her jaw snap at the impact. The turquoise knit cap she wore slid over one eye. She pushed the hat back into position as a low moan came from the back seat.
If she weren’t so stressed, Wara would have grinned. Her best guy friend Noah was waking up from his perch back with the luggage. “Where are we?” she heard him mutter under his breath. “This place looks like the Twilight Zone.” One long arm brushed Wara’s ear as he reached up to clear frost from her window. Not a single light outside, and the murky sky tossed off thick shadows. The skeletal remains of a tree rose up out of the gravel path, beckoning the Jeep forward.
Noah was right: it looked downright freaky out there. Pushing back her nervousness about the whole Bible conference thing, Wara turned towards the back seat. Despite the rough ride, Noah was looking content, emerald green eyes glinting in the moonlight. His sandy, shoulder-length hair was littered with straw and the poor guy really had to hunch over to fit his frame in the tight space on top of the luggage. At first glance, Noah Hearst might give off the aura of surfer dude, but he wasn’t really full of muscle. And he wasn’t fat. Noah was just a big guy.
Plus, there weren’t really a lot of surfers in Ohio, where Noah was from.
“Did you have a nice nap back there with the potatoes?” she asked.
Noah tried to stretch, then grimaced and gave up. “Yeah. I guess.” He glanced around the car, took in Pastor Martir and two skinny Quechua-speaking Bible school students in the front, Wara and Nazaret in the middle seat. “I guess I’ll be the one carrying this stuff up to the conference for our lunch. Seriously, that’s about all I’ll be good for. Nazaret’s dad must be thrilled he got you to translate, though. Word on the street is you speak Quechua like a native.”
True. Despite the cold, Wara felt her armpits prick.
She used to be good at this. The first year Wara lived in Bolivia, she worked teaching Bible lessons to ladies in Quechua and helped at a ton of children’s Bible clubs around the city.
But then everything happened. She left the country for four months to try to get things together, and when she came back she was teaching literacy classes to Quechua women. And volunteering at the home for children with AIDS that the Martir family ran.
She didn’t teach about the Bible anymore, because that would just make her a hypocrite. And Noah, good friend that he was, never asked.
“I can never get over how lucky you are,” Noah was going on. “Sounding so Bolivian, and looking it too. Can you imagine anyone ever mixing me up with a Bolivian?”
“Uh, no.” Wara raised an eyebrow and him and stifled a smile. “I would be seriously worried about anybody who thought you were Bolivian.” In addition to being tall and blond with skin that crisped red in the strong Cochabamba sun, Noah had studied Spanish in Spain. Whenever the guy spoke Spanish, it came out with a lisp that, to Bolivians, sounded really silly.
Noah had good reason to be jealous of Wara. Besides teaching her Quechua from the time she was a baby, Wara’s Quechua grandmother from Peru had passed along some of her color. Wara’s skin was a light tan that bronzed in the sun. Behind trendy maroon glasses, her eyes were honey brown. And her brown hair, now sporting an uneven cut with burgundy highlights, let her fit right in with her Bolivian friends.
“I think I’m getting a cold,” Nazaret announced smally from Wara’s side. Wara turned back to her and took in her friend’s pale, heart-shaped face framed in dyed blond ringlets. She was sheathed in a puffy pink coat, mounds of pink scarves, and a snow white knit hat with pale pink sparkles. The Jeep hit another hard rut just as Nazaret sneezed, a cute, shrill little sound that was all but muffled in tiny pink alpaca mittens.
“I hov I can still help you wif de kids,” she sniffled, bleary hazel eyes turned on Noah, who patted her on the white knit cap with a few encouraging words. They all jerked to attention as the Jeep braked to a halt in a sudden spray of gravel.
When the group piled out of the car, they discovered the air outside the car was even colder than inside. Even though it would look ridiculous, Wara almost wished