If You Really Loved Me

by Anne Schraff

  Destini went to her room and picked up her cell phone. “Hi Alonee, do you still need someone for that camping trip, or did you find another person already?” Destini asked.

  “No, we didn’t find anybody. Oh Destini, can you go? Is it okay with your mom?” Alonee asked hopefully.

  “Yeah, I guess I’m in,” Destini replied reluctantly. Her mother seemed so enthusiastic about the trip that Destini felt trapped. Destini knew she hadn’t given her mother a lot of reasons to be proud of her and maybe she owed her this. Maybe going on the trip would make up in a small way for all the Ds and Fs on her report cards, all the griping and complaining that Destini did.

  At lunchtime the next day, Tyron asked Destini to join him, Marko, and Jasmine. They all bought hotdogs in the school cafeteria. Because Mom had been so impressed with Destini going on the camping trip with the troubled kids, Destini thought Tyron might be jazzed about it too. Tyron would see what a caring person Destini was, although in Destini’s heart she didn’t really think she was such a nice person. She had been dragged into it. But Tyron wouldn’t know that.

  “I’m going on a camping trip on the weekend with a bunch of foster kids,” Destini announced. “It’s an outing for them and some of us juniors are going along to help. These are kids from bad homes that the child protective guys had to rescue. We’re going to camp with them and roast marshmallows and do all those dumb things younger kids like.”

  “Is that like being a camp counselor?” Marko asked. “I got a chance to do something like that this summer. How much do they pay you?”

  “Oh, they don’t pay anything,” Destini answered. “It’s a volunteer thing. Pastor Bromley came up with the idea. Six of us are doing it for nothing, you know, for the kids.”

  Jasmine threw back her head and laughed. “Girl, are you telling me you’re going camping in the dirty, dusty old woods with six little juvenile delinquents and spending the night with them and all that for nothing? Are you wigged out or what, girl?”

  Tyron added, “My father says volunteer work is sucker work. Don’t do anything they’re not paying you for. Only fools do volunteer work, big dopey fools. That’s what my old man said.” Marko started laughing too.

  “They suckered you into it, didn’t they?” Tyron asked. “One of those little phonies, the goody-two-shoes who act like they’re out to save the world just so everybody thinks they’re better than the rest of us. One of them suckered you into this, huh Destini? Who was it?”

  “Well, Alonee Lennox told me about it,” Destini admitted. “She said they needed one more junior for a kid.” Destini began to regret agreeing to go at all.

  “Alonee Lennox,” Marko roared. “She is the biggest phony of them all. She’s so sweet and sugar-faced, she makes me want to puke. In class she’s all the time sucking up to the teachers. She’s a freakin’ little teacher’s pet and she’d stab a kid in the back just to get in good with The Man. Poor Destini, you’re a sucker.”

  Destini felt horrible. “I just thought I’d do it for the kid, you know, for the foster home kid.” She was trying to rescue her reputation. She didn’t want her precious new friends to think she was hopelessly stupid.

  “The kid? You mean the little punk they’ll stick you with?” Tyron laughed. “The kid is probably a thief and a liar. Maybe she set fire to her house and her parents dumped her on the county. She’s probably a regular criminal. You be careful spending time with some little freak who’s probably been in juvie enough times to learn all the dirty tricks.”

  Destini wished she could get out of the camping trip, but there was no way. She wouldn’t have minded disappointing Alonee, but it would get back to Mom. She was friends with Alonee’s mom. Destini could not stand the look of disappointment on her mom’s face if she learned Destini had given her word to go on the trip and then backed out.

  “Well, I won’t ever do anything like this again,” Destini declared. “But now I guess I’m stuck.”

  “Why don’t you pretend you’re sick?” Jasmine suggested. “Whenever I’m pushed into something I don’t want to do, I play sick. Like, my grandmother is in a nursing home and Mom goes there every week. It’s a horrible, ugly depressing place. I can’t stand the smell. Mom thinks I should go with her. She goes, ‘Oh, Grandma will be so sad if you don’t come. She loves you so much,’ and I go, ‘Mom, my stomach hurts, you know, cramps again. Give my love to Grandma.’ And Mom buys it.”

  “I’m always trying to get out of school by saying I’m sick, but Mom never buys it,” Destini countered. “I’ll just have to suffer through the camping trip this time. But it’s the last time Alonee gets me into something like this.”

  On Friday afternoon, the parents of a classmate, Jaris Spain, picked up Destini at her home. “You got your overnight bag packed and everything you’ll need, honey?” Mrs. Spain asked.

  “Yeah, Alonee gave me a list of stuff I’d need. I’ve never done anything like this before. I think I bit off more than I can chew,” Destini replied glumly.

  “You’ll have fun,” Mrs. Spain told her. “And you’re doing such a good thing too. The funny part of doing stuff like this for other people is that in the end we get more out than we give. We feel really big to be giving our time to someone who needs help, and then we look back on it and are amazed how fun it was.”

  Destini doubted that. She thought what Mrs. Spain had to say was a lot of bunk. She was missing out on maybe Tyron calling her for a movie or something. Just at an important time, when their friendship was growing, she was getting out of town for the weekend. How stupid was that? Maybe Tyron would be bored and he’d ask some other girl out and forget all about Destini. On top of that, Destini thought she’d probably stumble into a bed of poison ivy and be in misery for a month. And she really dreaded spending Friday afternoon and night and then Saturday with some pesky kid she didn’t even know.

  The other kids and chaperones were all gathered at the church when the Spains drove up. Alonee’s parents were loading kids into their van. Alonee came toward Destini with a skinny kid, about eleven. The little girl had braids and big eyes, and she reminded Destini of those strange little creatures—lemurs—who live in Madagascar.

  “This is Destini Fletcher,” Alonee told the little girl. “Destini, this is Amber.”

  The girl looked down at the tops of her sneakers. Her feet seemed too small for them. Her skinny legs looked like mop sticks stuck into boat-sized shoes. The girl mumbled, “Hello.”

  “Hi,” Destini said back.

  Destini, Alonee, and Sami got into the Lennox van with the three younger girls. The Spain van was taking Jaris Spain, Kevin Walker, and Derrick Shaw and three little boys. Amber sat next to Destini in the van. Alonee was already chattering away with her young charge, and Sami and her kid were exchanging corny knock-knock jokes.

  “What am I going to say to this kid?” Destini wondered. “How do I get started with this spooky little twit who won’t even look at me?”

  “Uh, what grade are you in at school?” Destini finally asked in desperation.

  “Sixth. I’m in sixth grade,” Amber replied. Her lower lip jutted out in an aggressive way. Destini recalled what Tyron had said. Amber probably was a juvenile delinquent.

  “Do you like school, Amber?” Destini inquired.

  “No, I hate school,” Amber snarled. “I hate it. I hate it a lot.”

  Destini was intimidated by the venom in the girl’s voice. She was such a small girl, but the rage seemed to gush from a much larger person.

  Destini knew that now was the time to point out how important school was and how going to school could even be a lot of fun if you have the right attitude. Destini knew she ought to mention the nice friends you can make at school and say all the stuff parents and other adults tell kids who hate school. The trouble was that Destini herself didn’t believe any of it. But she was supposed to be a role model here.

  Destini shrugged and admitted, “I hate school too. I go to high school. Tubman High School.
I used to be in sixth grade like you. I hated it too, but not as much as I hate high school. It just keeps getting worse the higher you go. The only fun I ever had in school was in first grade.”

  Amber turned to Destini, finally looking at her. “Really?” she said, her large eyes growing even larger. And that was when Destini noticed the burn scar on her forehead. It was a bad scar. It really stood out on her very dark skin.

  “You looking at my scar, aren’t you?” Amber remarked bitterly. “Everybody does. Makes me even uglier than I am anyways.”

  “You’re not ugly,” Destini stammered, though the truth was that Amber was not very pretty and the scar didn’t help.

  “Yeah, I am,” the frail child insisted. “The doctor, he said he can try to fix the scar later on so it looks better. My mom’s boyfriend done it. He got mad at me and he come at me with a red hot poker from the fire and he hit me with it.” Amber was speaking at a rapid pace, as if trying to get the explanation over as quickly as possible. She didn’t want to linger on the incident in her mind.

  Destini was horror stricken. What kind of monster would do such a thing to anybody, much less a child? Still, the girl didn’t seem surprised that it happened. She acted as if things like this happened frequently in her life.

  “What happened to the man who hurt you?” Destini inquired.

  “He got busted,” Amber replied.

  “That’s good,” Destini said.

  Then Amber got back to what she was really interested in. “Do you really hate school, or was you just saying that?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I really do hate school,” Destini admitted, “ ’cause it’s boring. I have to sit there and listen to a lot of teachers talking about stuff I don’t care about. It goes on and on, and I’m thinking about other stuff, and pretty soon they give tests and then I flunk and my mom is mad.”

  “I feel like that too,” Amber commented. Her big eyes got a spark in them that had not been there before. The corner of her mouth twitched into a sort of smile. “But I figured maybe high school was better than sixth grade.”

  “No, it’s worse,” Destini warned. “They talk longer and they don’t do any fun projects. Like one time in sixth grade we had this crazy teacher who told us to make relief maps of the universe using food. I made the planets out of plums and tomatoes and I tried to run this wire through them, but they all started falling off when I got to do my presentation.”

  Amber started laughing in spite of her effort to remain glum and serious. Last night, she had made up her mind that she would not like the teenager assigned to her and she would hate the trip.

  Destini started giggling at the memory of her planet fiasco. “One of the plums was kinda rotten and my teacher stepped on it and almost fell down,” Destini chuckled. “It was such a big mess, we never had another sixth grade project.” Sami was sitting behind Destini and Amber with her young charge. She leaned over and tapped Destini on the shoulder. “You girls havin’ way too much fun,” she remarked, laughing.

  The vans wound their way around mountain curves, coming finally to a clearing containing several log cabins. Pastor Bromley shared the location with other organizations who brought children up for weekends. They used two roomy cabins, and each had bathrooms and plenty of room for sleeping bags. Jaris’s and Alonee’s mothers would supervise the girl’s cabin, and Jaris’s and Alonee’s fathers would take care of the boys.

  When all the unpacking was done, everybody gathered around the fire rings outside for a cookout. There were hamburgers and hotdogs, then toasted marshmallows. Watching Amber, Destini could tell she’d never had a toasted marshmallow.

  The sun was going down over the mountain ridges, and it was getting chilly. Destini overheard the men and the boys, on the other side of the fire ring, laughing and joking and telling ghost stories. She wished Tyron was among them. She liked the way Jaris, Kevin, and Derrick interacted with the younger kids. Kevin said to his boy, “When the moon comes up, then we get to hear the coyotes howl, Shawne.”

  “For sure?” Shawne asked, wide-eyed.

  Maybe, Destini thought, if this thing didn’t turn out too bad, she could talk Tyron into getting involved. Tyron was influenced by Marko and Jasmine’s attitude. Destini thought Tyron had a softer, kinder side than he showed, and she hoped she might bring that out. At first, Destini dreaded this camping trip, but now she was sort of getting into it. She even enjoyed it a little bit. In many ways, Amber was like Destini had been at that age, and that made Destini feel close to her.

  As they sat by the fire, Amber asked, “Are you smart in anything in school, Destini?”

  “No,” Destini allowed. Then she thought about the question. “Maybe art.”

  “I’m bad in most everything,” Amber replied. “But I love math.”

  “Math!” Destini almost choked on her marshmallow. “You like math. Math is horrible. It’s impossible to understand.”

  “No it’s not,” Amber insisted. “It’s easy. It’s like a game. I jump ahead in the book and do the harder problems. I’m doing some algebra.”

  “Oh wow,” Destini cried, “I never met a girl who likes math. You are amazing. People who’re good at math are so lucky. That’s because a lot of us struggle with it, and the world needs teachers who can get it through our thick heads.”

  Amber grinned. She wasn’t used to praise of any kind.

  “You know what?” Destini went on to say. “Maybe when I’m having trouble understanding something in math, you could help me. You know, tutor me.”

  “You’d let me tutor you? But I’m only eleven and you’re sixteen,” Amber said.

  “That doesn’t matter,” Destini countered. “If you’re good in math, I’d really appreciate it if you gave me some help.”

  “You think?” Amber probed in an almost reverential voice. “Or you just jiving?”

  “For sure,” Destini asserted.

  When they were all in their sleeping bags, beyond the cabin windows a large moon began to rise from behind the mountain. As it sailed into the open sky, the soft yips and then drawn-out howls of the coyotes filled the night.

  “Shawne!” Kevin whispered, in the boys’ cabin. “Listen. There they are. The coyotes.”

  “Whoa!” Shawne said back in a hushed voice.

  In the other cabin, Destini also heard the howls and decided she wasn’t too crazy about coyotes. Amber was curled up in her sleeping bag beside Destini, and she opened her big eyes and whispered, “Whatever is makin’ that awful noise can’t get in here with us, can it?”

  “No Amber,” Destini assured her, reaching over and giving the girl’s shoulder a squeeze.

  Chapter Four

  In the morning, they all went hiking. Destini and Amber caught up to Derrick Shaw and his boy, Josh. All four of them took off their shoes and socks and went wading in a cold mountain stream along the trail.

  “Oooooo, that feels good, huh Josh?” Derrick suggested. “Hey Josh, look at the little pollywogs slithering around down there.”

  Josh and Amber both scampered over to where Derrick was pointing.

  “They look like funny fish,” Josh commented. “Can we catch some of them?”

  “No,” Derrick said. “When they grow up they’ll be frogs. Now they’re baby frogs. You don’t want them not to grow up and be like Kermit on TV.” Derrick laughed at his own joke. “Besides, we got a teacher at Tubman High who’d horsewhip us if we captured baby frogs.”

  “Could he do that?” Josh asked.

  “I dunno,” Derrick mused. “I don’t want to find out.”

  They all scrambled from the water then and sat in a grassy spot beneath an old tree. Destini didn’t know Derrick, but she had seen kids making fun of him because he was slow. Destini was surprised at how well he was getting along with Josh. He didn’t seem stupid after all.

  Derrick was looking at Destini at the same moment she was looking at him. “I’m real surprised to see you here,” he remarked.

  “I’m surprised to
see you too,” Destini told him. “But how come you’re surprised to see me?”

  Derrick shrugged. “You seem mad at school all the time, Destini,” he explained. “You seem stuck up too. And when Marko Lane makes fun of people, like Mr. Pippin or me, you laugh. It made me think you were one of those mean girls. You don’t expect to see a mean girl helping out with these kids.”

  “Destini is not mean,” Amber said. “She’s all right.”

  “Well,” Derrick said, “you don’t seem mean now.” He looked more intently at Destini and asked her, “How come you were surprised to see me here?”

  Destini felt bad saying it, but she did anyway. “I guess because a lot of kids say you’re dumb and stuff. I thought you were dull witted or something, but you’re not. I didn’t think such a dumb guy could be with the kids, but you’re doing fine. I just didn’t expect you to be just a regular guy . . . ”

  “I’m no genius or anything, but I get by,” Derrick responded. “I’m going to graduate from Tubman with a C, I think. I’m not as dumb as I look sometimes, or as Marko Lane and his buddies make me out to be. I don’t know why they do that. I’ve never done anything to them . . . ”

  Destini looked down into the meadow grass for a moment. What Derrick said made her sad. She didn’t much like Marko either, but she liked Tyron and Tyron and Marko were close friends. Because Tyron thought so much of Marko, Destini couldn’t be disloyal to Marko either. “I think Marko is just joking around,” she offered. “I don’t think he means to hurt people . . . ”

  On Saturday afternoon, as the vans pulled into the church parking lot, everybody was saying they were sorry the day was ending. Destini felt that way too, but she wasn’t ready yet to admit that. She never would say so when she got home and got a call from Tyron.