Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,30

should go over, make an appearance. Who knew, maybe they’d have an opening in one of the rooms. At least then she could get away from this dumpster fire she now called life.

When she put the phone down, she thought about the day. It was Sunday, and had she been home, she would have gone to church. She thought about Greg’s offer to go to the student center, but she dipped her spoon in her cereal as her heart fell at the thought. They didn’t want her around. That much was obvious.

No. She would be better off finding somewhere else to be rather than anywhere she was supposed to be. Invisible had never been her strong suit in life, but it seemed that was about to change in a very big way.

“Greg?”

The knock on his door only brought Greg halfway back to consciousness.

“Hey,” Wes called softly. “You up?”

Well, that really depended on whose definition of ‘up’ you were using.

“Uh.” Rolling over, Greg flopped his arm to the side to retrieve his phone. There was no telling what time it was, or what month it was, or what year it was. 4:10 “Uh, yeah,” he said, but there was no strength to the syllable.

“You going to make the service?” Wes asked. “We’re about to head out.”

He’d already gone back to sleep.

“Greg?”

“Yeah,” he said, jerking awake. “I’m up. I’m coming. I’ll be there.”

“Okay, but you’d better get a move on, or you’re going to be late.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Greg forced himself to a sitting position. “You guys go on. I’ll be there.”

“K. We’ll see you there.”

Both arms dropped as his shoulders slumped. “Yeah. I’ll be there.”

The text from Greg shouldn’t have been as surprising as it was. The little ding sounded, and before she thought about who it might be, Taylor flipped the phone over as she sat in the little lounge area down the hall from her room where she had been watching what passed for entertainment on the community television most of the afternoon.

You coming? I’m headed out. I can pick you up if you need, or I’ll see you there.

Taylor exhaled. She should have known.

You need me to come get you? I can, he wrote, and she sighed again.

No. I can drive.

You sure?

Yeah. She was sure she could drive. It was the going part that was confounding her. The three others who were in the room didn’t even look up as she stood and took one look at herself. They were going to throw her out showing up looking like this. But there wasn’t time to change, and maybe she would get lucky and they would throw her out. That would solve so many issues. “God, please,” she prayed as she headed out, “just don’t let this make things worse.”

Greg made it to the choir area of the chapel with ten minutes to spare by the Grace of God and owing to the fact that he had foregone a shower.

“Hey, look who showed up,” Ryan said, putting out his fist.

“Yikes,” Wes said. “Should I have let you sleep?”

“Nah,” Greg said as he hit Ryan’s fist and went over to the keyboard to turn it on. “It’s cool.”

“Okay,” Wes said, not looking too sure of that. He angled his gaze out to Nelson who was talking to Paige, Clara, and Lauren, and he waved to get Nelson’s attention.

A second and Nelson held up his hand. He laughed at something before straightening and coming down the aisle. His guitar was already out and surely tuned and ready to go. It was the rest of them that were straggling to get ready. Head down, Greg paged through the four songs Nelson had put on the stand for him. This was getting less fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants all the time.

“I figured we’d just do ones we know,” Nelson said as he came into the equipment and strapped on his guitar. “We can work on new stuff Thursday if we want to.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Ryan said.

Thursday. It sounded like the other side of eternity from where Greg stood.

In the back Pastor Dave walked in as Merel came down the side aisle as she always did just before the service started. Nelson half-turned to the band, “And a-one, and a-two…”

Going in the lobby doors, Taylor heard the music on the other side of the wall. The service was already started. This was a bad idea. Just before she turned to escape however, two students came in behind her, obviously headed for the chapel. She was in their pathway,