Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
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
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Acknowledgments
Goodbye, Magnolia - About the Book
The Truth About Drew - About the Book
About the Author
Copyright ©2016 Krista Noorman
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means - electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other - except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the author.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.
Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version. Public Domain.
Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™
For my biggest fan - my Mom.
1
August 1994
“There is NO WAY I’m going to a Christian college!”
The old, rickety table in the kitchen of the tiny two bedroom apartment was covered with brochures and catalogs from Cedarville, Cornerstone, and Grace — three religious colleges in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana respectively. All were addressed to Miss Michelle Harrison.
“Well, you better get used to the idea.” Her mother, Louise, stood across the table from where she sat.
Michelle shoved the papers across the table toward her mother. A few slid over the edge and floated to the floor. She flipped her dark, silky hair over her shoulder and crossed her arms over her chest in defiance.
Mom shot her a warning look.
Her father had been mostly quiet since he arrived with his parents for this special family meeting. “This is important. This is your future, Michelle.”
Michelle wished he would have remained quiet. “You didn’t have to come all this way, Dad. Mom and I will manage. Just like we have all these years.”
Her grandmother piped in at that. “That’s no way to talk to your father.”
Michelle raised an eyebrow. “And I don’t need your help either.”
“Well, I never,” Grandma huffed.
Grandpa shook his head. He was a man of few words, but Michelle could sense his disappointment in her behavior.
“I’ll just go to a community college,” Michelle stated.
“We can’t even afford that.” Louise reached for the papers and retrieved them from the floor. She looked weary. Michelle couldn’t remember a time when her mother hadn’t looked that way.
“Well, I’ll get a job and pay for it.” She was determined to stand her ground, even if it meant working multiple jobs like Mom always had. “I can do this on my own.”
“You could do that and struggle your way through school.” Louise sat across from her and placed the fallen papers with the others. “Or you could accept your grandparents’ generous offer to pay for your tuition and not have to worry about the money.”
“You guys don’t even like me.” She picked at the chipping paint on the edge of the table, not making eye contact with her grandparents.
“That’s not true.” Grandma took two steps closer and laid her fingertips on the edge of the table. “We love you. But you haven’t made it easy.” She paused with eyebrow raised. “For any of us.”
Michelle rolled her eyes. “You’re just doing this because you feel guilty.”
Grandma’s mouth fell open a little. “What do we have to feel guilty about?”
“That your son is such a horrible father.”
Dad took a step forward and addressed her sternly. “You need to learn a little respect, young lady.”
“Don’t yell at her, Robert.” Louise glared at her ex-husband like a mama bear protecting her cub.
“Well, maybe if you had done a better job with her, she wouldn’t be acting out like this.” He poked the bear.
“Are you kidding me? If anyone’s to blame, it’s you! She needed a father, and you walked out.”
Michelle covered her ears as she had always done when she was little. There had never been a shortage of raised voices in their home. It was how they communicated. When he bothered to be there, that is.
Almost since the day she took her first steps, he had been out the door on this business trip or that, rarely spending more than a couple weeks at home at a time. Her mother was a cold, paranoid sort of woman. Not once in all of her childhood could she remember Mom showing affection to Dad. She didn’t know if that was how she had always been or if her father’s lengthy absences and suspected rendezvous had caused it. She often wondered why they had married in the first place, because there seemed to be no love there.
They divorced when she was six, and she saw him once, maybe twice a year after that. He was a stranger, and he made no real effort to get to know her, which made their visits awkward and, in her opinion, completely unnecessary.
Mom did the best she could, but she struggled to pay the bills, every spare moment consumed by work. No time for her young daughter, who so desperately needed a mother’s guidance.
So Michelle was left to figure life out on her own. With a lack of positive female role models, no real girl friends in her life, and the absence of her father, she gravitated toward the company of boys, which inevitably led to boyfriends at an early age. And where her mother was cold and distant, steering clear of men after the sting of divorce, Michelle was the opposite, almost to the extreme. She was overly warm and affectionate, drawn to the opposite sex like a moth to a flame. And the attention she had never received at home was found in the arms of whatever guy would have her.
Michelle squeezed her eyes shut. Harsh insults and rude remarks overwhelmed the small space. Grandma had joined in, slinging opinions of her own. Her grandfather stood quietly in the corner, staying out of it.
“Stop!” Michelle finally cried. “STOP IT!”
The yelling ceased, but tension still hung heavy in the stale air.
Michelle felt a sudden urge to run. She would rather be with Tyler and Eddie than sitting there reliving the fights of her childhood. It was like the worst deja vu moment ever.
Louise gently pushed the papers in Michelle’s direction. “Look, I don’t care why your grandparents wanna do this. This is your ticket out of this place.”
Michelle didn’t want out of Chicago. She was happy there. She had a life there. “I’m not leaving my friends,” she snapped.
Her mother snorted. “Friends? Those boys are a bad influence, Missy.”
She hated being called “Missy”. And she knew exactly what her mother
’s comment was referring to — a certain party Mom would never let her forget.
Almost two years had passed since that night at Ray’s with Tyler and Eddie, her closest guy friends. They were the guys she grew up with, the ones she felt most herself with, the ones who taught her how to play basketball. They also told her all about sex and introduced her to drinking and smoking pot. Eddie was like a brother to her, but Tyler was the one she wanted. She wanted him to look at her the way he looked at all the other girls, not just like one of the guys. Tyler had been with a lot of girls since she had known him, but she longed to be the one he wanted. She wanted to be the one he kissed behind the school during lunch. She wanted her first time to be with him. And that night at Ray’s, thanks to many beers, she got what she wanted.
Ray’s was always the place to be — the place to hang out and hook up, among other things. The crowd was larger than usual, the noise level higher than it should have been. It was not uncommon for Ray’s parties to be broken up by the cops, and Michelle and her friends were usually among the first to bolt when trouble came knocking. But they’d been drunk — very drunk — when she led Tyler up the smoky staircase to one of the bedrooms and clicked the door shut behind them.
“What are you doing?” he had asked when she pushed him back onto the bed.
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
He didn’t complain or try to stop her. And it finally happened. She lost her virginity to Tyler.
And then they spent the night together … in jail.
If they hadn’t been upstairs when the cops came, they never would have been caught. And if Eddie had warned them sooner, none of them would have. She totally blamed Eddie.
This incident, her continued association with these boys, and her constant sneaking out of the house led to many fights at home. Mom constantly held the party over her head. She even went so far as to forbid her from seeing any of them, but it didn’t work.
Sleeping with Tyler didn’t work either. She had hoped it would propel her to girlfriend status, but that didn’t happen. Instead, he saw them as friends with benefits and got physical with her whenever he was in the mood.
Sadly, she let him.
Her mother walked over and laid a hand on her shoulder. “You’ll find new friends. Better friends.”
She shrugged her shoulder away. “I don’t want new friends, and you can’t make me give them up. I’m not a little kid any more.”
“You’re sixteen. In my book, that’s still a kid.”
“Well, your book is old and out of print.” Michelle stood, her chair scraping loudly against the dingy linoleum floor. “And I’m almost seventeen.”
“Seventeen is not an adult.”
“Close enough.” She walked to the wall phone, and picked up the handset.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Michelle looked at her mom like she was totally clueless. “I think we’re done here. I have a phone call to make.”
“Those boys have no say in this.” Her mother walked across the kitchen, grabbed the phone from her hand, and slammed it into place. She grabbed Michelle’s arm and tugged her toward the table. “And we aren’t done talking yet.”
“Hey!” Michelle cried. She twisted her arm from Mom’s grip and pushed past, knocking her backwards into the wall.
Her mother’s eyes widened with anger.
Dad slammed his hands on the table. “Sit down! NOW!”
Michelle flopped down in the nearest chair and rolled her eyes. She knew her dad wasn’t there because he actually cared about her or what was going on in her life. He was only there because his parents had summoned him.
Dad pointed at the brochures. “You will apply to these three schools. You can choose which one you wanna go to when you see which ones accept you. If you don’t, we’ll pick for you.”
She crossed her arms again. Despite her rebellious ways, she was smart and got decent grades. She knew she would inevitably be accepted to all three.
“Why these?” She glared at the brochures in disgust.
“Your Uncle Brian is a professor at Cedarville, and Grandpa and Grandma both went to Grace. It’s where they met.”
Michelle wondered how her dad grew up in such a religious family yet still turned out the way he did. Neither of her parents ever had much to do with God, except maybe the occasional use of His name in vain, and He had never done anything to help their family. It was for this reason that the idea of God and religion seemed pointless to her.
She motioned to the last brochure for Cornerstone College. “And this one?”
“It’s another good Christian college, so you have options.”
Michelle flipped each catalog over and noticed the very obvious pattern. “All out of state.”
“Yes.”
“To get me away from my horrible friends,” she said sarcastically.
“To give you a chance at a better life,” her grandmother interjected.
“This sucks.” Michelle hated that they were ganging up on her like this. “I love Chicago. It’s my home. I don’t wanna live anywhere else.”
“You’re going,” her mother demanded.
“Screw you!” The fury bubbled up within her.
“You are out of control, Missy!”
“You can’t make me go!”
Her mother’s eyes narrowed. “Watch me.”
2
Michelle opened the window of her dorm room to let in the fresh, late-summer air. A soft breeze blew in and cleared the stuffiness away. She glanced around and took in the drab cinder block walls, boring tile floor, and pale wood doors of the closets. Cornerstone College — home for the next nine months.
She took a seat at a built-in desk next to the only single bed in the room, which she had claimed with her bags. The other two beds were bunks, and there was no way she was sleeping on a bunk bed. It was bad enough she had to share a room with two complete strangers.
She sighed, still not quite believing she was there. The benefits of having her grandparents pay for a full ride to college far outweighed any argument she could come up with for not going, so she had caved and agreed to their conditions. And she spent her final year of high school acting out in any way possible to let her family know just how unhappy she was about the whole thing.
Why she chose Cornerstone had little to do with the quality of the academics or the look of the campus and everything to do with her family’s lack of affiliation with this particular school. She didn’t care to go to Grace just because her grandparents met there, and she didn’t want to go to Cedarville and risk having Uncle Brian as one of her professors. So Cornerstone it was.
She didn’t know how she would survive a month there, let alone four years, with all its rules and strict morals, of which she was in short supply. And she already missed home. Grand Rapids, Michigan was only three hours away from Chicago, but it may as well have been three hundred. She was dropped off by her mom, left without a car, stranded in a strange place.
The door suddenly opened and in walked a pretty girl with sandy blonde hair carrying a laundry basket overflowing with her belongings. A man, woman, and teenaged boy followed carrying boxes and bags.
“Hi,” the girl said. “You must be one of my roommates. I’m Maggie.”
Michelle smiled weakly. “Michelle.”
The man and woman introduced themselves as Patty and Ron James, Maggie’s parents, and shook her hand politely.
The teenaged boy hovered nearby with a flirty grin on his face, his strawberry blond hair hanging over one eye. “Hey, I’m Tom.”
Maggie smacked him on the arm. “Leave her alone, Tommy.”
This made Michelle smile in spite of herself. Being an only child, she had always wondered what it would be like to have a brother or sister to harass.
“I wonder when our other roommate’s getting here.” Maggie opened the closet doors and checked out the space.
Michelle shrugged. “I just got here about an hour ag
o myself. No sign of her yet.”
Mr. James and Tom left to retrieve the rest of Maggie’s things.
“Where are you from, Michelle?” Patty asked.
“Chicago.”
“Oh, we love the Windy City,” she replied. “Have you always lived there?”
Michelle nodded. “Yep.” She didn’t really know how to do the whole small talk thing.
Maggie rifled through her pile of things at the foot of the bunk beds. She grabbed a black padded bag from one of the boxes and pulled an expensive looking camera from within.
“Will you take a picture of me and Michelle, Mom?”
Michelle groaned inwardly when Maggie stepped to her side and put an arm around her. She faked a smile.
Ron and Tom returned and stacked a couple more boxes and baskets with the rest.
“I wonder which bed she’ll want,” Maggie considered.
Michelle sat on the bed she had left her things on. “I say we get first choice since we were here first.”
“Sounds good to me,” Maggie agreed. She tossed her pillow and some bedding on the bottom bunk. “Hey, we’re going to dinner. Do you wanna come along?”
“Oh.” Michelle shook her head.
“You’re more than welcome to come, Michelle.” Patty looked at her with kind, green eyes.
“That’s OK. I think I’ll stay here and see if the other roommate shows.”
“Are you sure?” Maggie’s eyes were even greener than her mother’s.
Michelle nodded.
“OK. Well, I’ll be back in a couple hours, and we can talk more.”
Michelle cringed at the thought. “OK. Have fun.”
They left the door open on their way out.
Michelle rolled onto her stomach and stared out the open door as more students filed through the hallway with their families. Part of her thought she should have gone with Maggie’s family. They seemed like nice people, but the idea of more small talk did not sound at all appealing.
Waiting for their other roommate was a good excuse, but she wasn’t really going to do that.
The campus was simple yet beautiful, with it’s winding sidewalks lined with trees, lovely landscaping, and a picturesque pond. Michelle walked from her dorm, Miller Hall, across the campus to the gymnasium. The doors were open to welcome the students, and the sound of sneakers squeaking on the wood floor greeted her.
Until Then (Cornerstone Book 2) Page 1