Read Crossing for Free Online

do. Deep down, past the nice-girl act, Naomi believed the world revolved around her. Talk about her, and her eyes would illuminate, her head would become just that little more animated.
    “Anyway, I was really nervous at the audition,” I said.
    “What do you usually do to calm yourself down before singing? I mean, you’re doing a duet at church tonight, right?”
    “Well,” she said, perking up. I had her. “It’s important to keep yourself warm; drink a lot of warm fluids. Look,” she said, pointing at her cup of Lipton tea, “see?” She swiped a few strands of hair that had come loose behind her ear. Two strands sashayed before her prominent cheekbones. “And the worst thing you can do is worry too much about it. Do something fun. Hang out with friends. Get your mind off it for a while. Look.” She pointed at the two of us, her index finger swiveling around like a door opening and closing between us. “See?” And she smiled in that incandescent, winning way of hers.
    I tried not to stare at her as she spoke. Her hair was fuller now, a lush fall of silkiness. And her baby fat had burned off to reveal soft cheekbones and a chin that was elegantly pointed. Dimples once hidden by her baby fat were now punctures of sweetness: when she smiled, I wanted to embed my fingertips in them. And her arms and legs had grown longer and leaner, too; what a marvel to watch her during gym class as she rose up in the air to spike the volleyball, her arms twirling in a menagerie in tandem with one another, working in unison with her springing legs, the rich upper thighs glimmering with the reflection of the fluorescent lamps above.
    Her intelligence had already been noticed at school, that sprightly, coquettish mind. Her steely concentration was impressive, her luminescent eyes absorbing, digesting. She grabbed facts, pulled in concepts, owned them. She was already light-years ahead of teachers whose idea of intelligence was scoring a perfect ten on a spelling test composed of words like bereavement , pedestrian , and monotonous . She was meant for the stars, and they were measuring her with their plastic white Wal-Mart rulers.
    Very soon boys at school would start taking notice. Attention was slow in the coming at a school where boys thought that Charlie’s Angels starred Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and some Asian chick. But a girl the likes of Naomi did not go unnoticed for long.
    So when she asked me if I wanted to go to church with her that night, a place I resented with every fiber of my being, my answer was a foregone conclusion.
     
     
    Redeemer Church of Ashland was where all the successful in Ashland showed off their wares: their cars, their clothes, and most of all their children. Adolescents came decked out in their Limited, Banana Republic, and Abercrombie & Fitch designer clothes. They had their laptops, their digital cameras, and their iPhones. And incredible teeth. Pearly white, perfectly aligned. In the winter they all loved to wear black turtlenecks, and their teeth glimmered brilliantly above the black like a halo.
    They spoke of things I never felt at ease with, GPAs and honor societies and Princeton Reviews and summer school at Phillips Exeter or Andover and spring break mission trips to Paris or Vienna. On rare occasions when I visited—really just to be with Naomi, though I never told her so—I steered clear of them as much as possible. I watched them during youth worship, playing on their pricey guitars and flutes and violins and cellos, some with their own cars sitting in the church parking lot, others with doting parents waiting to take them home to their five-bedroom cul-de-sac McMansions. During Bible study, they crinkled the pages of their leather-bound King James Version Bibles. They spoke of their sufferings and travails, all trivial. God was in the details of their suburban self-esteem.
    They were the sumptuous feast of life. Me, the stingy, cold leftover.
     
     
    It wasn’t long before