Clouds Read Online Free PDF

against the counter and swallowed hard. It wasn’t the lemonade that made her face begin to pucker. It was the tears she was trying so hard to swallow.
    “Too strong?” Meredith guessed. “Try adding some water.”
    Shelly added the water even though she knew the lemonade was fine.
    “Why did you say nothing was happening? Aren’t you supposed to be working?” Meredith asked. “Or don’t you want to talk about it?”
    “I don’t know,” Shelly answered flatly.
    Meredith paused. She tucked her blond hair behind her ears and made another attempt at conversation. “You don’t know what’s going on, or you don’t know if you want to talk about it?”
    “Both.”
    “Then do you want to help me pack?” Meredith hopped down and pointed to the open boxes and stacks of packing paper that filled the living room. “I could use some help.”
    Shelly followed her sister into the jungle of disorganization and silently went about taking the pictures off the walls and wrapping them. They worked without a word until the timer went off on the microwave. Then, as if that were the starting bell for Shelly to spill her guts, she took off running with her words.
    “I’m totally lost, Meredith. I’ve never felt like this before. Idon’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t think I want to be a flight attendant anymore. They put me on reserve. Can you believe that? I have no schedule. I’m at the mercy of sick people and people who want to go on vacation. It’s crazy! I refuse to sit around Mom and Dad’s all day. I’m so depressed. What am I going to do?”
    Meredith sat down on the arm of the couch. She looked shocked, and Shelly could imagine why. Meredith had never seen Shelly like this before. She had never seen herself like this.
    “I’d start crying now,” Shelly said, leaning against the wall that had just been emptied of all its pictures, “except my tears are so deep inside me they won’t come up.”
    “You’ve been through a lot of changes,” Meredith offered. “Maybe you’re in some kind of shock. I didn’t know about the airline schedule. Do Mom and Dad know?”
    “Not yet.”
    “Here,” Meredith moved some boxes off her couch. “Sit down. We can figure this out. It’s just a big change in your life, that’s all. You can handle this. You’ll get a regular schedule soon.”
    Shelly numbly sat on the couch and shook her head. “I think the airline is going under.” She had always been the confident big sister with Meredith. Never had she fallen apart like this and let her sister be the ministering angel of mercy.
    “Are they going to be bought out?”
    “I don’t know. It’s just a gut feeling I have. I really don’t know what will happen, and I sure don’t know what I should do.”
    “What’s God telling you in your heart?” Meredith asked softly.
    Shelly’s mind went blank. “I don’t know.”
    Shelly had always felt close to God the way she felt close to her dad. He was there, and she could access him if she neededhim, but if she could figure things out herself, why bother either her father or God? She had prayed about this, of course, asking God to fix everything, and it had felt strange. She had never been at such a loss before.
    “This is probably a dumb question,” Meredith said, “but did you check with other airlines or see about being transferred?”
    Shelly explained all her efforts.
    Meredith crossed and uncrossed her bare legs. “I can see how you would feel stuck.”
    “Stuck,” Shelly repeated. “That’s what I am. Stuck. I’ve never been stuck before.”
    “Except in the mud,” Meredith said, releasing her tinkling laughter over the memory. “Remember when you and I went out to the tree house that one Sunday after church? We got our good shoes stuck in the mud, and then Jonathan came and pulled them out with that big stick. We had to walk home in our stocking feet. It started to rain, and our best dresses were soaked. Do you remember?”
    Shelly