. He was looking pretty vulnerable.

Trent took him up on the pizza offer, and we all thanked him and Mrs. Ennis, who was probably going to have to talk her husband out of a major funk when they got home. We couldn't pile into Stevie's Ford Expedition fast enough.

Actually, it wasn't Stevie's-it was her dad's. He let her use it, though, every time the five of us went someplace together. Celeste and I each drove an old Mercedes fixed up by her father, neither of which was big enough for Trent alone, much less the rest of us. Trent wasn't a jock like Joy Beth, but he was big and hulky and had legs the size of thirty-year-old tree trunks. He himself didn't have a driver's license. Joy Beth did, but their family had Daddy's pick-up truck and Mama's nine-passenger van for the toting of the seven Barnes offspring. Neither of those vehicles was ever available for Joy Beth's recreation.

"You SO owe us, Duffy," Celeste said as Stevie pulled the Expedition into the Books-A-Million parking lot. "I'm ordering a double mocha."

"Would you quit your whinin'?" I said. "You would think I put you in front of a firing squad."

Books-A-Million wasn't crowded, not the way it was on Friday and Saturday nights when half the high school kids in Panama Beach crammed in there to hang out. There was only one other group of students in the coffee shop area that night, sitting on the couch and soft chairs by the window. As we dropped our stuff off at our usual table and went for the counter, Stevie put her lips close to my ear.

"It's that new girl in second period," she murmured. "Shouldn't we say hi to her?"

"Just don't expect her to say hi back," Celeste said, as under-her-breath as she could manage. "She's in my P.E. class. I tried to talk to her-y'know-I'm from New York, I heard she's from New York, that kinda thing." Her face went blank. "It was like talkin' to a tree. Double mocha," she said to the girl behind the counter. "With extra whipped cream."

"Are they all from New York?" Stevie said. She tapped CAPPUCINO on the menu with her fingernail and smiled at the counter girl. "They all came at the same time, and they all look kind of alike-they have to be from the same family."

Trent looked at Joy Beth. "Wanna share an Italian soda?"

"Too cute!" Celeste said to Stevie and me behind her hand.

I didn't order anything. I didn't usually whip the Big Bird syringe out in public places, except at school where everybody had pretty much seen it-although they still stared. Only a few more weeks and the doctor would clip the wires.

Continues...

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Excerpted from Fault Lines by Nancy Rue Copyright © 2004 by Youth Specialties . Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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