Rumor Has It. Cindi Myers

had given her the day the family had left California for Texas. “Write all your problems in here,” Grandma had told her. “Then maybe they won’t seem so bad.”

      She ran her fingers over the diary, tracing the gold-toned metal heart that served as a lock. Who knew where the key was now; surely she could find a way to open the book. She lay the diary on top of the annual and replaced everything else in the trunk. Then she carried the two books down to the kitchen.

      She poured another glass of tea and looked at the books laid out on the bar, reluctant to open them. Thank God no one was here to see her being so silly. Finally she took a deep breath and opened the annual. The plastic cover was stiff with age and the first grouping of pictures, of the freshman class, made her laugh. Had they really worn such awful hairstyles back then?

      Quickly she flipped to the back of the book, to the section devoted to the seniors. She found her picture: a pretty young girl with short dark hair who smiled shyly at the camera. Beneath her name were the words “Voted girl most likely to…”

      She frowned. Mark Wilson, the yearbook editor, had put that in after she’d refused to go out with him. She closed the book. Maybe digging up all this old stuff wasn’t such a good idea, after all.

      But the diary beckoned her. In the bright light, the cover looked scuffed and faded. Harmless. Why not revisit her seventeen-year-old self in those pages? It might be good for a laugh.

      She found a pair of kitchen shears in a drawer and sliced through the leather flap that held the book closed. Carrying the diary into the living room, she settled herself at one end of the couch to read.

      The entries began with her arrival in Cedar Creek.

      Well, we’re here, and all I can say is it’s hot and dusty and looks like a set out of some old Western movie. The only kids I’ve seen so far are wearing boots and jeans and cowboy hats and they all stared at me when I rode by on my bike and didn’t say anything.

      Well, I didn’t say anything to them, either. Next time I will. We’re here and I have to make the best of it. Dad is always saying things like that, as if clichés are going to make everything all right.

      Anyway, I do want to fit in here. I want to make friends. I’m sure things will be a lot easier when I start school next week.

      She flipped over a few pages, past entries about shopping with her mother and arranging her room. Finally she found an entry written after the first week of school.

      I’m really tired of everybody staring at me as if I’m from another planet. You’d think they’d never seen cool clothes before. There’s this one particular girl, Alyson. She’s a cheerleader and she and her friends think they are so “all that.” She makes a face at me every time I go by….

      There is one boy, though. He’s on the staff of the literary magazine. His name is Dylan Gates and he is sooooo cute!!! And he writes the most awesome poetry.

      She read on, about her growing friendship with Dylan. She and Dylan ate lunch together in the cafeteria. She and Dylan worked on a project in chemistry class. Dylan let her borrow his history notes when she was out sick.

      I think Dylan must be the sweetest guy in the entire world! She smiled, the feelings rushing back as if it all happened yesterday. She would never have admitted to it then, but Dylan had been her first big crush. She’d have given anything to really be his girlfriend, but he’d never given the slightest hint that he’d wanted to be anything more than a friend.

      She flipped through a few more pages of boring entries about homework, television shows and records. It might be fun to share some of this with her students sometime, to show how things had changed and how much they’d stayed the same.

      I hate this place!!!! The words were bold and underlined three times. Apparently the cause of all this angst was the annual senior camping trip. Taylor hadn’t wanted to go, but Dylan had talked her into attending. If only she’d listened to her gut and stayed home, none of the rest would have happened.

      Today I found out what everyone really thinks of me. Saturday night, after everyone else went to sleep, Dylan and I stayed up talking. It got colder and colder and we kept putting wood on the fire, until we ran out of wood. It was so cold, I knew I’d never sleep, so Dylan invited me into his tent with him. We were both wearing so many layers of clothes, it was completely innocent. We only wanted to get warm. But the next morning, when Mr. and Mrs. Healy got up and found us, they had a cow. You’d have thought we’d committed murder or something. We tried to tell them nothing happened, but they wouldn’t believe us.

      By the time our parents came to pick us up, the Healys had calmed down some. Thank God my mom and dad believed me when I told them Dylan and I didn’t do anything in that tent—or out of it—but sleep. I figured most of the kids didn’t know what happened and by Monday everything would blow over. I should have known better.

      She scanned the pages, her stomach in a knot. It was all there: the jeers from other students, the whispers, the rude propositions from some of the bolder boys. She stared at the words at the bottom of one page, the writing cramped and small. Dylan wouldn’t even look at me. I felt so awful.

      She closed the diary, blinking back tears. That had been the beginning of the end. Every day a new rumor developed. She and Dylan had been caught showering together in the boys’ locker room. She and Dylan had been skinny-dipping at the old gravel pit. By unspoken agreement, they avoided each other, hoping this would scotch the rumors, but the gossip escalated. When she left school, everyone was sure it was because she was having Dylan’s baby.

      What would have happened if she’d found the strength to face up to those rumors? If she’d had the courage to tell Dylan how she’d really felt about him? Would they have had a normal high school romance and its inevitable end as they each moved on to other interests? Would she have lived the rest of her life without this sense of having left something back there unresolved?

      Instead she’d spent the last month of her senior year in a home schooling program, graduated, gone off to college and gotten her teaching degree. She’d vowed never to return to Cedar Creek.

      But four years later, when she’d seen an opening for a teacher here, she’d felt a rush of nostalgia for all the things she had liked about the town: the slower pace of life, the lovely old courthouse square and the sense of being connected to history, the chance to really get to know your students in and out of school. Her parents had long since relocated to Arizona, so Taylor had had no reason to even visit Cedar Creek since she’d left for college.

      She couldn’t explain why she’d been so drawn to a place where she’d suffered so much, but in the end she’d decided the best way to put the past behind her was to face her demons head-on.

      Things hadn’t worked out quite the way she’d hoped. Sure, she loved teaching and she’d made a few friends, especially Mindy. But that sense of belonging—of home—she’d hoped to find was still missing. To the town, she would never stop being an outsider with a wild reputation—an outsider who never fit in.

      So when the opportunity had come up to study for a year in England, she’d jumped at it. Maybe she’d be happier in a place where the past everyone was interested in wasn’t her own.

      She looked at the diary again. Would things be any better in Oxford if she took her old problems with her? Had she really faced her demons? All of them? Mindy’s scornful words came back to her. Some people are still stuck in high school. It’s pathetic. Then how pathetic was it that Taylor had let the events of ten years before shape her life? How else to explain her inability to encourage any kind of lasting relationship with a man? It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had opportunities. She’d dated quite a few perfectly nice men. But none of them had measured up to the ideal she had in her head.

      An ideal that had been firmly fixed since she’d developed a crush on Dylan Gates. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, she had spent ten years comparing every romantic relationship with the one she’d imagined she and Dylan would have had.

      She might not wear her hair the same way she