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  WILDFLOWER

  A N N E S C H R A F F

  A Boy Called Twister

  The Fairest

  If You Really Loved Me

  Like a Broken Doll

  One of Us

  Outrunning the Darkness

  The Quality of Mercy

  Shadows of Guilt

  To Be a Man

  Wildflower

  © 2011 by Saddleback Educational Publishing

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-61651-009-1

  ISBN-10: 1-61651-009-9

  eBook: 978-1-60291-794-1

  15 14 13 12 11 1 2 3 4 5

  TABLE OF CONTENT

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Hold on there, little girl!” Lorenzo Spain called out to his fourteen-year-old daughter, Chelsea. She was coming down the hall, carrying her books. “Chelsea Spain, am I seeing things, or is my daughter going to Marian Anderson Middle School dressed like a Vegas showgirl?”

  “Oh Pop!” Chelsea rolled her eyes and groaned.

  Monica Spain shouted from the living room. “What’s all the hollering about?”

  “Monie,” Pop replied, “your daughter is about to go to school without most of her clothes on.” Pop was shouting even louder now. His son, sixteen-year-old Jaris, was doing some last-minute studying for an English test. Jaris sighed. He closed his book and looked down the hallway at his sister.

  “Chili pepper,” Jaris pleaded, “please go put something else on. Don’t get Pop all riled up before he has to go to work. There’s enough stress for him down at the garage.”

  “Mom!” Chelsea screamed. “Pop’s being impossible again.”

  Mom came down the hall, and she looked from her husband to her daughter. Monica Spain was a well-regarded fourth grade teacher at the local elementary school. Before she could say a word, her husband demanded, “Where does this little wildflower get these clothes? Monie, you got no sense? You let her dress in trash like this? You help her buy these clothes that aren’t fit for decent girls?”

  “Lorenzo, calm down,” Mom responded. “Trudy Edson took Chelsea shopping with her daughter, Athena. I gave Chelsea a hundred dollars. I had a late faculty meeting. I just couldn’t take her there myself.”

  “Trudy Edson and that daughter of hers!,” Pop chided in a scornful voice. “You let those freaks dress our daughter?”

  “Lorenzo, Trudy is not a freak,” Mom asserted. “She teaches at a high school in the district.”

  “Ohhh!” Pop said. “That makes it all different. If she’s a big shot teacher, then it’s okay that she lets Chelsea buy trashy clothes.”

  Jaris moved alongside Chelsea. “Please, Chelsea, change your clothes,” he urged. He hated it when his parents started fighting. The argument always turned into a clash of wills between his tough-minded conservative Pop and his more liberal mother. “Chili pepper, just go in your room and put on something else!”

  Chelsea turned around and headed back to her room, stamping her feet all the way. “This is so totally stupid,” she whined. “I dress like every other girl at school. I mean, why don’t we set up inspection like in the army so I can be checked every day?”

  Monica Spain looked at her husband. “You’ve upset her so much,” she said.

  “Oh a thousand pardons,” Pop replied with mock contrition. “I would never want to upset our daughter when she’s goin’ out on the street with the whole front of her showing like she’s doin’ a revue in Vegas or something.”

  “Lorenzo, just get a hold of yourself,” Mom demanded. Lorenzo Spain worked as a mechanic at Jackson’s Auto Repair. He hated his job. As a boy, he had dreamed of using his athletic skills to win a scholarship. Then he’d go to college and perhaps be an engineer or some other type of professional. But all his dreams crashed with a sports injury. Now he was often in a dark, bitter mood. He was disappointed by how his life had turned out. Jaris worried about him. Sometimes the darkness seemed to spread over the entire house.

  “I got to go down to that stinking garage and work hard all day with Jackson yelling at me,” Pop complained. “And all that keeps me going is you and having good kids. If Chelsea is going down the drain, then what am I working for?”

  “She’s not going down the drain, for goodness sakes!” Mom objected.

  Chelsea came back down the hall wearing a modest blue top and jeans. “I hope this satisfies you, Pop,” she said. “Maybe I should wear a cape that covers me even more. I mean, wouldn’t it be horrible if somebody noticed that I’m a girl?”

  “Oh, don’t you worry about that, little girl,” Pop growled. “Everybody can see you’re a girl. Just make sure you look like a nice girl, not like that trashy Athena who looks inappropriate.”

  “Pop,” Chelsea cried, “don’t call Athena names. She’s my friend. I don’t insult your friends!”

  “Who are my friends?” Pop asked. “Old Jackson, my boss? He’s not my friend. He’s my enemy. I don’t hang around creepy people like you do, Chelsea. That Trudy Edson wears so much makeup she looks like a clown. I think the next time I see her I’m gonna suggest she sign up for the circus. She can work with Bozo.”

  “Mom!” Chelsea wailed. “Don’t let Pop insult Athena’s mom.”

  “He’s not serious, sweetie,” Mom said, frowning so much that there were deep lines in her usually smooth brow.

  “The devil I’m not,” Pop protested, grabbing his truck keys off the wall hook. He went roaring down the driveway, as he always did when he was angry.

  Mom looked at Jaris and commented. “Your father really got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning.”

  Jaris shrugged. He loved both his parents. He didn’t want to take sides, though in his heart he usually agreed more with Pop. Mom had a kind of Pollyanna approach to life. Jaris didn’t think her view squared with the real world. She didn’t know what it was like out there on the streets or even in school. If a girl dressed as if she was asking for attention, she sometimes got too much of the wrong kind of it.

  Chelsea usually walked to school with her friend, Inessa Weaver. Inessa was a sweet, quiet girl whom Pop approved of. Now she was at the door, waiting for Chelsea. “Is Chelsea ready?” Inessa asked Mom.

  “Yeah, I’m ready,” Chelsea bounded out the door and fled down the walk. Jaris overheard her complaining to Inessa. “Pop was absolutely crazy this morning! I had on this really cute top I just got at Lawson’s. I was so excited to be wearing it to school. Pop went bananas! He made me take it off and put this dumb thing on that I’ve worn forever.”

  “That top looks cute on you, Chel,” Inessa remarked.

  “It’s old and it’s blah, Chelsea groaned. “Everybody’s seen it a zillion times. The new top was so fierce.”

  Jaris didn’t have to leave for Tubman High for a few more minutes. He was alone with Mom.

  “Jaris,” Mom asked, “do you think Chelsea’s top was so bad that your father had to throw a fit like that?”

  “Well,” Jaris replied carefully, “Chelsea is really growing. Last year she was a skinny little girl. This year she’s, you know, filled out some. And, well, the top was a little bit . . . uh . . . hot.”

  “I didn’t think it was bad,” Mom insisted. “I see tops like that on all the young girls.”

  “M
om,” Jaris told his Mom, “uh, the guys at school, even middle school, they’re looking at the girls and making cracks. I mean, they hassle the girls with jokes and stuff. Chelsea’s only fourteen. Next year she’ll be at Tubman. It’d be good if she could, you know, hold off on the really sexy clothes.”

  “You know, though, Jaris,” Mom countered, “your father’s problem is that he still sees Chelsea as a child. He thinks she’s ten years old and he can boss her around. She’s becoming a young lady. She has to be allowed to make her own decisions.” Mom disappeared into the bedroom to get ready for school, where she taught.

  Jaris didn’t have to wonder whom Mom was talking to on the phone when he heard her voice in the bedroom. Whenever Mom had the slightest problem with Pop, she called her mother to talk about the issue.

  Mom’s mother, Jessie Clymer, was an active, sixty-eight-year-old retired real estate agent. She was in good health and well fixed economically. She had never liked Pop, even before Mom and Pop were married. Sometimes Jaris thought that his grandmother would actually be pleased if the Spains got a divorce. Jaris once heard his grandmother lamenting how many years Mom had already “wasted” on Lorenzo Spain. To grandma, Dad was an obvious loser. It would be a pity, Grandma Clymer had said, if Monica wasted the rest of her life with him. When Jaris had heard this past conversation, he tightened his hands into fists. He felt as though he actually hated his grandmother. She was his only grandmother and she loved Jaris and Chelsea. But the fact that she hated Pop embittered Jaris.

  One of Jaris’s deepest fears had always been that his parents would split up. It had already happened to his girlfriend, Sereeta Prince, and the divorce tore her apart. Jaris’s grandmother was hoping for the one thing Jaris feared more than anything else.

  “Oh Mom,” Monica Spain was saying, “Lorenzo was like a crazy man this morning. He ripped into poor little Chelsea over a sweet little top she was wearing. It’s a cute top, a little bit low-cut, but all the girls are wearing them. Lorenzo made her take it off. Can you imagine?”

  Then Mom said other things. “I know, I know. You did say that, Mom. . . . You’re right. But I love Lorenzo, Mom. . . . I know . . .”

  Jaris gritted his teeth and headed for school. On the way, as he jogged down the street, he thought about Chelsea. A few months ago, she got involved with a jerk from Tubman, a ninth grader named Brandon Yates. Yates was throwing a party. He talked Chelsea into lying to her parents that she was going to a girlfriend’s house. Chelsea ended up at the party where there were drugs and liquor. Even B.J. Brady, a drug dealer, was there. Jaris had followed her and dragged her out. He shuddered to think of what might have happened to Chelsea that day if he hadn’t done that. Jaris never told his parents about the incident. Chelsea swore she’d never see Brandon Yates again. In return, Jaris promised to keep her secret.

  But Chelsea was getting bolder. Pop saw it, and Jaris saw it too, even if Mom couldn’t. She never would have talked back to Pop before, as she did this morning.

  Jaris figured a lot of Chelsea’s new attitude came from her friendship with Athena Edson. Athena was fourteen, going on sixteen. She dressed older than she was, and she dressed the way she wanted. Her parents had thought they might never have a child because they were in their late thirties when they married. When Athena came along, they were delighted and they spoiled her. Athena’s mother was a high school teacher, and her father was an insurance agent. They led busy lives. So Athena got to do whatever she wanted, from lip piercing to outrageous clothing. Jaris hated to even think of what Pop would say if Chelsea wanted to get her lips pierced.

  As Jaris neared Tubman, his friend, Alonee Lennox, fell in step beside him.

  “Wassup Jaris? You look deep in thought,” Alonee commented. Oliver Randall was Alonee’s boyfriend, but Jaris and Alonee went way back. They were dear friends.

  “Oh, Pop had a big blowup with Chelsea this morning ’cause she had on this sort of sexy top. It was low-cut, and Pop freaked,” Jaris answered.

  Alonee smiled. “My little sister, Lark, is only twelve,” she remarked. “My dad is already dreading her becoming a teenager and having to deal with that stuff.”

  “I wish,” Jaris hoped, “Chelsea would hang with Lark and Sami’s sister Maya, and Derrick’s little sister Kayla. Sometimes she does stuff with them, but she’s stuck on this girl, Athena Edson. She’s a snippy, spoiled little show-off. I think her being kinda bad is what appeals to Chelsea. She’s a bad influence on my sister. What really bothers me, Alonee, is my parents fighting over Chelsea doing stuff. I hate that. Mom’s more okay with Chelsea doing her own thing, but Pop, he’s the big protective papa bear. Mom thinks Pop is being too hard on Chelsea, and then they argue.”

  Alonee nodded. “That’s hard. My parents are pretty much on the same page with stuff like that. I’d feel bad too if they argued. You always worry that it’ll get worse and . . .” Her voice trailed off. She didn’t want to use the word they were both thinking about, divorce.

  “Poor Sereeta,” Jaris said., “She’s gone through so much with her folks splitting up. And it’s still not good. She likes living with her grandma, but she’s all the time trying to find a way to have a mom again.” It made Jaris sick to imagine his parents divorced and each of them eventually with someone else. Even now, Mom’s principal, Greg Maynard, seemed to like her very much. And Mom liked him. Maynard was divorced. Jaris imagined that he would probably be eager to become the man in Mom’s life if Pop wasn’t there anymore.

  When Jaris got home from school that day, Mom was still working at her elementary school, and Pop was still at Jackson’s garage. Jaris was alone in the house until Chelsea came home.

  “How’s it going, chili pepper?” Jaris asked her.

  “I told everybody yesterday to check out the top I’d be wearing today,” Chelsea moaned. “Then they saw me in this old blue thing and started making fun of me. I told them I would look awesome. They’re all laughing and saying, ‘Awww-some!’ when they saw me in this old rag!”

  “Mom’s got a faculty meeting today, and Pop’ll be late at the garage, chili pepper,” Jaris responded. “What do you say we walk over to the Ice House for a frozen yogurt, just you and me. They got a new caramel flavor.”

  Chelsea brightened. “Yeah! Cool! This’s been such a nothing day, I need for something good to happen. I’m feelin’ so crummy cuz I think I flunked my science quiz! Pop’ll have another spasm about that! Athena told me today she doesn’t know how I stand Pop. Her dad trusts her about everything. He’s not on her case like a parole officer!”

  As they walked to the Ice House, Jaris started talking to his little sister. “You know why some fathers are so upset when their girls start growing up and stuff?”

  “Why?’ Chelsea asked.

  “ ’Cause dads remember being teenagers themselves,” Jaris advised. “They remember how they felt about girls in low-cut clothes and stuff. Girl like that comes along, and the guys start drooling. Even if she’s a nice girl, and most boys will respect her anyway, some boys will take advantage, you know. Pop doesn’t want you to be a target for some sleazy guys.”

  “I’m not that kind of a girl. That top was okay,” Chelsea protested. “I’m plain, and no guys drool over me no matter what I wear. Now Athena is beautiful—”

  “Chili pepper,” Jaris interrupted, “you’re getting awfully pretty. A couple of my friends at Tubman said you’re gonna be the cutest freshman in the class next year.”

  Chelsea giggled. “Oh, that’s silly,” she chuckled, though it was clear she enjoyed hearing it. “I got zits on my forehead, and my hair is so yucky sometimes, and I’m getting fat too.”

  “The zits will clear up, your hair looks fine, and you’re not fat,” Jaris insisted.

  “I already weigh a hundred pounds,” Chelsea said. “Athena and I are the same height, and she weighs ninety pounds.”

  “Chelsea, Athena looks too skinny,” Jaris told her. “I think she’s got anorexia or something. Believe me, chili
pepper, you look great.”

  “There’s a boy in my science class—Heston Crawford,” Chelsea confided. “He’s kind of geeky, but he likes me. I told him yesterday I was buying a magenta top, ’cause he told me once he liked that color. He smiled. He got kinda flustered, but I guess that’s because he likes me.”

  After a while, they were at the Ice House, waiting for their frozen yogurt. Jaris said, “Chelsea, I don’t like it when Mom and Pop fight. They were yelling at each other this morning, and then Mom called Grandma and told her everything. Then she’s dissin’ Pop like she always does.”

  “I don’t like Grandma,” Chelsea declared. “I used to like her when I was little, but now I don’t anymore.”

  Jaris ignored her comment and went on. “I just wish we’d both try to keep things cool around the house, chili pepper, you hear what I’m saying?”

  “Oh, so now it’s my fault?” Chelsea flared up. “I gotta dress like some old lady or something so Pop doesn’t freak and start a fight!”

  “No,” Jaris said, “just don’t go overboard.”

  Several girls from middle school came into the Ice House. Mattie Archer had brought her daughter, Maya, and Alonee’s sister Lark, along with two other girls. Jaris noticed they all wore low-cut tops and short-short skirts. One of the girls wore a top that seemed about to fall off her shoulders.

  “Hi Lark! Hi Maya!” Chelsea called to them.

  When Lark and Maya came over, Jaris remarked, “You’re looking good, Maya.” Earlier in the year Maya had been hit by gunfire outside a store. The shots were meant for someone else, but she was hit in the leg.

  “I’m all good, Jaris,” Maya replied with a big grin that reminded Jaris of her big sister, Sami. Sami was one of Jaris’s best friends at Tubman High.

  “You guys,” Chelsea said, “I had this cute top from Lawson’s on this morning for school, and it looked just like your tops. But Pop made me take it off. Why does my pop have to be an impossible old grump?”