Arousing Love, a teen novel by M.H. Strom Read Free Book Online Page B

good to hang with.
    “You smoke, Zach?” Matt asked me.
    “Nah.”
    “Yeah, I don’t smoke . . . cigarettes.” He gave me a knowing look
and laughed. “Ever tried mushies?”
    “Matt!” Joanna gave him an evil look.
    “What?” He thrust out his hands, all
innocent.
    “Why do you even do drugs?” Joanna’s attitude
changed to concern for her friend. “Don’t you want to achieve
something with your life? Drugs are just going to mess it up.”
    “Yeah,” Lizzie piped in. “You could end up
homeless and living on the streets. That’s what happened to this
guy I know. He owned his own house and everything, and lost it all
‘cause of his addiction.”
    “I’m not addicted. It doesn’t even do
anything, it’s like a little party in your brain. It’s not as bad
as you think.”
    I’d always thought doing drugs was dumb, but
if that’s what they wanna do, it’s their life. I wasn’t the kind of
guy to tell anyone else what they should or shouldn’t be doing. But
now I found myself wanting to back Joanna—“Yeah man, drugs are like
a party, and you think the guy throwing the party is your friend.
But while the party’s going on at your place, he’s out the back
stealing everything—your intelligence, your ambition, your health,
your future, everything you want in life—all gone in a puff of
smoke while you’re enjoying the party. Drugs aren’t your friend,
man, they’re your enemy.”
    Joanna flashed me a smile.
    “Hey, that’s deep,” Lizzie laughed.
    Matt shook his head. “Yeah, but everything’s
bad for you, everything’s a risk—what you eat, having sex. We all
die in the end anyway.”
    For a while no one else spoke, and the
silence soon became uncomfortable. Matt just sat there like he was
lost in thought or sulking or something. I felt bad for him.
    “I don’t touch drugs, or anything like that,
after what happened to a friend of mine.” Lizzie said, her eyes
fixed in the distance.
    “Why, what happened?” Joanna prompted.
    “She liked this guy, but she wasn’t gonna do
anything with him. But when she got high she had sex with him.”
    “Ohh.” Joanna put a hand on her friend’s
shoulder.
    Lizzie shrugged it off. “Yeah, she got
pregnant. She was only fifteen and had to get an abortion.”
    “This is gettin’ depressing.” The other guy
got up. “I’m outta here. See ya later.”
    “Hey, wait up.” Matt jumped to his feet and
followed his friend, leaving just Joanna, Lizzie, and me.
    “I’d hate to be in that situation, but I’d
never get an abortion.” Joanna stated.
    “She didn’t want her parents or anyone to
know about it.”
    “So? That’s not a reason to kill your
baby.”
    “It was a hard decision for her,” Lizzie
started to raise her voice. “Sometimes you have to make hard
decisions like that. I think she did the right thing.”
    “I wish abortion wasn’t even an option.”
    “It’s a woman’s right to choose!” Lizzie
folded her arms and glared at Joanna.
    “The baby should have a right to live.
There’s no right that says you shouldn’t suffer the consequences of
your actions. She didn’t have to keep the baby, she could’ve given
it up for adoption after it was born. The right to choose is so
selfish, it’s only for the inconvenience of pregnancy.”
    “Pregnancy’s a big deal, ya know, and having
to adopt your baby to someone else would be horrible.”
    “You’d rather put the baby to death?”
    “It’s not a baby yet. It’s not fully
developed, it has no feelings, it doesn’t even know if it wants to
live or not, it’s not like you’re putting an actual person to
death.”
    “No, Lizzie, you don’t get it. That baby has
a whole future ahead of her, and her life has already begun. If she
wasn’t terminated she’d live out a life—maybe get married and have
children. If you kill her, even when she’s tiny, you’re taking her
whole life away and all she was meant to be and do. You’re not just
killing a fetus,