He scraped himself, seeing if he could fit through the window, but no one saw him. Tore open a pustule right through his favorite Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt, the Greenville show, Ronnie Van Zant’s last before the band’s fatal crash on the way to Baton Rouge. The tee was a collector’s item — and Jimmy only had five more of them. That was when he remembered the salve XXL had applied to his worst sores. She’d grimaced applying it.
He found the tube in the bathroom and smothered his bare chest with the greasy ointment. Hated to leave the tee behind, but he had no choice. He was giving someone a real fine gift, even if it did have some of the ooze that came out of those sticky sores.
Now he squeezed right through the open window and found himself thirty seconds later perched near the edge of the sill, a good leap from the drainage pipe.
One more step, dude, and you’re free!
But when he pressed his foot down to get ready to launch himself from the last brick, a chunk of the outer sill broke and the brain buster flew loose. Almost took Jimmy with it, landing and bouncing on brown grass that looked hard as concrete.
He steadied his nerves, tested his footing one more time, and reassured himself all he needed was one good jump and he could slide away to freedom, just as he’d done as a kid after climbing light poles.
But you never were Spider-Man, a meek voice inside him said.
He nodded in agreement and studied the pipe, shadowy now under the ever-darkening sky. Oh, no. He’d spotted rust on the length of it. Hadn’t been painted in forever and a day.
His palms felt sweaty as he shifted his weight back to help propel himself over the gap. Not just sweaty, he realized when he rubbed them against the gown: greasy. Really greasy.
“Shit.”
He did his best to wipe off the salve but the reason it proved so soothing was the ointment had been designed to penetrate the deepest layers of skin.
Voices arose in the hallway outside his room. He wasn’t sure if it was XXL, the orderlies, soldiers, or someone else.
Just go!
He hurled himself at the drainage pipe, regret throbbing through him the moment he felt himself falling short.
But no. With a desperate reach he grabbed it and jammed his fingers between the rusty metal and the brick wall, skinning his knuckles. Then he started slipping. Good God! And the rusty metal strips holding the pipe to the brick wall began to break loose.
The whole apparatus fell backward. The only blessing — if you could call it that — was Jimmy could now wrap his arms and legs around the pipe and hold on, no longer hampered by greasy hands.
Down he went, faster and faster in gravity’s sure grip, a nail stuck to the mighty head of a magnetized hammer.
Emma was pregnant. No doubt about it. She’d used up five test sticks. Every one came up pink. She had no idea what she was going to do.
Here she was waltzing down the stairs with Sufyan to have dinner with her folks and Tahir — this was happening way too often — and she hadn’t even told her boyfriend the nightmare news. Even so, for all her casual airs, she feared he sensed her doom already. He’d sure been asking her a lot of questions: “What’s the matter?” “You feel all right?” “You sure?” No surprise why: she’d vomited in his presence four times. Morning sickness. Except not always in the morning; the fourth time had come five minutes ago.
“Stomach flu,” she’d lied.
“You have got to tell your mom. You should see a doctor.”
“No!” she’d snapped. “She’s got too much to worry about. Don’t say anything. Promise?”
Sufyan might not have figured it out but she knew her mom would put two and two together.
He wasn’t promising. He’d stopped on the stairs and was staring at Em as her dad called them down to dinner again.
Em knew Sufyan was going to have to own up because it was the condom that broke, not that that excuse would wash with her mother who’d been telling her the same message since she’d first shown interest in boys: “The pill is to stop pregnancy, and the condom’s not a bad backup but it’s also good to stop STDs.” Always reminding her that even a condom could fail to protect her from herpes.
Em had got something a whole lot worse than an STD: she’d gotten pregnant.
“The last of the halibut,” her dad announced as they walked into the dining room. “Cooked it in a creamy dill sauce. Your favorite,” he said to Em, who felt like hurling all over again. It really was her favorite fish dish, so why did it smell worse than a septic tank?
“Great. Thanks.” He was always trying to fix foods she liked, but she’d been eating less and less because of morning sickness. Maybe he’d noticed; her portion tonight was smaller.
Thank God.
Em urged herself to eat. She felt a hint of her gag reflex when she flaked off a forkful of the white fish, but managed to swallow it.
Tahir’s eyes were on her. He rarely said much but his gaze felt penetrating. She and Sufyan had talked about that. Her boyfriend said there had been times when he would have sworn his uncle could read his mind.
What else could he read? Em wondered. My body?
“So what have you been up to?” Don asked Tahir.
“Not too much,” Tahir replied, his manner of speaking as stiff as ever.
“You work on your computer all the time,” Sufyan said, a prod that didn’t appear appreciated by Tahir, who replied crisply:
“Like you on your phone.”
“Do you work on it a lot?” Lana asked Tahir.
You’re real subtle, Emma thought.
“It is the only way I can stay in touch with our friends and family in Sudan.” Tahir smiled at Lana, which is to say his lips parted just enough to flash his perfect teeth.
“I thought you didn’t have any surviving relatives there,” Lana replied.
“Cousins. Our clan.” That smile again, sneaky as a snake bite.
Em watched her mother eye him the way she always stared at her when Lana expected Emma to say more. The silence trap. That was what Em called it. She’d learned to avoid it — after years of fumbling verbally and trying to fill it, often with self-incriminating information. She saw immediately that Tahir was a much faster study: he simply went back to eating.
“Awkward. Awkward,” Em said to Sufyan when they walked outside to wait for his uncle, who’d stopped to thank her parents for dinner, as formal in parting as he’d been at the table.
The FBI agent, Robin Maray, smiled at Emma and Sufyan. Good-looking, for sure, Em thought, smiling back. Too old for her, though. Old as her mom and dad. And she loved Sufyan.
“We’ve got to slip away from your uncle and my dad soon,” she told him.
“Why?”
“I’ll tell you but you have to promise to keep it secret.”
“Of course.”
“No, I mean it. Say—”
“I promise I’ll keep it secret.”
“I’m pregnant. I need to get away from those two and get to Planned Parenthood as soon as possible.”
“Why?” Sufyan exclaimed. “This is glorious news.”
Glorious?
“No, it’s not gl—”
Tahir was walking toward them. She doubted he could read her mind — or his nephew’s — but she had no doubt that he’d at least heard her last few words. Among them might have been “I’m pregnant.”
“Text me,” Sufyan said, as if they’d been discussing his latest basketball drills. He bounced a ball up and down the court every day.