Somebody Love Me (Journeys) by Michelle Sutton Page B

the wrong places. I know it sounds cliché, but I couldn't think of a better description of how I felt.
    While I was doing well in school, I didn't think I could stand another year with the same people who now knew that I was easy according to my ex-friend Shari Gecko, who passed rumors around the school. Some crappy friend she turned out to be. I told my parents I couldn't last another year with the same group of kids. I had no real friends anyway, so what would it hurt for me to transfer schools?
    My parents resisted the idea of me leaving, of course, until I took half a bottle of pain pills and made sure my mother found me in time to make me puke it up. My father came home that night furious. "What did you hope to accomplish, Missy?"
    I didn't know what to say, so I hung my head, which hurt like someone had hit it with a hammer. I made a mental note to avoid taking too many of those blue pills in the future. The after effects sucked.
    "Missy, tell us what's wrong. We just want to help." My mother's voice pleaded and sounded on the verge of tears.
    My throat didn't want to work, so I swallowed hard and stared at them until my parents started fighting. Dad accused Mom of passing her depression on to me and Mom said Dad was the cause of my grief since he gave me permission to have sex with all the guys in the neighborhood when he got me on the pill.
    I was shocked that they fought and said such mean things to each other. Worse, most of what they screamed in each other's faces was true.
    "I just want to die," I whispered.
    My parents turned and glanced at me, and all arguing ceased. My mother's eyes filled with tears and my father clenched his fists. He asked through tight lips, "What did you just say?"
    "I want to die. Just let me die!" I sobbed into my hands.
    For a while, other than my desperate cries, silence lingered between them. After I calmed down and couldn't shed another tear, my mother said, "Aunt Laverne told us you could stay with her if it would help. We told her it wasn't necessary when we talked about it the last time, but I think we'll call her again. Maybe going to California will be the change that you need."
    I brightened just a bit when I thought about moving away from all this. My father put his hand on my shoulder and said in a soft voice, "There's a Christian high school there. We'll pay whatever the fee is to get you enrolled. If you want to go to school there just say the word."
    Conflicted by my parents sudden support for me and the desire to leave my sad past behind, I decided to take their offer to move for the last two years of high school. I'd miss my parents, but if it would help me turn my life around, I was willing to try anything.
     
     
     
    Chapter Eleven
     
     
    When the time came to get on the plane, I had no regrets. I'd distanced myself from Mary and Cathy and the rest of my low-life friends. I needed hope for the future, and while the idea of going to a Christian school made me want to cringe, it couldn't be any worse than my public high school where kids pushed drugs at you during lunch recess and guys just wanted to get into your pants. Maybe the boys would be nicer there.
    Berating myself for even thinking about guys, I rubbed my eyes and tried to sleep. Wasn't that a big part of my problem? Once I'd had sex, I seemed to have forgotten how to relate to boys without letting them touch me and trying to turn them on. Somehow my head had gotten things backwards and I'd lost my knack for basic communication.
    I wanted my life to be simple again, like it had been before I was ruined by friends like Jenny and her scumbag boyfriend. How I wished I'd never listened to any of them. At least then I wouldn't feel like a used up girl who hadn't even reached her seventeenth birthday. How did other girls live like this and seem happy? Or was it all a big façade for them too, like I tried to portray to cover up my hurt?
    How I wished everyone would stop pretending and be real with me. Could I