Becoming Me Read online

  “Jeremy has a girlfriend?” I could tell my voice sounded kind of high-pitched and funny, but fortunately no one else seemed to notice.

  “Yeah, this was news to us too, but Isaiah said that Jeremy’s been dating the same girl for about four or five years now.”

  “That’s almost like being engaged,” added Laura.

  “No, it’s not,” I said a little too quickly.

  “It would be for me,” Laura retorted.

  “So how about it, Chloe?” pleaded Allie. “Why don’t you ask Isaiah? It’s not like you guys need to be involved or anything. You can just go together as friends and have a good time.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Laura. “We could triple date. It would be so cool.”

  I was looking at the floor now, tracing the diamond pattern of the carpet with the toe of my Doc Martens. “I’ll think about it,” I muttered.

  And thankfully, Willy arrived then and we started to practice. But to be honest, I had a hard time focusing on our practice, and it didn’t go too well.

  Finally, we finished and I told them that my stomach didn’t feel too great. “I think it’s something I ate.” Although I knew that wasn’t true. Unless you can ingest a conversation, which I suppose is sort of true. It feels like I swallowed a bunch of foul-tasting words. Anyway, I excused myself and went up to our room in the hotel.

  I lay down on my bed and cried myself to sleep. I know it’s stupid. It’s not like Jeremy and I actually had anything going on or as if he’d led me on at all. It was all just in my head. I guess that’s what comes of letting your mind run wild about things like guys and romance.

  Well, when I woke up I wrote this all down in my diary. Kind of like I just needed to barf it out so I could feel better. And then I read my Bible and prayed.

  We have a big concert tomorrow night where Redemption is the main event, so I really need to get my head and my heart together and put this whole thing into God’s hands—for the sake of the band, our recording contract, and most of all for the audience who has paid good money to hear us. Hopefully, they’ll be touched by God when they do.

  And so I’m making this commitment to myself and to God: I will not let this disappointment about Jeremy mess up my music. If anything, I have decided that this whole thing can just make me stronger. Like that verse I memorized in James. Maybe it will become my “life verse” since Pastor Tony says that everybody should have at least one Bible verse that they take with them through everything. Perhaps this is mine.

  “…count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

  Now how cool would it be to become perfect and complete and to be lacking nothing? And if that comes from going through trials, well, I guess I should just say, “Bring ’em on.” Okay, let’s not get carried away. I’m not asking to be hit by a truck or suffer from some horrible skin disease or anything too dramatic. But I do recall Pastor Tony preaching about how we should greet our trials as we greet our friends. We should welcome them as we realize how they’ve come to make us bigger and better people.

  BRING ’EM ON

  here we go, God

  bring on the crud

  pour on the rain

  sling on the mud

  bring on the hard times

  fling on the bad

  bring on the tears

  heap on the sad

  pile it all up, Lord

  it won’t be long

  ’til all these trials

  help make me strong

  cm

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL

  published by Multnomah Books

  A division of Random House, Inc.

  and in association with the literary agency of Sara A. Fortenberry

  ©2000 by Melody Carlson

  Multnomah and its mountain colophon are registered trademarks of Random House Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission.

  For information:

  MULTNOMAH BOOKS

  12265 ORACLE BOULEVARD, SUITE 200

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Carlson, Melody.

  Diary of a teenage girl : Becoming me, by Caitlin O’Conner / by Melody Carlson. p. cm.

  Summary: Sixteen-year-old Caitlin O’Conner keeps a six-month diary in which she records the day-to-day events of her life as well as her struggles to understand herself and God’s plan for her future.

  eISBN: 978-1-58860-103-2

  [1. Diaries—Fiction. 2. Self-perception—Fiction. 3. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 4. Christian life—Fiction. 5. High schools—Fiction. 6. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.C216637 Di 2000 00-009655

  [Fic]—dc21

  v3.0