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hurts so much -- and I can’t tell anyone. I can’t!” Her back shuddered with each gasp between sentences.
    Christy calmed her down before attempting to speak. "I know you feel lonely, but you can always talk to me. And, even if you can't talk to me, you can still talk to God."
    Nikki sniffled. "God?"
    Christy nodded. "Nikki, I... well, I haven't been the best friend I could be. I've been a horrible Christian lately, but I'm trying to change that, and... I think it's better if I tell this to you when it seems like it's too late than if I think it won't do any good and never tell you. You see, Jesus, who is God's one and only Son, died on a cross for our sins. He came down to earth as a human. When He was thirty-three, He let soldiers arrest Him and take Him to court.
    “Even though He was God's Son, Jesus let those soldiers kill Him. That was because He loved us. But three days later, a bunch of women went to His grave, and He was gone! See, because He’s God's Son, He came back to life. And because He came back to life, we can go to heaven someday when we die. Our sins are washed by the blood Jesus lost on the cross. Am I making sense?"
    Nikki nodded and sniffed. She'd gone to a few Christmas services with Christy in years past, so she'd heard something similar to this. Bits and pieces had slipped through the deaf ear she'd turned to her parents' religious rants, too.
    "Well, when we die, we go to one of two places -- heaven or hell. Hell is where the people who never believed in Jesus or His Father go, because they can’t go to Heaven with sin. Heaven is where Christians go -- true Christians, who believe in Jesus and have asked Him to save them from their sins. Not Christians who say they're Christians just because they go to a certain church."
    Nikki sat taking all this in for a minute. The Christmas messages she'd heard were starting to come back. She had never paid very much attention, but fragments of the pastor's words were coming to mind. She asked, "What do I have to do to believe in Jesus?"
    Christy smiled. "That's simple. You just pray to Him and tell Him you believe He died for you and you want Him to come into your heart and live in you. But first, you have to be sure that you really believe what you're saying -- just saying the words doesn't do anything. And you have to pray because you believe in Him, not because you're afraid of going to hell. Are you sure you believe in Jesus and God?"
    "Well... how do I know for sure if this is real? I mean, I guess I kinda wonder... you just told me all this, and I’ve heard it at church and stuff, but… what makes it more than just a story? You know?" She laughed a little and sniffled. “Because if I could make up a happy story about erasing all my mistakes, I don’t think it’d be too hard to convince myself it was that simple.” She paused. “Especially right now.”
    "God tells us about Jesus in the Bible. He also tells us about people who lived before Jesus and some people who lived after Jesus. It tells us about how God created the world and how we should live.”
    Hope began to surface and blossom in Nikki’s heart, but she fought it. Could she really be freed from the shame of that night with Matt so easily? It sounded too good to be true. She asked the first question that came to mind. “How do I know that this is real? Anybody can write stuff down in a book.”
    Christy sighed. “I really don’t know as much about the Bible as I should. And part of that comes with faith  -- in the end, after all the evidence from Christians and all the doubts from others, you just have to decide if you believe God or not. But I won’t try to tell you all about all the evidence we can find of God in nature or history, not right now. You should know, though, that since the story of Jesus and salvation -- which is what it's called when you become a true Christian -- is so important, He put in four different accounts of it. He told men what to write, and they wrote