Split Ends

by Jacquelin Thomas

She wipes away her tears with her fingertips. “I just don’t want to lose you, Kylie. My life isn’t the same with you gone.”

  “You say that now, but what about when the next man comes along? What then, Mama? I’m glad you’re not a drug addict, but in a way it’s not much different. You’re addicted to men.”

  “No more,” she vows. “Just you watch. I’m gonna show you, Kylie. I’ma prove it to you—I’ve changed, and you’ll see.” She marches to the door.

  “Mama,” I call out.

  She stops.

  “I love you, and congratulations on the job,” I tell her.

  She smiles through her tears. “I love you, too, baby.”

  When my mama leaves, Miss Lucy strolls out of the kitchen and takes a seat beside me. “She sure sounds like she means it, Kylie. When she was talking, all I saw on her face was repentance.”

  I’m not so easy to convince. “I think she just doesn’t have a man right now.”

  “Don’t be so hard on your mother.”

  “Miss Lucy, she probably wants to move in here with us,” I say. “That’s all that is, but we don’t need her drama.”

  She is making a little shaking motion with her head. “I usually have a pretty good read on people. Serena is trying to change because of her love for you.”

  The girls come over an hour later.

  “Kylie, why are you being so quiet?” Mimi asks me. “You okay?”

  I nod.

  Divine studies me a moment before saying, “No, you’re not, Kylie. Now, what’s up with you?”

  Rhyann puts her hands on her hips. “Talk to us, girl.”

  “My mama came by the apartment today,” I announce. “She told me that she has a job now.”

  Alyssa gives me a sidelong glance. “That’s a good thing, right?”

  “Only if she’s serious about working,” I say. “There’s no point in working for a few weeks and then quitting. She claims that she’s changed, and Miss Lucy believes her. I’m just not as sure.”

  “If Jerome can change, then I know your mom can change also,” Divine tells me. “I didn’t believe him at first, but he proved me wrong.”

  That gives me hope. “She told me that she was going to show me that she’s telling the truth.”

  “Give her a chance,” Divine says. “She’s your mom. You two need each other.”

  “I don’t need her.”

  “Kylie, don’t say that,” Rhyann interjects. “At least your mom is alive. I would give anything to have my mom walking around here, even if she wasn’t acting like a mother.”

  I had not really considered how I’d feel if something terrible happened to my mama. I don’t want to lose her.

  “We know that you love your mom,” Divine is saying. “You’re just really mad at her right now. Kylie, don’t hold on to all that anger. Forgive your mom and give her another chance. Think how you’d feel if you had done something bad. Wouldn’t you want her to forgive you and give you a second chance?”

  “Or a third?” Mimi asks.

  “Or a fourth,” Rhyann interjects.

  “Even if you mess up a hundred times, you would still want a chance to get it right,” Alyssa contributes. “Think about how many times we mess up with God, but we still want His forgiveness.”

  “You’re right,” I say at last. “I want to believe my mama about everything, even if she’s let me down so many times in the past. I know what you’re saying, Alyssa. It’s not like I haven’t made mistakes or bad choices. I don’t want them held against me, and I’d want another chance.” I chew on my bottom lip.

  “Just take your relationship with your mother one day at a time, Kylie,” Miss Lucy interjects. “That’s really all you can do.”

  “I guess so,” I say in a low voice.

  My mama calls me every day just to check on me since she bought herself a prepaid cell phone. She even has a second job now.

  She is a receptionist for some company on Wilshire Boulevard, and she works at Red Lobster on the weekends.

  “I’m on my lunch break, but I wanted to tell you that I love you, Kylie. I also read all that stuff you gave me on that school. I think you should go there.”

  “I gave you that packet almost two months ago.”

  “I know. That was before I decided to change my life. It’s not too late for you to attend, is it? I didn’t mess it up for you, did I?”

  “They are gonna want to meet with you. Mr. Nash is paying my tuition, but they still need to meet you—and Miss Lucy, since I’m living here with her.”

  “Let me know when and I’ll put in for a day off or at least half a day. Kylie, you won’t believe it, but I have almost a thousand dollars saved. I have a bank account with the credit union.”

  My mouth drops open in my shock. “You have a bank account?”

  She laughs. “Yeah, girl. It’s only a savings account for right now. I would have more saved, but I have to pay off some stuff to raise my credit score. I’m taking a class on managing finances because I’d like to buy us a house one day. One of my coworkers was saying that I could qualify for one of those Habitat for Humanity houses. Maybe we could get us a three-bedroom house.”

  “Why three bedrooms?”

  “We can’t leave out Miss Lucy,” she tells me. “She’s family now.”

  Her words make me smile. “That would be nice. I’m really proud of you, Mama.”

  She sounds very pleased. “Well, I have to get back to work.”

  “Mama, why don’t you come over on Sunday if you don’t have to work? You could have dinner with us.”

  She jumps on that idea. “Honey, I’ll come right after work,” she says. “Thanks for inviting me to eat with y’all. You have no idea how much this means to me, Kylie.”

  I’ve been doing some thinking, and I’ve come to realize something very important. “None of us are perfect, and I have no right to judge you. You’re my mama, and you deserve a second chance. I’m sorry for the way that I treated you.”

  “As Mama would say, truth is truth. You had every right to expect me to act like a mother. After all, I brought you into this world.”

  I’m not done, though. “Miss Lucy says that we shouldn’t keep looking back into the past. She says that we should focus on the future. We’re gonna start over, Mama.”

  “I’d really like that.”

  I smile. “I can’t wait to see you.”

  “I’m proud of you,” Miss Lucy tells me when I get off the phone.

  “You were right,” I admit. “If I want to be forgiven for the times I mess up, then I have to do the same. I realize that now. I also realize that my mama did the best that she could, I guess. By the time she was sixteen, I was two years old. She just wanted to be a teenager.”

  “I’m glad to see she’s trying to be an adult now,” Miss Lucy replies. “You need her to grow up so that she can be there to guide you.”

  “I know she’s gonna make mistakes and all, but I’m gonna just love her.”

  “And keep the lines of communication open,” Miss Lucy advises. “She needs you as much as you need her.”

  “She’ll also have you to help keep her on the straight and narrow, as Grandma Ellen would say.”

  Miss Lucy laughs. “I’ll keep you both straight.”

  She has been so good to me. “My grandma was right about something else. She used to always say that being related doesn’t always make you a family—love is what makes you family. I lost her, but God brought you into my life.”

  She feels the same way. “I was never blessed to have any children, and I used to be sad about it, but like you said, God brought us together. We are a family.”

  I finally have the one thing I have wanted most in my life. I have my mama back and some wonderful friends and family. I don’t have a lot of material possessions, but as far as I’m concerned, I am the richest girl in the world.

  Readers Club Guide for

  Split Ends

  by Jacquelin Thomas

&n
bsp; SYNOPSIS

  Kylie Sanderson is sixteen and homeless, living on the streets of Los Angeles after running away from her neglectful mother, Serena. With no friends, no family, and no safe place to stay, she’s scared and alone, until an older homeless woman and a kind local business owner take her under their wings, offering her a job at a well-known salon. Kylie becomes friends with her coworker Rhyann, and through her, she befriends Divine, Mimi, and Alyssa, forming the “fab five B.F.F. club.” But Kylie has a secret she’s keeping from everyone, and she knows that if they find out, it could ruin her newfound happiness. In the end, Kylie learns that true friends will stand by you no matter what, you can create your own family, and dreams sometimes do come true.

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  1. Do you think Kylie made the right decision to run away from her mother because their life together was too unstable, or did she jump into an even more chaotic and dangerous situation?

  2. In her first couple of days on the streets, Kylie encounters other teenagers who have turned to drugs and shoplifting, and a pimp who tries to lure her into prostitution. Do you think if Kylie had not met Miss Lucy and Miss Marilee, she would have continued to resist, or would she have allowed herself to be pulled into that lifestyle in order to survive? What other options besides a life of crime are available to a teenager on the streets?

  3. Before she meets Divine, Kylie reads about her in a magazine and fantasizes about how perfect her life must be. Why are we so inclined to think other people’s lives, particularly those of celebrities, are so much better than our own? Is anyone ever completely happy, or is that a naïve assumption?

  4. Miss Lucy is a former war veteran who turned to alcohol and ended up on the streets. Now she cannot receive her veteran’s benefits because she has no address. Do you think it’s common for people who have served their country to fall between the cracks like this? Should there be better systems in place to ensure this doesn’t happen?

  5. Divine tells Kylie, “Stop being a victim. . . . we accept you as you are. The problem is that you seem to want us to change who we are. . . .” (page 196) While Kylie thinks that her friends are judging her, is she actually the one judging them? Can snobbery work in both directions?

  6. Kylie is determined not to get too close to Chandler or any other boy, so that she’s not distracted from her dreams of finishing high school and going to college. Do you think this is an unreasonable fear, based on her mother’s relationships with men, or is this a valid concern? What did you think of Kylie’s purity ring? Do you know anyone who has taken a purity vow?

  7. When Mimi and Divine try to give Kylie some of their hand-me-down clothing, she doesn’t want to accept it. Divine tells her, “God has blessed my family so that we can be a blessing to others.” (page 148) Why is Kylie willing to accept help from Miss Marilee, but so reluctant to accept it from her friends? Do you agree with Divine that those who have been given many blessings have a responsibility to share those blessings?

  8. Kylie tells Chandler, “The truth is that not all homeless people are druggies or have mental problems. They are normal people like you and me. ” (page 191) Did this make you think of homeless people differently? Did you have a preconceived notion of what homeless people are like, or what they had done to end up on the streets?

  9. Kylie believes that if Serena really loved her, she would be a better mother, but Miss Marilee suggests that she might be doing the best she can, having given birth to Kylie when she was only fourteen. Do her circumstances excuse her behavior? Either way, does Kylie owe it to her mother to forgive her? Does Serena deserve respect, or must she, as Kylie says, earn that respect?

  10. At the end of the novel, Kylie says, “. . . being related doesn’t always make you family—love is what makes you a family.” (page 231) What do you think about this statement? Is family based on bloodlines, or can it be a choice?

  ACTIVITIES TO ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB

  1. On average, there are 1.35 million homeless children and 400,000 homeless veterans annually in the United States. To learn more about the problem, visit National Coalition of the Homeless at www.nationalhomeless.org.

  2. Before they get their own apartment, Kylie and Miss Lucy rely heavily on the people at the Safe Harbor Mission. Get the members of your group together to volunteer at a local soup kitchen one Saturday, or help build a house with a Habitat for Humanity group.

  3. Jacquelin Thomas has written a previous series of books about Divine and her friends. To learn more, visit www.SimplyDivineBooks.com.

  A CONVERSATION WITH JACQUELIN THOMAS

  Q. You’ve written for both teenagers and adults. Does your process change from one to the other? Is there one audience you prefer writing for?

  A. I love writing for both audiences, and it’s interesting that my audience as a whole seems to read both genres. I have adults who read the YA books and teens reading my adult books. The process is the same—only the mentality of my characters changes.

  Q. Kylie’s friends are always pitching in to help each other. Do you have your own “B.F.F. club”? What are your best friends like?

  A. I don’t have a lot of best friends, but the ones I have are wonderful! They know who I am and they still love me.

  Q. Mimi tells Kylie that “having each other’s back is part of the B.F.F. code.” What would you consider to be your basic rules of friendship? If you were writing a B.F.F. code, what would be in it?

  A. My rules would be:

  1. Be honest with each other.

  2. Know each other’s faults and love each another in spite of them.

  3. Have each other’s back unless it’s something illegal and/or immoral.

  4. Show yourself worthy of their trust.

  Q. You deal with some serious issues in Split Ends, such as panic disorder, homelessness, and abuse. What kind of research did you do in writing those scenes? How do you find the right balance between getting a message across and entertaining your readers?

  A. I actually suffer from panic disorder, so I know from experience how anxiety can cripple you. I’ve volunteered to help the homeless and have heard their stories of how they ended up on the streets. I don’t just set out to entertain my readers—I also want to educate them on real life, but not to the point of beating them over the head with my message. I want readers to pause for a moment and just consider what is going on, and how it relates to their experiences or of those of someone they may know.

  Q. What made you decide to make the transition from writing traditional romance to writing with Christian themes?

  A. It was my relationship with God. He has always been a part of my life, and so it was natural to include Him in the world I created for my characters.

  Q. Miss Marilee feels that she has been blessed so she can bless others, and puts a lot of emphasis on service, without expecting anything back. Is there someone who was there for you at a time when you really needed it?

  A. Jesus said that He came to serve and not to be served. This is His desire for us as well. I’ve found true contentment whenever I’m helping others. I’ve had many angels in my lifetime—people who reached out to me when I needed them and I believe in paying it forward.

  Q. Kylie and Miss Lucy use a lot of unusual expressions, like calling chicken the “gospel bird” (page 64) or saying a boy couldn’t “hit a lick with a snake,” (page 94) to mean that he wasn’t ambitious. Are there any regional or family expressions you use that your readers may not have heard before?

  A. I’m from Georgia, so the expressions in the book are the ones I grew up hearing.

  Q. Who are your favorite writers? What do you read for fun?

  A. I love mysteries and especially books by James Patterson, but I also love historical fiction, and read a lot of historical romance as well as most authors writing in the Christian fiction genre.

  Q. Throughout the novel, the characters refer back to the Bible. Do you have a favorite passage from scripture? What is it, and why?

&
nbsp; A. I guess it would be Habakkuk 3:17–19, because it talks about how Habakkuk lost everything, but he continued to rejoice in the Lord because God is his strength and has equipped him to endure trials and tribulations. I believe that we find out what we’re really made of when we go through hardships. Oftentimes, we feel life isn’t fair and we pout, but another way to look at our struggles is this: The harder the struggle, the more faith God has in us. He knows just how much we can bear, so when life gets rough, just know that God is there cheering you on, because He knows that you can make it through! He just wants you to realize it, too, and trust that He’s already worked it out.

  Q. Your previous novel, Hidden Blessings, was made into a movie. If Split Ends were a movie, are there actresses you picture for any of the roles?

  A. Divine: KeKe Palmer (True Jackson, VP; Akeelah and the Bee) Kylie: Erica Hubbard (Lincoln Heights) Mimi: Sahara Garey (Akeelah and the Bee; That’s So Raven; Everybody Hates Chris) Rhyann: Kiely Williams (The Cheetah Girls)

  Check out the Divine book that started it all!

  simply divine

  Available from Pocket Books

  Mimi, I’m dying for you to see my dress,” I say into the purple-rhinestone-studded cell phone. “It’s this deep purple color with hand-painted scroll designs in gold on it. I have to be honest. I—Divine Matthews-Hardison—will be in all the magazines. I’ll probably be listed in the top-ten best-dressed category.”

  Mimi laughs. “Me too. My dress is tight. It’s silver and strapless and Lana Maxwell designed it.”

  “Oh, she’s that new designer. Nobody really knows her yet.” I’m hatin’ on her because she’s allowed to wear a strapless gown and I had to beg Mom for days to get her to let me wear a halter-style dress.

  I make sure to keep my voice low so that the nosy man Mom claims is my dad can’t hear my conversation. It’s a wonder Jerome actually has a life of his own—he’s always trying to meddle in mine.

  I can tell our limo is nearing the entrance of the Los Angeles Convention Center because I hear people screaming, and see the rapid flashing of cameras as die-hard fans try to snap pictures of their favorite celebrities while others hold up signs. I’m glued to the window, checking out the growing sea of bystanders standing on both sides of the red carpet.