When I came out of the bathroom, Pauline poked her head out of the kitchen. “Dinner’s on the table,” she said brightly.
I followed them into the dining room and we all sat down to eat. We chatted about the Wilda McClure house and the theater lecture Ava had taken me to, and I managed to eat most of my falafel and tabbouleh, but by the time Lev went into the kitchen for the blueberry pie, I was spent.
“Pauline?” I said. “I need to lie down.”
Scraping of chairs, worried murmurs, the blueberry pie hustled back into the kitchen. I thought I would die of embarrassment.
“I thought you looked a little sick,” said Pauline.
We went out to the living room and I lay down on the couch beside the drooling dog. Pauline draped the patterned blanket over my shoulders. I wanted to sleep for ten thousand years. I hadn’t realized how worried I’d been until the appointment was over. Now that the burden had been removed, I felt its full weight for the first time.
I must have looked awful.
“Do you want to call your mom?” Pauline said.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
She reached for the phone. I grabbed her hand to stop her.
“Please don’t call her,” I said.
Sharp silence. Something changed in the air. I took my hand off Pauline’s, but it was too late. She sank to a crouch beside me and patted the dog’s head.
“Annabeth,” said Pauline. “I think you’d better tell me what’s going on.”
64
I KEPT THE STORY SIMPLE. HOMECOMING dance, boy, accident. I tried to make it sound as adult and reasonable as possible.
“I didn’t want to miss campus visits, so I decided to get it done while I was up here.”
Pauline wasn’t buying it.
“Why didn’t you tell Leslie?” she said, flat out, when I had finished my summary.
I skirted my eyes away from Pauline’s and started to ramble. Mom and I had been fighting, Mom didn’t like my friends, Mom would freak out if she discovered that I’d spent homecoming drinking Jack Daniel’s and Gatorade with a boy I hardly knew, let alone the sex part.
“I’d already sort of denied that I’d been with a boy,” I said. “And then this happened and I didn’t want—I couldn’t stand—for her to look at me like that.”
“Look at you like what?” Pauline said.
“Like a disappointment,” I said. “Like a skank.”
“Is that how you see yourself?”
“No.”
“Then why would Leslie?”
I mumbled something about Operation Condom Drop. The truth is, skank wasn’t the thing I was worried about. It was something else. It was the cold glove that clenched at my stomach when I tried to finish my sandwiches. The way I sometimes saw myself in the mirror and wondered if Mom saw him when she looked at me. The way that revulsion would sometimes overcome me when I was in the shower or getting dressed for school, the tightness that lived in the corner of my heart, as if something there could hardly stand to be alive.
“I don’t want to give her any more reasons to hate me,” I said.
Pauline’s gray-blue eyes gazed deeply into mine. “Why would she hate you?”
“Why do you think?”
The clock on the mantelpiece ticked. The dog snored. Pauline drew in a short breath. “Leslie once told me she would rather crawl barefoot through snow than see you suffering. She loves you more than anyone else in the world. It’s a spit in her face to say she wouldn’t want to be with you for every minute that you were going through this. A spit in the face.”
I wasn’t expecting Pauline to be angry. I lay there, stunned, while she got up and disappeared into the kitchen.
I pulled the blanket up to my chin. I wasn’t sure which was worse: the grief I imagined in my mother’s voice when she said this, or the love. I didn’t want to be responsible for either. I just wanted to disappear.
“I’d like you to sleep here tonight,” Pauline said when she came back. “Can you call your cousin to let her know?”
Knowing better than to argue with her, I pulled out my phone.
65
BEFORE SAYING GOOD NIGHT, PAULINE gave me an ultimatum.
“I want you to tell her,” she said. “It’s not the kind of decision you’re supposed to make for another person, and you can call me a blackmailing bitch, but there is no way I’m putting you on a bus tomorrow in your condition. We’ll call her in the morning and you can explain.”
Pauline looked tired. She stood in the doorway of the den with her arms folded.
“You can hate me if you need to,” Pauline said. “If I was your age I’d hate me too. Leslie would never forgive me if I let you keep this a secret from her. I guess that’s more important to me than being the cool auntie, even though I wish there was a way I could be both.”
She smiled sadly. I dropped onto the foldout couch and felt my world sink like a flooded canoe. Pauline came over and gave me a half hug.
“She loves you,” Pauline said. “I love you too.”
The pattern in the floor danced and flashed. I thought forlornly of the flowers on Ava’s desk. I nodded, and Pauline went away.
66
EVEN THOUGH I WAS ALMOST DELIRIOUS from exhaustion, there was no way I could sleep with the phone call hanging over my head. I woke up Pauline’s computer and browsed distractedly. I started looking at old photos of Noe and me, the ones I used to upload religiously: Noe and Annabeth drinking lemonade on Noe’s patio, Noe and Annabeth making scared faces on a roller coaster, Noe and Annabeth wearing matching Trivia Wars T-shirts in tenth grade. I was so deep in my memories that when Noe chatted me I almost jumped out of my chair.
hey doll. how’s it going?
good, I typed. well—
yeah. good.
what’s up?
I hesitated, my hands hovering over the keyboard.
remember how you said the pill still worked if you took half? I typed.
well
it doesn’t.
It took a few seconds for Noe to reply, and when she did it was first just a stream of exclamation points.
!!!
!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!
ohmigod!!!!!
i know, I typed.
what are you going to do?!?!??
i already did it
this morning
are you ok?!?!?
yeah
are you sure???
oh bethy. i want to give you the biggest hug right now
this year has been so crazy
i know, I typed.
i want to wrap you up in a warm blanket