The Chic Shall Inherit the Earth by Shelley Adina

hairband like mine. It wasn’t until after her gaze had slid off me and to the side, and she’d waved good-bye and moved on that I realized someone was dogging me.
    Vanessa.
    As I walked, she stuck by my elbow, close enough so it looked like we might be walking together, yet far enough away that she didn’t have to admit to it. And the other students, taken by surprise for the moment, kept their nasty comments to themselves just in case she was indeed with me.
    She scuttled into the history classroom and the world was once more as it had always been. But hmm… was she using me for protection? I’d told her she needed a friend. Was she taking me up on it? Could I trust her if she was?
    “Proceed with caution,” Gillian said bluntly at lunch, as I brought the girls up to date on the last couple of days of weirdness. At the table in the window, the sun warmed our backs and we had a prime view of everyone in the dining room—as they did of us.
    No wonder Vanessa liked sitting here.
    “But what if she’s for real?” I sipped my blackberry smoothie.
    “I believe God can change a person,” Gillian said. “But is that what’s happening here?”
    “She came this close to thanking me for helping her the other day,” I protested. “That’s gotta be hard. And it had to mean something.”
    “That she’s not popular anymore and she’s reaching for straws to haul herself out of her own hole?” Gillian gazed at me. “I love it that you helped her, and praise God that you did. But it doesn’t mean she’s going to change. The point is, I care about you. We all do. And we don’t want you to get slapped in the face if you try to be friends.”
    “If you’re lucky,” Brett said from Carly’s other side. “Vanessa’s usual weapon of choice is the knife in the back.”
    “You guys, she was crying,” I protested. “After DeLayne and Emily dissed her on the stairs, I saw that her mascara had run. The girl is going to have a hard enough time of it. Aren’t we Christians? Shouldn’t we do something to help? Go two miles if a person asks us to go one?”
    “Not that Vanessa would ever ask,” Brett put in.
    “That’s just my point,” I said. “We’re supposed to show the love of God to other people. Her, too. Without being asked.”
    “Even when they’ve done something wrong?” Shani wanted to know.
    “You can love the sinner, not the sin,” Gillian said. “I totally think Lissa is right to pray for her. I’ve been praying, myself. We can show the love of Jesus that way without standing close enough to get slapped.”
    Okay, but in the meantime, who was going to walk down the corridor with her or sit with her at lunch? Was I overthinking this? Worrying about the logistics when I should be thinking about it from a more spiritual standpoint?
    “But—”
    At that point Shani stepped in and changed the subject, leaving me still wondering what my responsibility was. If I even had any. I mean, I pretty much look to Gillian as my yardstick to measure up to as far as my faith walk goes. She has her struggles like any of us, but she’s the first one to suggest prayer while we’re problem-solving (not so good for math, but great for life). She’s reading her way through the Bible a chapter at a time, and she’s got me doing that, too… though I have to say, I was really glad to get past the begats and the battles in the Old Testament. So if Gillian says the best thing to do is to pray for someone, you kinda have to pay attention because she’s usually right.
    But the look in Vanessa’s eyes haunted me. The thought of that baby riding around and being taunted and made fun of made me feel sick. I mean, it’s been proven that they can hear things in utero, right? How would you like to develop an inferiority complex along with your fingers and toes before you’re even born?
    In Public Speaking that afternoon, I attempted to take notes during the lecture while the guy who sat at the table in front of us