Chapter 10 - Page 141 - Rhasha Drives

    Jim pulled the sides of her eyes back, to make her look Chinese. The problem was, she looked like a Chinese black girl. He chuckled. “Now that I’ve seen a black girl look like that, I’ll never forget it.”

    She laughed, then changed her face. She made circles with her thumbs and middle fingers and held the circles over her eyes, like eyeglasses. Three fingers stuck straight up on each side of her head. Again she stuck out her tongue and tried to touch it to her nose. She held her head up as she looked at the tip of her nose, and her eyes crossed.

    Jim couldn’t help but laugh at her. She grinned, then made a different face.

    “Rhasha,” Jim asked, “do you make faces to yourself in front of your mirror, like American teenage girls do?”

    “Of course I do,” she teased, “don’t you?”

    Jim suddenly felt guilty about his love for Rhasha. He knew she should fall in love with someone more her own age. Then he remembered what God’s messenger had told him in his dream, that Rhasha would be an inspiration to him for the rest of his life. As Jim thought about it, he came to two conclusions. Either he would have a short life or he was going to be the happiest man alive for a long time.

    Jim also remembered the vision of Rhasha in a twin engine plane, crashing into the side of a mountain, and he sobered. He knew that he must never let her ride in a twin engine plane.

    Jim noticed two black boys about Rhasha’s age, playing on a boulder in the water. One boy gripped a thick vine that hung from a tree tilted over the pool. Jim realized the boy intended to swing from the boulder onto another boulder.