Amen, LA

188 Pages·2016·0.81 MB·English

by  Bennett Cherie

This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of
some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are
not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations,
incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict
actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance
to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2011 by Cherie Bennett
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Ember, an imprint of Random House
Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Ember and the colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.randomhouse.com/teens
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at
www.randomhouse.com/teachers
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bennett, Cherie.
Amen, L.A. / by Cherie Bennett & Jeff Gottesfeld — 1st Ember ed.
p. cm.
Summary: When seventeen-year-old Natalie Shelton and her familiy move from Minnesota to
Beverly Hills after her mother is hired as pastor of the wealthy Church of Beverly Hills, Natalie
becomes overwhelmed by the lavish lifestyle and starts to forget her Christian values.
eISBN: 978-0-37589808-2
[1. Conduct of life—Fiction. 2. Christian life—Fiction. 3. Beverly Hills (Calif.)—Fiction.]
I. Gottesfeld, Jeff. II. Title.
PZ7.B43912Am 2011
[Fic]—dc22
2010032348
RL: 6.0
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
For our editor,
Wendy Loggia. Amen!
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Prologue
To lose my virginity or not to lose my virginity? That was the question.
Before I elaborate, I really should introduce myself—my name is
Natalie Shelton, but my friends call me Nat—and let you get to know
this virgin on the verge. Now, I don’t normally blab about my personal
life to complete strangers. In fact, one of my pet peeves is when a girl
you’ve never seen before decides that just because you happen to end up
in the same ladies’ room at the same time, this is the moral equivalent of
longtime best-friend-hood, and she spills the most intimate details of her
life. Her period is late and she’s scared to death she’s pregnant. Or she
has certain—ahem—symptoms that make her worry she has an STD but
no way can she go to the family doctor because the family doctor is her
mom’s best friend. Or … well, you get the idea.
No matter how many times this happens—and it happens to me a lot—
I’m still amazed. My dad says I just have a face, like my mother’s, that
makes people feel like they can confide in me. My mom and I both have
deep-set blue eyes, a round face with dimples inherited from my
grandma Palma, and shoulder-length wavy blondish hair. I say
“blondish” because in my case, it’s the color you end up with when
you’re a platinum-blond baby and everyone coos over you and says how
cute you are and how gorgeous your hair is and how you look like a
little angel that should be on the top of a Christmas tree, only then you
grow up and by the time you’re seventeen and filling out the information
for the driver’s license your parents have finally allowed you to get,
when you write blond under hair color, you’re kinda-sorta-almost-but-
not-quite lying.
In my mom’s case, it’s Clairol Nice ’n Easy.
I guess that’s what I have to look forward to. Joy.
Once I got past the baby-pudge stage—which lasted until I was
fourteen, unlike for my younger brother and sister, who each apparently
reached puberty in the womb—and shot up to my present height of five
foot six, I ended up with a decent figure and nice legs. Once, at a party,
this guy told me I look like Katherine Heigl. He also told me he wasn’t
wearing his contact lenses. Objectively, I suppose I’m not as hot as my
little—trust me, “little” refers only to the fact that she’s two years
younger than me—sister, Gemma. She’s five eight but has four-inch
heels, like, superglued to her feet, and one of those skinny-curvy-busty-
all-natural bodies that get a million guys wanting to be your friend on
Facebook. Her goal in life is to be famous. She worships Megan Fox.
Unfortunately, I’m totally serious.
As for my brother, Chad, he’s also little in name only. Already five
foot nine (thanks to Grandpa Chester) at age thirteen and still growing,
with black hair and huge blue eyes framed by long, sooty lashes, he’s got
a cut, broad-shouldered swimmer’s build, because, well, he’s a swimmer.
One of the best his age in the state of Minnesota. Mostly, he concentrates
on swimming, which is a good thing. If he concentrated on girls,
Mankato would be the broken-heart capital of the Midwest. Again,
totally serious.
My dad, Charlie, is an author of middlingly successful mysteries. No
bestsellers, but he does write for a New York publishing house and has a
rabid, if modest, following. My mom, Marsha, who I sort of look like, is
a minister. The “my mom is a minister” thing had everything to do with
why I was pondering the big “Do I or don’t I?”
Hang on, this is all going to make sense, I swear.
At the moment of my contemplation, I was on the bedroom floor of
my good friend Shelby’s family fishing cabin on the shore of Lake
Washington, about forty-five minutes from Mankato. I was separated
from the hardwood floor by a truly butt-ugly pee-yellow/puke-green
hooked rug and could hear my friends partying in the living room while
Lady Gaga sang. My red blouse was off, my floral summer skirt had
worked its way up to my navel, and my boyfriend Sean’s hands were
inching under my 36B lacy pink push-up bra bought on sale at Victoria’s
Secret—the one my mother didn’t know I owned.
My position—on the floor—and the position of Sean’s hands—on my
breasts—would have been shocking to those on the other side of the
bedroom door. Here’s the thing. I am the proverbial “good girl.” Good
grades, good friends, a good relationship with my mom and dad, do
church volunteer work, play guitar and write songs, don’t drink, don’t
smoke anything, don’t do drugs, and the gates to my heaven were still
one hundred percent intact.
My parents have always emphasized the importance of waiting till
marriage to have sex—that sex is a holy gift from God meant to be
shared by husband and wife. Unlike Gemma, who—let’s face it—will not
make it to age sixteen without biblical knowledge, I sort of agreed with
my mom and dad. I mean, how cool would it be, sometime in the distant
future, to marry my true love and know that I’d saved myself for him?
When I discussed this with Gemma, she smirked and asked if my “true
love” was supposed to have saved himself for me, too. Like, didn’t I want
a guy on my wedding night who had some concept of what he was
doing? Besides, how would I know if my true love and I were sexually
compatible if we hadn’t done it? What if I waited until after I was
married, and it turned out my true love had the performance capabilities
of our basement sump pump? Then I’d be, like, stuck.
Gemma’s point was well taken, but it still seemed to me that in
specific cases, you could tell whether you’d be sexually compatible with
a boy without actually “doing it.” Take Sean, for example. We’d known
each other since eighth grade and had been boyfriend and girlfriend
since just after Christmas. Everything between us pointed to our being
sexually compatible if and when the time came. We matched up in so
many ways. We cared about our friends, we cared about music, we cared
about our families, and we cared about our church lives. We didn’t have
deep conversations, but hanging out together was easy. For as long as I
could remember, my friends had been telling me, “You and Sean Butler
would be the best couple,” and after we started dating, he told me that
his friends had been saying the same thing about me, except in
guyspeak.
Here is how Sean first showed romantic interest in me: he showed up
at my mom’s nondenominational church on Sunday, which, considering
that his parents were typical Minnesota Lutherans, meant he had to be
highly motivated.
Anyway, I know you’d rather hear about Sean than about my mother.
You’d especially like to know whether my theory of prospective sexual
compatibility is true in real life. I have to admit that until that night on
the puke-ugly rug, I hadn’t really been in a position to comment, since
the furthest we’d gone had been Sean’s hand atop my sweater. Under
which had been a tank top, under which had been a bra from Kmart and