Being Real

In the middle of the night at the Kids Radio studio, Bridget Perkins arrives for the 3 to 4 a.m. shift of a forty-eight-hour pledge drive for the Homeward Bound Foster Care Ministry and is surprised to find Jules Kendall working the same hour. Bridget, who signed up for the overnight slot to earn easy community service credit for school, had hoped to work alone, and the two girls, once friends and now barely on speaking terms, settle in awkwardly. Between songs they go live on the air, reading announcements and hilariously cheesy sponsor commercials for products like Funga Gel Mold and Mildew Remover, Pete's Gas and Chow, and Tough and Stretchy Garbage Bags, joking that only insomniacs, truck drivers, and raccoons could possibly be listening.

Off the air, the small talk slowly turns serious. Jules catches Bridget up on everything that has happened: after being suspended from school she moved in with Valerie to escape her sister Connie's punishment, then moved back home, and about a week ago she nearly died in a car accident with her boyfriend Gunner, walking away with a broken arm while he spent days in the hospital. Facing how empty her life had become, Jules became a Christian. Since then she has quit the band, broken up with Gunner, and stopped hanging out with Valerie, and she and Connie are getting along better than ever. Bridget is skeptical and needles her mercilessly, cracking, "It's like the flu around here. Everybody's getting saved," and peppering her with mocking questions about what movies and outfits a new Christian could possibly allow.

Old wounds surface too. Bridget is still hurt that Jules took her place as the band's singer, and when the sniping escalates, Jules cruelly declares that Bridget was expendable and nobody needed her. But after an angry commercial read, Jules apologizes sincerely, admitting Bridget is a good singer who is anything but expendable. Oddly, Bridget says she is glad Jules blew up, because it proves Jules will be the comfortable kind of Christian whose life never really changes, someone Bridget could tolerate. Jules quietly answers that that is not the kind of Christian she wants to be.

As the hour rolls on, the ice melts anyway. The girls rewrite the terrible commercials together, howl over one of Gunner's awful song lyrics, and dream up an all-girl band called Hyper Linguini. Bridget opens up about her dad being back for good, and admits that after years of dreaming about a permanent home, she now feels like a foreigner everywhere and wants to move away for a fresh start. Jules tells her, "Sometimes it just takes one friend." Soon they are declaring themselves friends again, planning a celebration at Burger World, and Jules even ad-libs on the air that their friendship is like a tough and stretchy garbage bag: "Nothing will ever, ever tear it apart."

Then everything unravels. Checking the schedule for the next shift, Bridget notices that none of the other early-morning hours have two people assigned. She realizes Jules asked Mr. Whittaker to be added to her shift, and concludes that she is Jules's new conversion project, the last holdout in a town full of Christians. She insists a real friendship is impossible, because Jules will always see her as a potential convert instead of accepting her as she is.

Jules stops pretending and gets honest. She describes standing on a cliff a week earlier, looking down at the demolished car she could have died in, and giving her life to Jesus because she had no hope left. She talks about the small, real changes since then: no more slamming her fist on the steering wheel in traffic, better songs in her head, feet that somehow feel lighter, and the certainty that she is loved. Knowing all that, she asks, wouldn't it be worse if she didn't try to help Bridget find the same thing? Bridget agrees it would be, and admits that this kind of caring probably makes Jules one of the best friends she has ever had. Then she adds, "And that's exactly why I cannot be your friend."

The two part on gentler terms than they began. Instead of Burger World, they settle for being "friendly": visits during work breaks, a mandatory hello in the school halls, an occasional text. When Jules promises to pray for her, Bridget shrugs that so many people are praying for her it is all white noise, but Jules doesn't buy it. Connie prayed for Jules every single day, Jules says, and even though she mocked her sister for it, she is glad Connie never stopped. Jules insists that everything she said tonight was real, that she misses Bridget and truly cares about her, and Bridget, at last, says she believes her. As the shift ends, they trade a quiet "See you around," leaving the door to friendship open just a crack.