Point of No Return (4 page)

Maybe he could come down with something contagious.

Jimmy's plotting was interrupted by a tap at his window. Tony sat on a tree branch outside looking like the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Jimmy opened his window.

“Hey, Jimmy,” Tony said as casually as if he were sitting on the living room sofa instead of an unsteady branch.

“Get out of here or I'll get in worse trouble than I already am,” Jimmy said.

Tony smiled as he asked, “Did your mom and dad give it to you good?”

“You know they did,” Jimmy said. “They were really ticked off, and you're not supposed to be here.”

“That's too bad. You're gonna miss a great time tonight.”

Jimmy frowned. “Tonight? What's going on tonight?”

“A couple of us are going out to Allen's Pond. I heard that a bunch of Nathan's friends are gonna get drunk and stuff.” Nathan was Tony's older brother and did things like sneak out and get drunk. He hated Tony and Jimmy for hanging around, but they did it anyway.

Jimmy thought of how fun it'd be to follow Nathan and his pals like a couple of secret agents on a mission. But he knew he couldn't—not tonight of all nights. “I can't anyway,” he said. “I have to go to church.”

“Church!” Tony nearly fell out of the tree.

“Yeah. I got tricked into going.”

“But it's not Sunday! Why're you going to church on a Saturday night?”

Jimmy toyed with the booklet he still held in his hand. “Because that's when the kids get together. I guess it's kinda like a Saturday night Sunday school.”

“Oh boy! I wish I could go with you!” Tony said in the singsong voice he used to tease Jimmy.

“Why don't you?” Jimmy asked seriously. “Then maybe I won't get so bored.”

Tony scowled at Jimmy. “You're kidding.”

“No.”

“Forget it,” Tony said.

“Thanks,
friend
,” Jimmy said and closed the window.

Tony laughed as he slithered down the tree branch and out of Jimmy's sight.

Jimmy sat down on his bed again and looked at the booklet. “If you were to die tonight…” the black letters on the front said. Jimmy had seen the booklet before in a rack in the lobby of his church. He had never paid attention to it. Why should he? At his age, why would he think about death? Kids his age didn't die unless they were in car accidents or got some kind of weird disease. And Jimmy didn't plan on getting in any car accidents or coming down with a weird disease—unless it would get him out of going to that meeting at church. What did death have to do with him? Death happened to other people that Jimmy didn't know. Death happened in the make-believe world of movies. Death happened to old people.

The last thought gave him an uneasy feeling as his grandmother came to mind. She was old and sick. She might even die. What would happen to her after that? She always told Jimmy she wasn't afraid of death. Because of Jesus, she knew she would go to heaven. Jimmy believed her. She
would
go to heaven because she was the best grandmother anybody could ever have.

“If you were to die tonight…” the booklet said.

It wasn't talking about Jimmy's grandmother. It was talking to Jimmy.

He threw the booklet onto his nightstand.
What a stupid idea
, he thought as he fell back onto his bed and looked at the ceiling. Then he remembered when he was smaller and his parents prayed with him at bedtime. They used a little poem, and part of it said: “And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

If I died tonight…

Jimmy didn't like it. And suddenly he didn't like Dave or Jacob or the way they had tricked him into going to church that night.
What kind of maniac would give a kid my age a booklet that talks about dying? They must be warped
, Jimmy concluded.

Once again, he set his mind to coming up with a scheme to get out of going to church.

CHAPTER FIVE

Saturday Night

J
IMMY FAILED TO DEVISE
an escape. Dave and Jacob picked him up right on time.
They want to be absolutely sure I make it
, he figured.

The club meeting started 10 minutes late in what everyone at the church called the “fellowship hall.” It was a large, auditorium-like room just off the main sanctuary. Jimmy knew it from the Sunday school assembly his parents made him attend every week. It had multiple purposes, with a marked floor for sports games and enough blackboards and wall space to work for teaching. With the addition of a few long tables, it also served as a banquet hall for events like Valentine's Day or back-to-school or end-of-school get-togethers, depending on the time of year.

Because he'd never paid much attention on Sunday mornings to know who attended, Jimmy was surprised by some of the faces he recognized. Many of the most popular kids from school were there. Kids of all ages showed up. Jimmy dropped himself onto a folding chair along the wall and figured that those kids were there because somebody
made them
go—just like him.

Jack Davis, who was in the same grade as Jimmy, sat down next to him. “Hey, Jimmy, what're you doing here?” he asked.

“I don't know,” Jimmy said with a shrug. “I got tricked into coming. What are
you
doing here?”

“I come every week.”

“Really? Your parents make you?”

“At first they did, but now I come because I want to. It's a lot of fun,” Jack said. “There's Lucy and Oscar! I'll see you later.” And Jack took off to greet his friends.

Jimmy was surprised. Jack's answer wasn't what he would have expected. As he looked more closely at the expressions on the faces of the kids mingling around, saying hi to one another or talking about how they had spent their Saturdays, he realized they didn't seem dejected like him. They didn't look as if they minded being there at all.

Jacob walked in, saw Jimmy, and waved. Jimmy nodded. Jacob looked as if he might come over but was distracted by his dad whistling through his fingers to get everyone's attention.

As they quieted down and took their seats, Dave took hold of a microphone attached to a portable podium. He welcomed one and all in a voice made thin by the cheap speaker. He asked any visitors to stand up and say their names, and a couple of kids scattered through the crowd complied. Jimmy didn't. Dave realized it and, not to be undone, announced that Jimmy was there. Jimmy blushed and leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees, wishing he'd never agreed to that stupid basketball game. He didn't belong here. He didn't belong with any of these people. He belonged with Tony somewhere at Allen's Pond, spying on Tony's older brother. But it was too late now. All he could do was hope the evening would slip by as quickly as possible.

Dave introduced a guest speaker, Mr. Lucas, one of the church's deacons. Jimmy recognized him from the times he got up to pray in the services.

Mr. Lucas talked for almost 15 minutes, and about halfway through, Jimmy realized he was having a hard time understanding a word the man was saying. A couple of times he mentioned having an abundant life and calling on some sort of power and being born again by being washed in the blood of the Lamb for remission of something or other and inheriting some kind of eternal thingy in a kingdom of a lot of big words in a fullness of time affixed before Adam fell in his garden and….

Jimmy felt as if he were drowning in a sea of weird words. He had a vague idea of what Mr. Lucas was trying to say, and Mr. Lucas was obviously sincere, but Jimmy got so lost that he could only stare at the pattern of marking tape on the floor.

Mr. Lucas finished his talk on a loud and excited note and stepped away. Dave took the podium again and announced that it was time to split up into various grades for games. Jimmy was relieved to find himself in a game of dodgeball with Jacob, Jack, Lucy, Oscar, and a few other kids he knew from school. He was especially proud when he held out the longest and was the last one in the circle to get hit.

Then they played a beanbag toss, ran a relay race, and played a game Jimmy had never seen before where they lay down on their backs and kicked an enormous ball from one side of the room to another. The idea was to score by hitting the other team's wall. Jimmy alternately screamed and laughed through all the games. Time slipped away. He was shocked when they stopped for snacks and drinks and he realized it was after nine o'clock.

All the kids gathered again for a few final words from Dave. Jimmy braced himself for another sermon with a lot of words and expressions he didn't understand.

Dave spoke simply, however. “I can't let any of you out of here tonight without making a few things absolutely clear,” he said. “We try to have a lot of fun when we meet like this, but we're not here just for fun. We're here to get to know each other. We're here to have fellowship with other Christians. And we're here to see that there are ways to enjoy ourselves without doing what a lot of our friends think is fun—the kinds of things that get us in trouble, that lead nowhere, and don't give you anything except a few seconds of pleasure.”

Dave held up a booklet just like the one he gave Jimmy earlier that day. “I've handed out this booklet to a lot of you over the last few days. I'll bet most of you haven't read it. You looked at the front and said, ‘Hey, I'm just a kid. What do I care about dying?'”

Jimmy squirmed in his chair and wondered how Dave knew that.

“I understand how you feel,” Dave continued. “You don't care about the past or the future. All you care about is
right now
—what games you play, what's on television, what kind of music is really hot, what all the other kids are doing. Today is all there is for you. Living for the great big
right now.
You're too young to feel you have a past. You're too young to feel there's really a future. And if there
is
a future out there for you, dying isn't part of it. So why did I give you these booklets?”

Good question
, Jimmy thought.

Dave laughed and said, “I gave you these booklets because we have two boxes of them in the church office and we didn't know what else to do with them.”

Some of the kids snickered.

Dave's laugh tapered off. “Actually,” he said, “I gave them to you because of what they say inside. Did any of you read what was on the inside?”

Jimmy glanced around, but no one raised a hand.

Dave went on. “See, these booklets are supposed to make you
think
, if only for a minute. Any of us could die at any time. Any of us could die
right now.
The same
right now
that you live in day after day. I'm not trying to scare you. I'm just saying there's something
more
to this world than we realize. There's a lot more to it than games, television, music, what the other kids are doing, finishing your homework, or eating all the right vegetables. In fact, there's a whole
other
world. An eternal one. One that goes on forever. And it's not some kind of comic-book place. It's
God's
place. It's
real.
And it's even more real than
this
world.”

Dave knocked on the podium as if to say that the “this world” he was talking about was the one that could be rapped with your knuckles. It was the world Jimmy could see with his two eyes and touch with his two hands.

It made Jimmy sit up. He stared at Dave and wished he
could
see the other world or touch it somehow. Maybe that would make a difference. Maybe then Jimmy could….

Could what?
he wondered.
Could what?

“But y'know,” Dave said with a smile, “when I was your age, I figured there was no point in thinking about any other worlds, because I have to live in this one. None of us can be Alice slipping through the looking glass or Peter stepping through the closet into Narnia or a captain on the Enterprise warping to another galaxy. We're stuck
here
for now. And that's why God had to do something radical. God had to make a move. Do you know what He did?”

Jimmy waited for the answer.

“God stepped into
our
world. He put on skin and hair and muscles and clothes and became just like
us.
He took on a name—Jesus. He did it so we could have some of that other world in
our
world. He did it so we could go to that other world and be with Him when the time is right. But it wasn't easy for Him. It cost Him
a lot
to do it. I know some of you guys know what I'm talking about.”

Jimmy knew, but he wanted to hear Dave say it anyway.

Dave said, “That other world is a perfect place, just as God is perfect. But we're not. Not matter what we do, we can't be good enough to go there. So God had to do something even
more
radical than just walk around in our world. He had to come up with a way to get us imperfect people into His perfect world. And the only way to do that was to die for you and me and all our imperfections—our
sins
—and He did it in the most painful way possible: on a cross. He did it because we couldn't do it for ourselves. I can't do enough or be good enough. You can't, either. No matter what you try to do to make yourself better, it won't be good enough. Do you understand? He
had to do it
—and He did it
for you.
”

Those words hung in the air, and for a moment Jimmy felt as though it were just him and Dave in the room.
He had to do it, and He did it for me
, Jimmy thought.

“But dying wasn't enough,” Dave continued. “Anybody can die and be put in a grave to rot. Nothing special about that. But Jesus died and then came out of the grave. Death couldn't hold Him down. He rose up so that we could rise up, too. And when we rise up, we rise to that other place, the place where God lives. And we'll live with Him. But until then….”