If You Loved Me Read online

  IF YOU LOVED ME

  Also by Marilyn Reynolds

  True-to-Life Series from Hamilton High

  Telling

  Detour For Emmy

  Too Soon for Jeff

  Beyond Dreams

  But What About Me?

  Baby Help

  If You Loved Me

  Love Rules

  No More Sad Goodbyes

  Shut Up

  Eddie's Choice

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  To Sharon, Cindi, and Matt | ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Chapter | 1

  Chapter | 2

  Chapter | 3

  Chapter | 4

  Chapter | 5

  Chapter | 6

  Chapter | 7

  Chapter | 8

  Chapter | 9

  Chapter | 10

  Chapter | 11

  Chapter | 12

  Chapter | 13

  Chapter | 14

  Chapter | 15

  Chapter | 16

  Chapter | 17

  Chapter | 18

  Chapter | 19

  Chapter | 20

  Chapter | 21

  Chapter | 22

  Chapter | 23

  Chapter | 24

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  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  To Sharon, Cindi, and Matt

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For their close readings and critical comments on this work in progress, I wish to thank:

  Dale Dodson, Cindi Foncannon, Karen Kasaba, Judy Laird, Karyn Mazo-Calf, Mike Reynolds, Matt Reynolds, Sharon Reynolds-Kyle, and Anne Scott. Lisa Lundstrom at Calvine High School. Marc Mallinger and student readers at South County Community School.

  Barry Barmore and student readers at Century High School.

  Marilyn Reynolds

  New Wind Publishing

  Copyright © 1999, 2014 Marilyn Reynolds

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this publication may be adapted, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without permission from the publisher. Like Marilyn Reynolds’ other novels, If You Loved Me is part of the True-to-Life Series from Hamilton High, a fictional, urban, ethnically mixed high school somewhere in Southern California. Characters in the stories are imaginary and do not represent actual people or places.

  Originally published by Morning Glory Press, 1999.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Reynolds, Marilyn, 1935-

  If you loved me / by Marilyn Reynolds.

  Summary: Racially mixed seventeen-year-old Lauren, the daughter of drug users, is pressured to have sex with her boyfriend and questions her promise to herself to stay a virgin until she is married.

  ISBN 978-1-929777-00-6

  1. Sexual abstinence—Fiction. 2. Sexual ethics—Fiction. 3. High schools—Fiction. 4. Drug abuse—Fic­tion. 5. Racially mixed youth—Fiction. I. Title. II. Series: Reynolds, Marilyn, 1935- True-to-life series from Hamilton High.

  PZ7.R3373If 1999

  [Fic]—dc21 99-29522

  Chapter

  1

  The sun is barely up when I meet Tyler at the rickety old bench under the palm tree at the north end of the Hamilton High School parking lot.

  “Hey, Curly,” he says, giving me a quick kiss.

  We squeeze hands three times, meaning “I love you,” and walk together into the B building. I like the early morning quiet of Hamilton High, with only a few students on their way to zero period classes.

  We’re about five minutes early so, except for Mr. Harper, we’re the first to arrive at creative writing. Mr. Harper, also known as “The Harp,” because he’s always harping on us to write more, is staring off into space. He is cradling his grungy coffee cup, warming his hands. He looks as if he’s just rolled out of bed, stubble-faced and sleepy-eyed.

  “Good morning, Teacher,” Tyler and I say in a sing-songy, kindergarten sort of way.

  The Harp groans and pours more coffee into his cup from a thermos that probably hasn’t been washed since he started teaching here five years ago.

  Tyler and I take seats next to each other and get out our notebooks. Blake comes dragging in, clutching a coffee cup. He’s wearing thrift store corduroy pants, dark brown, and a wrinkled white T-shirt with a picture on the front of an old guy soaking in a bathtub filled with mud. “Take a bath” it says, in big mud-colored letters across the back. Except for Coach Howard, who’s so old he can give an eyewitness account of the landing of the Mayflower, Blake’s the only guy at Hamilton High who wears brown corduroy pants from the seventies.

  “Your mommy sure dressed you funny this morning,” Tyler says. Blake just smiles the sweet smile that lights his pudgy face. He sits down on the other side of Tyler and holds out a handful of seeds. Tyler looks closely, then extends his hand. Blake dumps the seeds and sits back, looking self-satisfied. Tyler looks even more closely, holds one up to the light, then puts it in his mouth and bites down.

  “Tangerine,” Tyler says. “I’m pretty sure.”

  “How do you know it’s not an orange seed? Or lemon?” Blake says, frowning.

  “I don’t know for sure. It’s just what I think. I’m right, huh?”

  Blake takes a dollar from his pocket and hands it to Tyler.

  So far, in the seed identification bet, Tyler’s ahead by twelve dollars. Tyler’s been interested in plants since he was a little kid, and he knows a whole lot more than Blake can believe he knows.

  They’ve made up certain rules—Blake can’t bring any seeds that are poison, he has to gather the seeds himself from local plants, and the seeds have to be at least an eighth of an inch long. Tyler has to identify the seeds when he gets them, not carry them around all day, or get help from the biology teacher.

  Blake makes me laugh. He wants to bet on everything. In fact, in junior high school, his nickname was Betcha.

  By the time the bell rings, all twelve creative writing students are in the room, seated, notebooks open.

  “When I wake up, I want you to be ready to go, notebooks out, thinking caps on,” The Harp hammered into us during the first week of school. “It’s a privilege to be in this class. If you ever feel like it’s just too, too very much for you to be ready to work when the bell rings, I’ll quick-whisk a drop card up to officialdom.”

  We pretty much take The Harp seriously, because we want to be here. Not like math, or geography. I mean, I suppose those things are important, to someone, but they’re nap time for me.

  By the last reverberation of the tardy bell, The Harp is standing in front of his desk, eyes wide open, shoulders back, alive.

  “Okay. Let’s get started. Here’s our jumping off sentence for the autobiography assignment,” he says, handing out quarter-sheets of paper with the photocopied sentence.

  When we all have the paper in our hands he reads, “You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain’t no matter.”

  “Huck Finn,” Zack calls out from the back of the room where he’s trying to get the printer to work.

  “No brainer,” Tyler says.

  “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” Zack yells. “Tale of Two Cities,” three people yell back.

  “Double no brainer!” Tyler yells. “How about ‘That Sam I Am. That Sam I Am. I do not like that Sam I Am.’”

  We all laugh, including Mr. Harper, who then leans against his desk in his relaxed teacher pose and says, “Remember, this is creative writing, not creative talking, so . . .”

  He arch
es one eyebrow practically to the ceiling and surveys the classroom with the smile that makes me think he knows a secret. Most of the girls at Hamilton High have crushes on Mr. Harper. I did too, when I was a sophomore, but that was before Tyler Bronson. Tyler Bronson and me, Lauren Bailey. Bronson and Bailey. We’re a pair.

  “. . . if you could just pay attention long enough to hear your assignment . . .?” Harper says over the hum of the classroom. He

  waves one of the quarter-sheets of paper in the air, over his head. “The part I want you to concentrate on, and write from, is ‘You don’t know me without . . .’ I want you to THINK about it—not doodle it while you’re watching reruns of ‘Beavis and Butthead,’ or mumble it over and over again while you’re staring into space. THINK about what it is that people can’t know you without. For instance, you don’t know me without you know I teach English to the hope of the nation. And you also don’t know me without you know that I am working on a novel of epic proportions.”

  “Am I going to be in your novel, Mr. Harper?” Kelsey says, batting her thick, lengthy lashes.

  “I’m only on page 3,247, Kelsey. I can’t tell yet. So far you’re not . . . Zack?”

  “How long does this have to be?”

  Mr. Harper sighs. “You’re writers. It’s as long or as short as it needs to be, given what you’re writing . . . Now, what is it for you that people must know, or they can’t know you? Start with the phrase, ‘You don’t know me without . . .’ and continue on from there.”

  “Mr. Harper?” Shawna asks.

  We all turn to look at Shawna, sitting in her chosen place in the far back corner of the room. Shawna is this mystery person who keeps her head down so you can never see her face. She’s in my peer communications class, too, and it’s the same way there. She sits in the back of the room and hides under her hair. Blake and I have a bet to see who can be the first to find out what color Shawna’s eyes are. We’ve had the bet since school started, and neither of us has had a chance to see Shawna’s eyes.

  Right now, Shawna is facing The Harp, but her hair is down over her face so you can’t even see her mouth, much less her eyes.

  “Yes, Shawna?” The Harp says, the look on his face revealing that he is as surprised to hear from her as the rest of us are.

  “Do we have to tell the truth?”

  “Well, as you know, autobiography is generally considered to be nonfiction.”

  “So we have to tell the truth?” she says, pushing for a concrete answer with more words than she’s ever before spoken aloud in class.

  “You don’t have to stick to the facts, but you have to tell the truth,” Mr. Harper says.

  “What does that mean?”

  Harper looks at Shawna and sighs.

  “It means it can be creative nonfiction. And, by the way, I hope you’re all started on a book in the autobiography category by now. Reading and writing, two sides of the same coin. Right?”

  For once I’m ahead in the assignment. I’m more than halfway through an autobiography, Angela’s Ashes, and I can hardly put it down. Really, this book is the reason I’m behind in my English class assignments. It’s way more interesting than Jane Eyre.

  “Let’s take about five minutes to do a quick outline, or cluster ideas, before you start on your first draft.”

  In the middle of a page of notebook paper, I write, “You don’t know me without . . .” and draw a circle around the statement. An avalanche of things slides through my brain. I draw a bunch of lines extending from the circle, like spokes on a wheel. Next I label the lines as fast as I can: Born drug addicted. Dead mother. I LOVE TYLER. Only fam—Gram. No to drugs. Yes to staying a virgin. Mixed race. Baby on the trail. Dad dead or alive? There’s so much! Where will I start?

  As if he’s read my mind, Harper says, “I’m not asking for a full length autobiography here. Try to narrow things down to the core of you—the essence of you. I probably can know you without knowing you had the mumps in the third grade.”

  “I don’t like the way that opening sentence sounds,” Tyler says.

  “You, Tyler Bronson, are criticizing the opening sentence of one of America’s greatest novels?” Harper asks.

  “Not criticizing it in Huck Finn, exactly. I just don’t like it for myself.”

  Harper smiles. “That’s what I love about teaching creative writing. You have opinions. Anybody else want to express an opinion?”

  “It sounds weird to me, too,” Blake says.

  “Weird?” Harper says.

  “You know. It doesn’t sound like anything anyone I know would ever say.”

  “Okay,” Harper says. “You’ve got a point. Huck speaks in a particular dialect, as does Jim. They’re not dialects we hear or speak. Change the wording but keep the idea. Okay?”

  “How should we change it?” Zack asks.

  “Ay!” Harper says, running his hand through his hair. “You have to decide. Keep the original wording if you want, I don’t care as long as it makes sense.”

  There’s a buzz in the classroom, but it’s obvious Harper is through with questions. He sets the timer for fifteen minutes, like he does every day, and we all, Harper included, start writing. “Quick-Write” it’s called, because we’re supposed to write as fast as we can, without self-editing, or self-censorship. That part comes later, after the first few drafts.

  What is at the core of me, I wonder? I jot down ideas from the subjects I’ve clustered. First there’s Tyler Bronson, who is my one true love. And the thing is, the miracle really, is that he loves me, too. Since the day we met, he’s been there for me whenever I needed him. And I’m there for him, too. He’s helping me learn not to sweat the small stuff, and I’m helping him learn to appreciate his mother. And we both help each other with our creative writing projects.

  I glance over at him at the same time he’s checking me out. He gives me that white-toothed, dimpled, light-up-the-room smile, then turns back to his paper. He is tan, from working in the sun. His arms are covered with a soft, golden down. I think of running my hand lightly over his arm, barely touching the downy hairs. I’m melting.

  I guess my meltdown is somehow felt across the room, because The Harp looks up from his paper, right at me, and taps his pen—a sign that I should be writing rather than melting.

  After a quick rereading of the assigned sentence, I decide to change the word “without” to “unless.” To my modern ear that sounds better.

  I tackle the mother spoke of the wheel of me:

  You don’t know me unless you know my mother was a big time druggie. She’s dead now. I guess that’s pretty important if you’re going to know me. My mother’d been doing speed all the time she was pregnant with me. The first thing I had to do as a person in the world was get through drug withdrawal. So right off, the doctor turned me over to a social worker, who turned me over to a foster mom. I don’t even know who that person was, the one who rocked me when I was all jumpy and kept me warm when I got the shivers, and got me to eat when all I wanted was a jolt of speed. I’ve probably got a damaged brain because of all that. My gramma says she’s sure my brain works fine, but, like in math? Sometimes I just don’t get it.

  I feel the familiar anger rising within me as I write about my mother. Often, when people first hear that my mother’s dead, they look all sad, and they say stuff like, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” But I’m not sorry. It’s lucky for me she’s dead.

  I don’t want to keep writing about the mother stuff. If I think about her very long I accumulate a load of anger that rushes to spill all over the place. But the only place I want to let that anger out is on the volleyball court. I get power from it in my serves, and in my spikes, and then I lock it back in its compartment until the next game.

  I’m not stupid. I know that if a person lets anger eat at them, they lose a lot of the good stuff in life. Besides, maybe you can know me without knowing what a rotten person my mother was.

  I go on to the mixed race spoke.

  You don’
t know me unless you know I’m mixed race. On those forms where you’re supposed to check the little boxes, there’s never a box for me. White/Black/Chinese is not a combination they include, but that’s what I am. White on my mom’s side and my dad was half black and half Chinese. At least that’s what Grams tells me. I wouldn’t know. My dad may be dead by now, too. Anyway, he’s dead to me.

  Grams tells me I’m a beautiful mongrel, and that when the whole world gets all mixed up, like I am, we’ll all be better off. She says there can’t be racial prejudice when the races are no longer distinct. That’s my grams, always looking at the bright side. She’s a big part of my life because without her I’d probably be shuffling through the system, going from one foster home to another, having to deal with who knows what.

  The truth is, I like being a mix. That way no one can cat­egorize me.

  What else would a person need to know about me? I’ve got plans for my future. I already know I want to be some kind of writer—maybe books, but probably a journalist. I know I’ll want a paycheck, so journalism’s more of a sure thing.

  I doodle some more, pull more stuff from the avalanche. My favorite color is purple. I’m afraid of snakes. I’m afraid people won’t like me. I wish I had blonde hair like Amber instead of this dark, curly stuff.

  I’m a Virgo, which is supposed to mean I’m methodical, talented and hard-working, and I stick with my long-term goals until I accomplish what I’ve set out to do. According to this astrology thing I read, it said my negative side was that I could become too tied to rules, and also I might be nagging, and critical. Maybe some of those things are true. I do have long-term goals. I don’t think I’m nagging and critical, though. I asked Tyler about that once, if he thought I was nagging.

  “No way,” he said. “My mom’s a classic nag, and you’re not a thing like my mom.”

  Anyway, I don’t really believe in astrology. My mother was a Virgo, too, and I know for sure I’m nothing like she was. All she cared about was drugs. I hate drugs and I hate anyone who uses them. It’s such a stupid waste!