9
silver
NEVER BEFORE HAD WARA TRUELY understood the expression “I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.”
Noah sat next to her, and she wanted to die, just die. What was he even doing here? Nothing was ever going to be ok between them ever again.
She barely noticed as the last of the passengers filed onto the bus, sitting somewhere behind her and Noah. Good. Her eyes were so bloodshot and swollen from sobbing in the hotel room that she couldn’t even pretend to be civil to anyone in the mood to talk. Wara stared out the window, nervously winding her foot up in the strap of her backpack under the seat, again feeling her eyes sting.
“She’s a lot of fun for one night. Not the good little missionary girl you may imagine…enjoy!”
His voice ran through her head without her permission, and Wara blinked away the tears, truly wishing for that dark hole and covers to pull over her head and hide---forever.
With a soft hiss, the bus door closed and the vehicle rumbled to life. She sat in a daze as the bus began to crawl its way along the narrow, darkened streets, leaving Coroico behind. The hum of the highway enveloped them and Wara slumped forward against the seat back, miserable.
She knew he was there and was going to say something eventually, but she actually jumped when Noah’s voice broke the silence. “I can’t believe Lázaro would just make up all that stuff about you,” he spat. She glanced at him for a millisecond and saw that his jaw was squared, eyes stormy. “I mean, what is his problem? This is the second time we used his tour group to do stuff here in Coroico, and I thought the guy was cool. How in the world did he…”
The look on Wara’s face must have cut him off.
Noah thinks Lázaro made it all up.
Her heart broke then and she felt herself staring at him, pale in the moonlight streaming through the window.
“It wasn’t a lie.” She nearly gagged on the words. “I used to date him.”
“Huh?” Noah blinked. Wara felt her face crumple.
“Oh, Noah! Why did you come with me? You should have stayed…do you want to go back? We’re barely out of town.” Now she was blubbering, but the memory of everything was taking over: the things Lázaro said. Things that had happened that first year.
“No. There’s no way I’m letting you stay on this bus yourself.” Noah still seemed a little stunned by what she had just said. “You used to date Lázaro?”
“For like six weeks. The first year I lived in Cochabamba. We met at a church youth thing.”
This breath, this space in the universe she now occupied next to Noah, who she loved and had to confess these things to, was without question the worst moment in her life. If she could just say what had happened, she might curl into the seat and die in peace, next to Noah. “So one night,” she mumbled, “I had too much to drink.”
Like the other night.
For a little while, Wara had totally forgotten about that lovely scene at Café Paris. New waves of shame washed over her. Her hands twisted the hem of her sweater into a pulp. “And it was like he said. That night was the last time I saw him…because I couldn’t handle seeing him after what happened.”
She was telling all this to the velvet pattern on the back of the seat, terrified to look at Noah and see his disgust. He wasn’t looking at the girl he thought he knew, and now he realized the truth about her.
“Wara,” he started, but she cut him off, laughing breathlessly.
“And that’s not everything! The morning after it happened, we were supposed to fly to Puerto Rico together for his brother’s wedding. He made such a big deal about it, because he said he’d never had a ‘nice’ girlfriend before to take home to meet his family and he knew his mom was going to be all proud of him. Lázaro’s parents even paid for our tickets.”
Wara felt dizzy, and she squeezed her eyes shut. Had she really done all this? She’d spent so long trying not to think about it, pretending she was the kind of person who would never act this way. But it was all true. She licked her lips, determined to finish the story.
“So, the last night I saw Lázaro, he gave me five thousand dollars for the trip, just to keep for him because in the morning he had to stop in the market and get a present for his mom and he didn’t want to get robbed there on the way to the airport. And…he also gave me the diamond wedding ring for his brother’s wife. She had him buy it in Bolivia, because it was cheaper than in Puerto Rico. That was at dinner. But later, I felt so horrible about everything that I never showed up to go to Puerto Rico in the morning. I just stood Lázaro up at the airport. I went to Montana for four months and never talked to him again. When I came back to Cochabamba he was gone. I just ran away from him, because it was easier to just not think about it. Never gave him back the money and the ring. He definitely hates me now.”
There, she’d told him everything. There was a giant split somewhere inside her heart: this adventurous girl who loved languages and Jesus and living here in Bolivia. And then, on the dark side, this liar who had slept with a guy while working as a missionary and never had the guts to face him afterwards.
She felt like she had just turned herself inside out, here on this bus in front of Noah: the rotten inside she always kept hidden from the world was now revealed, stinking up this bus, her entire life. Noah was speaking, but focusing on his voice was a struggle.
“But you repented.” The tone was a statement, not a question. “And God forgave you.”
“Yes.” Wara shrugged weakly. “But it doesn’t feel like it.”
Noah pulled Wara’s chin up with one finger, until her face was tilted towards his. “C’mon, look at me!” he insisted. Wara tried, but abject humiliation wouldn’t let her eyes connect with his.
“In that story Jesus told,” he said, “the Father took his son back after he spent everything in wild living, like we all do.” Noah took both of Wara’s hands in his and leaned in closer. “But when the son came back, the Father didn’t just let him slave away as a servant. He threw a party. He loves you, Wara. You’re back.”
Noah’s Adam’s apple bobbed and he paused, gazing out the window behind Wara, seemingly lost in thought. A moment later his eyes rounded and he jerked his gaze back to her. His grip on her hands tightened. And he was staring at her. Wide-eyed and staring.
“I have something to give you,” he finally said, releasing her hands hastily and digging around in his pocket. Wara’s gaze spiraled to the floor, still dizzy with shame in spite of Noah’s reminder that she was forgiven. Nice words, yeah. God could forgive, but how could he ever feel same about her, seeing what she had done? It was one thing to not punish her for her sins, and quite another to still like her, to want to spend time with her.
The same for Noah. He was witness to her worst moment. Maybe several worst moments. He could still be nice, but he would never look at her without thinking about…that.
Her heart was aching when she felt Noah slide closer, wrapping one long arm around her shoulder. Wara inhaled sharply and met his eyes, completely confused.
Noah was touching her? He was supposed to be repulsed. He sat like that in silence for a full minute, eyes flickering, obviously running through something in his head. Then he slid his arm from her shoulder and scooted back to his own seat, fist tightly closed around something in his left hand.
“I have something to…to ask you,” he announced, and the goofy grin that began to spread across his face caused Wara to blink. “Now might not be a good time. In fact, you just might kill me. But we’ve known each other for a really long time now, so I just…” Noah’s voice faltered and Wara sniffed, completely mystified.
He better not be about to ask me advice about some sin problem he has, now that we’re on the subject and he happens to have a friend here who is quite familiar with sinfulness!
“…I just have this…for you,” Noah was going on. “Feel free to laugh at me, as long as it makes you feel better.”
Wara’s eyes focused blankly on a silver ring engraved with Arabic letters that Noah was holding out towards her, glimmering in the faint light from the front of the bus.
“Wara, I…” Noah shot her a lopsided smile and murmured to himself, “You’re doing this all wrong.” He leaped to his feet, almost banging his head on the bus’s dark ceiling, and managed to get down on one knee in the aisle. Wara’s eyes popped and flashed between the silver ring and Noah.
What? Had he gone crazy?
“Ok, now I’m sweating,” Noah said, rubbing a hand across his face and sucking in a deep breath. “I’m kind of messing this up. This ring is something I got in Egypt when I studied there for a semester when I was twenty. I kept it for a while, to give to the unlucky girl I will attempt to trick into dating and then marrying me. It says,” Noah held the ring out towards Wara again, on one shaking palm, “’My beloved is mine and I am his’. I wanted to ask you if you would consider thinking of me like that…if you would like to be with me…get to know me…think about marrying me someday! If you didn’t get sick of me while we’re dating, you know.”
Noah’s hands were shaking, though he tried to smile, and he actually seemed on the verge of tears. Wara’s jaw went slack as Noah quickly added, “I mean, you don’t have to decide right now, but I would like us to get to know each other. I want to be with you, Wara!”
“What? You can’t. How could you…” Wara tried in vain to think of something to say, jerking around in her seat as scattered applause broke out from the back of the bus.
They were watching! Why was Noah on his knees?
He’s crazy!
He said he wanted to be with me…
Is this a joke?
It’s not a joke—he’s sweating and waiting for me to answer! He looks like he really…still likes me?
In reality, Noah’s eyes said that he still loved her.
“Of course, I love you,” Wara blurted. “But how could you…”
“Ssshhh…” Noah hauled himself out of his scrunched up position in the aisle, laughing but looking stricken. “Are you serious? You actually love me?” Noah sat down next to her again, and Wara gaped at him, dumbstruck. She nodded.
“Ok then,” he said nervously. For a moment no one spoke, and Wara’s heart pounded in her ears like a tom-tom. “We, my dear, have a lot to talk about. But not now. Let’s just rest, ok. Come here…just rest.”
Noah put his arm around her tentatively, watching her to make sure it as ok. As he pulled her close, he slid the silver ring on her finger and squeezed her hand. All Wara could do was lean against him in an amazed stupor, thinking this could not be real.
“Everyone in the world is desperate for grace.” The quote from a book Wara had read this year exploded in her mind like sparkling firecrackers. “This is what’s unique about Christianity: grace. No other religion has a god who gives grace.”
Her heart was thudding against her ribs, but her eyelids drooped. Wara leaned back against the seat, Noah’s arm around her, and her heart slowed until she finally fell asleep.
She came to consciousness as if in a dream. A roaring heat swallowed her and something solid and icy smacked her in the head. Wara’s eyes flew open as wide as they had ever opened in her life, and what she saw was a mountain of writhing silver flames. And then it was gone.
She tried to grab on to something, but it was like a nightmare catapult flung her into space. The flames spiraled overhead again and she opened her mouth to scream, hearing only a sickening crunch of metal and glass shattering around her like crystal rain. The flaming bus lifted off the ground over her head and hurdled away with a whoosh of fire and Wara realized she had fallen out of the window of the bus onto her back.
Just like that, there was nothing but the star-studded sky overhead and the most awful sound Wara had ever heard in her life: metal punching against boulders as the bus rolled down the ravine. Screams echoed for a few seconds, and then another explosion battered the ground and all was deathly quiet.
Wara began to shake. She didn’t know if she was dying, but this had to be what dying felt like. There had been an accident, and…where was Noah?
She had to see if she could get up, because Noah had been right beside her, and he had to be right beside her still.
She tried to roll onto one side and was terrified to feel her head weighed about a hundred pounds. She could barely move. Gasping for breath, Wara forced her eyes to the drop-off where the entire bus had disappeared. To her left was an expanse of flat ground and spiky, clumped grass.
She struggled to turn her head to the right and laid her cheek against the cold gravel. Shadowy trees bent over the ravine, dipping low in the wind towards death below.
There was no one there.
Wara sprawled on the edge of the cliff, eyes unseeing, until everything faded into darkness.